'Look at the part which money played in our first unhappy revolution!
'It is the most instructive part of that whole sad history, and yet, for a hundred different reasons, it is the part which from the beginning has been most obscured by a miscellaneous conspiracy of silence. Some day perhaps it will be possible to get a true life written of Le Pelletier de Saint-Fargeau, the millionaire Mephistopheles of Philippe Égalité. The hand that struck him to death in the very centre of the scene of his long machinations, there in the Palais Royal, with his vote, dooming the king to death, still as it were on his lips, did not strike at random. There was no such bit of dramatic justice done in those dark days as the killing of that man in that place between the giving of that vote and the murder of the king that followed it next day!
'But the story cannot be written yet. They were much more concerned about the death of Le Pelletier next day in the Convention, you will see if you look into the true records of the session, than they were about the murder of the king, which was then going on in the Place de la Révolution. They gave him—why not?—(the most active of them and the deepest in the plot were his property, bought and paid for)—they gave him a national funeral, and made his heiress—the greatest heiress she was in France—the ward of the nation.
'It was quite another vision he had in his mind for her! I will show you some day a curious letter of hers written after she became a duchess, about the EmpressJoséphine. It is very instructive. She grew up a lovely, untameable, unmanageable young person, made a love-match, as you know, and with whom you know, broke her husband's heart, got a divorce and married again. To go into all this now would disturb the peace of families in no way responsible for her career or for the plots and schemes of her father. It would be like "flushing" the ghost of that monster Carrier who drowned the poor and the priests at Nantes, only to plague his descendants. His son was an excellent person who very properly changed his name. The most malicious thing I ever knew one woman say of another, was said of one of his grand-daughters at a foreign court by another Frenchwoman, jealous of her social success. "She is very charming, no doubt; but look at her mouth, and you will see she has carious teeth—des dents Carrier!" But when, if ever, the truth about that dark episode of Le Pelletier and his schemes is told, it will be seen how much more gold and private ambitions had to do with the final fatal drift of things after the destiny of France fell into the swirl of Paris, than all the howlings and ravings of the philosophers and the patriots. What happened in the last century will happen again whenever and wherever human society ceases to be held together by the idea of Duty. It is not the discontent of Labour which makes me most anxious as to the future. It is the egotism of Capital, educated and encouraged into egotism by the false doctrines of what is called Liberalism in this country, and provoked into egotism by the equally egotistic discontent of Labour. What I most value in the work of M. Harmel is the courage and precision with which he has from the first insisted upon the Duty of the employer to the employed. You have seen, of course, hisCatéchisme du Patron?'
The Cardinal Archbishop had given me a copy ofthis book, which is really one of the most remarkable contributions ever made to the practical study of the relations between Capital and Labour. In it M. Harmel has condensed, in the catechetical form of questions and answers, his lifelong experience in the work of ascertaining and fulfilling all the duties incumbent, from the point of view of Christian duty, upon the capitalist who employs the labour of his fellow-men in putting his capital into use and making it profitable. It would be very interesting merely as a theory of the true relations between Labour and Capital. It is more than interesting as the ripe expression of an experiment faithfully and successfully carried out by a man of resolute will and great practical ability for more than a quarter of a century in a field which, when he entered upon it, was certainly one of the most unpromising in the world.
The 'Christian Corporation' was an established institution, as I have said, at Val-des-Bois, in 1870, when the war with Germany broke out. In 1871, after the storm of the invasion had been followed by the horrors of the Commune of Paris, the principles on which the industrial family at Val-des-Bois had been organised began to attract attention all over France. A club of Catholic working-men was opened at Paris in 1871, and a movement began in earnest for extending these institutions throughout France. It made rapid progress. In September 1874 a great disaster occurred at Val-des-Bois. The factory buildings took fire during the night of the 12th of that month, and despite the efforts of the whole population they were all in ashes when the morning broke. Before noon of the next day M. Harmel announced to his workmen that he had leased, at no small sacrifice of his immediate pecuniary interests, another factory at some distance from the Val-des-Bois, called La Neuville, and that the 'ChristianCorporation' of Val-des-Bois might at once be transferred thither, and carried on as before until the reconstruction of its original site. The tidings of this calamity brought substantial succour from Catholic clubs all over France, from Marseilles to Nantes, and from Bordeaux to Lille. More than a hundred clubs were represented in this outburst of sympathy, and the disaster led, not indirectly, to a formal approval of the work in a brief issued by His Holiness Pius IX. on October 2, 1874.
In 1878 there were more than four hundred clubs in France, with a membership of nearly a hundred thousand persons. Concurrently with the development of these clubs a movement went on for establishing an organisation of honorary members, not belonging to the working classes, who should co-operate with the clubs in promoting the principles represented by the 'Christian Corporations.' In 1875 a parliamentary inquiry was made into the condition of Labour in France; and on behalf of the committee which conducted this inquiry, the deputy, M. Ducarre, who drew up the report, declared it to be the opinion of the committee that all the syndicating movements of modern times point to the necessity of re-establishing the corporate system of labour which was destroyed by the First Republic in 1791. The language used in this Report is worth citing.
'All the remedies suggested for the existing state of things,' said M. Ducarre, 'may be summed up in this conclusion; there must be an end of the isolation of the individual labourer. This must be replaced by the action of collectivities, associations, or syndicates, whose duty it shall be to watch over the interests of every calling. In a word we must go back to the system of corporations of the trades,maîtrises, andjurandes, underwhich labour was so long carried on in France.' This Report found no favour in the eyes of the Radicals because it aimed at a good understanding and practical co-operation between Labour and Capital. Nine years afterwards, on March 21, 1884, a law was carried through the French Parliament authorising the establishment of 'professional syndicates.' The object of the Republicans, then as now controlling a majority of the Chamber, in passing this law, was to strengthen the trades unions as against the employers of France. The law, it will be observed, was passed at the time when a syndicate of miners in the North, which had no legal right to exist before the passage of the law, was actively promoting, under its leader, M. Basly, the great strike at Anzin of which I have spoken in a preceding chapter. But while the law of March 1884 legalised 'syndicates' of this aggressive, and in the nature of things tyrannical, type, it also necessarily legalised precisely such Christian corporations as those contemplated in the Report of 1875, and long before organised on the lines laid down by M. Harmel. A great and visible responsibility was thus thrown upon the employers of France and upon what are called the upper classes generally in that country. It was clear that, if they would energetically and systematically throw themselves into the work of bringing about a reconstruction of social order on the principles of co-operation and sympathy as opposed to the principle of antagonism between Capital and Labour, the law of 1884, intended to widen, might be effectually used to close the threatening breach between the employers and the employed. There seems to be little doubt that down to that time the promoters of the Christian Corporation movement in France had made greater headway with the working classes than with the employers. A Report presented in 1885 by the general committee of the Catholic clubs of France to the French bishops states this very plainly. This report was signed by the Marquis De La-Tour-du-Pin-Chambly, who from the beginning of M. Harmel's experiment at Val-des-Bois had been one of his most earnest and active coadjutors, by the Comte de la Bouillerie, Treasurer of the General Society, by the Comte de Mun, and by the Comte Albert de Mun, the moving spirit now of the whole work, who resigned his commission in the army to devote himself to it, and who went up from the Morbihan to Paris as a deputy in 1885, elected by 60,341 votes, to demand not only the restoration of the monarchy but a property restriction upon the suffrage. In 1889, under thescrutin d'arrondissementreadopted by the terrified Republicans to defeat 'Boulangism,' Count Albert de Mun was re-elected without opposition for the 2nd division of Pontivy. In no part of France is the passion of equality stronger than in the Morbihan; and the contempt of the people there for 'universal suffrage' is extremely instructive.
'Of the Christian Corporations,' says this Report of 1885, 'as of the working-men's clubs, it is proper to say that never in any place or at any time has any obstacle been offered to them by the working classes. On the contrary, there is plainly going on among the working classes, under the influence of the deplorable crises which affect the industrial world, an instinctive and ever-increasing movement towards this association of common and professional interests, the notion of which is suggested by the natural sentiment of right and wrong, as well as by some confused memory, obscured by revolutionary doctrines, of the traditions of Labour in France, which predisposes the working-man to seek safety in a return to the old system of the Corporations. A similarfeeling exists among the employers, who desire, though they too often despair of seeing, a closer union of interests between themselves and their working-men. Wherever the movement languishes, one of the chief causes will be found to be the apathy, the discouragement, and the frivolity of the upper classes.'
In the case of great factories like that of the Val-des-Bois, the Christian Corporations naturally are sufficient unto themselves. There the employer and the employed between them constitute a small world, which can take care of itself and carry out the numerous subsidiary features of the system, such as the promotion of domestic economy, the establishment of savings-funds, the organisation of festivals and of courses of instruction, without relying much, or at all, upon any co-operation from without. It is in the development of the system for the benefit of working-men who are isolated in their work, or employed in small establishments, that the co-operation of the upper classes is needed; and while I incline to think that there is still much ground for the strong language on this point employed in the Report of 1885, there appears to be no doubt that a great improvement has taken place during the last three or four years. In 1884 the efforts of the Cardinal Archbishop of Reims, the Bishop of Angers, and of other energetic prelates, secured the active participation of the Holy See in the promotion of this work. In February of that year a pilgrimage to Rome of members of the Catholic Clubs of France was organised. The pilgrims were received in special audience by Leo XIII., and he gave his Papal approbation and benediction to the work in a very remarkable address which produced a deep and widespread impression throughout Catholic France. Similar pilgrimages were made in 1887 and in 1889.
One very important effect of this has been to bring about a better understanding between the parochial clergy of France in general and these steadily increasing lay organisations. It is in the nature of things that the clergy should be slow in giving their unreserved aid to any movement, no matter how admirable in itself, which involves a good deal of extra-clerical activity in matters religious. This was illustrated in the attitude of the English Protestant clergy towards Wesley and Whitfield, and there are some curious coincidences—of course absolutely undesigned—between some of the methods of the great and powerful Protestant sect of the Wesleyans and those of M. Harmel's Catholic Clubs.
The Methodist 'class-leader,' for example, reappears in a modified form in thezélateursandzélatricesof the Harmel Clubs and fraternities. These are members, working-men and working-women, who are willing to devote themselves to promoting religious sentiments and practices among their comrades, and who hold regular meetings to consider and work out the best and most practical way of doing this.
It is not surprising that in many cases the curés should have looked with a little uneasiness upon the development of such a system until it had been fully considered and formally approved by the highest authority in the Church. Of its efficacy from the point of view of M. Harmel there can be no doubt.
Something not wholly unlike the 'exclusive dealing' which contributes so much to the strength of Methodism in America has also been established for the benefit of the members of M. Harmel's Christian Corporation. This is 'exclusive dealing 'of an honest and honourable sort, and must not be confounded with the rascally 'exclusive dealing' known in Ireland as 'boycotting.' It combines a system of 'privileged purveyors' with an accumulative savings fund.
The firm of Harmel Brothers, acting for the Corporation, makes contracts with tradesmen at Val-des-Bois—grocers, butchers, bakers, and the like—by which the tradesmen bind themselves to sell certain wares to members of the Christian Corporations, and to them only, at a fixed discount below the lowest current rate of prices—the wares to be of the best quality, under a penalty—and the lowest current rate to be fixed by an average taken from the current rates as given to Harmel Brothers by four dealers in such wares in the city of Reims, of whom two are to be named by them and two by the 'privileged purveyor.' Each member of the Corporation receives certificates, of one franc, ten sous, or ten centimes in value, from the office of Harmel Brothers, and these are taken by the 'privileged purveyor' in payment at their face value.
For him they are each week cashed in money at the office of Harmel Brothers. If the members prefer to pay the 'privileged purveyor' in cash, or in orders upon their wages, the sums so paid are inscribed on the account of the Corporation. When the weekly or fortnightly accounts are made up, a certain percentage of the differences between the current market-price of the purchases made and the actual price so paid by the purchasers goes to what is called the 'Corporation profit,' the residue of the difference being paid over to the member with his or her wages. The 'Corporation profit' is a savings fund. Each member has a book showing—with his or her number, and with the full name of the head of the family to which he or she may belong—the amount of this fund standing each quarter to his or her credit, with interest at 5 per cent.
This can only be drawn out by the member, on leaving the employment of the firm, in case of illness or incapacity, or at the age of fifty years.
An actuary's estimate shows that the share of the Corporation profit accruing to each member in twenty-five years on an annual estimated average Corporation profit of 70 francs a member, with five per cent. interest, would be 3,300 francs. And this, be it observed, will have cost the member nothing, being simply a result of the union of employer and employed in a corporate dealing with the purveyors. In 1879 the annual budget of a hundred families at Val-des-Bois, earning among them 249,242 francs, showed an actual 'Corporation profit' of 91,319.05 francs, which ought to have been much larger had Val-des-Bois then possessed more than one butcher, baker, grocer, and tailor. These hundred families comprised 496 members, 279 of them employed in the factory and 217 occupied at home.
During the last ten years, and especially since the passage of the law of March 1884, the scope of these Christian Corporations, not only at Val-des-Bois and at Reims, but all over France, has been considerably extended. Many of them have now the character of true guilds, as at Poitiers, for example, where there is a Corporation of the Builders under the invocation of St-Radegonda, another—Our Lady of the Keys—founded upon a syndicate of clothiers, and a third, of St.-Honoré, founded upon a syndicate of provision-dealers. At Lille I found a typical Corporation, that of the spinners and weavers, known as the Christian Corporation of St.-Nicholas. This was founded in May 1885. This Corporation admits workmen and workwomen, employees and manufacturers, belonging, either by residence or by connexion with the industry named, to the commune of Lille or to one of the adjoining communes. It had last year a membership of 887 persons, of whom 26 were master manufacturers and 37 employees, the rest beingworkmen and workwomen. Five large firms were represented in it. The Syndical Council was made up of a syndic employer, a syndic employee, and a syndic workman from each of these firms, and of a syndic workman, M. Courtecuisse, representing the members who were employed in other establishments. The directing bureau consisted of seven members, including the chaplain. It was presided over by one of the great manufacturers of Lille, M. Féron-Vrau, and the two vice-presidents were M. Edouard Bontry, of the house of Bontry-Droullers, and M. Courtecuisse already named.
This Corporation, under the law of 1884, can own the buildings necessary for its meetings, its libraries, and its lecture-courses; it can establish among its members special savings funds, mutual assistance and pension funds; found and conduct offices for information bearing on the business of its members, and it may be consulted, under Article 6 of the Law of 1884, on 'all difficulties and misunderstandings and questions arising out of its specialty.' This provision—specially intended by the authors of the law to arm the 'strikers' of France against French employers—may thus, it will be seen, be turned quite as effectually to purposes of concord and harmony as to purposes of discontent and strife. The Corporation of St.-Nicholas may receive gifts and legacies in aid of its Corporation funds and purposes, and generally take an active part, like all these Corporations, as was pointed out by Leo XIII. in his 'Encyclical of April 20, 1884,' in protecting, under the 'guidance of the Faith, both the interests and the morals of the people.'
It already has within its sphere of action a Confraternity of Our Lady of the Factory, comprising 548 members, a Mutual Aid Society with 218 members, an Assistance Fund with 409 members; and a Domestic Economy Fund, the principle of which is that certaindealers make a discount on their wares to members of the Corporation which is certified to by them in counters of different values. These counters are receivable by the Corporation in payment of the assessments and subscriptions of the members.
The steady development of these institutions during the last four or five years has led to the organisation by them of a complete general system of administration, provincial and national. The Corporations are grouped not by departments but by provinces.
Provincial assemblies are held, by which delegates are named to attend an annual general assembly at Paris. At the general assembly of 1889, held on June 24, 350 delegates were present, and the session of the assembly was opened by the delegation from Dauphiny, the chair being taken by one of its members, M. Roche, in virtue, as he explained to the crowded audience in the large hall of the Horticultural Society in the Rue de Grenelle, of his descent 'from a representative of the Estates of Dauphiny in 1789.' The work of the assembly was divided between four committees, one on moral and religious interests, one on public interests, one on commercial and industrial interests, and one on agricultural and rural interests.
From this it will be seen that the principles of the movement are being systematically applied to the whole field of active life in France. The general maxim of the organisation is the sound, sensible, and military maxim, of St.-Vincent de Paul, 'let us keep our rules, and our rules will keep us,' and I think there can be no doubt that the French freemasons, and the fanatics of unbelief generally who have launched the government of the Third Republic upon its present course, will find this new Christian organisation of Capital and Labour a troublesome factor in the political field.
We have seen what came in Germany of theCultur-Kampf, and there are curious analogies between the work and the spirit of the Catholic Clubs in France to-day, and the ideas of Monseigneur von Ketteler, which gave vigour and vitality to the great 'party of the Centre,' in the contest with the Chancellor. Where the giant of Berlin had the wisdom to give way, the pigmies of Paris are likely to persist until they are crushed. For they have burned their ships, as the Chancellor never burned his, and they are dogmatists, while he is a statesman. He sought to control and use the Catholic Church in Germany. Their object is, as one of the ablest Republicans in France, Jules Simon, long ago told them, to supplant a State Church of belief by a State church of unbelief. In America and in England when men talk of 'religious freedom,' they mean the freedom of a man to profess and practise his own religion. What the Third French Republic means by 'religious freedom' is freedom from religion. Their legislation has tended, ever since 1877, not indirectly nor by implication, but directly and avowedly, to establish in France a state of things in which, not Catholics only, but all men who profess any form of religion, shall be treated as Protestants were in France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, or as Catholics were in Ireland under William III. This is the meaning of M. Gambetta's war-cry 'Clericalism is the enemy.' The phrase was his, but the policy was announced by his party long before he invented the phrase in 1877. It was distinctly formulated in 1874 by a Republican leader much better equipped for dealing with such questions than M. Gambetta, who was the Boanerges not the Paul of the French gospel of unbelief.
On September 4, 1874, M. Challemel-Lacour, in a remarkable speech, laid it down as a fundamental principle of the Republican policy that the State should so control all the higher branches of education as to secure what he called 'the moral unity of France.' It was on this principle that Napoleon in 1808 had re-organised the University of France. M. Challemel-Lacour unhesitatingly called upon the Republicans to adopt it. If Catholics or Protestants or Israelites were allowed to found universities of their own and confer degrees and diplomas, what would become of the 'moral unity of France'? The duty of the Republicans was to protect and develop this 'moral unity.' So long as one Frenchman could be found in France who believed anything not believed by every other Frenchman, so long this 'moral unity' would be imperfect. The French Liberals of 1830 obviously made a great mistake when they put 'freedom of education' as a right of Frenchmen in the charter. M. Guizot, the great Protestant Minister of Louis Philippe, obviously made a great mistake when he established the principles of free primary education in 1833. The Republicans of 1848 obviously made a great mistake when they proclaimed 'freedom of education' as a Republican principle. The Jacobins of 1792 were the true 'children of light,' and they alone understood how really to achieve the 'moral unity of France,' M. Challemel-Lacour did not say this in so many words; but he did say in so many words that he objected to see any bill passed which should establish 'freedom of education,' and permit clerical persons to found universities, because, 'instead of establishing the moral unity of France, this newfangled liberty would only aggravate the division of Frenchmen into two sets of minds moving upon different lines to different conclusions. The young men educated in these universities,' he said, 'will become zealous apostles of Catholicism. The more ardour they put into theirproselytism the more antagonism they will excite!' At this passage in M. Challemel-Lacour's extraordinary speech, according to the official report, a member of the Right broke in with the very natural exclamation, 'And why not? Is not that liberty? liberty for all?' To which M. Challemel-Lacour discreetly made no reply, but went on to say, 'Instead of establishing our moral unity, you will heap up combustibles in the country until shocks are produced and perhaps cataclysms!'
This is the doctrine of the worthy Lord Mayor in 'Barnaby Rudge' who querulously exclaims to Mr. Harwood when that gentleman came to him asking for protection against the Gordon rioters, 'What are you a Catholic for? If you were not a Catholic the rioters would let you alone. I do believe people turn Catholics a-purpose to vex and worrit me!' 'Moral unity' would have saved the good Lord Mayor a great deal of trouble. 'Moral unity' would have kept things quiet and comfortable throughout the Roman Empire under Diocletian, and throughout the Low Countries under Phillip II. and Alva, and throughout England under Henry VIII. The Jacobins of 1792 did their best to organise 'moral unity' in France with the help of the guillotine, and of the Committee of Public Safety and of the hired assassins who butchered prisoners in cold blood.
Here, at Reims, in September 1792, while Marat 'the Friend of the People' and Danton the 'Minister of Justice' were employing Maillard the 'hero of the Bastile' and his salaried cut-throats to promote public economy and private liberty by emptying the prisons of Paris, certain agents of Marat made a notable effort in behalf of the 'moral unity of France.' To this effort the melodramatic historians of the French Revolution have done scant justice. Mr. Carlyle, forexample, alludes to it only in a casual half-disdainful way, which would be almost comical were the theme less ghastly. 'At Reims,' he observes, 'about eight persons were killed—and two were afterwards hanged for doing it.' The contest of this curious passage plainly shows that he imagined these 'eight persons' (more or less) to have been "killed" by the people of Reims, roused into a patriotic frenzy by the circular which Marat, Panis and Sergent sent out to the provinces calling upon all Frenchmen to imitate the 'people of Paris,' and massacre all the enemies of the Revolution at home before marching against the foreign invaders. That the 'people' of Reims thus aroused should only have killed 'about eight persons' really seemed to him, one would say, hardly worthy of a truly 'Titanic' and 'transcendental' epoch. There is something essentially bucolic in the impression which mobs and multitudes always seem to make upon Mr. Carlyle's imagination. Of what really happened at Reims in September 1792 he plainly had no accurate notion. He obviously cites from some second-hand contemporary accounts of the transactions there this statement, that 'about eight persons were killed,' because, as it happens, we have a full precise and official Report of the killing of all these persons, with their names and details of the massacre, drawn up on September 8, 1792, by the municipal authorities of Reims and signed by all the members of the Council General. Had Mr. Carlyle seen this Report, it would have shown him that Marat, Panis and Sergent knew what they were about when they sent out their famous or infamous circular, just as Marat and Danton knew what they were about when they organised the massacres of September in the prisons of Paris. The 'people' of Reims had no more to do with the killing of 'about eight persons'in the streets and squares of this historic city in September 1792 than the 'people' of Paris had to do with the atrocious butcheries at the Abbaye and Bicêtre and La Force and the Conciergerie. Mr. Carlyle ought to have learned even from the 'Histoire Parlementaire' of Buchez and Roux, which he seems to have freely consulted, that 'the days of September were an administrative business.'
What actually happened at Reims in September 1792 is worth telling. It does not prove, as Mr. Carlyle almost dolefully takes it to prove, that in the provinces the 'Sansculottes only bellowed and howled but did not bite.' It does prove that when they bit, they bit to order, and under impulses no more 'Titanic' or 'transcendental' than those which in our own time lead active politicians to invent lies about the character of their opponents, and to manufacture emotional issues on the eve of a sharp political contest.
The subsidised Parisian insurrection of August 10, 1792, prostrated the monarchy, but it did not found the Republic. It was the death knell both of Pétion and of the Girondists, who had been most active in secretly or openly promoting it. The Constitution having been torn into shreds, power became a prize to be fought for by all the demagogues and all the factions in Paris. The Legislative Assembly fell into the trough of the sea. The sections of Paris supported Marat in calmly laying hands on the printing-presses and material of the royal printing-office, and converting his abominable newspaper into a 'Journal of the Republic.' He was voted a special 'tribune of honour' in the hall of the Council. On August 19 he openly called upon the 'people' to 'march in arms to the prison of the Abbaye, take out the prisoners there, especially the officers of the Swiss Guard and their accomplices, and put them tothe sword.' This was an electoral proceeding. The members of the National Convention were then about to be chosen. Under a law passed by the expiring legislature, electors of the members were first to be chosen by the voters on August 26, and the electors thus chosen were to meet on September 2, and choose the members of the Convention. It was in view of this second and decisive election day that Marat and Danton settled the date at which the great patriotic work of 'emptying the prisons' should begin, and it was in view of this day also that the circular already mentioned of Marat, Panis and Sergent was sent forth to all places at which a lively administration of murder and pillage would be most likely to conduce to the choice by the electors of deputies agreeable to the authors of the circular.
The electors for the Department of the Marne chosen on August 26 were to meet in Reims on September 2, and choose the Deputies for that department to sit in the Convention.
In Reims Marat had a faithful personal ally in the person of the Procureur-Syndic, the most important national functionary in the city. This man, Couplet, called Beaucourt, was a disreputable and apostate ex-monk who had married an ex-nun. His position, of course, gave him a great influence over the least respectable part of the population, and with Marat and Danton at his back in Paris he cared nothing for the mayor and the municipal authorities. From August 19 to August 31 he kept issuing incendiary placards and making inflammatory speeches in Reims. On August 31 he received an intimation from Paris that a column of so-called 'Volunteers' was in motion for Reims, and that he must have things ready for them. To this end he caused the arrest of the postmaster, M. Guérin, and of a poor young letter-carrier named Carton, on a charge of sequestrating and burning 'compromising letters' which ought to have been turned over to him and the 'justice of the Republic.'
On the morning of the election day there marched into Reims the expected 'Volunteers,' who carried banners proclaiming them to be 'Men of the 10th of August.' Couplet received them and feasted them. They broke up into squads and went roaring about Reims denouncing 'the aristocrats' and demanding 'justice upon all public enemies.' They finally broke open the prison, and dragging out the unfortunate postmaster, cut him to pieces in front of the Hôtel de Ville. Some courageous citizens contrived to smuggle out of their reach the young letter-carrier, and took him for safety into the hall of the Municipal Council.
There the murderers followed him, excited by a speech from the Procureur-Syndic, who knowing that no trial had been had, did not scruple to say that 'nothing could excuse the unfaithful letter-carrier.'
The town officers tried to get Carton out by a back door, but Marat's murderers were too quick for them, and the poor youth was torn to pieces. While this was doing the Procureur-Syndic provided another victim. He arrested on some pretext a retired officer of the army, M. de Montrosier, ex-commandant of Lille, then in the house of his father-in-law, M. Andrieux, one of the first magistrates of Reims. M. de Montrosier being taken to prison, the Maratist mob broke again into the prison, dragged him out, killed him, and carried his head all over Reims on a pike. Meanwhile a detachment went out to a neighbouring village in quest of two of the canons of Reims, who had taken refuge there, brought them back to the city, and shot them dead in the street. Night now coming on, the apostles of the'moral unity of France,' many of them by this time being exceedingly drunk, kindled a huge bonfire in front of the Hôtel de Ville, flung into it the mutilated corpses of their victims, and towards midnight laying hands upon two priests, MM. Romain and Alexandre, threw them into the flames! Another band during the evening broke into the venerable church of St.-Rémi, and tearing down the shields and banners which for fourteen centuries had hung above the tomb of the great Archbishop who made France a Christian kingdom, brought these to the bonfire and consumed them.
During this day of horrors, the electors of the department had been in session. As the news reached them of what was going on in the streets, one thought came into the minds of all the decent men among them, to get through as fast as possible and quit the city. At the first ballot 442 electors were present. At the seventh only 203 remained. Of these 135, being the compact 'Republican' minority, gave their votes on that ballot to Drouet, the postmaster's son of Ste-Ménéhould, Mr. Carlyle's 'bold old dragoon,' who stopped the carriage of Louis XVI. at Varennes. He was one of the special adherents of Marat, and a most vicious and venal creature, as his own memoirs, giving among other matters an account of his grotesque attempt to fly down out of his Austrian prison with a pair of paper wings, abundantly attest. He escaped the guillotine, and naturally enough turned up under the empire as an obsequious sub-prefect at Ste-Ménéhould. The whole of the elections, which in normal circumstances would have occupied at least three days, were hurried through before midnight of the first day.
Couplet, called Beaucourt, was satisfied. But so were not the 'men of the 10th of August,' They got their payof course, but they wanted more blood. At 9 A.M. the next morning they seized the venerable curé of St.-Jean, the Abbé Paquot, and dragged him before Couplet, insisting that he should take the constitutional oath. Couplet tried to explain that the time for taking it had expired on August 26. But the courageous Abbé, looking his assassins in the face, said to them: 'I will not take it, it is against my conscience. If I had two souls I would gladly give one of them for you. I have but one, and it belongs to my God.' He had hardly uttered the words when he was struck down and cut to pieces. Almost at the same moment another priest more than eighty years of age, the curate of Rilly, refusing to take the oath, was hanged upon the bar of a street lantern before the eyes of the Mayor of Reims, who tried in vain to disperse or control thesesans-culottes, who, according to Mr. Carlyle, 'howled and bellowed, but did not bite.'
By this time the news came of the surrender of Verdun to the Prussians, and the tocsin began to sound from the great bells of the cathedral. The citizens of Reims suddenly took courage from the sense of the national peril, not to fall upon and slay helpless and unarmed prisoners, but to make head against the murderers and scoundrels who were domineering over their city. The local National Guards began to appear, and were shortly reinforced by a column of Volunteers from the country armed to meet the invaders. The Mayor took command of them and marched to the Hôtel de Ville. There they found that one Chateau, an agent of Couplet, had been secretly denounced by his employer as a spy and promptly hanged by the Parisians on the same lantern-bar from which the night before they had hanged the aged curé of Rilly. His dead body had been flung into the still blazing bonfire kept up allnight with woodwork from the pillaged churches of Reims. The champions of 'moral unity' had also laid hands on the wife of this wretched man, and were on the point of throwing her alive into the flames when the Mayor and the troops appeared. The order to 'charge bayonets' was given and the whole brood of scoundrels thereupon broke and fled in all directions.
All these details, with others too loathsome to be here reproduced, are, as I have said, taken from an officialprocès verbaldrawn up at Reims on September 8, 1792, and signed by every member of the Council-General. This record was produced when in 1795, after the fall of Robespierre had opened the way for the great reaction which finally made Napoleon master of France, the tribunals of the Department of the Marne took steps to bring to justice such of the assassins of 1792 as they could lay hands upon. On the 26 Thermidor, An III., two wretches, one a newspaper-vendor and the other a slopshop-keeper, were condemned to death and executed for the murder of the Abbé Paquot and of the curé of Rilly. Two others, a glazier and a shoemaker, were condemned to six years in the chain-gang.
The evidence on which these assassins were convicted in 1795 had then been for two years in the hands of the municipal authorities at Reims. But during these two years France had been the football of the employers and accomplices of these assassins. The municipal authorities had been powerless to prevent these murders, which were committed in the public streets and under the protection of the Procureur-Syndic of the department, the official representative at Reims of the 'Minister of Justice,' Danton, at Paris. They were equally powerless to punish them.
The Mayor of Reims was fortunate to escape denunciation at Paris for his attempt to save the lives of some of the victims. That was an offence against the 'moral unity' which the First Republic tried to establish.
There was a heroic Mayor in those days at Lille named André. When the Duke of Saxe-Teschen with his wife, a sister of Marie Antoinette, appeared before Lille at the head of an Austrian army and demanded the surrender of the place, Mayor André, who was a Republican but not of the 'moral unity' type, replied that he had sworn to keep the place, and he would keep his oath. With the help of the Ancient Artillery Corporations of the old Flemish city (Corporations of which the 'Honourable Artillery Corps' of London and of Boston are offshoots), Mayor André did keep his oath and kept Lille. The Minister Roland, the respectable confederate of the virtuous Pétion, sent him promises of help, but no help. Why? Because Mayor André had taken the lead in a masculine protest of the honest people of Lille against that ruffianly invasion of the Tuileries by the mob on June 20 which the virtuous Pétion, Mayor of Paris, and his respectable confederate Roland had for their own purposes promoted. So Mayor André got words and no troops. But Lille took care of herself; bore a tremendous bombardment for days without flinching, and finally, in the early days of October, saw the Saxon Duke and his army march away, Valmy having opened the eyes of Brunswick to the utter futility and fanfaronnade of the French emigrant noblesse and princes, who had drawn up for him and persuaded him against his own better judgment to sign the too famous and fatal proclamation with which he heralded the Austro-Prussian advance into France. Mayor André having thus saved the grand North-eastern bulwark of France, his services had to be in some way recognised. But in what way? Paris voted that Lillehad deserved well of the nation, which was obvious enough; also that Lille should get a million of francs towards repairing damages, which million of francs, I am assured, never reached Lille; also that a grand monument should commemorate the valour and constancy of Lille. But the grand monument was never erected until half a century afterwards, when King Louis Philippe took the matter up, and carried it through.
With the proclamation of the Republic in September 1792 it ceased to be meritorious in Mayors and other municipal personages to protect life and property, repulse foreign invaders and punish domestic criminals. Varlet, the self-appointed 'Apostle of Liberty,' the man with the camp-chair and the red cap, whom Carnot, the grandfather of the present President, actually insisted that the Assembly should welcome to its floor, gave the keynote of the new order of things. 'We must draw a veil,' he exclaimed, 'over the Declaration of the Rights of Man!' And a veil was indeed drawn over the Declaration of the Rights of Man. Here at Reims, as elsewhere, proscriptions and confiscations were the order of the day. The glorious Cathedral of Reims itself, the Westminster and Canterbury in one of France, was in continual peril. Nothing really saved it and the Archi-episcopal palace but the religious and patriotic reverence of the people of Reims for the memory of Jeanne d Arc. In that Archi-episcopal palace the peasant girl of Domrémy, the Virgin saviour of France, had been lodged. In that Cathedral she had stood, her banner in her hand, and watched the solemn consecration of her mission and her triumph. The emissaries of plunder and murder from Paris shrank from driving the Rémois to extremities on that issue. But they desecrated the building and defaced it as much as they dared.
I am told that Robespierre during his dictatorship interfered to put a stop to the vandalism of his disciples here, and that we owe to him the preservation of the magnificent groups which still exist of statues representing scenes in the life of the Virgin Mary. The groups above the head of the Virgin on the double lintel had already been dashed to pieces when he was appealed to. The groups below, still unharmed, afford unanswerable proof that the sculptors of this part of Europe in the thirteenth century must have been familiar with the best traditions of their art. If Robespierre preserved these, we may forgive him not only for sending his dear Camille Desmoulins and his detested Danton to the guillotine, but even for replacing the shattered groups of the Nativity, the Presentation, and the Death of the Virgin with this inscription of his own devising: 'The French people believe in the existence of God and in the immortality of the soul!' Under the First Consul this inscription gave place to the Latin dedication now visible.
Pillaging he did not prevent, perhaps could not. One wizened old reprobate, Ruhl, got himself great Republicankudosby persistently putting about a legend that he had successfully stolen the sacred ampulla, from which St.-Rémi had anointed Clovis King of France, and had dashed it to pieces in public. That he did indeed dash in pieces publicly a flask of glass is, I am assured, indubitable. But not less indubitable is it that he did not dash in pieces the sacred ampulla. Ruhl was a bit of a scholar, and his legend was obviously suggested to him by the traditional story of the Frankish warrior who smashed a sacred vase at Soissons, and whose own head the stalwart King Clovis afterwards clove in twain with his battle-axe on the Champ de Mars in requital of the deed. Curiouslyenough, it was written that the head of Ruhl should likewise in the end be smashed, as it was by himself with a pistol at Paris, May 20, 1795, to save it from the guillotine!
All the churches of Reims did not escape so well as the Cathedral. St.-Nicaise, 'the jewel of Reims' and the masterpiece of a famous architect of the thirteenth century, Hues Libergiers, whose name is preserved in that of one of the chief streets of Reims, was pillaged and then pulled down, the materials and the site being sold at a 'mock auction' to Santerre, the enterprising brewer, who 'pulled the wires' of all the patriotic emotions of the Faubourg St.-Antoine from the outset of the Revolution, got himself thereby made a general, and in that capacity conducted Louis XVI. to the scaffold, where, as all the world knows, he ordered the drums to drown the last words of the King. He was an incorrigible and indefatigable speculator, and while he drove a roaring trade at Paris in beer, he was always on the look out for demolished churches and convents in the provinces. Napoleon took his measure promptly, subsidised and used him to good purpose. Hearing once that there was a ferment brewing in St.-Antoine, the Emperor sent an officer to Santerre. 'Go and tell that fellow,' he said, 'that if I hear one word from the Faubourg St.-Antoine I will have him instantly shot.'
The 'Titanic' and 'transcendental' Faubourg remained as mute as a mouse!
In no French city are the memories of the Revolutionary orgie more offensively out of key with the actual aspect and the great associations of the place than in Reims. Whatever may have been the ways of the working people here forty years ago, I have always been struck by their quiet and orderly demeanour, as well as by the general air of prosperity and animationwhich pervades the city. Its grand Cathedral, the most consummate type which exists of the great ogival architecture of the thirteenth century, stands, the archæologists tell us, on the spot where the Romans planted their citadel sixteen centuries ago. Like a citadel, it dominates the whole city to-day; a fortress no longer, like the Roman citadel, of armed force, but of faith, charity, and hope. Seven centuries have not shaken the solidity of its massive fabric. They who built it 'dreamt not of a perishable home.' But only a year ago a serious dislocation appeared in the framework of the stupendous rose-window over the grand entrance, and this, with other unsatisfactory symptoms observable here and there in the building, lend colour to the theory that the great chalk bed upon which the Cathedral stands may have been affected by the percolation of water from some deep trenches which, it seems, were dug near the northern and southern towers at the entrance of the Cathedral, during the year 1879, and unfortunately left open during the very inclement winter which followed.
This is a rather alarming theory, particularly if it be true, as it is said to be, that since 1880 the towers have perceptibly come out of plumb.
Fortunately the see of Reims is now in the charge of a prelate who fully appreciates the value to art and to civilisation, as well as to France and to the Church, of this magnificent edifice. When he came here from the bishopric of Tarbes, his first episcopate, in November 1874, one of the earliest steps taken by the present Cardinal Langénieux was to get a full report on the condition of the Cathedral from M. Millet, the accomplished successor of M. Viollet-le-Duc in the great work of the conservation and restoration of the historical monuments of France. M. Millet, on August 25, 1875, reportedthat the flying buttresses needed immediate attention, and that 'the gables and vaults of the western façade were seriously damaged, so that the rain water was penetrating the masonry and threatening the destruction of the numerous statues and sculptured ornaments of the grand western portal.' This portal, as every traveller knows, is simply matchless in the world. The Archhishop thereupon invited four of his personal friends, all at that time members of the Ministry—MM. Dufaure, Léon Say, Wallon, and Caillaux—to Reims, to see for themselves the state of the Cathedral. They came and inspected the building, and after their return to Paris prepared a bill, which became a law in December 1875, appropriating a sum of 2,033,411 francs in ten yearly instalments to the restoration of the Cathedral. The work began at once under the direction of M. Millet, who unfortunately died in 1879.
It was prosecuted after his death by another able architect, M. Brugère, and is now in the hands of M. Darcy, who has shown by his work at Evreux and St.-Denis that he is no unworthy successor of Viollet-le-Duc. The appropriation made in 1875 has been expended, but I am glad to find, on looking into the Budget for 1890 of the Ministry of Public Worship, that a sum of 301,508 fr. 26 c. is still available for the works at Reims. This budget, by the way, is an instructive document. It shows that the whole outlay of the State in France upon all objects connected with public worship and religion in France and Algiers, excepting the service of the chaplains in the army and the navy, amounted in 1889 to a little more than one franc per head of the population! The whole expense in connection with the Catholic Church, the Calvinist and Lutheran confessions, the Israelitish religion and the Mussulmans, was no more than 45,337,145 francs, asum less than the amount annually expended by the Protestant Episcopal Church of the single State of New York upon keeping up its churches, colleges, and clergy! What proportion this sum bears to the present annual income of the Church property confiscated under the first Republic it would be interesting to ascertain. A Protestant friend of mine in the south of France, who has made some investigations into this subject, tells me that it cannot possibly represent aboveten per cent. of the present actual product of the former property of the Church. Of the whole sum, 228,000 francs were spent on the civil servants of the ministry. There are seven sub-chiefs of bureaux in this ministry, all of them now doubtless good atheists, who receive salaries of from 3,400 to 5,400 francs a year. The highest salary paid to a Protestant pastor even in Paris is 3,000 francs, or 120l.a year. The curé of Notre-Dame de Paris receives 2,400 francs, or less than 100l.a year. There are 580 curés of the first class who receive from 1,500 to 1,600 francs a year; 275 curés of the second class receiving 1,500 francs a year, and 2,527 curés of the third class receiving from 1,200 to 1,300 francs a year. The thirty-one clerks in the Ministry receive from 1,800 to 4,500 francs a year. The Vicar-General of Paris receives no more than 4,500 francs a year. The Archbishop of Paris receives, like all the other archbishops, 15,000 francs, or 600l., a year, which is the salary paid to the Director of the Ministry! The Grand Rabbi of the Central Consistory receives 12,000 and the Grand Rabbi of Paris 5,000 francs a year, and the salaries paid to the Israelitish ministers of religion range from 2,500 down to 600 francs, the latter amount being less by 300 francs than the wages of the servants in the Ministry. The Muftis and Imams in office receive from 300 to 1,200 francs a year. All these salaries, with the outlay on the construction, rent, or maintenance of buildings of all kinds used for religious purposes, pensions, and travelling expenses, are comprised in the total appropriation of 45,337,145 francs, or a little more than 1,800,000l.for the year 1889. During the same year 12,760,745 francs were appropriated for the Fine Arts service. I do not say that the sum thus devoted to the Fine Arts out of the pockets of the taxpayers of France was at all too large. But I do say that it is out of all proportion large as compared with the sum voted out of the pockets of the taxpayers to the maintenance of religious institutions, which an overwhelming majority of the people of France regard, and rightly regard, as essential to the stability of law and order. Furthermore, this Budget of 1889 shows the spirit in which the fanatics of 'moral unity' are prosecuting their war against all religions in France. In 1883 the Government's budget amounted to 53,528,206 francs. Here we have a reduction within six years of more than 8,000,000 francs. In 1883 M. Jules Roche, now a deputy for the first district of Chambéry and an ally of M. Clémenceau, proposed to reduce the Budget of Public Worship to 4,588,800 francs! The Third Republic, it will be seen, is getting on towards the proposition of M. Jules Roche—a proposition which clearly combines everything that is most open to objection in a legal connection between the State and religion with everything that is most odious and dangerous in an open war of the State against religion.
During these six years the leaders of this war against religion have never dared to draw up a statistical account of the strength of the various religious bodies in France. In 1882 one of their followers, M. Alfred Talandier, on February 13, rashly proposed that a table should be officially prepared of the state of religious opinions in France; but the managers of thecause of 'moral unity' were too wily to walk into that trap; they quietly stifled the proposition. It really might be a little awkward, even for a Parliamentary oligarchy with a strongly-bitted Executive well in hand, to confront, let us say, 37,500,000 of Catholics, Protestants, Israelites, not to mention the Mussulmans in Africa, with a proposition to abolish a Budget of Worship amounting to a little over a franc a head, for the purpose of reducing France to a complete 'moral unity' of absolute unbelief in God and in the immortality of the human soul!
Cardinal Langénieux took possession, as I have said, of the Archi-episcopal See of Reims in November 1874. Seldom has the right man been put into the right place more exactly at the right moment. It was in September 1874 that M. Challemel-Lacour unfolded the Republican programme of war to the knife against all religion. In September 1874, too, as I have mentioned, the burning of the factory at Val-des-Bois called out a general demonstration of sympathy from the Catholic working-men's clubs all over France, which attracted public attention to the movement; and in October 1874 Pius IX. issued a brief recognising its importance and earnestly commending it.
The new Archbishop of Reims was exceptionally fitted by his training and his experience to promote such a movement.
He was a Benedictine of the school of Cluny, bred in the traditions of that illustrious Order, to which, without exaggeration, it may be said that we owe almost everything that is best worth having in our Western civilisation. For upon what does human society rest in the last resort if not upon the two great pillars of the rule of St. Benedict—Obedience and Labour? As a priest, the new Archbishop had successively and successfully administered two of the most important parishes in Paris, one in the workmen's quarter of the Faubourg St.-Antoine, the other in the quarter of the noblesse, in the Faubourg St.-Germain.
After a single year passed in the Episcopate at Tarbes, that pleasant city on the Adour which all the winds of the Pyrenees have not yet quite disinfected of the memory of Barère, he was translated to this great historic see in the prime of his vigour. For fifteen years he has so ruled it that the Christians of Reims and of the Marne now seize with delight upon every opportunity of manifesting their incorrigible indifference to the 'moral unity of France.' You meet workmen in the streets going about their work with religious medals openly displayed. The churches of Reims are filled with men on great Church festivals. Taking all the districts of the Marne together, the Revisionists and Monarchists at the elections of 1889 outnumbered considerably the Government Republicans. These latter polled 35,046 votes in the Marne, against 40,287 polled by the former. The Radicals, who are very strong in the first district of Reims, polled 11,037 votes there against a Revisionist vote of 9,230. Do not these figures show, what I believe to be the truth, that the 'true Republican' policy of reducing France to 'moral unity' by trampling on the traditions and coercing the consciences of the French people is steadily dividing the French people into two great camps—the camp of the Social and Radical revolution and the camp of the Monarchy? That there was no necessity for this is illustrated by what I have said as to the relations between the Cardinal Archbishop of Reims and the Republican Ministers of 1875 who came here on his invitation, and then took steps to secure the preservation and restoration of the Cathedral. One of these Republican Ministers, M.Léon Say, who is largely responsible for clothing the present Government with the power which it abuses, has just been signally humiliated by the present Government and the dominant majority.
In the second district of Bergerac in the Dordogne, the Monarchist candidate for the Chamber, M. Thirion Montauban, received 6,708 votes, against 6,439 given to his Republican competitor. I took a special interest in this election, because M. Thirion-Montauban is the present proprietor of the house of Michel de Montaigne, which came into his possession through his marriage with the daughter of M. Magne, the eminent Finance Minister of Napoleon III. I made a visit there late in the summer, and found him busy with his canvass, on lines of respect for personal liberty and the right of men to think their own thoughts as to life and death, which would have commanded the cordial sympathy of the great Gascon sceptic. The tower, the study, the bedroom of Montaigne are preserved by him with religious care. The inscriptions on the walls which John Sterling copied so lovingly half a century ago are there still, and if indeed there be a life of faith as Tennyson says, 'in honest doubt,' the Pyrrhonist seigneur who thought before Pascal that the true philosophy was to laugh at philosophy, would not find himself a stranger in his old haunt to-day because its lower hall has been consecrated as a chapel.
The opponents of M. Thirion-Montauban behaved throughout the contest with extraordinary violence, and on one occasion put him into serious personal peril. However, he was elected. When the Chamber met in November his election was contested. M. Léon Say took an active part in maintaining the validity of the returns which gave the seat to M. Thirion-Montauban, and the evidence in the case was overwhelmingly inhis favour. Nevertheless after the Report of the Committee was made, the majority of the Chamber coolly invalidated the choice of the electors, and seated the candidate who had not been elected. It was an open secret that this was done quite as much to punish M. Léon Say as to exclude M. Thirion-Montauban.
Intolerant as the 'true Republicans' are towards their political opponents, they are still more intolerant towards those 'false Republicans' who hesitate at framing the policy of a French Republic in the nineteenth century upon the principles which led to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Were Socrates alive and a Frenchman, he would stand no chance for a government chair of philosophy in a competition with the little atheist Aristodemus, and were David Hume to reappear at Reims, where he got his early schooling, he would certainly find himself treated by the authorities as no better than a Catholic.
The irreligion of the Third Republic is a dogmatic irreligion. Bayle would find no favour in its eyes, because protesting, as he said he did 'from his inmost soul protest, against everything that was ever said or done,' he must of course protest against the Nihilism of M. Marcou and M. Paul Bert.
Unfortunately for the 'true Republicans,' it is essential to their success that with the religious faith they should also abolish the patriotic traditions of France. M. Jules Simon, a Republican and a Republican Minister of Public Instruction, has found himself compelled to denounce in the clearest and strongest language the deliberate attempt which these 'true Republicans' are making 'to teach the children of France that the glory of France began with 1789, and that it was never so great as under the Convention.'
Stuff like this is actually taught in the schools into which it is the object of the present French Government to drive by statute all the children of the country.
'These men,' says M. Jules Simon, 'who proscribe the name of Jesus Christ and forbid it to be mentioned in the schools of France, on the pretext that public education must be neutral in such matters, do not hesitate to have children compelled to attend schools in which they are taught that Louis XIV. was a tyrant without greatness or ability, and that Louis XVI. was an enemy of his country justly condemned and executed.'
Of the great historic France—the France which aided the American colonies to establish their independence, after contesting with England the dominion of North America and of India for more than a century—the France of Montesquieu and of Rabelais, of Henri IV. and Sully, of François I. and St.-Louis, of Chivalry and of the Crusades, the coming generation of Frenchmen, if these fanatics can get their way, will know no more than their Annamite fellow-citizens in Asia. It is not surprising that a Government controlled by such men with such objects should have amnestied the criminals of the Commune. Thepétroleurswho destroyed the Tuileries and the Hôtel de Ville were only trying in their practical way to abolish the history of France before 1789.
Here at Reims the history of France, I think, will die very hard. No one could doubt this who visited the Department of the Marne in the month of July 1887.
When the 'moral unity' men began their sinister work in 1880, the Cardinal Archbishop of Reims was earnestly urging upon the Holy See the beatification of the great French pontiff, Urban II., the disciple, friend and successor of Hildebrand, and the canonisation ofJeanne d'Arc, 'that whitest lily in the shield of France, with heart of virgin gold.'
On July 14, 1881, Leo XIII. confirmed the beatification of Urban II. and fixed of course the date of his death, July 29, as his place in the calendar of Church festivals. In July 1882 a solemn Triduum appointed by a Papal Rescript was celebrated with extraordinary pomp in the Cathedral of Reims.
Two Cardinals, one the special Legate of the Pope, more than twenty bishops, several abbots of the great Benedictine Order of which Urban II. was a member, and hundreds of the clergy from all parts of France, were present. The Cardinal Legate was attended by Monsignor Cataldi, so long and so well known to all foreigners in Rome as the master of the ceremonies to the Pope. The Cathedral was crowded. 'What I should like to know,' said a quiet shrewd master workman who described to me the effect produced by the scene in the Cathedral, 'what I should like to know is why the Catholics of Reims have not the right upon such occasions to escort the Legate of the Head of the Church from the railway station to the Cathedral with a procession and with music and with banners? Is that liberty I ask you?'
The question seems to me natural enough, particularly as I see that only the other day the Freemasons at Grenoble were permitted to force themselves, marching in a body with all their regalia and their emblems, into the funeral procession of a Prefect who was not a member of their order at all, and against the protest of the Bishop of Grenoble, who had been asked by the family of the dead man to give him the burial rites of the Church. That the Freemasons like other citizens should attend the funeral as individuals the Bishop was ready to admit, but he not unnaturally declined toacquiesce in the deliberate parade on such an occasion of a body openly and undisguisedly hostile to Christianity in all its forms.
Without a procession, however, the Triduum of the great Pope of the Crusades was a great success in 1882. It led to the organisation of a movement for erecting a magnificent monument to the memory of Urban II. at his native place. Châtillon-sur-Marne, one of the loveliest little towns in the valley of the Marne, situated about twenty miles from Reims. Early in 1887 this monument was completed, and on July 21 in that year it was unveiled with a solemn ceremonial in the presence of the Cardinal Archbishop of Reims, of the Papal Nuncio at Paris, and of many French bishops, among them the great orator of the Chamber of Deputies, Monseigneur Freppel, Bishop of Angers. He delivered a most impressive discourse on the significance of the Crusades, every sentence of which was weighted with pregnant allusions to the actual condition of religious liberty in France. These allusions were curiously emphasised by the absence of the Bishop of Orléans, detained at his post in the city of 'Jeanne d'Arc' by the sudden 'laicisation' of the schools in his diocese!
The day was what a perfect day in the summer of Northern France can be. The scene might have been planned by a poet or a painter. There are other Châtillons in France more famous in history, and held in higher honour therefore by those useful men the makers of guide-books, than Châtillon-sur-Marne; and it is in the nature of all castles to stand on picturesque sites, as of great rivers to flow by large towns. But neither the Châtillon which saw the birth of the Admiral de Coligny, nor the Châtillon which saw Napoleon throw away his sceptre with his scabbard, stands morebeautifully than the quiet little town which nestles on its green plateau beneath the still majestic ruins of the château in which the great Pope of the Crusades was born. It overlooks, in the verdant valley of the Marne, the ancient priory of Binson, superbly renovated now, and restored in great measure through the zeal and energy of the Benedictine Archbishop of Reims. Around it sweeps a great circle of green and wooded hills, dotted over with fair mansions and lordly parks. For this province of Champagne is a land of wealth as well as of labour.
From a shattered tower of the old feudal fortress floated side by side the flags of France and of the Holy See. Beside the ruins rose, sharply defined and well detached against the summer sky, the colossal statue of Urban II. upon its lofty pedestal of granite. About it were arrayed in a pomp of colour and of flowing vestments, the host of ecclesiastics drawn together to do homage and honour in the sight of all men to the illustrious French pontiff, whom the Church found not unworthy in days of great stress and sore trial to take up and carry forward the work of his friend and teacher and predecessor, Hildebrand. One need not be a Catholic to recognise the debt of mankind to Gregory VII., of whom, dying in exile and in seeming defeat at Salerno, Sir James Stephen has truly said that he has 'left the impress of his gigantic character upon all succeeding ages.' One need only be a moderately civilised man of common sense to recognise the debt of mankind to Odo de Châtillon, known in the pontificate as Urban II. Wherever in the world the evensong of the Angelus breathes peace on earth to men of good-will, it speaks of the great pontiff and of the Truce of God which he founded, that the races of Christian Europe, suspending their internecine strife, might uniteto roll back into Asia once for all the threatening invasion of Islam.
But the thousands upon thousands of people of both sexes and of all conditions in life who filled the vast plateau of Châtillon on that summer day in July 1887, and hailed with tumultuous shouts the monument of this great Frenchman and great Pope, visibly took a more than historic interest in the occasion. They were moved not only by those 'mystic chords of memory' of which President Lincoln knew the social and political value much better than the French fanatics of 'moral unity,' but by a vivid consciousness of the present peril of their country, their homes and their faith. Once more, as in the eleventh century and in the eighteenth, France needs to-day 'an invincible champion of the freedom of the Church, a defender of public peace, a reformer of morals, a scourge of corruption.'
This was the true significance of this memorable scene in the Marne. It was in the minds of that whole multitude, and it stirred them all with a common impulse when the eloquent Bishop of Angers, after sketching in a bold and striking outline the career of Urban II., thus drove its lesson home:—'Urban II. and the Popes of the Middle Ages have made for evermore impossible any return to the pagan theory of the omnipotence of the State. Ah, no doubt, despite that signal defeat, despotism will return to the charge. More than once in the course of the ages we shall see fresh appeals to violence against a power which can defend itself only by appealing to moral authority. We shall see, as we saw under Henry of Germany, emperors, kings, and republics strive to forge chains for the Church by their laws and their decrees. But the memory of the heroic struggles of the eleventh century will notpass out of the minds of the people. Canossa will remain for ever an inevitable stage in the progress of every power which undertakes to suppress religion and the Church.'
This festival of Urban II. fell in the week which includes the anniversary of the coronation of Charles VII. at Reims in the presence of Jeanne d'Arc, and the Cardinal Archbishop availed himself in July 1887 of this circumstance to crown the manifestation at Châtillon by a solemn commemoration in the Cathedral at Reims of the triumph of the peasant-girl of Domrémy. He was a schoolfellow at St.-Sulpice and has been a lifelong friend of Gounod, and upon his suggestion the great French composer produced for the commemoration his Mass of Jeanne d'Arc. He came from Paris himself to superintend the execution of the music. Simple, grand, choral, in the manner of Palestrina, music of the cathedral, not of the concert, I must leave my readers to imagine what its effect was beneath those vast and magnificent arches which had looked down four centuries ago upon the Maid of Orléans kneeling with her banner in her hand before the newly-anointed King who owed his crown to Heaven and to her, and praying that, now her mission was fulfilled, 'the gentle prince would let her go back to her own people and to tend her sheep.'
I do not think it would be easy to convince anyone who that day witnessed the profound and silent emotion of those assembled thousands in the Cathedral of Reims that the religious sentiment is either dead or dying in France! In the evening of the same day the Cathedral was thronged again, and thousands of men stood there for an hour, as I saw men stand in Rome last year under the preaching of Padre Agostino, to listen to a very remarkable sermon from one of the most eloquentpreachers in France, Canon Lemann of Lyons. In the course of this sermon the preacher incidentally, but with an obvious and courageous purpose, dwelt at some length upon the energy with which Urban II. had denounced and repressed the 'false Crusaders' who, under cover of the uprising of Christendom against the infidel, fell upon, persecuted, and massacred the Jews in Europe. This quiet and earnest protest against the 'Jew-baiting' tendency which is showing itself in France, as well as in Germany, was plainly understood, and as plainly commanded the sympathy of his hearers. This was the case also with his admirable treatment of the international aspects of the story of the Maid of Orléans. There was not a trace of Chauvinism in his citation of the simple and downright message sent by the Pucelle to the English before Orléans. 'I have been sent by God to throw you out of France.' Out of France she did throw them. 'In this,' said the preacher, 'Jeanne d'Arc did a great service to England as well as to France. The fair-haired nation of the North had fought side by side with France, Cœur de Lion with Philip Augustus, in the Crusades. When, therefore, the destined queen of the seas sought to establish herself as a Continental power in the heart of Europe, the Lord put in her way that grain of star-dust from Domrémy, forced her back to her vocation, and bade her content herself with being sovereign on the ocean.'