1332 (return)[ "Archives Nationales," D. XXIX. 1. Letter of M. Despretz-Montpezat, a former artillery officer, July 24th (with several other signatures). On the same day the alarm bell is sounded In fifty villages on the rumor spreading that 7,000 brigands, English and Breton, were invading the country.]
1333 (return)[ "Archives Nationales," D. XXIX. I. Letter of Briand-Delessart, August 1st (domiciliary visits to the Carmelites of Angoulême where it is pretended that Mme. de Polignac has just arrived.—Beugnot, I. 140.—Arthur Young, July 20th, etc.—Buchez and Roux, IV. 166. Letter of Mamers, July 24th; of Mans, July 26th.]
1334 (return)[ Montjoie, ch. LXXII, p. 93 (according to acts of legal procedure). There was a soldier in the band who had served under M. de Montesson and who wanted to avenge himself for the punishments he had undergone in the regiment.]
1335 (return)[ Mercure de France, August 20th (Letter from Vésoul, August 13th).]
1336 (return)[ M. de Memmay proved his innocence later on, and was rehabilitated by a public decision after two years' proceedings (session of June 4, 1791; Mercure of June 11th).]
1337 (return)[ Journal des Débats et Décrets, I. 258. (Letter of the municipality of Vésoul, July 22nd.—Discourse of M. de Toulougeon, July 29th.)]
1338 (return)[ De Rochambeau, "Mémoires," I. 353.—"Archives Nationales," F7, 3253. (Letter of M. de Rochamheau, August 4th.)—Chronicle of Schmutz (ibid. ), p. 284. "Archives Nationales," D. XXIX. I. (Letter of Mme. Ferrette, of Remiremont, August 9th.)]
1339 (return)[ Sauzay, I. 180. (Letters of monks, July 22nd and 26th.)]
1340 (return)[ "Archives Nationales," D. XXIX. I. (Letter of M. de Bergeron, attorney to the présidial of Valence, August 28th, with the details of the verdict stated.) Official report of the militia of Lyons, sent to the president of the National Assembly, August 10th. (Expedition to Serrière, in Dauphiny, July 31st.)]
1341 (return)[ Letter of the Count of Courtivron, deputy substitute (an eye-witness).—"Archives Nationales," D. XXIX. I. Letter of the municipal officers of Crémieu (Dauphiny), November 3rd. Letter of the Vicomte de Carbonnière (Auvergne), August 3rd.—Arthur Young, July 30th (Dijon) says, apropos of a noble family which escaped almost naked from its burning chateau, "they were esteemed by the neighbors; their virtues ought to have commanded the love of the poor, for whose resentment there was no cause."]
1342 (return)[ "Archives Nationales," XXIX. I. (Letter of the commission of the States of Dauphiny, July 31st.)]
1343 (return)[ "Désastres du Mâconnais," by Puthod de la Maison-Rouge (August, 1789). "Ravages du Mâconnais."—Arthur Young, July 27th.—Buchez and Roux, IV. 215, 214.—Mercure de France, September 12, 1789. (Letter by a volunteer of Orleans.) "On the 15th of August, eighty-eight ruffians, calling themselves reapers, present themselves at Bascon, in Beauce, and, the next day, at a chateau in the neighborhood, where they demand within an hour the head of the son of the lord of the manor, M. Tassin, who can only redeem himself by a contribution of 1,600 livres and the pillaging of his cellars.]
1344 (return)[ Letter of the Count de Courtivron.—Arthur Young, July 31st.—Buchez and Roux, II. 243.—Mercure de France, August 15, 1789 (sitting of the 8th, discourse of a deputy from Dauphiné.)—Mermet, "Histoire de la Ville de Vienne," 445—" Archives Nationales," ibid. (Letter of the commission of the States of Dauphiny, July 31st.)—"The list of burnt or devastated chateaux is immense." The committee already cites sixteen of them.—Puthod de la Maison-Rouge, ibid.: "Were all devastated places to be mentioned, it would be necessary to cite the whole province" (Letter from Mâcon). "They have not the less destroyed most of the chateaux and bourgeois dwellings, either burning them and or else tearing them down."]
1345 (return)[ Lally-Tollendal, "Second Letter to my Constituents," 104.]
1346 (return)[ Doniol, "La Révolution et la Féodalité," p.60 (a few days after the 4th of August).—"Archives Nationales," H. 784. Letters of M. de Langeron, military commander at Besançon, October 16th and 18th.—Ibid. , D. XXIX. I. Letter of the same, September 3rd.—Arthur Young (in Provence, at the house of Baron de la Tour-d'Aignes). "The baron is an enormous sufferer by the Revolution; a great extent of country which belonged in absolute right to his ancestors, has been granted for quit-rents, ceus, and other feudal payments, so that there is no comparison between the lands retained and those thus granted by his family. . . . The solid payments which the Assembly have declared to be redeemable are every hour falling to nothing, without a shadow of recompense. . . The situation of the nobility in this country is pitiable; they are under apprehensions that nothing will be left them, but simply such houses as the mob allows to stand unburned; that the small farmers will retain their farms without paying the landlord his half of the produce; and that, in case of such a refusal, there is actually neither law nor authority in the country to prevent it. This chateau, splendid even in ruins, with the fortune and lives of the owners, is at the mercy of an armed rabble."]
Powerlessness and discords of the authorities.—The people,king.
The powerlessness, indeed, of the heads of the Government, and the lack of discipline among all its subordinates, are much greater in the capital than in the provinces.—Paris possesses a mayor, Bailly; but "from the first day, and in the easiest manner possible,"1401his municipal council, that is to say, "the assembly of the representatives of the commune, has accustomed itself to carry on the government alone, overlooking him entirely." There is a central administration, the municipal council, presided over by the mayor; but, "at this time, authority is everywhere except where the preponderating authority should be; the districts have delegated it and at the same time retained it;" each of them acts as if it were alone and supreme.—There are secondary powers, the district-committees, each with its president, its clerk, its offices, and commissioners; but the mobs of the street march on without awaiting their orders; while the people, shouting under their" windows, impose their will on them;—in short, says Bailly again, "everybody knew how to command, but nobody knew how to obey."
"Imagine," writes Loustalot1402himself; "a man whose feet, hands, and limbs possessed each its own intelligence and will, whose one leg would wish to walk when the other one wanted to rest, whose throat would close when the stomach demanded food, whose mouth would sing when the eyelids were weighed down with sleep; and you will have a striking picture of the condition of things in the capital"
There are "sixty Republics"1403in Paris; each district is an independent, isolated power, which receives no order without criticizing it, always in disagreement and often in conflict with the central authority or with the other districts. It receives denunciations, orders domiciliary visits, sends deputations to the National Assembly, passes resolutions, posts its bills, not only in its own quarter but throughout the city, and sometimes even extends its jurisdiction outside of Paris. Everything comes within its province, and particularly that which ought not to do so.—On the 18th of July, the district of Petits-Augustins1404"decrees in its own name the establishment of justices of the peace," under the title of tribunes, and proceeds at once to elect its own, nominating the actor Molé. On the 30th, that of the Oratoire annuls the amnesty which the representatives of the commune in the Hôtel-de-Ville had granted, and orders two of its members to go to a distance of thirty leagues to arrest M. de Bezenval. On the 19th of August, that of Nazareth issues commissions to seize and bring to Paris the arms deposited in strong places. From the beginning each assembly sent to the Arsenal in its own name, and "obtained as many cartridges and as much powder as it desired." Others claim the right of keeping a watchful eye over the Hôtel-de-Ville and of reprimanding the National Assembly. The Oratoire decides that the representatives of the commune shall be invited to deliberate in public. Saint-Nicholas des Champs deliberates on the veto and begs the Assembly to suspend its vote.—It is a strange spectacle, that of these various authorities each contradicting and destroying the other. To-day the Hôtel-de-Ville appropriates five loads of cloth which have been dispatched by the Government, and the district of Saint-Gervais opposes the decision of the Hôtel-de-Ville. To-morrow Versailles intercepts grain destined for Paris, while Paris threatens, if it is not restored, to march on Versailles. I omit the incidents that are ridiculous:1405anarchy in its essence is both tragic and grotesque, and, in this universal breaking up of things, the capital, like the kingdom, resembles a bear-garden when it does not resemble a Babel.
But behind all these discordant authorities the real sovereign, who is the mob, is very soon apparent.—On the 15th of July it undertakes the demolition of the Bastille of its own accord, and this popular act is sanctioned; for it is necessary that appearances should be kept up; even to give orders after the blow is dealt, and to follow when it is impossible to lead.1406A short time after this the collection of the octroi at the barriers is ordered to be resumed; forty armed individuals, however, present themselves in their district and say, that if guards are placed at the octroi stations, "they will resist force with force, and even make use of their cannon."—On the false rumor that arms are concealed in the Abbey of Montmartre, the abbess, Madame de Montmorency, is accused of treachery, and twenty thousand persons invade the monastery.—The commander of the National Guard and the mayor are constantly expecting a riot; they hardly dare absent themselves a day to attend the King fête at Versailles. As soon as the multitude can assemble in the streets, an explosion is imminent. "On rainy days," says Bailly, "I was quite at my ease."—It is under this constant pressure that the Government is carried on; and the elect of the people, the most esteemed magistrates, those who are in best repute, are at the mercy of the throng who clamor at their doors. In the district of St. Roch,1407after many useless refusals, the General Assembly, notwithstanding all the reproaches of its conscience and the resistance of its reason, is obliged to open letters addressed to Monsieur, to the Duke of Orleans, and to the Ministers of War, of Foreign Affairs, and of the Marine. In the committee on subsistence, M. Serreau, who is indispensable and who is confirmed by a public proclamation, is denounced, threatened, and constrained to leave Paris. M. de la Salle, one of the strongest patriots among the nobles, is on the point of being murdered for having signed an order for the transport of gunpowder;1408the multitude, in pursuit of him, attach a rope to the nearest street-lamp, ransack the Hôtel-de-Ville, force every door, mount into the belfry, and seek for the traitor even under the carpet of the bureau and between the legs of the electors, and are only stayed in their course by the arrival of the National Guard.
The people not only sentence but they execute, and, as is always the case, blindly. At Saint-Denis, Chatel, the mayor's lieutenant, whose duty it is to distribute flour, had reduced the price of bread at his own expense: on the 3rd of August his house is forced open at two o'clock in the morning, and he takes refuge in a steeple; the mob follow him, cut his throat and drag his head along the streets.—Not only do the people execute, but they pardon—and with equal discernment. On the 11th of August, at Versailles, as a parricide is about to be broken on the wheel, the crowd demand his release, fly at the executioner, and set the man free.1409Veritably this is sovereign power like that of the oriental sovereign who arbitrarily awards life or death! A woman who protests against this scandalous pardon is seized and comes near being hung; for the new monarch considers as a crime whatever is offensive to his new majesty. Again, he receives public and humble homage. The Prime Minister, on imploring the pardon of M. de Bezenval at the Hôtel-de-Ville, in the presence of the electors and of the public, has put it in appropriate words:
"It is before the most unknown, the obscurest citizen of Paris that I prostrate myself; at whose feet I kneel."
A few days before this, at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and at Poissy, the deputies of the National Assembly not only kneel down in words, but actually, and for a long time, on the pavement in the street, and stretch forth their hands, weeping, to save two lives of which only one is granted to them.—Behold the monarch by these brilliant signs! Already do the young, who are eager imitators of all actions that are in fashion, ape them in miniature; during the month which follows the murder of Berthier and Foulon, Bailly is informed that the gamins in the streets are parading about with the heads of two cats stuck on the ends of two poles.1410
The dearth and the lack of work.—How men of executiveability are recruited.
A pitiable monarch, whose recognized sovereignty leaves him more miserable than he was before! Bread is always scarce, and before the baker's doors the row of waiting people does not diminish. In vain Bailly passes his nights with the committee on supplies; they are always in a state of terrible anxiety. Every morning for two months there is only one or two days' supply of flour, and often, in the evening, there is not enough for the following morning.1411The life of the capital depends on a convoy which is ten, fifteen, twenty leagues off; and which may never arrive: one convoy of twenty carts is pillaged on the 18th of July, on the Rouen road; another, on the 4th of August, in the vicinity of Louviers. Were it not for Salis' Swiss regiment, which, from the 14th of July to the end of September, marches day and night as an escort, not a boat-load of grain would reach Paris from Rouen.1412—The commissaries charged with making purchases or with supervising the expeditions are in danger of their lives. Those who are sent to provinces are seized, and a column of four hundred men with cannon has to be dispatched to deliver them. The one who is sent to Rouen learns that he will be hung if he dares to enter the place. At Mantes a mob surrounds his cabriolet, the people regarding whoever comes there for the purpose of carrying away grain as a public pest; he escapes with difficulty out of a back door and returns on foot to Paris.—From the very beginning, according to a universal rule, the fear of a short supply helps to augment the famine. Every one lays in a stock for several days; on one occasion sixteen loaves of four pounds each are found in an old woman's garret. The bakings, consequently, which are estimated according to the quantity needed for a single day, become inadequate, and the last of those who wait at the bakers' shops for bread return home empty-handed.—On the other hand the appropriations made by the city and the State to diminish the price of bread simply serve to lengthen the rows of those who wait for it; the countrymen flock in thither, and return home loaded to their villages. At Saint-Denis, bread having been reduced to two sous the pound, none is left for the inhabitants. To this constant anxiety add that of unemployment. Not only is there no certainty of there being bread at the bakers' during the coming week, but many know that they will not have money in the coming week with which to buy bread. Now that security has disappeared and the rights of property are shaken, work is wanting. The rich, deprived of their feudal dues, and, in addition thereto of their rents, have reduced their expenditure; many of them, threatened by the committee of investigation, exposed to domiciliary visits, and liable to be informed against by their servants, have emigrated. In the month of September M. Necker laments the delivery of six thousand passports in fifteen days to the wealthiest inhabitants. In the month of October ladies of high rank, refugees in Rome, send word that their domestics should be discharged and their daughters placed in convents. Before the end of 1789 there are so many fugitives in Switzerland that a house, it is said, brings in more rent than it is worth as capital. With this first emigration, which is that of the chief spendthrifts, the Count d'Artois, Prince de Conti, Duc de Bourbon, and so many others, the opulent foreigners have left, and, at the head of them, the Duchesse de l'Infantado, who spent 800,000 livres a year. There are only three Englishmen in Paris.
It used to be a city of luxury, it was the European hot-house of costly and refined pleasures, but once the glass was broken then the delicate plants perish, their lovers leave, and there is no employment now for the innumerable hands which cultivated them. Fortunate are they who at the relief works obtain a miserable sum by handling a pick-axe! "I saw," says Bailly, "mercers, jewellers, and merchants implore the favor of being employed at twenty sous the day." Enumerate, if you can, in one or two recognized callings, the hands which are doing nothing:14131,200 hair-dressers keep about 6,000 journeymen; 2,000 others follow the same calling in private-houses; 6,000 lackeys do but little else than this work. The body of tailors is composed of 2,800 masters, who have under them 5,000 workmen. "Add to these the number privately employed—the refugees in privileged places like the abbeys of Saint-Germain and Saint-Marcel, the vast enclosure of the Temple, that of Saint-John the Lateran, and the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, and you will find at least 12,000 persons cutting, fitting, and sewing." How many in these two groups are now idle! How many others are walking the streets, such as upholsterers, lace-makers, embroiderers, fan-makers, gilders, carnage-makers, binders, engravers, and all the other producers of Parisian nick-nacks! For those who are still at work how many days are lost at the doors of bakers' shops and in patrolling as National Guards! Gatherings are formed in spite of the prohibitions of the Hôtel-de-Ville,1414and the crowd openly discuss their miserable condition: 3,000 journeymen-tailors near the Colonnade, as many journeymen-shoemakers in the Place Louis XV., the journeymen-hairdressers in the Champs-Elysees, 4,000 domestics without places on the approaches to the Louvre,—and their propositions are on a level with their intelligence. Servants demand the expulsion from Paris of the Savoyards who enter into competition with them. Journeymen-tailors demand that a day's wages be fixed at forty sous, and that the old-clothes dealers shall not be allowed to make new ones. The journeymen-shoemakers declare that those who make shoes below the fixed price shall be driven out of the kingdom. Each of these irritated and agitated crowds contains the germ of an outbreak—and, in truth, these germs are found on every pavement in Paris: at the relief works, which at Montmartre collect 17,000 paupers; in the Market, where the bakers want to hang the flour commissioners, and at the doors of the bakers, of whom two, on the 14th of September and on the 5th of October, are conducted to the lamp post and barely escape with their lives.—In this suffering, mendicant crowd, enterprising men become more numerous every day: they consist of deserters, and from every regiment; they reach Paris in bands, often 250 in one day. There, "caressed and fed to the top of their bent,"1415having received from the National Assembly 50 livres each, maintained by the King in the enjoyment of their advance-money, entertained by the districts, of which one alone incurs a debt of 14,000 livres for wine and sausages furnished to them, "they accustom themselves to greater expense," to greater license, and are followed by their companions. "During the night of the 31st of July the French Guards on duty at Versailles abandon the custody of the King and betake themselves to Paris, without their officers, but with their arms and baggage," that "they may take part in the cheer which the city of Paris extends to their regiment." At the beginning of September, 16,000 deserters of this stamp are counted.1416Now, among those who commit murder these are in the first rank; and this is not surprising when we take the least account of their antecedents, education, and habits. It was a soldier of the "Royal Croat" who tore out the heart of Berthier. They were three soldiers of the regiment of Provence who forced the house of Chatel at Saint-Denis, and dragged his head through the streets. It is Swiss soldiers who, at Passy, knock down the commissioners of police with their guns. Their headquarters are at the Palais-Royal, amongst women whose instruments they are, and amongst agitators from whom they receive the word of command. Henceforth, all depends on this word, and we have only to contemplate the new popular leaders to know what it will be.
Their ascendancy.—Their education.—Their sentiments.—Their situation.—Their councils.—Their denunciations.
Administrators and members of district assemblies, agitators of barracks, coffee-houses, clubs and public thoroughfares, writers of pamphlets, penny-a-liners are multiplying as fast as buzzing insects are hatched on a sultry night. After the 14th of July thousands of jobs have become available for released ambitions; "attorneys, notaries' clerks, artists, merchants, shopkeepers, comedians and especially advocates;1417each wants to be either an officer, a director, a councillor, or a minister of the new reign; while journals, which are established by dozens,1418form a permanent tribune, where speakers come to court the people to their personal advantage." Philosophy, fallen into such hands, seems to parody itself; and nothing equals its emptiness, unless it be its mischievousness and success. Lawyers, in the sixty assembly districts, roll out the high-sounding dogmas of the revolutionary catechism. This or that one, passing from the question of a party wall to the constitution of empires, becomes the improvised legislator, so much the more inexhaustible and the more applauded as his flow of words, showered upon his hearers, proves to them that every capacity and every right are naturally and legitimately theirs.
"When that man opened his mouth," says a cold-blooded witness, "we were sure of being inundated with quotations and maxims, often apropos of street lamp posts, or of the stall of a herb-dealer. His stentorian voice made the vaults ring; and after he had spoken for two hours, and his breath was completely exhausted, the admiring and enthusiastic shouts which greeted him amounted almost to frenzy. Thus the orator fancied himself a Mirabeau, while the spectators imagined themselves the Constituent Assembly, deciding the fate of France."
The journals and pamphlets are written in the same style. Every brain is filled with the fumes of conceit and of big words; the leader of the crowd is he who raves the most, and he guides the wild enthusiasm which he increases.
Let us consider the most popular of these chiefs; they are the green or the dry fruit of literature, and of the bar. The newspaper is the stall which every morning offers them for sale, and if they suit the overexcited public it is simply owing to their acid or bitter flavor. Their empty, unpracticed minds are wholly void of political conceptions; they have no capacity or practical experience. Desmoulins is twenty-nine years of age, Loustalot twenty-seven, and their intellectual ballast consists of college reminiscences, souvenirs of the law schools, and the common-places picked up in the houses of Raynal and his associates. As to Brissot and Marat, who are ostentatious humanitarians, their knowledge of France and of foreign countries consists in what they have seen through the dormer windows of their garrets, and through utopian spectacles. In minds like these, empty or led astray, the Contrat-Social could not fail to become a gospel; for it reduces political science to a strict application of an elementary axiom which relieves them of all study, and hands society over to the caprice of the people, or, in other words, delivers it into their own hands.—Hence they demolish all that remains of social institutions, and push on equalization until everything is brought down to the same level.
"With my principles," writes Desmoulins,1419"is associated the satisfaction of putting myself where I belong, of showing my strength to those who have despised me, of lowering to my level all whom fortune has placed above me: my motto is that of all honest people: 'No superiors!'"
Thus, under the great name of Liberty, each vain spirit seeks its revenge and finds its nourishment. What is sweeter and more natural than to justify passion by theory, to be factious in the belief that this is patriotism, and to cloak the interests of ambition with the interests of humanity?
Let us picture to ourselves these directors of public opinion as they were three months earlier: Desmoulins, a briefless barrister, living in furnished lodgings with petty debts, and on a few louis extracted from his relations. Loustalot, still more unknown, was admitted the previous year to the Parliament of Bordeaux, and has landed at Paris in search of a career. Danton, another second-rate lawyer, coming out of a hovel in Champagne, borrowed the money to pay his expenses, while his stinted household is kept up only by means of a louis which is given to him weekly by his father-in-law, who is a coffee-house keeper. Brissot, a strolling Bohemian, formerly employee of literary pirates, has roamed over the world for fifteen years, without bringing back with him either from England or America anything but a coat out at elbows and false ideas; and, finally, Marat; a writer that has been hissed, an abortive scholar and philosopher, a misrepresenter of his own experiences, caught by the natural philosopher Charles in the act of committing a scientific fraud, and fallen from the top of his inordinate ambition to the subordinate post of doctor in the stables of the Comte d'Artois.—At the present time, Danton, President of the Cordeliers, can arrest any one he pleases in his district, and his violent gestures and thundering voice secure to him, till something better turns up, the government of his section of the city. A word of Marat's has just caused Major Belzunce at Caen to be assassinated. Desmoulins announces, with a smile of triumph, that "a large section of the capital regards him as one among the principal instigators of the Revolution, and that many even go so far as to say that he is the author of it." Is it to be supposed that, borne so high by such a sudden jerk of fortune, they wish to put on the drag and again descend? and is it not clear that they will aid with all their might the revolt which hoists them towards the loftiest summits?—Moreover, the brain reels at a height like this; suddenly launched in the air and feeling as if everything was tottering around them, they utter exclamations of indignation and terror, they see plots on all sides, imagine invisible cords pulling in an opposite direction, and they call upon the people to cut them. With the full weight of their inexperience, incapacity, and improvidence, of their fears, credulity, and dogmatic obstinacy, they urge on popular attacks, and their newspaper articles or discourses are all summed up in the following phrases:
"Fellow-citizens, you, the people of the lower class, you who listen to me, you have enemies in the Court and the aristocracy. The Hôtel-de-Ville and the National Assembly are your servants. Seize your enemies with a strong hand, and hang them, and let your servants know that they must quicken their steps!"
Desmoulins styles himself "District-attorney of the gallows,"1420and if he at all regrets the murders of Foulon and Berthier, it is because this too expeditious judgment has allowed the proofs of conspiracy to perish, thereby saving a number of traitors: he himself mentions twenty of them haphazard, and little does he care whether he makes mistakes.
"We are in the dark, and it is well that faithful dogs should bark, even at all who pass by, so that there may be no fear of robbers."
From this time forth Marat1421denounces the King, the ministers, the administration, the bench, the bar, the financial system and the academies, all as "suspicious;" at all events the people only suffer on their account.
"The Government is monopolizing grain, to make us to pay through the nose for a poisonous bread."
The Government, again, through a new conspiracy is about to blockade Paris, so as to starve it with greater ease. Utterances of this kind, at such a time, are firebrands thrown upon fear and hunger to kindle the flames of rage and cruelty. To this frightened and fasting crowd the agitators and newspaper writers continue to repeat that it must act, and act alongside of the authorities, and, if need be, against them. In other words, We will do as we please; we are the sole legitimate masters;
"in a well-constituted government, the people as a body are the real sovereign: our delegates are appointed only to execute our orders; what right has the clay to rebel against the potter?"
On the strength of such principles, the tumultuous club which occupies the Palais-Royal substitutes itself for the Assembly at Versailles. Has it not all the titles for this office? The Palais-Royal "saved the nation" on the 12th and 13th of July. The Palais-Royal, "through its spokesmen and pamphlets," has made everybody and even the soldiers "philosophers." It is the house of patriotism, "the rendezvous of the select among the patriotic," whether provincials or Parisians, of all who possess the right of suffrage, and who cannot or will not exercise it in their own district. "It saves time to come to the Palais-Royal. There is no need there of appealing to the President for the right to speak, or to wait one's time for a couple of hours. The orator proposes his motion, and, if it finds supporters, mounts a chair. If he is applauded, it is put into proper shape. If he is hissed, he goes away. This was the way of the Romans." Behold the veritable National Assembly! It is superior to the other semi-feudal affair, encumbered with "six hundred deputies of the clergy and nobility," who are so many intruders and who "should be sent out into the galleries."—Hence the pure Assembly rules the impure Assembly, and "the Café Foy lays claim to the government of France."
Their pressure on the Assembly.
On the 30th of July, the harlequin who led the insurrection at Rouen having been arrested, "it is openly proposed at the Palais Royal1422to go in a body and demand his release."—On the 1st of August, Thouret, whom the moderate party of the Assembly have just made President, is obliged to resign; the Palais-Royal threatens to send a band and murder him along with those who voted for him, and lists of proscriptions, in which several of the deputies are inscribed, begin to be circulated.—From this time forth, on all great questions-the abolition of the feudal system, the suppression of tithes, a declaration of the rights of man, the dispute about the Chambers, the King's power of veto,1423the pressure from without inclines the balance: in this way the Declaration of Rights, which is rejected in secret session by twenty-eight bureaus out of thirty, is forced through by the tribunes in a public sitting and passed by a majority.—Just as before the 14th of July, and to a still greater extent, two kinds of compulsion influence the votes, and it is always the ruling faction which employs both its hands to throttle its opponents. On the one hand this faction takes post on the galleries in knots composed nearly always of the same persons, "five or six hundred permanent actors," who yell according to understood signals and at the word of command.1424Many of these are French Guards, in civilian clothes, and who relieve each other: previously they have asked of their favorite deputy "at what hour they must come, whether all goes on well, and whether he is satisfied with those fools of parsons (calotins) and the aristocrats." Others consist of low women under the command of Théroigne de Méricourt, a virago courtesan, who assigns them their positions and gives them the signal for hooting or for applause. Publicly and in full session, on the occasion of the debate on the veto, "the deputies are applauded or insulted by the galleries according as they utter the word 'suspensive,' or the word 'indefinite.' "Threats," (says one of them) "circulated; I heard them on all sides around me." These threats are repeated on going out: "Valets dismissed by their masters, deserters, and women in rags," threaten the refractory with the lamp post, "and thrust their fists in their faces. In the hall itself, and much more accurately than before the 14th of July, their names are taken down, and the lists, handed over to the populace," travel to the Palais-Royal, from where they are dispatched in correspondence and in newspapers to the provinces.1425—Thus we see the second means of compulsion; each deputy is answerable for his vote, at Paris, with his own life, and, in the province, with those of his family. Members of the former Third-Estate avow that they abandon the idea of two Chambers, because "they are not disposed to get their wives' and children's throats cut." On the 30th of August, Saint-Hurugue, the most noisy of the Palais-Royal barkers, marches off to Versailles, at the head of 1,500 men, to complete the conversion of the Assembly. This garden club indeed, from the heights of its great learning, integrity, and immaculate reputation, decides that the ignorant, corrupt, and doubtful deputies must be got rid of." That they are such cannot be questioned, because they defend the royal sanction; there are over 600 and more, 120 are deputies of the communes, who must be expelled to begin with, and then must be brought to judgment.1426In the meantime they are informed, as well as the Bishop of Langres, President of the National Assembly, that "15,000 men are ready to light up their chateaux and in particular yours, sir." To avoid all mistake, the secretaries of the Assembly are informed in writing that '2,000 letters" will be sent into the provinces to denounce to the people the conduct of the malignant deputies: "Your houses are held as a surety for your opinions: keep this in mind, and save yourselves!" At last, on the morning of the 1st of August, five deputations from the Palais-Royal, one of them led by Loustalot, march in turn to the Hôtel-de-Ville, insisting that the drums should be beaten and the citizens be called together for the purpose of changing the deputies, or their instructions, and of ordering the National Assembly to suspend its discussion on the veto until the districts and provinces could give expression to their will: the people, in effect, alone being sovereign, and alone competent, always has the right to dismiss or instruct anew its servants, the deputies. On the following day, August 2nd, to make matters plainer, new delegates from the same Palais-Royal suit gestures to words; they place two fingers on their throats, on being introduced before the representatives of the commune, as a hint that, if the latter do not obey, they will be hung.
After this it is vain for the National Assembly to make any show of indignation, to declare that it despises threats, and to protest its independence; the impression is already produced. "More than 300 members of the communes," says Mounier, "had decided to support the absolute veto." At the end of ten days most of these had gone over, several of them through attachment to the King, because they were afraid of "a general uprising," and "were not willing to jeopardize the lives of the royal family." But concessions like these only provoke fresh extortions. The politicians of the street now know by experience the effect of brutal violence on legal authority. Emboldened by success and by impunity, they reckon up their strength and the weakness of the latter. One blow more, and they are undisputed masters. Besides, the issue is already apparent to clear-sighted men. When the agitators of the public thoroughfares, and the porters at the street-corners, convinced of their superior wisdom, impose decrees by the strength of their lungs, of their fists, and of their pikes, at that moment experience, knowledge, good sense, cool-blood, genius, and judgment, disappear from human affairs, and things revert back to chaos. Mirabeau, in favor of the veto for life, saw the crowd imploring him with tears in their eyes to change his opinion:
"Monsieur le Comte, if the King obtains this veto, what will be the use of a National Assembly? We shall all be slaves "1427
Outbursts of this description are not to be resisted, and all is lost. Already, near the end of September, the remark applies which Mirabeau makes to the Comte de la Marck:
"Yes, all is lost; the King and Queen will be swept away, and you will see the populace trampling on their lifeless bodies."
Eight days after this, on the 5th and 6th of October, it breaks out against both King and Queen, against the National Assembly and the Government, against all government present and to come; the violent party which rules in Paris obtains possession of the chiefs of France to hold them under strict surveillance, and to justify its intermittent outrages by one permanent outrage.