Chapter 3 No.3

I.-The second stage of the Jacobin conquest.

The importance and multitude of vacant offices.

The second stage of the Jacobin conquest will,3301 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 renewal3302 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.3303 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.3304-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.3305 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,3306 which leaves four places to be filled by their Jacobin clerks. At Paris,3307 "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.3308 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!3309-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.3310 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 Besan?on the number of the registered voters is doubled.3311-Thus are the usual clients of the Jacobins admitted within the electoral boundaries, from which they had hitherto been excluded,3312 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."3313

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.3314 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.3315-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,3316 patriots alone, in many places, being admitted,3317 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 7,000.3318 At Besan?on, 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.3319 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.3320

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.3321 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-Rh?ne 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.3322 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-Rh?ne, 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,3323 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.3324 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."3325 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,3326 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,3327 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,3328 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.3329

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 fifty3330 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."3331 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."3332

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,3333 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,3334 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,"3335 marching in one body under the leadership of the 180 Girondists who now form the "Right."3336

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 Encyclopédie3337 or the Contrat Social, the same as the Puritans formerly were with the Bible.3338 At the age when the mind is maturing, and fondly clings to general ideas,3339 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.3340 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.3341 "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 illusions3342 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.3343

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,3344 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.3345 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.3346 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.3347 To repress the malevolent they propose "punishment and not banishment."3348 In all State trials they oppose irregular courts, and strive to maintain for those under indictment some of the usual safeguards.3349 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.3350 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 Condorcet3351:

"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,3352 "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."3353 "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.3354 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,3355 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."3356 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."3357 The following week they compel the revolutionary committee of Saint-Eustache3358 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;3359 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,"3360 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."3361-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."3362-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,"3363 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;3364 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."3365 '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."3366 "Guadet, Pétion, Brissot, would not find thirty persons in Paris who would take their part, or even take the first step to save them."3367

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.3368-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."3369 According to the report of the Minister himself;3370 "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 Théba?des (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.3371 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;3372 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,"3373 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,3374 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 dandy3375 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-dealers3376 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."3377 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."3378 "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!"3379 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.3380

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.3381 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.3382 Putting all together, there are not six thousand Jacobins in Paris, all of them sans-culottes and partisans of the "Mountain."3383 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."3384

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.3385 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.3386 "The respectable class of the arts, says observers, "is gradually leaving the faction to join the sane party."3387 "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.3388-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."3389-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,3390... 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,"3391 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 elections3392 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.'"3393-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."3394 "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,3395 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,3396 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."3397 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."3398-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!"3399-Along with these are the thieves and prostitutes out of the Chatelet 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 observer33104 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-Royal33105 "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 H?tel-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

* * *

3301 (return)

[ Any contempory Western reader take notice!! The proof of any Jacobin or Socialist or Communist take-over, surreptitious or open-handed, lies in their take-over of the important posts in politics, the judicial system, the media and the administration. They may be years in doing this, placing convinced or controlled men and women, first in the faculties, later in career post, so that they, 30 years later, have their people on all leading posts; or they may do it all at once, like the Jacobins in France, Lenin in Russia or Stalin in the conquered territories after the second world war. (SR).]

3302 (return)

[ Duvergier, "Collection des lois et décrets," decrees of Sept. 22 and Oct. 19, 1792. The electoral assemblies and clubs had already proceeded in many places to renew on their own authority the decree rendering their appointments valid.]

3303 (return)

[ The necessity of placing Jacobins everywhere is well shown in the following letter: "Please designate by a cross, on the margin of the jury-panel for your district, those Jacobins that it will do to put on the list of 200 for the next quarter. We require patriots." (Letter from the attorney-general of Doubs, Dec. 23, 1792. Sauzay, III. 220.)]

3304 (return)

[ Pétion, "Mémoires" (Ed. Dauban), p. 118: "The justice who accompanied me was very talkative, but could not speak a word of French. He told me that he had been a stone-cutter before he became a justice, having taken this office on patriotic grounds. He wanted to draw up a statement and give me a guard of two gendarmes; he did not know how, so I dictated to him what to say; but my patience was severely taxed by his incredibly slow writing."]

3305 (return)

[ Decrees of July 6, Aug. 15 and 20, Sept. 26, 1792.]

3306 (return)

[ Decree of Nov. 1, 1792.-Albert Babeau, II. 14, 39, 40.]

3307 (return)

[ Dumouriez, III. 309, 355.-Miot de Melito, "Mémoires," I.31, 33.-Gouverneur Morris, letter of Feb. 14, 1793: "The state of disorganization appears to be irremediable. The venality is such that, if there be no traitors, it is because the enemy have not common sense."]

3308 (return)

[ "Archives Nationales," F7, 3268. Letter of the municipal officers of Rambouillet, Oct. 3, 1792. They denounce a petition of the Jacobins of the town, who strive to deprive forty foresters of their places, nearly all with families, "on account of their once having been in the pay of a perjured king."-Arnault ("Souvenirs d'un sexagénaire"), II. 15. He resigns a small place he had in the assignate manufacture, because, he says, "the most insignificant place being sought for, he found himself exposed to every kind of denunciation."]

3309 (return)

[ Dumouriez, III. 339.-Meillan, "Mémoires," 27. "Eight days after his installation as Minister of War, Beurnonville confessed to me that he had been offered sums to the amount of 500,000 francs to lend himself to embezzlements." He tries to sweep out the vermin of stealing employees, and is forthwith denounced by Marat.-Barbaroux, "Mémoires" (Ed. Dauban). (Letter of Feb. 5, 1793.) "I found the Minister of the Interior in tears at the obstinacy of Vieilz, who wanted him to violate the law of Oct. 12, 1791 (on promotion)." Vieilz had been in the service only four months, instead of five years, as the law required, and the Minister did not dare to make an enemy of a man of so much influence in the clubs. Buchez et Roux, XXVIII.19 ("Publication des pièces relatives au 31 Mai," at Caen, by Bergoing, June 28, 1793): "My friend learned that the place had been given to another, who had paid 50 louis to the deputy.-The places in the bureaus, the armies, the administrations and commissions are estimated at 9,000. The deputies of the Mountain have exclusive disposal of them and set their price on them, the rates being almost publicly stated." The number greatly increases during the following year (Mallet du Pan, II.56, March, 1794). "The public employees at the capital alone amount to 35,000."]

3310 (return)

[ Decree of Aug. 11, 12, 1792.]

3311 (return)

[ Sauzay, III. 45. The number increases from 3,200 to 7,000.]

3312 (return)

[ Durand-Maillane, "Mémoires," p. 30: "This proceeding converted the French proletariat, which had no property or tenacity, into the dominant party at electoral assemblages.... The various clubs established in France (were) then masters of the elections." In the Bouches-du-Rh?ne "400 electors in Marseilles, one-sixth of whom had not the income of a silver marc, despotically controlled our Electoral Assembly. Not a voice was allowed to be raised against them... Only those were elected whom Barbaroux designated."]

3313 (return)

[ Decree of Aug. 11, 12, "Archives Nationales," CII. 58 to 76. Official report of the Electoral Assembly of the Rh?ne-et-Loire, held at Saint-Etienne. The electors of Saint-Etienne demand remuneration the same as the others, considering that they gave their time in the same way. Granted.]

3314 (return)

[ "Archives Nationales," CII. 1 to 32. Official report of the Electoral Assembly of the Bouches-du-Rh?ne, speech by Durand-Maillane: "Could I in the National Convention be otherwise than I have been in relation to the former Louis XVI., who, after his flight on the 22d of June, appeared to me unworthy of the throne? Can I do otherwise than abhor royalty, after so many of our regal crimes?"]

3315 (return)

[ Moniteur, XIII. 623, session of Sept. 8, speech by Larivière.-"Archives Nationales," CII., 1 to 83. (The official reports make frequent mention of the dispatch of this comparative lists, and the Jacobins who send it request the Electoral Assembly to have it read forthwith.)]

3316 (return)

[ Rétif de la Bretonne, "Les Nuits de Paris," Night X. p. 301: "As soon as the primary assemblies had been set up, the plotters began to work, electors were nominated, and through the vicious system adopted in the sections, an uproar made it out for a majority of voices."-Cf. Schmidt, "Tableaux de la Révolution Fran?aise," I. 98. Letter of Damour, vice-president of the section of the Théatre-Fran?ais, Oct.29.-" Un Séjour en France," p.29: "The primary assemblies have already begun in this department (Pas-de-Calais). We happened to enter a church, where we found young Robespierre haranguing an audience as small in point of number as it was in that of respectability. They applauded vigorously as if to make up for their other shortcomings."]

3317 (return)

[ Albert Babeau, I. 518. At Troyes, Aug.26, the revolutionaries in most of the sections have it decided that the relations of an émigré, designated as hostages and the signers of royalist addresses, shall not be entitled to vote: "The sovereign people in their primary assembly may admit among its members only pure citizens against whom there is not the slightest reproach" (resolution of the Madeleine section).-Sauzay, III. 47, 49 and following pages. At Quinsy, Aug. 26, Lout, working the Chattily furnaces, along with a hundred of his men armed with clubs, keeps away from the ballot-box the electors of the commune of Courcelles, "suspected of incivisme. "-" Archives Nationales," F7, 3217. Letters of Gilles, justice an the canton of Roquemaure (Gard), Oct. 31, 1792, and Jan. 23, 1793, on the electoral proceedings employed in this canton: Dutour, president of the club, left his chair to support the motion for "lanterning" the grumpy and all the false patriots... On the 4th of November "he forced contributions by threatening to cut off heads and destroy houses." He was elected juge-de-paix.-Another, Magère, "approved of the motion for setting up a gallows, provided that it was not placed in front of his windows, and stated openly in the club that if people followed the law they would never accomplish anything to be remembered." He was elected member of the department directory.-A third, Fournier, "wrote that the gifts which citizens made to save their lives were voluntary gifts." He is made a department councilor. "Peaceable citizens are storing their furniture in safe places in order to take to flight... There is no security in France; the epithet of aristocrat, of Feuillant, of moderate affixed to the most honest citizen's name is enough to make him an object of spoliation and to expose him to losing his life... I insist on regarding the false idea which is current in relation to popular sovereignty as the principal cause of the existing anarchy."]

3318 (return)

[ Schmidt, "Pariser Zustande," I. 50 and following pages.-Mortimer-Ternaux, V. 95. 109, 117, 129. (Ballot of Oct. 4, 14,137 voters; Oct. 22, 14,006; Nov.19, 10,223, Dec. 6, 7062.)]

3319 (return)

[ Sauzay, III. 45, 46, 221.-Albert Babeau, I. 517.-Lallié, "Le district de Machecoul," 225.-Cf. in the above the history of the elections 'of Saint-Affrique: out of more than 600 registered electors the mayor and syndic-attorney are elected by forty votes.-The plebiscite of September, 1795, on the constitution of the year III. calls out only 958,000 voters. Repugnance to voting still exists. "Ninety times out of a hundred, on asking: 'Citizen, how did the Electoral Assembly of your canton go off?' they would reply (in patois): 'Me, citizen? why should I go there? They have a good deal of trouble in getting along together.' Or, 'What would you? Only a few will come; honest people will stay at home!'" (Meissner, "Voyage à Paris," towards the end of 1795.)]

3320 (return)

[ Stalin easily found a remedy. He obliged all to vote and falsified the count so that 99% now voted for him and his men. (SR).]

3321 (return)

[ "Archives Nationales," CII. 1 to 76, passim, especially the official reports of the assemblies of the Bouches-du-Rh?ne, Hérault and Paris. Speech by Barbaroux to the Electoral Assembly of the Bouches-du-Rh?ne: "Brothers and friends, liberty will perish if you do not elect men to the National Convention whose hearts are filled with hatred of royalty... Mine is the soul of a freeman; ever since my fourth year it has been nourished on hatred to kings. I will relieve France from this detestable race, or I will die in the attempt. Before I leave you I will sign my own death-warrant, I will designate what I love most, I will show you all my possessions, I will lay a dagger on the table which shall pierce my heart if ever for an instant I prove false to the cause of the people!" (session of Sept. 3).-Guillon de Montléon, I, 135.]

3322 (return)

[ Durand-Maillane, I.33. In the Electoral Assembly of the Bouches-du-Rh?ne "there was a desire to kill an elector suspected of aristocracy."]

3323 (return)

[ Mortimer-Ternaux, IV. 52. "Archives Nationales," CII. I to 32.-Official report of the Electora1 Assembly of Bouches-du-Rh?ne. Speech by Pierre Bayle, Sept. 3: "That man is not free who tries to conceal his conscience in the shadow of a vote. The Romans openly elected their tribunes... Who amongst us would reject so wise a measure? The galleries of the National Assembly have had as much to do with fostering the Revolution as the bayonets of patriots. "-In Seine-et-Marne the Assembly at first decided for the secret vote; at the request of the Paris commissaries, Ronsin and Lacroix, it rescinds its decision and adopts voting aloud and by call.]

3324 (return)

[ Barbaroux, "Mémoires," 379: "One day, on proceeding to the elections, tumultuous shouts break out: 'That is an anti-revolutionary from Arles, hang him!' An Arlesian had, indeed, been arrested on the square, brought into the Assembly, and they were lowering the lantern to run him up."]

3325 (return)

[ Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 338.-De Sybel, "Histoire de l'Europe pendant la Révolution Fran?aise" (Dosquet's translation), I. 525. (Correspondence of the army of the South, letter by Charles de Hesse, commanding the regular troops at Lyons.)]

3326 (return)

[ Mortimer-Ternaux, V.101, 122 and following pages.]

3327 (return)

[ Guillon de Montléon, I. 172, 196 and following pages.]

3328 (return)

[ Sauzay, III. 220 and following pages.-Albert Babeau, II. 15. At Troyes, two mayors elected refuse in turn. At the third ballot in this town of from 32,000 to 35,000 souls, the mayor-elect obtains 400 out of 555 votes.]

3329 (return)

[ Moniteur, XV. 184 to 233 (the roll-call of those who voted for the death of Louis XVI).-Dumouriez, II. 73 (Dumouriez reaches Paris Feb. 2, 1793, after visiting the coasts of Dunkirk and Antwerp): "All through Picardy, Artois, and maritime Flanders Dumouriez found the people in consternation at the tragic end of Louis XVI. He noticed that the very name of Jacobin excited horror as well as fear."]

3330 (return)

[ This number, so important, is verified by the following passages:-Moniteur, session of Dec. 39, 1792. Speech by Birotteau: "Fifty members against 690... About twenty former nobles, fifteen or twenty priests, and a dozen September judges (want to prevail against) 700 deputies."-Ibid., 851 (Dec.26, on the motion to defer the trial of the king): "About fifty voices, with energy, No! no!"-Ibid., 865, (Dec.27, a violent speech by Lequinio, applauded by the extreme "Left" and the galleries; the president calls them to order): "The applause continues of about fifty members of the extreme 'Left.' "-Mortimer-Ternaux, VI. 557. (Address by Tallien to the Parisians, Dec.23, against the banishment of the Duke of Orleans): "To-morrow, under the vain pretext of another measure of general safety, the 60 or 80 members who on account of their courageous and inflexible adherence to principles are offensive to the Brissotine faction, will be driven out."-Moniteur, XV. 74 (Jan. 6). Robespierre, addressing Roland, utters this expression: "the factious ministers." "Cries of Order! A vote of censure! To the Abbaye/ 'Is the honest minister whom all France esteems,' says a member, 'to be treated in this way?'-Shouts of laughter greet the exclamation from about sixty members."-Ibid., XV. 114. (Jan. 11). Denunciation of the party of anarchists by Buzot. Garnier replies to him: "You calumniate Paris; you preach civil war!" "Yes! yes! 'exclaim about sixty members.-Buchez et Roux, XXIV. 368 (Feb. 26). The question is whether Marat shall be indicted. "Murmurs from the extreme left, about a dozen members noisily demanding the order of the day."]

3331 (return)

[ Mercier, "Le nouveau Paris," II. 200.]

3332 (return)

[ Buchez et Roux, XIX. 17. XXVIII. 168.-The king is declared guilty by 683 votes; 37 abstain from voting, as judges; of these 37, 26, either as individuals or legislators, declare the king guilty. None of the other 11 declare him innocent.]

3333 (return)

[ "Dictionnaire biographique," by Eymery, 1807 (4 vols). The situation of the conventionists who survive the Revolution may here be ascertained. Most of them will become civil or criminal judges, prefects, commissaries of police, heads of bureaus, post-office employees, or registry clerks, collectors, review-inspectors, etc. The following is the proportion of regicides among those thus in office: Out of 23 prefects 21 voted for the king'' death; 42 out of 43 magistrates voted for it, the 43rd being ill at the time of the sentence. Of 5 senators 4 voted for his death, and 14 deputies out of 16. Out of 36 other functionaries of various kinds 35 voted for death. Among the remaining regicides we again find 2 councillors of state, 4 diplomatic agents and consuls, 2 generals, 2 receiver-generals, 1 commissary-general of the police, 1 minister in the cabinet of King Joseph, the minister of police, and the arch-chancellor of the empire.]

3334 (return)

[ Buchez et Roux, XIX, 97, session of Sept. 25, 1792. Marat states: "'I have many personal enemies in this assembly.' 'All! all!' exclaim the entire Assembly, indignantly rising."-Ibid., XIX. 9, 49, 63, 338.]

3335 (return)

[ "Right" and "Left", only refers to the right and left wings of the hemicycles of the hall in which the Assembly meets. The Plain and the Mountain refer to the same Assembly but here to those on the lower or the upper benches.(SR).]

3336 (return)

[ Meillan, "Mémoires," 20.-Buchez et Roux, XXVI. Session of April 15, 1793. Denunciation of the Twenty-two Girondists by the sections of Paris: Royer-Fonfrède regrets "that his name is not inscribed on this honorable list. 'And all of us-all! All!' exclaim three-quarters of the Assembly, rising from their seats."]

3337 (return)

[ The Philosophe Denis Diderot (1713-84) was largely responsible for the 28 volume Encyclopédie (1751-729, which incorporated the latest knowledge and progressive ideas, and which helped spread the ideas of the Enlightenment in France and in other parts of Europe. (Guinness Encyclopedia).]

3338 (return)

[ "Archives Nationales," A.F. 45. Letter of Thomas Paine to Danton, May 6, 1792 (in English). "I do not know better men or better patriots." This letter, compared with the speeches or publications of the day, produces a singular impression through its practical good sense. This Anglo-American, however radical he may be, relies on nothing but experience and example in his political discussions.]

3339 (return)

[ Cf. The memoirs of Buzot, Barbaroux, Louvet, Madame Roland, etc.]

3340 (return)

[ And for some incomprehensible reason still in fashion at the end of the 20th Century. (SR).]

3341 (return)

[ Buchez et Roux, XXIV. 102. (Plan drawn up by Condorcet, and reported in the name of the Committee on the Constitution, April 15 and 16, 1793.) Condorcet adds to this a report of his own, of which he publishes and abstract in the Chronique de Paris.]

3342 (return)

[ Buchez et Roux, XXIV. 102. Condorcet's abstract contains the following extraordinary sentence: "In all free countries the influence of the populace is feared with reason; but give all men the same rights and there will be no populace."]

3343 (return)

[ Cf. Edmond Biré. "La Légende des Girondins," on the part of the Girondists in all these odious measures.]

3344 (return)

[ These traits are well defined in the charges of the popular party against them made by Fabre d'Eglantine. Maillan, "Mémoires," 323. (Speech of Fabre d'Eglantine at the Jacobin Club in relation to the address of the commune, demanding the expulsion of the Twenty-Two.) "You have often taken the people to task; you have even sometimes tried to flatter them; but there was about this flattery that aristocratic air of coldness and dislike which could deceive nobody. Your ways of a bourgeois patrician are always perceptible in your words and acts; you never wanted to mix with the people. Here is your doctrine in few words: after the people have served in revolutions they must return to dust, be of no account, and allow themselves to be led by those who know more than they and who are willing to take the trouble to lead them. You, Brissot, and especially you, Pétion, you have received us formally, haughtily, and with reserve. You extend to us one finger, but you never grasp the whole hand. You have not even refused yourselves that keen delight of the ambitious, insolence and disdain."]

3345 (return)

[ Buzot, "Mémoires," 78.]

3346 (return)

[ Edmond Biré, "La légende des Girondins." (Inedited fragments of the memoirs of Pétion and Barbaroux, quoted by Vatel in "Charlotte Corday and the Girondists," III. 472, 478.)]

3347 (return)

[ Buchez et Roux, XXVI. A financial plan offered by the department of Hérault adopted by Cambon and rejected by the Girondists.]

3348 (return)

[ Buchez et Roux, XXV. Speech by Vergniaud (April 10), pp. 376, 377, 378. "An effort is made to accomplish the Revolution by terror. I would accomplish it through love."]

3349 (return)

[ Maillan, 22.]

3350 (return)

[ Buchez et Roux, XXIV. 109. Plan of a constitution presented by Condorcet. Declaration of rights, article 32. "In every free government the mode of resistance to different acts of oppression should be regulated by law."-Ibid., 136. Title VIII. Of the Constitution "De la Censure des lois."]

3351 (return)

[ Buchez et Roux, 93. Session of the Jacobin Club, April 21, 1793.]

3352 (return)

[ Schmidt, "Tableaux de la révolution Fran?aise," II.4 (Report of Dutard, June 6, 1793.)-The mental traits of the Jacobins form a contrast and are fully visible in the following speeches: "We desire despotically a popular constitution." (Address of the Paris Jacobin Club to the clubs in the departments, Jan. 7, 1793.)-Buchez et Roux, XXIII. 288-Ibid., 274. (Speech by Legros in the Jacobin Club, Jan. 1.) "Patriots are not counted; they go by weight... One patriot in a scale weights more than 100,000 aristocrats. One Jacobin weights more than 10,000 Feuillants. One republican weights more than 100,000 monarchists. One patriot of the Mountain weights more than 100,000 Brissotins. Hence I conclude that the convention should not be stopped by the large number of votes against the death-sentence of Louis XVI., (and that) even (if there should be) but a minority of the nation desiring Capet's death."-"Applauded." (I am obliged to correct the last sentence, as it would otherwise be obscure.)]

3353 (return)

[ Buzot, "Mémoires," 33: "The majority of French people yearned after royalty and the Constitution of 1790. This was the strongest feeling, and especially at Paris.. This people is only republican because it is threatened by the guillotine.. All its desires, all its hopes incline to the constitution of 1791."-Schmidt, I. 232 (Dutard, May 16). Dutard, an old advocate and friend of Garat, is one of those rare men who see facts behind words; clear-sighted, energetic, active, abounding in practical counsels, and deserving of a better chief than Garat.]

3354 (return)

[ Schmidt, ibid., I. 173, 179 (May 1, 1793).]

3355 (return)

[ "La Démagogie à en Paris en 1793," p.152. Dauban ("Diurnal de Beaulieu," April 17).-"Archives Nationales," AF II. 45 (report by the police, May 20). "The dearness of supplies is the leading cause of agitation and complaints."-(Ib., May 24). "The calm which now appear to prevail in Paris will soon be disturbed if the prices of the prime necessities of life do not shortly diminish."-(Ibid., May 25). "Complaints against dear food increase daily end this circumstance looks as if it might become one of the motives of forthcoming events."]

3356 (return)

[ Schmidt, I. 198 (Dutard, May 9).]

3357 (return)

[ Schmidt, I. 350; II. 6 (Dutard, May 30, June 7 and 8).]

3358 (return)

[ Durand-Maillane,100: "The Girondist party was yet more impious than Robespierre."-A deputy having demanded that mention should be made of the Supreme Being in the preamble of the constitution, Vergniaud replied: "We have no more to do with Numa's nymph than with Mahomet's pigeon; reason is sufficient to give France a good constitution."-Buchez et Roux, XIII. 444. Robespierre having spoken of the Emperor Leopold's death as a stroke of Providence, Guadet replies that he sees "no sense in that idea," and blames Robespierre for "endeavoring to return the people to slavery of superstition."-Ibid., XXVI. 63 (session of April 19, 1793). Speech by Vergniaud against article IX of the Declaration of Rights, which states that "all men are free to worship as they please." This article, says Vergniaud, "is a result of the despotism and superstition under which we have so long languished."-Salle: "I ask the Convention to draw up an article by which each citizen, whatever his form of worship, shall bind himself to submit to the law "-Lanjuinais, who often ranked along with the Girondists, is a Catholic and confirmed Gallican.]

3359 (return)

[ Schmidt, I. 347 (Dutard, May 30). "What do I now behold? A discontented people hating the Convention, all its administrators, and the actual state of things generally."]

3360 (return)

[ Schmidt, I. 278. (Dutard, May 23).]

3361 (return)

[ Schmidt, I. 216 (Dutard, May 13).]

3362 (return)

[ Schmidt, I. 240 (Dutard, May 17).]

3363 (return)

[ Schmidt, I. 217 (Dutard, May 13).]

3364 (return)

[ Schmidt, I. 163 (Dutard, April 30).]

3365 (return)

[ Schmidt, II. 377 (Dutard, June 13). Cf. Ibid., II. 80. (Dutard, June 21): "If the guillotining of the Thirty-Two were subject to a roll call, and the vote a secret one I declare to you no respectable man would fail to hasten in from the country to give his vote and that none of those now in Paris would fail to betake themselves to their section."]

3366 (return)

[ Schmidt, II. 35 (Dutard, June 13). On the sense of these two words, inferior aristocracy, Cf. All of Dutard's reports and those of other observers in the employ of Garat.]

3367 (return)

[ Schmidt, II. 37 (Dutard, June 13).]

3368 (return)

[ Schmidt, I. 328 (Perrière, May 28): "Intelligent men and property-owners abandoned the section assemblies and handed them to others as these were places where the workman's fist prevailed against the speaker's tongue."-Moniteur. XV. 114 (session of Jan. 11, speech by Buzot). "There is not a man in this town who owns anything, that is not afraid of being insulted and struck in his section if he dares raise his voice against the ruling power... The permanent assemblies of Paris consist of a small number of men who have succeeded in keeping other citizens away."-Schmidt, I. 235 (Dutard, May 28): "Another plan would be to drill young men in the use of the staff. One must be a sans-culotte, must live with sans-culottes, to discover the value of expedients of this kind. There is nothing the sans-culotte fears as much as a truncheon. A number of young men lately carried them in their trousers, and everybody trembled as they passed. I wished that the fashion were general."]

3369 (return)

[ Moniteur, XV. 95 (Letter of Charles Villette, deputy).]

3370 (return)

[ Moniteur, XV. 179 (Letter of Roland, Jan. 11. 1793).]

3371 (return)

[ Moniteur, XV. 66, session of Jan. 5, speech of the mayor of Paris; (Chambon)-Ib., XV 114, session of Jan. 14, speech by Buzot;--Ib., XV. 136, session of Jan. 13. Speech by a deputation of Federates.-Buchez et Roux, XXVIII. 91 (Letter of Gadolle to Roland, October, 1792).-XXI. 417 (Dec. 20, article by Marat): "Boredom and disgust have emptied the assemblies."-Schmidt, II, 69 (Dutard, June 18).]

3372 (return)

[ Schmidt, I. 203. (Dutard, May 10). The engravings published during the early period of the Revolution and under the directory exhibit this scene perfectly (cabinet des estampes, Paris).]

3373 (return)

[ Moniteur, XV. 67 (session of Jan. 5, 1793). Speech by the mayor of Paris.]

3374 (return)

[ Schmidt, I. 378 (Blanc, June 12).]

3375 (return)

[ Schmidt, II. 5 (Dutard, June 5).]

3376 (return)

[ Schmidt, II. (Dutard, June 11)-Ibid., II. (Dutard, June i8): "I should like to visit with you," if it were possible, "the 3,000 or 4,000 wine-dealers, and the equally numerous places of refreshment in Paris; you would find the 15,000 clerks they employ constantly busy. If we should then go to the offices of the 114 notaries, we should again find two-thirds of these gentlemen in their caps and red slippers, also very much engaged. We might then, again, go to the 200 or 300 printing establishments, where we should find 4,000 or 5,000 editors, compositors, clerks, and porters all conservatized because they no longer earn what they did before; and some because they have made a fortune."-The incompatibility between modern life and direct democratic rule strikes one at every step, owing to modern life being carried out under other conditions than those which characterized life in ancient times. For modern life these conditions are, the magnitude of States, the division of labor, the suppression of slavery and the requirements of personal comforts and prosperity. Neither the Girondists nor the Montagnards, who aimed to revive Athenian and Spartan ways, comprehended the precisely opposite conditions on which Athens and Sparta flourished.]

3377 (return)

[ Schmidt, I. 207 (Dutard, May 10).]

3378 (return)

[ Schmidt, II. 79 (Dutard, June 19).]

3379 (return)

[ Schmidt, II.70 (Dutard, June 10).]

3380 (return)

[ Lenin must have felt encouraged by reading these lines which can only have increase his disdain for the "capitalist" and bourgeoisie. (SR).]

3381 (return)

[ Mortimer-Ternaux, V. 101.]

3382 (return)

[ Meillan, 54.-Raffet, Henriot's competitor and denounced as an aristocrat, had at first the most votes, 4,953 against 4,578. At the last ballot, out of about 15,000 he still has 5,900 against 9,087 for Henriot.-Mortimer-Ternaux, VIII. 31: "The electors had to vote thirty at a time. All who dared give their votes to Raffet were marked with a red cross on the roll-call, followed by the epithet of anti-revolutionary."]

3383 (return)

[ Schmidt, II. 37 (Dutard, June 13): "Marat and others have a party of from 4,000 to 6,000 men, who would do anything to rescue them."-Meillan, 155 (depositions taken by the Commission of the Twelve): Laforet has stated that there were 6,000 sans-culottes to massacre objectionable deputies at the first signal.-Schmidt, II, 87 (Dutard, June 24): "I know that there are not in all Paris 3,000 decided revolutionaries."]

3384 (return)

[ Moniteur, XV. 114, session of Jan. 11, speech by Buzot.-Ibid., 136, session of Jan. 13, speech of the Federates of Finisterre.-Buchez et Roux, XXVIII. 80, 81, 87, 91, 93 (Letter of Gadolle to Roland, October 1792).-Schmidt, I. 207 (Dutard, May 10, 1793).]

3385 (return)

[ Schmidt, II. 37 (Dutard, May 10, 1793).]

3386 (return)

[ Mortimer-Ternaux, IV. 269 (petition presented by Gonchon.)-"Archives Nationales," AF, II 43. Letters of Gonchon to the Minister Garat, (May 31, June 1, June 3, 1793). These are very odd and naive. He addresses the Minister Garat: "Citizen Garra."]

3387 (return)

[ Schmidt, I, 254 (Dutard, May 19).-Moniteur, XIV. 522 (Letter addressed to Roland number for Nov. 21, 1792): "The sections (are) composed of, or at least frequented, nineteen-twentieth of them, by the lowest class, both in manners and information."]

3388 (return)

[ Schmidt, II. 39 (Dutard, June 13).]

3389 (return)

[ Schmidt, II.87 (Dutard, June 14). The expression of these fish-women is still coarser.]

3390 (return)

[ Rétif de la Bretonne ("Bibliographie de ses oeuvres, par Jacob," 287).-(On the pillage of shops, Feb.25 and 26, 1793).]

3391 (return)

[ Schmidt, II. 61; I. 265 (Dutard, May 21 and June 17).]

3392 (return)

[ Schmidt, I.96 (Letter of citizen Lauchou to the president of the Convention, Oct. 11, 1792).-II. 37 (Dutard, June 13). Statement of a wigmaker's wife: "They are a vile set, the servants. Some of them come here every day. They chatter away and say all sorts of horrible things about their masters. They are all just alike. Nobody is crazier than they are. I knew that some of them had received benefits from their masters, and others who were:still being kindly treated; but nothing stopped them."]

3393 (return)

[ Schmidt, I. 246 (Dutard, May 18).-Grégoire, "Mémoires," I. 387. The mental and moral decline of the party is well shown in the new composition of the Jacobin Club after September, 1792: "I went back there," says Grégoire in September, 1792 (after a year's absence), "and found it unrecognizable; no opinions could be expressed there other than those of the Paris section... I did not set foot there again; (it was) a factious disreputable drinking place."-Buchez et Roux, XXVI. 214 (session of April 30,1793, speech by Buzot). "Behold that once famous club. But. thirty of its founders remain there; you find there none but men steeped in debt and crime."]

3394 (return)

[ Schmidt, I. 189 (Dutard, May 6).]

3395 (return)

[ Cf. Rétif de la Bretonne, "Nuits de Paris," vol. XVI. (July 12, 1789). At this date Rétif is in the Palais-Roya1, where "since the 13th of June numerous meetings have been held and motions made... I found there none but brutal fellows with keen eyes, preparing themselves for plunder rather than for liberty."]

3396 (return)

[ Mortimer-Ternaux, V.226 and following pages (address of the sans-culottes section, Sept. 25).-"Archives Nationales," F7, 146 (address of the Roule section, Sept. 23). In relation to the threatening tone of those at work on the camp, the petitioners add: "Such was the language of the workshops in 1789 and 1790."]

3397 (return)

[ Schmidt, II.12 (Dutard, June 7): "During a few days past I have seen men from Neuilly, Versailles, and Saint-Germain staying here, attracted by the scent."]

3398 (return)

[ Schmidt, I.254 (Dutard, May 19).-At this date robbers swarm in Paris; Mayor Chambon, in his report to the Convention, himself admits it (Moniteur, XV. 67, session of Jan. 5, 1793).]

3399 (return)

[ De Concourt, "La Société Fran?aise pendant 'a Révolution." (According to the "Courrier de l'Egalité," Jul. 1793).]

33100 (return)

[ Buzot, 72.]

33101 (return)

[ Moore, Nov.10, 1792 (according to an article in the Chronique de Paris). 'The day Robespierre made his "apology," "the galleries contained from seven to eight hundred women, and two hundred men at most. Robespierre is a priest who has his congregation of devotees."--Mortimer-Ternaux, VII. 562 (letter of the deputy Michel, May 20, 1793): "Two or three thousand women, organized and drilled by the Fraternal Society in session at the Jacobin Club, began their uproar. which lasted until 6 o'clock, when the house adjourned. Most of these creatures are prostitutes."]

33102 (return)

[ An expression of Gadol's in his letter to Roland.]

33103 (return)

[ Buzot, 57.]

33104 (return)

[ Buchez et Roux, XXVIII. 80 (Letter of Gadolle to Roland).]

33105 (return)

[ Beaulieu, "Essais," I. 108 (an eye-witness).-Schmidt, II. 15. Report by Perrières, June 8.]

33106 (return)

[ Beaulieu, "Essais," I. 100. "Maillard died, his stomach eaten away by brandy" (April 15, 1794).-Alexandre Sorel, "Stanislas Maillard," pp. 32 to 42. Report of Fabre d'Eglantine on Maillard, Dec. 17, 1793. A decree subjecting him to indictment along with Ronsin and Vincent, Maillard publishes his apology, in which we see that he was already active in the Rue Favart before the 31st of May. "I am one of the members of that meeting of true patriots and I am proud of it, for it is there that the spark of that sacred insurrection of the 31st of May was kindled."]

33107 (return)

[ Alexandre Sorel, ibid. (denunciation of the circumstance by Lecointre, Dec.14, 1793 accompanied with official reports of the justices).-"Archives Nationales," F7, 3268 (letter of the directory of Corbeil to the Minister, with official report, Nov. 28,1792). On the 26th of November eight or ten armed men, foot-soldiers, and others on horseback, entered the farm-house of a man named Ruelle, in the commune of Lisse. They dealt him two blows with their sabers, then put a bag over his head, kicked him in the face, tormented him, and almost smothered his wife and two women servants, to make him give up his money. A carter was shot with a pistol in the shoulder and twice struck with a saber; the hands about the premises were tied and bound like so many cattle. Finally the bandits went away, carrying with them silver plate, a watch, rings, laces, two guns, etc.]

33108 (return)

[ Moniteur, XV. 565.-Buchez et Roux, XXIV. 335 and following pages.-Rétif de la Bretonne, "Nuits de Paris," VIII. 460. (an eye witness). The last of these details are given by him.]

33109 (return)

[ Cf. Ed. Fleury, "Baboeuf;" pp.139 and 150. Through a striking coincidence the party staff is still of the same order in 1796. Baboeuf estimates his adherents in Paris as "4,000 revolutionaries, 1,500 members of the former authorities, and 1,000 bourgeois gunners," besides soldiers, prisoners, and a police force. He also recruited a good many prostitutes. The men who come to him are workmen who pretend to have arsouillé in the Revolution and who are ready to repeat the job, provided it is "for the purpose of killing those rich rascals, the monopolizers, merchants, informers, and panachés at the Luxembourg." (Letter of the agent of the Bonne-Nouvelle section, April 13, 1796.)]

33110 (return)

[ The proportion, composition and spirit of the party are everywhere the same, especially at Lyons (Guillon de Montléon, "Mémoires," and Balleydier, "Histoire du peuple de Lyon,". passim); at Toulon (Lauvergne, "Histoire du department du Var"); at Marseilles, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Strasbourg, Besan?on, etc.-At Bordeaux (Riouffe, "Mémoires," 23) "it consisted wholly of vagabonds, Savoyards, Biscayans, even Germans,..brokers, and water-carriers, who had become so powerful that they arrested the rich, and so well-off that they traveled by post" Riouffe adds: "When I read this passage in the Conciergerie men from every corner of the republic exclaimed in one voice: 'It is the same in all the communes!'"-Cf. Durand-Maillane, "Mémoires," 67: "This people, thus qualified, since the suppression of the silver marc has been the most vicious and most depraved in the community."-Dumouriez, II. 51. "The Jacobins, taken for the most part, from the most abject and most brutal of the nation, unable to furnish men of sufficient dignity for offices, have degraded offices to their own level... They are drunken, barbarous Helots that have taken the places of the Spartans."-The sign of their advent is the expulsion of the liberals and of the refined of 1789. ("Archives Nationales," F7, 4434, No.6. Letter of Richard to the committee on Public Safety, Vent?se 3, year II.). During the proconsulate of Baudot at Toulouse "almost all the patriots of 1789 were excluded from the popular club they had founded; an immense number were admitted whose patriotism reached only as far back as the 10th of August 1792, if it even went so far as the 31st of last May. It is an established fact that out of more than 1,000 persons who now compose the club there are not fifty whose patriotism as far back as the beginning of the Revolution."]

33111 (return)

[ Any tribune taking command of a mob of brutes is well advised to understand Taine's analysis. One might think Hitler had read Taine pr somebody who had learned from his wisdom, somewhat like the Devil who had read the Bible. See page 208, The Secret of Ruling the Masses, in Rauschning's book, "Hitler Speaks". (SR).]

33112 (return)

[ Roederer, "Chronique des cinquante jours."]

33113 (return)

[ Schmidt, I. 246 (Dutard, May 18).]

33114 (return)

[ Schmidt, I. 215 (Dutard, May 25).]

33115 (return)

[ Buchez et Roux, XXV. 156 (extract from the Patriote Fran?ais, March 30, 1793).Speech by Chasles at the Jacobin Club, March 27: "We have announced to our fellow-citizens in the country that by means of the war-tax the poor could be fed by the rich, and that they would find in the purses of those egoists the wherewithal to live on." Ibid., 269. Speech by Rose Lacombe: "Let us make sure of the aristocrats; let us force them to meet the enemies which Dumouriez is bringing against Paris. Let us give them to understand that if they prove treacherous their wives and children shall have their throats cut, and that we will burn their houses.. I do not want patriots to leave the city; I want them to guard Paris. And if we are beaten, the first man who hesitates to apply the torch, let him be stabbed at once. I want all the owners of property who have grabbed everything and excited the people's anger, to kill the tyrants themselves or else be killed." Applause-April 3.:-Ibid., 302 (in the Convention, April 8): "Marat demands that 100,000 relatives and friends of the émigrés be seized as hostages for the safety of the commissioners in the hands of the enemy."-Cf. Balleydier, 117, 122. At Lyons, Jan. 26, 1793, Challier addresses the central club: "Sans-culottes, rejoice! the blood of the royal tiger has flowed in sight of his den! But full justice is not yet done to the people There are still 500 among you deserving of the tyrant's fate!"-He proposes on the 5th of February a revolutionary tribunal for trying arrested persons in a revolutionary manner. "It is the only way to force it (the Revolution) on royal and aristocratic factionists, the only rational way to avenge the sovereignty of the brave sans-culottes, who belong only to us."--Hydens, a national commissioner adds: "Let 25,000,000 of Frenchmen perish a hundred times over rather than one single indivisible Republic!"]

33116 (return)

[ Mallet du Pan, the last expression.]

33117 (return)

[ Buzot, 64.]

33118 (return)

[ Michelet, IV. 6 (according to an oral statement by Daunou).-Buchez et Roux, 101 (Letter of Louvet to Roland): "At the moment of the presentation of their petition against armed force (departmental) by the so-called commissioners of the 48 sections of Paris, I heard Santerre say in a loud tone to those around him, somewhat in these words: 'You see, now, these deputies are not up to the Revolution... That all comes from fifty, a hundred two hundred leagues off; they don't understand one word you say!'"]