CHAPTER III.

I.--The second stage of the Jacobin conquest.

The importance and multitude of vacant offices.

The second stage of the Jacobin conquest will, after August 10th and during the next three months, extend and multiply all vacancies from the top to the bottom of the hierarchy, for the purpose of filling them with their own men.--In the first place, the faction (the party) installs representatives on the summits of public authority which represent itself alone, seven hundred and forty-nine omnipotent deputies, in a Convention which, curbed neither by collateral powers nor by a previously established constitution, disposes at pleasure of the property, the lives and the consciences of all French people.--Then, through this barely installed convention, it decrees the complete renewal of all administrative and judicial bodies, councils and directories of departments, councils and communal municipalities, civil, criminal and commercial tribunals, justices and their assistants in the lower courts, deputies of the justices, national commissaries of the civil courts, with secretaries and bailiffs belonging to the various tribunals and administrations. The obligation of having practiced as a lawyer is abolished by the same stroke, so that the first comer, if he belongs to the club (party) may become a judge without knowing how to write, and even without being able to read.--Just before this the staff of the National Guard, in all towns above fifty thousand souls, and afterwards in all the towns on the frontier, has again passed through the electoral sieve. In like manner, the officers of the gendarmerie at Paris and throughout France once more undergo an election by their men. Finally, all post-masters and post-office comptrollers have to submit to election.--Even better, below or alongside the elected officials, this administrative purge concerns all non-elective functionaries and employees, no matter how insignificant their service, however feeble and indirect their office may be connected with political matters. This is because tax receivers and assessors, directors and other agents of rivers and forests, engineers, notaries, attorneys, clerks and scribes belonging to the administrative branch, are all subject to dismissal if they do not obtain a certificate of civism from their municipality. At Troyes, out of fifteen notaries, it is refused to four, which leaves four places to be filled by their Jacobin clerks. At Paris, "all honest folks, all clerks who are educated," are driven out of the navy offices; the war department is getting to be "a den where everybody on duty wears a red cap, where all thee-and-thou each other, even the Minister, where four hundred employees, among which are a number of women, show off in the dirtiest dress, affect the coolest cynicism, do nothing, and steal on all sides."--Under the denunciation of the clubs, the broom is applied even at the bottom of the hierarchical scale, even to secretaries of village councils, to messengers and call-boys in the towns, to jail-keepers and door-keepers, to beadles and sextons, to foresters, field-custodians, and others of this class. All these persons must be, or appear to be, Jacobin; otherwise, their place slips away from them, for there is always some one to covet it, apply for it and take it.--Outside of employees the sweeping operation reaches the suppliers and contractors; even here there are the faithful to be provided for, and nowhere is the bait so important. The State, even in ordinary times, is always the largest of consumers, and, at this moment, it is expending monthly, merely on the war, two hundred millions extra. What fish may be caught in such disturbed waters!--All these lucrative orders as well as all these remunerated positions are at the disposition of the Jacobins, and they seize the opportunity; they are the lawful owner, who comes home after a long absence and gives or withdraws his custom as the pleases, while he makes a clean sweep in his own household.--The administrative and judicial services alone number 1,300,000 places, all those in the treasury department, in that of public works, in that of public education, and in the Church; all posts in the National Guard and in the army, from that of commander-in-chief down to a drummer; the whole of the central or local power, with the vast patronage flowing from this. Never had such rich spoils been made available to the general public in one go. Lots will be drawn, apparently, by vote; but it is evident that the Jacobins have no intention of surrendering their prey to the hazards of a free ballot; they mean to keep it the way they got it; by force, and will leave no stone unturned to control the elections.

II.--The elections.

The young and the poor invited to the ballot-box.--Danger of the Conservatives if candidates.--Their chiefs absent themselves.--Proportion of absentees at the primary assemblies.

They begin by paving their way. A new decree has at once suppressed the feeble and last legal requirement for impartiality, integrity and competence of the elector and the eligible candidate. No more discrimination between active and passive citizens; no longer any difference between poll tax of an elector of the first degree and that of the second degree: no electoral poll tax qualification whatever. All Frenchmen, except domestics, of whom they are distrustful, supposing them under their employer's influence, may vote at the primary assemblies, and not longer at the age of twenty-five, but at twenty-one, which brings to the polls the two most revolutionary groups, on the one hand the young, and on the other the poor, the latter in great numbers in these times of unemployment, dearth and poverty, amounting in all to two millions and a half, and, perhaps, three millions of new electors.--At Besançon the number of the registered voters is doubled.--Thus are the usual clients of the Jacobins admitted within the electoral boundaries, from which they had hitherto been excluded, and, to ensure their coming, their leaders decide that every elector obliged to travel "shall receive twenty sous mileage," besides "three francs per diem during his stay."

While attracting their supporters they drove their adversaries away. The political banditry, through which they dominate and terrify France, has already taken care of that. Many arbitrary arrests and unpunished murders are a warning to all candidates who do not belong to their party; and I do not speak about to the nobles or friends of the ancient regime that have fled or are in prison, but the Constitutionalists and the Feuillants. Any electoral enterprise on their part would be madness, almost a suicide. Accordingly, none of them call attention to themselves. If any outrageous moderate, like Durand de Maillane, appears on a list, it is because the revolutionaries have adopted him without knowing him, and because he swears that he hates royalty. The others, more honest, do not want to don the popular livery and resort to club patronage, so they carefully stay away; they know too well that to do otherwise would mark their heads for pikes and their homes for pillage. At the very moment of depositing the vote the domains of several deputies are sacked simply because, "on the comparative lists of seven calls by name," sent to the departments from Paris by the Jacobins, their names are found on the right.--Through an excess of precaution the Constitutionalists of the Legislative body are kept at the capital, their passports being refused to them to prevent them from returning into the provinces and obtaining votes by publicly stating the truth in relation to the recent revolution.--In the same way, all conservative journals are suppressed, reduced to silence, or compelled to become turncoats.--Now, when one has neither the possibility to speak up nor a candidate which might become one's representative, of what use is it to vote? And especially, since the primary assemblies are places of disorder and violence, patriots alone, in many places, being admitted, a conservative being "insulted and overwhelmed with numbers," and, if he utters an opinion, exposed to danger, also, if he remains silent, incurring the risk of denunciations, threats, and blows. To keep in the background, remain on the sidelines, avoid being seen, and to strive to be forgotten, is the rule under a pasha, and especially when this pasha is a mob. Hence the absenteeism of the majority; around the ballot-box there is an enormous void. At Paris, in the election of mayor and municipal officers, the balloting of October, November and December collect together only 14,000 out of 160,000 registered voters, later 10,000, and, later again, only 7,000. At Besançon, 7,000. registered voters result in less than 600; there is the same proportion in other towns, as for example, in Troyes. In like manner, in the rural cantons, east of Doubs and west of Loire-Inférieure, but one-tenth of the electors dare exercise their right to vote. The electoral source is so exhausted, so often disturbed, and so stopped up as to be almost dry: in these primary assemblies which, directly or indirectly, delegate all public powers, and which, in the expression of the common will, should be full, there are lacking six millions three hundred thousands electors out of seven millions.

III.--Composition and tone of the secondary assemblies.

Exclusion of "Feuillant" electors.--Pressure on other electors.--Persons elected by the conservatives obliged to resign.--Elections by the Catholics canceled.--Secession of the Jacobin minorities.--The election of their men made valid.--Public opinion not in accord with official selections.

Through this anticipated purge the assemblies of the first degree find themselves, for the most part, Jacobin; consequently the electors of the second degree, appointed by them, are for the most part, Jacobin; in many departments, their assembly becomes the most anarchical, the most turbulent, and the most usurping of all the clubs. Here there is only shouting, denunciations, oath-taking, incendiary motions, cheering which carry all questions, furious speeches by Parisian commissaries, by delegates from the local club, by passing Federates, and by female wretches demanding arms. The Pas-de-Calais assemblage sets free and applauds a woman imprisoned for having beaten a drum in a mob. The Paris assembly fraternizes with the Versailles slaughterers and the assassins of the mayor of Etampes. The assembly of the Bouches-du-Rhône gives a certificate o virtue to Jourdan, the Glacière murderer. The assembly of Seine-et-Marne applauds the proposal to cast a cannon which might contain the head of Louis XVI. for a cannon-ball to be fired at the enemy.--It is not surprising that an electoral body without self-respect should respect nothing, and practice self-mutilation under the pretext of purification. The object of the despotic majority was to reign at once, without any contest, on its own authority, and to expel all offensive electors. At Paris, in the Aisne, in Haute-Loire, in Ille-et-Vilaine, in Maine-et-Loire, it excludes as unworthy the members of old Feuillants and monarchical clubs, and the signers of Constitutionalist protests. In Hérault it cancels the elections in the canton of Servian, because the elected men, it says, are "mad aristocrats." In Orne it drives away an old Constituent, Goupil de Préfeln, because he voted for the revision, also, his son-in-law, because he is his son-in-law. In the Bouches-du-Rhône, where the canton of Seignon, by mistake or through routine, swore "to maintain the constitution of the kingdom," it sets aside these retrograde elected representatives, commences proceedings against the "crime committed," and sends troops against Noves because the Noves elector, a justice who is denounced and in peril, has escaped from the electoral den.--After the purification of persons it proceeds to the purification of sentiments. At Paris, and in at least nine departments, and in contempt of the law, is suppresses the secret ballot, the last refuge of timid conservatives, and imposes on each elector a verbal public vote, loud and clear, on his name being called; that is to say, if he does not vote as he ought to, he risks the gallows. Nothing could more surely convert hesitation and indecision into good sense, while, in many a place, still more powerful machinery is violently opposed to the elections. At Paris the elections are carried on in the midst of atrocities, under the pikes of the butchers, and con ducted by their instigators. At Meaux and at Rheims the electors in session were within hearing of the screeches of the murdered priests. At Rheims the butchers themselves ordered the electoral assembly to elect their candidates, Drouet, the famous post-master, and Armonville, a tipsy wool-carder, upon which one-half of the assembly withdrew, while the two candidates of the assassins are elected. At Lyons, two days after the massacre, the Jacobin commander writes to the Minister: "Yesterday's catastrophe puts the aristocrats to flight, and ensures us the majority in Lyons." From universal suffrage thus subjected to so much sifting, submitted to such heavy pressure, heated and refined in the revolutionary alembic, those who control it obtain all they want, a concentrated extract, the quintessence of the Jacobin spirit.

And yet, should this extract not seem to them sufficiently strong, wherever they are sovereign, they throw it away and begin over again. At Paris, by means of a purifying and surplus ballot, the new Council of the Commune undertakes the expulsion of its lukewarm members, while d'Ormesson, the mayor elect of the moderates, is assailed with so many threats that, on the verge of his installation, he resigns. At Lyons, another moderate, Nivière-Chol, twice elected, and, by 9,000 out of 11,000 votes, is twice compelled to abandon his place; after him, Gilibert, the physician, who, supported by the same voters, is about to obtain the majority, is seized suddenly and cast into prison; even in prison, he is elected; the clubbists confine him there more rigidly, and do not let him out even after extorting his resignation.--Elsewhere in the rural cantons, for example, in Franche-Comté, a number of elections are canceled when the person elected happens to be a Catholic. The Jacobin minority frequently secede, meet in a tavern, elect their mayor or justice of the peace, and the validity of his election is secured because he is a patriot; so much the worse for that of the majority, whose more numerous votes are null because given by "fanatics."--The response of universal suffrage thus appealed to cannot be other than that which is framed for it. Indisputable facts are to show to what extent this response is compulsive or perverted, what a distance there is between an official choice and public opinion, how the elections give a contrary meaning to popular sentiment. The departments of Deux-Sèvres, Maine-et-Loire, la Vendée, Loire-Infèrieure, Morbihan, and Finistère, send only anti-Catholic republicans to the Convention, while these same departments are to become the inexhaustible nursery of the great catholic and royalist insurrection. Three regicides out of four deputies represent Lozère, where, six months later, thirty thousand peasants are to march under the Royal white banner. Six regicides out of nine deputies represent la Vendée, which is going to rise from one end of it to the other in the name of the King.

IV.--Composition of the National Convention.

Number of Montagnards at the start.--Opinions and sentiments of the deputies of the Plain.--The Gironde.--Ascendancy of the Girondins in the Convention.--Their intellectual character.--Their principles.--The plan of their Constitution.--Their fanaticism.--Their sincerity, culture and tastes.--How they differ from pure Jacobins.--How they comprehend popular sovereignty.--Their stipulations with regard to the initiative of individuals and of groups.-- Weakness of philosophic thought and of parliamentary authority in times of anarchy.

However vigorous the electoral pressure may have been, the voting machine has not provided the expected results. At the opening of the session, out of 749 deputies, only about fifty are found to approve of the Commune, nearly all of the elected in places where, as at Rheims and Paris, terror has the elector by the throat, "under the clubs, axes, daggers, and bludgeons of the butchers." But where the physical impressions of murder have not been so tangible and impressive, some sense of decency has prevented too glaring elections. The inclination to vote for well-known names could not wholly be arrested; seventy-seven former members of the Constituent Assembly, and one hundred and eighty-six of the previous Legislative Assembly enter the Convention, and the practical knowledge which many of these have of government business has given them some insights. In short, the consciences of six hundred and fifty deputies are only in part perverted.

They are all, unquestionably, decided republicans, enemies of tradition, apostles of reason, and trained in deductive politics; only on these conditions could they be elected. Every candidate is supposed to possess the Jacobin faith, or, at least, to recite the revolutionary creed. The Convention, consequently, at its opening session votes unanimously, with cheers and enthusiasm, the abolition of royalty, and three months later it pronounces, by a large majority, Louis XVI.,

"guilty of conspiring against the liberty of the nation, and of assaults on the general welfare of the State."

Nevertheless, social habitudes still subsist under political prejudices. A man who is born in and lives for a long time in an old community, is, through this alone, marked with its imprint; the customs to which he conforms have crystallized in him in the shape of sentiments: if it is well-regulated and civilized, he has involuntarily arrived at respect for property and for human life, and, in most characters, this respect has taken very deep root. A theory, even if adopted, does not wholly succeed in destroying this respect; only in rare instances is it successful, when it encounters coarse and defective natures; to take full hold, it is necessary that it should fall on the scattered inheritors of former destructive appetites, on those hopelessly degenerate souls in which the passions of an anterior date are slumbering; then only does its malevolence fully appear, for it rouses the ferocious or plundering instincts of the barbarian, the raider, the inquisitor, and the pasha. On the contrary, with the greatest number, do what it will, integrity and humanity always remain powerful motives. Nearly all these legislators, who originate in the middle class, are at bottom, irrespective of a momentary delusion, what they always have been up to now, advocates, attorneys, merchants, priests, or physicians of the ancient regime, and what they will become later on, docile administrators or zealous functionaries of Napoleon's empire, that is to say, ordinary civilized persons belonging to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, sufficiently honest in private life to have a desire to be equally so in public life.--Hence their horror of anarchy, of Marat, and of the September butchers and robbers. Three days after their assembling together they vote, "almost unanimously," the preparation of a law "against the instigators of murder and assassination." "Almost unanimously," they desire to raise a guard, recruited in the 83 departments, against the armed bands of Paris and the Commune. Pétition is elected as their first president by "almost the totality of suffrages." Roland who has just read his report to them, is greeted with the "loudest" applause from nearly the "entire" Assembly. In short they are for the ideal republic against actual brigands. This accounts for their ranging themselves around those upright and sincere deputies, who, in the two preceding Assemblies or alongside of them, were the ablest defenders of both principles and humanity, around Buzot, Lanjuinais, Pétition, and Rabaut-Saint-Etienne; around Brissot, Vergniaud, Guadet, Gensonné, Isnard, and Condorcet; around Roland, Louvet, Barbaroux, and the five hundred deputies of the "Plain," marching in one body under the leadership of the 180 Girondists who now form the "Right."

These latter, among the republicans, are the most sincere and have the most faith; for they have long been such, after much thought, study and as a matter of principle. Nearly all of them are well-read educated men, reasoners, philosophers, disciples of Diderot or of Rousseau, satisfied that absolute truth had been revealed by their masters, thoroughly imbued with the Encyclopédie or the Contrat Social, the same as the Puritans formerly were with the Bible. At the age when the mind is maturing, and fondly clings to general ideas, they embraced the theory and aimed at a reconstruction of society according to abstract principles. They have accordingly set to work as pure logicians, rigorously applying the superficial and false system of analysis then in vogue. They have formed for themselves an idea of man in general, the same in all times and ages, an extract or minimum of man; they have pondered over several thousands of or millions of these abstract mortals, erected their imaginary wills into primordial rights, and drawn up in anticipation the chimerical contract which is to regulate their impossible union. There are to be no more privileges, no more heredity, no qualifications of any kind; all are to be electors, all eligible and all of equal members of the sovereignty; all powers are to be of short date, and conferred through election; there must be but one assembly, elected and entirely renewed annually, one executive council elected and one-half renewed annually, a national treasury-board elected and one-third renewed annually; all local administrations and tribunals must be elected; a referendum to the people, the electoral body endowed with the initiative, a constant appeal to the sovereignty, which, always consulted and always active, will manifest its will not alone by the choice of its mandatories but, again, through "the censure" which it will apply to the laws--such is the Constitution they forge for themselves. "The English Constitution," says Condorcet, "is made for the rich, that of America for citizens well-off; the French Constitution should be made for all men."--It is, for this reason, the only legitimate one; every institution that deviates from it is opposed to natural rights and, therefore, fit only to be put down.-This is what the Girondists have done during the Legislative sessions; we know how they, armed with the illusions of their new philosophy and triumphing through a rigid, rash and hasty reason, have

* persecuted Catholic consciences,

* violated feudal property,

* encroached on the legal authority of the King,

* persecuted the remains of the ancient regime,

* tolerated crimes committed by the crowds,

* even plunged France into an European war,

* armed even the paupers,

* caused the overthrow of all government.--

As far as his Utopia is concerned, the Girondist is a sectarian, and he knows no scruples.

* Little does he care that nine out of ten electors do not vote: he regards himself as the authorized representative of all ten.

* Little does he care whether the great majority of Frenchmen favor the Constitution of 1791; it is his business to impose on them his own.

* Little does he care whether his former opponents, King, émigrés, unsworn ecclesiastics, are honorable men or at least excusable; he will launch against them every rigorous legal proceeding, transportation, confiscation, civil death and physical death.

In his own eyes he is the justiciary, and his investiture is bestowed upon him by eternal right. There is no human infatuation so pernicious to man as that of absolute right; nothing is better calculated for the destruction in him of the hereditary accumulation of moral conceptions.--Within the narrow bounds of their creed, however, the Girondins are sincere and consistent. They are masters of their formulae; they know how to deduce consequences from them; they believe in them the same as a surveyor in his theorems, and a theologian in the articles of his faith; they are anxious to apply them, to devise a constitution, to establish a regular government, to emerge from a barbarous state, to put an end to fighting in the street, to pillaging, to murders, to the sway of brutal force and of naked arms.

The disorder, mover, so repugnant to them as logicians is still more repugnant to them as cultivated, polished men. They have a sense of what is proper, of becoming ways, and their tastes are even refined. They are not familiar with, nor do they desire to imitate, the rude manners of Danton, his coarse language, his oaths, and his low associations with the people. They have not, like Robespierre, gone to lodge with a master joiner, to live him and eat with his family. Unlike Pache, Minister of War, no one among them "feels honored" by "going down to dine with his porter," and by sending his daughters to the club to give a fraternal kiss to drunken Jacobins. At Madame Roland's house there is a salon, although it is stiff and pedantic; Barbaroux send verses to a marchioness, who, after the 2nd of June, elopes with him to Caen. Condorcet has lived in high society, while his wife, a former canoness, possess the charms, the repose, the instruction, and the elegance of an accomplished woman. Men of this stamp cannot endure close alongside of them the inept and gross dictatorship of an armed rabble. In providing for the public treasury they require regular taxes and not tyrannical confiscations. To repress the malevolent they propose "punishment and not banishment." In all State trials they oppose irregular courts, and strive to maintain for those under indictment some of the usual safeguards. On declaring the King guilty they hesitate in pronouncing the sentence of death, and try to lighten their responsibility by appealing to the people. The line "laws and not blood," was a line which, causing a stir in a play of the day, presented in a nutshell their political ideas. And, naturally, the law, especially Republican law, is the law of all; once enacted, nobody, no citizen, no city, no party, can refuse to obey it without being criminal. It is monstrous that one city should arrogate to itself the privilege of ruling the nation; Paris, like other departments, should be reduced to its on-eighty-third proportion of influence. It is monstrous that, in a capital of 700,000 souls, five or six thousand radical Jacobins should oppress the sections and alone elect their candidates; in the sections and at the polls, all citizens, at least all republicans, should enjoy an equal and free vote. It is monstrous that the principle of popular sovereignty should be used to cover up attacks against popular sovereignty, that, under the pretense of saving the State, the first that comes along may kill whom he pleases, that, on the pretext that they are resisting oppression, each mob should have the "Right" to put the government down.--Hence, this militant "Right" must be pacified, enclosed within legal boundaries, and subjected to a fixed process. Should any individual desire a law, a reform or a public measure, let him state his on paper over his own signature and that of fifty other citizens of the same primary assembly; then the proposition must be submitted to his own primary assembly; then in case it obtains a majority, to the primary assemblies of his arrondissement; then, in case of a majority, to the primary assemblies of his department; then, in case of a majority, to all the primary assemblies of the nation, so that after a second verdict of the same assemblies twice consulted, the Legislative body, yielding to the majority of primary suffrages, may dissolve and a new Legislative body, in which all old members shall be declared ineligible, take its place.--This is the final expression and the master idea, of the theory. Condorcet, its able constructor, has outdone himself. Impossible to design on paper a more ingenious or complicated mechanism. The Girondists, in the closing article of this faultless constitution, believe that they have discovered a way to muzzle the beast and allow the sovereign people to fully assert their rights.

As if, with some kind of constitution and especially with this one, one could muzzle the beast! As if it was in the mood to crane the neck allowing them to put the muzzle on! Robespierre, on behalf of the Jacobins, counters with a clause radically opposed to the one drafted by Condorcet:

"To submit 'the right to resist oppression' to legal formalities is the ultimate refinement of tyranny... When a government violates the people's rights, a general insurrection of the people, as well as portions of the people, is the most sacred of duties."

Political orthodoxy, close reasoning, and oratorical talent are, however, no weapon against this ever-muttering insurrection.

"Our philosophers," says a good observer, "want to attain their ends by persuasion; which is equivalent to saying that battles may be won by eloquence, fine speeches, and plans of constitution. Very soon, according to them,.. if will suffice to carry complete copies of Macchiavelli, Rousseau and Montesquieu into battle instead of cannon, it never occurring to them that these authors, like their works, never were, and never will be, anything but fools when put up against a cut-throat provided with a good sword."

The parliamentary landscape has fallen away; things have returned to a state of nature, that is, to a state of war, and one is no longer concerned with debate but with brute force. To be in the right, to convince the convention, to obtain majorities, to pass decrees, would be appropriate in ordinary times, under a government provided with an armed force and a regular administration, by which, from the summits of public authority, the decrees of a majority descend through submissive functionaries to a sympathetic and obedient population. But, in times of anarchy, and above all, in the den of the Commune, in Paris, such as the 10th of August and the 2nd of September made it, all this is of no account.

V.--The Jacobins forming alone the Sovereign People.

Opinion in Paris.--The majority of the population constitutional.--The new régime unpopular.--Scarcity and high cost of food.--Catholic customs obstructed.--Universal and increasing discontent.--Aversion or indifference to the Girondins.--Political resignation of the majority.--Modern customs incompatible with pure democracy.--Men of property and income, manufacturers and tradesmen, keep aloof. --Dissension, timidity, and feebleness of the Conservatives. --The Jacobins alone form the sovereign people.

And it is of no account because, first of all, in this great city of Paris the Girondists are isolated, and have no group of zealous partisans to depend upon. For, if the large majority is opposed to their adversaries, that is not in their favor, it having secretly, at heart, remained "Constitutionalists." "I would make myself master of Paris," says a professional observer, "in ten days without striking a blow if I had but six thousand men, and one of Lafayette's stable-boys to command them." Lafayette, indeed, since the departure or concealment of the royalists, represents the old, fixed, and innermost opinion of the capital. Paris submits to the Girondists as well as to the Montagnards as usurpers; the mass of the public regards them with ill-will, and not only the bourgeoisie, but likewise the majority of the people loathe the established government.

Work is scarce and food is dear; brandy has tripled in price; only four hundred oxen are brought in at the Poissy market instead of seven or eight thousand; the butchers declare that there will be no meat in Paris next week except for the sick. To obtain a small ration of bread it is necessary to wait five or six hours in a line at the baker's shops, and, as is customary, workmen and housekeepers impute all this to the government. This government, which so poorly provides for its needs, offends them yet more in their deepest feelings, in the habits most dear to them, in their faith and worship. The common people, even at Paris, is still at this time very religious, much more so than at the present day. When the priest bearing the Host passes along the street, the crowd "gathers from all sides, men, women, and children, young and old, and fall on their knees in worship." The day on which the relics of saint Leu are borne in procession through the Rue St. Martin, "everybody kneels; I did not see a man," says a careful observer, "that did not take off his hat. At the guard-house of the Mauconseil section, the entire company presented arms." At the same time the "citoyennes around the markets talked with each other to know if there was any way of decking houses with tapestry." The following week they compel the revolutionary committee of Saint-Eustache to authorize another procession, and again each one kneels: "everybody approved of the ceremony, no one, that I heard of; making any objection. This is a striking picture.... I saw repentance, I saw the parallel each is forced to draw between the actual state of things and the former one. I saw what a privation the people had to endure in the loss of that which, formerly, was the most imposing of all church ceremonies. People of all ranks and ages were deeply affected and humble, and many had tears in their eyes." Now, in this respect, the Girondists, by virtue of being philosophers, are more iconoclastic, more intolerant than any one, and there is no reason for preferring them to their adversaries. At bottom, the government installed by the recent electoral comedy, for the major portion of the Parisians, has no authority but the fact of its existence; people put up with it because there is no other, fully recognizing its worthlessness; it is a government of strangers, of interlopers, of bunglers, of cantankerous, weak and violent persons. The Convention has no hold either on the people or on the bourgeois class, and in proportion as it glides more rapidly down the revolutionary hill, it breaks one by one the ties with which it is still connected to the undecided.

In a reign of eight months the Convention has alienated public opinion entirely. "Almost all who have property of any kind are conservative," and all the conservatives are against it. "The gendarmes here openly speak up against the Revolution, even up to the revolutionary tribunal, whose judgments they loudly condemn. All the old soldiers detest the actual order of things."--The volunteers "who come back from the army appear angry at putting the King to death, and on that account they would flay all the Jacobins."--No party in the Convention escapes this universal disaffection and growing aversion. "If the question of guillotining the members of the Convention could be put to an open vote, it would be carried against them by a majority of nineteen-twentieths," which, in fact, is about the proportion of electors who, through fright or disgust, keep away from the polls. Let the "Right" or the "Left" of the Convention be victors or vanquished, that is a matter which concerns them; the public at large does not enter into the discussions of its conquerors, and no longer cares for either Gironde or "Mountain." Its old grievances always revive "against the Vergniauds, Guadets" and company; it does not like them, and has no confidence in them, and will let them be crushed without helping them. The infuriates may expel the Thirty-Two, if they choose, and put them under lock and key. "There is nothing the aristocracy (meaning by this, owners of property, merchants, bankers, the rich, and the well-to-do), desire so much as to see them guillotined." 'Even the inferior aristocracy (meaning petty tradesmen and head-workmen) take no more interest in their fate than if they were so many escaped wild beasts... again caught and put in their cages." "Guadet, Pétion, Brissot, would not find thirty persons in Paris who would take their part, or even take the first step to save them."

Apart from all this, it makes little difference whether the majority has any preferences; its sympathies, if it has any, will never be other than platonic. It no longer counts for anything in either camp, it has withdrawn from the battle-field, it is now simply the stakes of the conflict, the prey and the booty of the winner. For, unable or unwilling to comply with the political system imposed on it, it is self-condemned to utter powerlessness. This system is the direct government of the people by the people, with all that ensues, permanence of the section assemblies, club debates in public, uproar in the galleries, motions in the open air, mobs and manifestations in the streets; nothing is less attractive and more impracticable to civilized and busy people. In our modern communities, work, the family, and social intercourse absorb nearly all our time; hence, such a system suits only the idle and rough outcasts who feel at home there; the others refuse to enter an environment expressly set up for singles, orphans, unskilled persons, living in lodgings, foul-mouthed, lacking the sense of smell, with a gift of the gab, robust arms, tough hide, solid haunches, expert in hustling, and with whom blows replace arguments.--After the September massacres, and on the opening of the barriers, a number of proprietors and persons living on their incomes, not alone the suspected but those who thought they might become so, escaped from Paris, and, during the following months, the emigration increases along with the danger. Towards December rumor has it that lists have been made up of former Feuillants; "we are assured that during the past eight days more than fourteen thousand persons have left the capital." According to the report of the Minister himself; "many who are independent in fortune and position abandon a city where the renewal of proscription is talked of daily."--" Grass grows in the finest streets," writes a deputy, "while the silence of the grave reigns in the Thébaïdes (isolated villas) of the faubourg Saint-Germain."--As to the conservatives who remain, they confine themselves to private life, from which it follows that, in the political balance, those present are of no more account than the absentees. At the municipal elections in October, November, and December, out of 160,000 registered voters, there are at first 144,000, then 150,000, and finally 153,000 who stay away from the polls; these, certainly, and for a much better reason, do not show themselves at the assemblies of their sections. Commonly, out of three or four thousand citizens, only fifty or sixty attend; one of these, called a general assembly, which signifies the will of the people to the Convention, is composed of twenty-five voters. Accordingly, what would a sensible man, a friend of order, do in these dens of fanatics? He stays at home, as on stormy days; he lets the shower of words spend itself, not caring to be spattered in the gutter of nonsense which carries off the filth of this district.

If he leaves his house at all he goes out for a walk, the same as in old times, to indulge the tastes he had under the old régime, those of a talkative, curious on-looker and friendly stroller, of a Parisian safe in his well run town. "Yesterday evening," writes a man who feels the coming Reign of Terror, "I took my stand in the middle of the right alley of the Champs-Elysées; it was thronged with--who do you think? Would you believe it, with moderates, aristocrats, owners of property, and very pretty women, elegantly dressed, seeking the caresses of the balmy spring breeze! It was a charming sight. All were gay and smiling. I was the only one that was not so... I withdrew hastily, and, on passing through the Tuileries garden, I saw a repetition of what I had seen before, forty thousand wealthy people scattered here and there, almost as many as Paris contains."--These are evidently the sheep ready for the slaughter-house. They no longer think of defense, they have abandoned their posts to the sans-culottes, "they refuse all civil and military functions," they avoid doing duty in the National Guard and instead pay their substitutes. In short, they withdraw from a game which, in 1789, they desired to play without understanding it, and in which, since the end of 1791, they have always burnt their fingers. The cards may be handed over to others, especially as the cards are dirty and the players fling them in each others' faces; as for themselves they are spectators, they have no other ambitions.--"Leave them their old enjoyments, leave them the pleasure of going and coming throughout the kingdom; but do not force them to take part in the war. Subject them to the heaviest taxation and they will not complain; nobody will even know that they exist, while the most serious question that disturbs them in their thoughtful days is, can one amuse one's self as much under a republican form of government as under the ancient régime?" They hope, perhaps, to escape under cover of inoffensive neutrality. Is it likely that the victor, whoever he is, will regard people as enemies who are resigned to his rule before-hand? "A dandy alongside of me remarked, yesterday morning, 'They will not take my arms away, for I never had any.' Alas,' I replied to him, 'don't make a boast of it, for you may find forty thousand simpletons in Paris that would say the same thing, and, indeed, it is not at all to the credit of Paris.'"--Such is the blindness or self-complacency of the city dweller who, having always lived under a good police, is unwilling to change his habits, and is not aware that the time has come for him to turn fighting man in his turn.

The manufacturers, the merchants and the man living on his income are even less disposed than the independent gentleman, to give up his private affairs for public affairs. His business will not wait for him, he being confined to his office, store or counting-room. For example, "the wine-dealers are nearly all aristocrats in the sense of this word at this period," but "never were their sales so great as during the insurrections of the people and in revolutionary days." Hence the impossibility of obtaining their services in those days. "They are seen on their premises very active, with three or four of their assistants," and turn a deaf ear to every appeal. "How can we leave when custom is so good? People must have their wants supplied. Who will attend to them if I and the waiters should go away?"--There are other causes of their weakness. All grades in the National Guard and all places in the municipality having been given up to the Jacobin extremists, they have no chiefs: the Girondists are incapable of rallying them, while Garat, the Minister, is unwilling to employ them. Moreover, they are divided amongst themselves, no one having any confidence in the other, "it being necessary to chain them together to have anything accomplished." Besides this, the remembrance of September weighs upon their spirits like a nightmare.--All this converts people into a timid flock, ready to scamper at the slightest alarm. "In the Contrat Social section," says an officer of the National Guard, "one-third of those who are able to defend the section are off in the country; another third are hiding away in their houses, and the other third dare not do anything." "If, out of fifty thousand moderates, you can collect together three thousand, I shall be very much astonished. And if; out of these three thousand, five hundred only are found to agree, and have courage enough to express their opinion, I shall be still more astonished. The latter, for instance, must expect to be Septemberized!" This they know, and hence they keep silent and bend beneath the yoke. "What, indeed, would the majority of the sections do when it is demonstrated that a dozen raving maniacs at the head of a sans-culottes section puts the other forty-seven sections of Paris to flight?"--Through this desertion of the state and themselves, they surrender in advance, and, in this great city, as formerly in ancient Athens and Rome, we see alongside of an immense population of subjects without any rights, a small despotic oligarchy in itself composing the sovereign people.

VI.--Composition of the party.

Its numbers and quality decline.--The Underlings.--Idle and dissipated workmen.--The suburban rabble.--Bandits and blackguards.--Prostitutes.--The September actors.

Not that this minority has been on the increase since the 10th of August, quite the reverse.--On the 19th of November, 1792, its candidate for the office of Mayor of Paris, Lhuillier, obtains only 4,896 votes. On the 18th of June, 1793, its candidate for the command of the National Guard, Henriot, will secure but 4,573 votes; to ensure his election it will be necessary to cancel the election twice, impose the open vote, and relieve voters from showing their section tickets, which will permit the trusty to vote successively in other quarters and apparently double their number by allowing each to vote two or three times. Putting all together, there are not six thousand Jacobins in Paris, all of them sans-culottes and partisans of the "Mountain." Ordinarily, in a section assembly, they number "ten or fifteen," at most "thirty or forty," "organized into a permanent tyrannical board."... "The rest listen and raise their hands mechanically."... "Three or four hundred Visionaries, whose devotion is as frank as it is stupid, and two or three hundred more to whom the result of the last revolution did not bring the places and honors they too evidently relied on," form the entire staff of the party; "these are the clamorers of the sections and of the groups, the only ones who have clearly declared themselves against order, the apostles of a new sedition, scathed or ruined men who need disturbance to keep alive," while under these comes the train of Marat, vile women, worthless wretches, and "paid shouters at three francs a day."

To this must be added that the quality of the factious is still more reduced than their number. Plenty of honest men, small tradesmen, wine dealers, cook-shop keepers, clerks, who, on the 10th of August, were against the Court, are now against the Commune. The September affair, probably, disgusted them, and they were not disposed to recommence the massacres. A workman named Gonchon, for example, the usual spokesman of the faubourg Saint-Antoine, an upright man, sincere and disinterested, supports Roland, and, very soon, at Lyons, seeing how things are with his own eyes, he is to loyally endorse the revolt of the moderates against the Maratists. "The respectable class of the arts, says observers, "is gradually leaving the faction to join the sane party." "Now that water-carriers, porters and the like storm the loudest in the sections, it is plain to all eyes that the gangrene of disgust has reached the fruit-sellers, tailors, shoe-makers, bar owners," and others of that class.--Towards the end, "butchers of both classes, high and low, are aristocratized."--In the same way, "the women in the markets, except a few who are paid and whose husbands are Jacobins, curse and swear, fume, fret and storm." "This morning," says a merchant, "four or five of them were here; they no longer insist on being called citoyennes; they declare that they "spit on the republic."--The only remaining patriot females are from the lowest of the low class, the harpies who pillage shops as much through envy as through necessity, "boat-women, embittered by hard labor,... jealous of the grocer's wife, better dressed than herself, as the latter was of the wives of the attorney and counselor, as these were of those of the financier and noble. The woman of the people thinks she cannot do too much to lower the grocer's wife to her own level."

Thus reduced to its dregs through the withdrawal of its tolerably honest recruits, the faction now comprises none but the scum of the populace, first, "subordinate workmen who look upon the downfall of their employers with a certain satisfaction," then, the small retailers, the old-clothes dealers, plasterers, "those who offer second-hand coats for sale on the fringes of the market, fourth-rate cooks who, at the cemetery of the Innocents, sell meat and beans under umbrella tops," next, domestics highly pleased with now being masters of their masters, kitchen helpers, grooms, lackeys, janitors, every species of valet, who, in contempt of the law, voted at the elections and at the Jacobin club form a group of "silly people" satisfied "that they were universal geographers because they had ridden post once or twice," and that they were politicians "because they had read 'The Four Sons of Aymon.'"--But, in this mud, spouting and spreading around in broad daylight, it is the ordinary scum of great cities which forms the grossest flux, the outcasts of every trade and profession, dissipated workmen of all kinds, the irregular and marauding troops of the social army, the class which, "discharged from La Pitié, run through a career of disorder and end in Bicêtre." "From La Pitié to Bicêtre" is a well known popular adage. Men of this stamp are without any principle whatever. If they have fifty francs they live on fifty, and if they have only five they live on five; spending everything, they are always out of pocket and save nothing. This is the class that took the Bastille, got up the 10th of August, etc. It is the same class which filled the galleries in the Assembly with all sorts of characters, filling up the groups," and, during all this time it never did a stroke of work. Consequently, "a wife who owns a watch, ear-rings, finger-rings, any jewels, first takes them to the pawnbrokers where they end up being sold. At this period many of these people owe the butcher, the baker, the wine-dealer, etc.; nobody trusts them any more. They have ceased to love their wives, and their children cry for food, while the father is at the Jacobin club or at the Tuileries. Many of them have abandoned their position and trade," while, either through "indolence" or consciousness "of their incapacity,"... "they would with a kind of sadness see this trade come back to life." That of a political gossip, of a paid claqueur, is more agreeable, and such is the opinion of all the idlers, summoned by the bugle to work on the camps around Paris.----Here, eight thousand men are paid forty sous a day "to do nothing"; "the workmen come along at eight, nine and ten o'clock in the morning. If they remain after roll-call... they merely trundle about a few wheelbarrow loads of dirt. Others play cards all day, and most of them leave at three or four o'clock, after dinner. On asking the inspectors about this they reply that they are not strong enough to enforce discipline, and are not disposed to have their throats slit." Whereupon, on the Convention decreeing piece-work, the pretended workers fall back on their equality, remind it that they had risen on the 10th of August, and wish to massacre the commissioners. It is not until the 2nd of November that they are finally dismissed with an allowance of three sous per league mileage for those of the departments. Enough, however, remain in Paris to increase immeasurably the troop of drones which, accustomed to consuming the store of honey, think they have a right to be paid by the public for buzzing around the State.

As a rear-guard, they have "the rabble of the suburbs of Paris, which flocks in at every tap of the drum because it hopes to make something." As advance-guard they have "brigands," while the front ranks contain "all the robbers in Paris, which the faction has enrolled in its party to use when required;" the second ranks are made up of "a number of former domestics, the bullies of gambling-houses and of houses of ill-fame, all the vilest class."--Naturally, lost women form a part of the crowd "Citoyennes," Henriot says, addressing the prostitutes of the Palais-Royal, whom he has assembled in its garden, "citoyennes, are you good republicans?" "Yes, general, yes!" "Have you, by chance, any refractory priest, any Austrian, any Prussian, concealed in your apartments?" "Fie, fie! We have nobody but sans-culottes!"--Along with these are the thieves and prostitutes out of the Châtelet and Conciergerie, set at liberty and then enlisted by the September slaughterers, under the command of an old hag named Rose Lacombe,[33100] forming the usual audience of the Convention; on important days, seven or eight hundred of these may be counted, sometimes two thousand, stationed at the entrance and in the galleries, from nine o'clock in the morning.[33101]--Male and female, "this anti-social vermin"[33102] thus crawls around at the sessions of the Assembly, the Commune, the Jacobin club, the revolutionary tribunal, the sections and one may imagine the physiognomies it offers to view. "It would seem," says a deputy,[33103] "as if every sink in Paris and other great cities had been scoured to find whatever was foul, the most hideous, and the most infected.... Ugly, cadaverous features, black or bronzed, surmounted with tufts of greasy hair, and with eyes sunken half-way into the head.... They belched forth with their nauseous breath the grossest insults amidst sharp cries like those of carnivorous animals." Among them there can be distinguished "the September murderers, whom" says an observer[33104] in a position to know them, "I can compare to nothing but lazy tigers licking their paws, growling and trying to find a few more drops of blood just spilled, awaiting a fresh supply." Far from hiding away they strut about and show themselves. One of them, Petit-Mamain, son of an innkeeper at Bordeaux and a former soldier, "with a pale, wrinkled face, sharp eyes and bold air, wearing a scimitar at his side and pistols at his belt," promenades the Palais-Royal[33105] "accompanied or followed at a distance by others of the same species," and "taking part in every conversation." "It was me," he says, "who ripped open La Lamballe and tore her heart out.... All I have to regret is that the massacre was such a short one. But we shall have it over again. Only wait a fortnight!" and, thereupon, he calls out his own name in defiance.--Another, who has no need of stating his well-known name, Maillard, president of the Abbaye massacres, has his head-quarters at the café Chrétien,[33106] Rue Favart, from which, guzzling drams of brandy, "he dispatches his mustached men, sixty-eight cutthroats, the terror of the surrounding region;" we see them in coffee-houses and in the foyers of the theaters "drawing their huge sabers," and telling inoffensive people: "I am Mr. so and so; if you look at me with contempt I'll cut you down!--A few months more and, under the command of one of Henriot's aids, a squad of this band will rob and toast (chauffer) peasants in the environment of Corbeil and Meaux.[33107] In the meantime, even in Paris, they toast, rob, and rape on grand occasions. On the 25th and 26th of February, 1793,[33108] they pillage wholesale and retail groceries, "save those belonging to Jacobins," in the Rue des Lombards, Rue des Cinq-Diamants, Rue Beaurepaire, Rue Montmartre, in the Ile Saint-Louis, on the Port-au-Blé, before the Hôtel-de-ville, Rue Saint-Jacques, in short, twelve hundred of them, not alone articles of prime necessity, soap and candles, but again, sugar, brandy, cinnamon, vanilla, indigo and tea. "In the Rue de la Bourdonnaie, a number of persons came out with loaves of sugar they had not paid for and which they re-sold." The affair was arranged beforehand, the same as on the 5th of October, 1789; among the women are seen "several men in disguise who did not even take the precaution of shaving," and in many places, thanks to the confusion, they heartily abandon themselves to it. With his feet in the fire or a pistol at his head, the master of the house is compelled to give them "gold, money, assignats and jewels," only too glad if his wife and daughters are not raped before his eyes as in a town taken by assault.

VII. The Jacobin Chieftains.

The make up of the rulers.--The nature and scope of their intellect.--The political views of M. Saule.

Such are the politicians who, after the last months of the year 1792, rule over Paris, and, through Paris, over the whole of France, five thousand brutes and blackguards with two thousand hussies, just about the number a good police force would expel from the city, were it important to give the capital a cleaning out;[33109] they too, were convinced of their rights, all the more ardent in their revolutionary faith, because the creed converts their vices into virtues, and transforms their misdeeds into public services.[33110] They are the actual sovereign people, this is why we should try to unravel their innermost thoughts. If we truly are to comprehend the past events we must discern the spontaneous feelings moving them on the trial of the King, the defeat of Neerwinden, at the defection of Dumouriez, on the insurrection in La Vendée, at the accusation of Marat, the arrest of Hébert, and each of the dangers which in turn fall on their heads. For, this is not borrowed emotion; it does not descend from above; they are not a trusty army of disciplined soldiers, but a suspicious accumulation of temporary adherents. To command them requires obedience to them, their leaders always remaining their tool. However popular and firmly established a chief may seem to be, he is there only for a short time, at all times subject to their approval as the bullhorn for their passions and the purveyor to their appetites.[33111] Such was Pétion in July, 1792, and such is Marat since the days of September. "One Marat more or less (which will soon be seen) would not change the course of events."[33112]--"But one only would remain,[33113] Chaumette, for instance; one would suffice to lead the horde," because it is the horde itself which leads. "Its attachment will always be awarded to whoever shows a disposition to follow it the closest in its outrages without in any respect caring for its former leaders... Its liking for Marat and Robespierre is not so great as for those who will exclaim, Let us kill, let us plunder!" Let the leader of the day stop following the current of the day, and he will be crushed as an obstacle or cast off as a piece of wreckage.--Judge if they are willing to be entangled in the spider's web which the Girondins put in their way. Instead of the metaphysical constitution with which the Girondins confront them, they have one in their own head ready made, simple to the last point, adapted to their capacity and their instincts. The reader will call to mind one of their chiefs, whom we have already met, M. Saule, "a stout, stunted little old man, drunk all his life, formerly an upholsterer, then a peddler of quackeries in the shape of four-penny boxes of hangman's grease, to cure pains in the loins,[33114] afterwards chief of the claque in the galleries of the Constituent Assembly and driven out for rascality, restored under the Legislative Assembly, and, under the protection of a groom of the Court, favored with a spot near the Assembly door, to set up a patriotic coffee-shop, then awarded six hundred francs as a recompense, provided with national quarters, appointed inspector of the tribunes, a regulator of public opinion, and now "one of the madcaps of the Corn-market." Such a man is typical, an average specimen of his party, not only in education, character and conduct, but, again, in ambition, principles, logic and success. "He swore that he would make his fortune, and he did it. His constant cry was that nobles and priests should be put down, and we no longer have either. He has constantly shouted against the civil list, and the civil list has been suppressed. At last, lodged in the house belonging to Louis XVI., he told him to his face that his head ought to be struck off, and the head of Louis XVI. has fallen."--Here, in a nutshell, is the history and the portrait of all the others; it is not surprising that genuine Jacobins see the Revolution in the same way as M. Saule,[33115]

* when, for them, the sole legitimate Constitution is the definitive establishment of their omnipotence;

* when they designate as order and justice the boundless despotism they exercise over property and life;

* when their instinct, as narrow and violent as that of a Turkish bey, comprises only extreme and destructive measures, arrests, deportations, confiscations, executions, all of which is done with head erect, with delight as if a patriotic duty, by right of a moral priesthood, in the name of the people, either directly and tumultuously with their own hands, or indirectly and legally by the hands of their docile representatives.

This is the sum of their political system, from which nothing will detach them; for they are anchored fast to it with the full weight and with every hold upon it that characterizes their immorality, ignorance and folly. Through the hypocritical glitter of compulsory parades, their one fixed idea imposes itself on the orator that he may utter it in tirades, on the legislator that he may put it into decrees, on the administrator that he may put it in practice, and, from their opening campaign up to their final victory, they will tolerate but one variation, and this variation is trifling. In September, 1792, they declare by their acts:

"Those whose opinions are opposed to ours will be assassinated, and their gold, jewels and pocketbooks will belong to us."

In November, 1793, they are to declare through the official inauguration of the revolutionary government:

"those whose opinions differ from ours will be guillotined and we shall be their heirs."[33116]

Between this program, which is supported by the Jacobin population and the program of the Girondins which the majority in the Convention supports, between Condorcet's Constitution and the summary articles of M. Saule, it is easy to see which will prevail. "These Parisian blackguards," says a Girondist, "take us for their valets![33117] Let a valet contradict his master and he is sure to lose his place. From the first day, when the Convention in a body traversed the streets to begin its sessions, certain significant expressions enabled it to see into what hands it had fallen:

"Why should so many folks come here to govern France," says a bystander, "haven't we enough in Paris?"[33118]

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