Composition of the party.—The club and the municipality.—Expulsion of the "Earnest" regiment.
Should you like to see the revolutionary tree when, for the first time, it came fully into leaf, it is in the department of the Bouches-du-Rhône you have to look. Nowhere else had it been so precocious, nowhere were local circumstances and native temperament so well adapted to enhance its growth.—"A blistering sky, an excessive climate, an arid soil, rocks,... savage rivers, torrential or dry or overburdened," blinding dust, nerves upset by steady northern blasts or by the intermittent gusts of the sirocco. A sensual race choleric and impetuous, with no intellectual or moral ballast, in which the mixture of Celt and Latin has destroyed the humane suavity of the Celt and the serious earnestness of the Roman; "complete, tough, powerful, and restless men,"2401and yet gay, spontaneous, eloquent, dupes of their own bombast, suddenly carried away by a flow of words and superficial enthusiasm. Their principal city numbering 120,000 souls, in which commercial and maritime risks foster innovating and adventurous spirits; in which the sight of suddenly-acquired fortunes expended on sensual enjoyments constantly undermines all stability of Character; in which politics, like speculation, is a lottery offering its prizes to audacity; besides all this, a free port and a rendezvous for lawless nomads, disreputable people, without steady trade,2402scoundrels, and blackguards, who, like uprooted, decaying seaweed, drift from coast to coast around the entire circle of the Mediterranean sea; a veritable sink filled with the dregs of twenty corrupt and semi-barbarous civilizations, where the scum of crime cast forth from the prisons of Genoa, Piedmont, Sicily, indeed, of all Italy, of Spain, of the Archipelago, and of Barbary,3 accumulates and ferments.2 No wonder that, in such a time the reign of the mob should be established there sooner than elsewhere.2403—After many an explosion, this reign is inaugurated August 17, 1790, by the removal of M. Lieutaud, a sort of bourgeois, moderate Lafayette, who commands the National Guard. Around him rally a majority of the population, all men "honest or not, who have anything to lose."2404After he is driven out, then proscribed, then imprisoned, they resign themselves, and Marseilles belongs to the low class, to 40,000 destitute and rogues led by the club.
The better to ensure their empire, the municipality, one month after the expulsion of M. Lieutaud, declared every citizen "active" who had any trade or profession2405; the consequence is that vagabonds attend the meetings of the sections in contempt of constitutional law. The consequence, was that property-owners and commercial men withdrew, which was wise on their part, for the usual demagogic machinery is set in motion without delay. "Each section-assembly is composed of a dozen factious spirits, members of the club, who drive out honest people by displaying cudgels and bayonets. The deliberations are prepared beforehand at the club, in concert with the municipality, and woe to him who refuses to adopt them at the meeting! They go so far as to threaten citizens who wish to make any remarks with instant burial in the cellars under the churches."2406The argument proved irresistible: "the majority of honest people are so frightened and so timid" that not one of them dare attend these meetings, unless protected by public force. "More than 80,000 inhabitants do not sleep peacefully," while all the political rights are vested in "five or six hundred individuals," legally disqualified. Behind them marches the armed rabble, "the horde of brigands without a country,"2407always ready for plundering, murder, and hanging. In front of them march the local authorities, who, elected through their influence, carry on the administration under their guidance. Patrons and clients, members of the club and its satellites, they form a league which plays the part of a sovereign State, scarcely recognizing, even in words, the authority of the central government.2408The decree by which the National Assembly gives full power to the Commissioners to re-establish order is denounced as plébécide; these conscientious and cautious moderators are qualified as "dictators"; they are denounced in circular letters to all the municipalities of the department, and to all Jacobin clubs throughout the kingdom;2409the club is somewhat disposed to go to Aix to cut off their heads and send them in a trunk to the president of the National Assembly, with a threat that the same penalty awaits himself and all the deputies if they do not revoke their recent decrees. A few days after this, four sections draw up an act before a notary, stating the measures they had taken towards sending an army of 6,000 men from Marseilles to Aix, to get rid of the three intruders. The commissioners dare not enter Marseilles, where "gibbets are ready for them, and a price set on their heads." It is as much as they can do to rescue from the faction M. Lieutaud and his friends, who, accused of lése-nation, confined without a shadow of proof, treated like mad dogs, put in chains,2410shut up in privies and holes, and obliged to drink their own urine for lack of water, impelled by despair to the brink of suicide, barely escape murder a dozen times in the courtroom and in prison.2411Against the decree of the National Assembly ordering their release, the municipality makes reclamations, contrives delays, resists, and finally stirs up its usual instruments. Just as the prisoners are about to be released a crowd of "armed persons without uniform or officer," constantly increased "by vagabonds and foreigners," gathers on the heights overlooking the Palais de Justice, and makes ready to fire on M. Lieutaud. Summoned to proclaim martial law, the municipality refuses, declaring that "the general detestation of the accused is too manifest"; it demands the return of the Swiss regiment to its barracks, and that the prisoners remain where they are; the only thing which it grants them is a secret permission to escape, as if they were guilty; they, accordingly, steal away clandestinely and in disguise.2412—The Swiss regiment, however, which prevents the magistrates from violating the law, must pay for its insolence, and, as it is incorruptible, they decide to drive it out of the town. For four months the municipality multiplies against it every kind of annoyance,2413and, on the 16th of October, 1791, the Jacobins provoke a row in the theater against its officers. The same night, outside the theater, four of these are attacked by armed bands; the post to which they retreat is nearly taken by assault; they are led to a prison for safety, and there they still remain five days afterwards, "although their innocence is admitted." Meanwhile, to ensure "public tranquility," the municipality has required the commander of the post to immediately replace the Swiss Guard with National Guards on all the military posts; the latter yields to force, while the useless regiment, insulted and threatened, has nothing to do but to pack off.2414This being done, the new municipality, still more Jacobin than the old one,2415separates Marseilles from France, erects the city into a marauding republican government, gets up expeditions, levies contributions, forms alliances, and undertakes an armed conquest of the department.
The town of Marseilles send an expedition to Aix.—Theregiment is disarmed.—The Directory driven out.—Pressureon the new Directory.
The first thing is to lay its hand on the district capital, Aix, where the Swiss regiment is stationed in garrison and where the superior authorities are installed. This operation is the more necessary inasmuch as the Directory of the department loudly commends the loyalty of the Swiss Guard and takes occasion to remind the Marseilles municipality of the respect due to the law. Such remonstrance is an insult, and the municipality, in a haughty tone, calls upon the Directory to avow or disavow its letter; "if you did not write it, it is a foul report which it is our duty to examine into, and if you did, it is a declaration of war made by you against Marseilles."2416The Directory, in polite terms and with great circumspection, affirms both its right and its utterance, and remarks that "the prorata list of taxes of Marseilles for 1791 is not yet reported;" that the municipality is much more concerned with saving the State than with paying its contribution and, in short, it maintains its censure.—If it will not bend it must break, and on the 4th of February, 1792, the municipality sends Barbaroux, its secretary, to Paris, that he may mitigate the outrages they are preparing. During the night of the 25-26, the drums beat the general alarm, and three or four thousand men gather and march to Aix with six pieces of cannon. As a precaution they pretend to have no leaders, no captains or lieutenants or even corporals; to quote them, all are equal, all volunteers, each being summoned by the other; in this fashion, as all are responsible, no one is.2417They reach Aix at eleven o'clock in the forenoon, find a gate open through the connivance of those in league with them among the populace of the town and its suburbs, and summon the municipality to surrender the sentinels. In the mean time their emissaries have announced in the neighboring villages that the town was menaced by the Swiss regiment; consequently four hundred men from Aubagne arrive in haste, while from hour to hour the National Guards from the surrounding villages likewise rush in. The streets are full of armed men; shouts arise and the tumult increases; the municipal body, in the universal panic, loses its wits. This body is afraid of a nocturnal fight "between troops of the line, citizens, National Guards and armed strangers, no one being able to recognize one another or know who is an enemy." It sends back a detachment of three hundred and fifty Swiss Guards, which the Directory had ordered to its support, and consigns the regiment to its quarters.—At this the Directory takes to flight. Military sentinels of all kinds are disarmed while the Marseilles throng, turning its advantages to account, announces to the municipality at two o'clock in the morning that, "allow it or not" it is going to attack the barracks immediately; in fact, cannon are planted, a few shots are fired, a sentinel killed, and the hemmed-in regiment is compelled to evacuate the town, the men without their guns and the officers without their swords. Their arms are stolen, the people seize the suspected, the street-lamp is hauled down and the noose is made ready. Cayol, the flower-girl, is hung. The municipality, with great difficulty, saves one man who is already lifted by the rope two feet from the ground, and obtains for three others "a temporary refuge" in prison.
Henceforth there is no authority at the department headquarters, or rather it has changed hands. Another Directory, more pliable, is installed in the place of the fugitive Directory. Of the thirty-six administrators who form the Council only twelve are present at the election. Of the nine elected only six consent to sit, while often only three are found at its sessions, which three, to recruit their colleagues, are obliged to pay them.2418Hence, notwithstanding their position is the best in the department, they are worse treated and more unfortunate than their servants outside. The delegates of the club, with the municipal officers of Marseilles seated alongside of them, oblige them either to keep silent, or to utter what they dictate to them.2419"Our arms are tied," writes one of them, "we are wholly under the yoke" of these intruders. "We have twice in succession seen more than three hundred men, many of them with guns and pistols, enter the hall and threaten us with death if we refused them what they asked. We have seen infuriate motionnaires, nearly all belonging to Avignon, mount the desks of the Directory, harangue their comrades and excite them to rioting and crime. "You must decide between life or death," they exclaimed to us, "you have only a quarter of an hour to choose." "National guards have offered their sabers through the windows, left open on account of the extreme heat, to those around us and made signs to them to cut our throats."—Thus fashioned, reduced and drilled, the Directory is simply an instrument in the hands of the Marseilles demagogues. Camoïn, Bertin and Rebecqui, the worst agitators and usurpers, rule there without control. Rebecqui and Bertin, appointed delegates in connection with matters in Arles, have themselves empowered to call for defensive troops; they immediately demand them for attack, to which the Directory vainly remonstrates; they declare to it that "not being under its inspection, it has no authority over them; being independent of it, they have no orders to receive from it nor to render to it any account of their conduct." So much the worse for the Directory on attempting to revoke their powers. Bertin informs its vice-president that, if it dares do this he will cut off his head. They reply to the Minister's observations with the utmost insolence.2420They glory in the boldness of the stroke and prepare another, their march on Aix being only the first halt in the long-meditated campaign which involves the possession of Arles.
The Marseilles expedition against Arles.—Excesses committedby them in the town and its vicinity.—Invasion of "Apt,"the club and its volunteers.
No city, indeed, is more odious to them.—For two years, led or pushed on by its mayor, M. d'Antonelle, it has marched along with them or been dragged along in their wake. D'Antonelle, an ultra-revolutionary, repeatedly visited and personally encouraged the bandits of Avignon. To supply them with cannon and ammunition he stripped the Tour St. Louis of its artillery, at the risk of abandoning the mouths of the Rhone to the Barbary pirates.2421In concert with his allies of the Comtat, the Marseilles club, and his henchmen from the neighboring boroughs, he rules in Arles "by terror." Three hundred men recruited in the vicinity of the Mint, artisans or sailors with strong arms and rough hands, serve him as satellites. On the 6th of June 1791, they drive away, on their own authority, the unsworn priests, who had taken refuge in the town.2422—At this, however, the "property-owners and decent people," much more numerous and for a long time highly indignant, raise their heads; twelve hundred of them assemble in the church of Saint-Honorat, swore to maintain the constitution and public order,"2423and then moved to the (Jacobin) club, where, in their quality of national guards and active citizens and in conformity with its by-laws, they were admitted en masse. At the same time, acting in concert with the municipality, they reorganize the National Guard and form new companies, the effect of which is to put an end to the Mint gang, thus depriving the faction of all its strength. Thenceforth, without violence or illegal acts, the majority of the club, as well as of the National Guard, consists of constitutional monarchists, the elections of November, 1791, giving to the partisans of order nearly all the administrative offices of the commune and of the district. M. Loys, a physician and a man of energy, is elected mayor in the place of M. d'Antonelle; he is known as able to suppress a riot, "holding martial law in one hand, and his saber in the other."—This is too much; so Marseilles feel compelled to bring Arles under control "to atone for the disgrace of having founded it."2424In this land of ancient cities political hostility is embittered with old municipal grudges, similar to those of Thebes against Platoee, of Rome against Veii, of Florence against Pisa. The Guelphs of Marseilles brooded over the one idea of crushing the Ghibellins of Arles.—Already, in the electoral assembly of November, 1791, M. d'Antonelle, the president, had invited the communes of the department to take up arms against this anti-jacobin city.2425Six hundred Marseilles volunteers set out on the instant, install themselves at Salon, seize the syndic-attorney of the hostile district, and refuse to give him up, this being an advance-guard of 4,000 men promised by the forty or fifty clubs of the party.2426To arrest their operations requires the orders of the three commissioners, resolutions passed by the Directory still intact, royal proclamations, a decree of the Constituent Assembly, the firmness of the still loyal troops and the firmer stand taken by the Arlesians who, putting down an insurrection of the Mint band, had repaired their ramparts, cut away their bridges and mounted guard with their guns loaded.2427But it is only a postponement. Now that the commissioners have gone, and the king's authority a phantom, now that the last loyal regiment is disarmed, the terrified Directory recast and obeying like a servant, with the Legislative Assembly allowing everywhere the oppression of the Constitutionalists by the Jacobins, a fresh Jacobin expedition may be started against the Constitutionalists with impunity. Accordingly, on the 23rd of March, 1792, the Marseilles army of 4,500 men sets out on its march with nineteen pieces of cannon.
In vain the commissioners of the neighboring departments, sent by the Minister, represent to them that Arles submits, that she has laid down her arms, and that the town is now garrisoned with troops of the line;—the Marseilles army requires the withdrawal of this garrison.—In vain the garrison departs. Rebecqui and his acolytes reply that "nothing will divert them from their enterprise; they cannot defer to anybody's decision but their own in relation to any precaution tending to ensure the safety of the southern departments."—In vain the Minister renews his injunctions and counter-orders. The Directory replies with a flagrant falsehood, stating that it is ignorant of the affair and refuses to give the government any assistance.—In vain M. de Wittgenstein, commander-in-chief in the south, offers his services to the Directory to repel the invaders. The Directory forbids him to take his troops into the territory of the department.2428—Meanwhile, on the 29th of March, the Marseilles army effects a breach with its cannon in the walls of defenseless Arles; its fortifications are demolished and a tax of 1,400,000 francs is levied on the owners of property. In contempt of the National Assembly's decree the Mint bandits, the longshoremen, the whole of the lowest class again take up their arms and lord it over the disarmed population. Although "the King's commissioner and most of the judges have fled, jury examinations are instituted against absentees," the juries consisting of the members of the Mint band.2429The conquerors imprison, smite and slaughter as they please. Countless peaceable individuals are struck down and mauled, dragged to prison and many of them are mortally wounded. An old soldier, eighty years of age, retired to his country home three months earlier, dies after twenty days' confinement in a dungeon, from a blow received in the stomach by a rifle butt; women are flogged. "All citizens that with an interest in law and order," nearly five thousand families, have emigrated; their houses in town and in the country are pillaged, while in the surrounding boroughs, along the road leading from Arles to Marseilles, the villains forming the hard core of the Marseilles army, rove about and gorge themselves as in a vanquished country.2430
They eat and drink voraciously, force the closets, carry off linen and food, steal horses and valuables, smash the furniture, tear up books, and burn papers.2431All this is only the appropriate punishment of the aristocrats. Moreover, it is no more than right that patriots should be indemnified for their toil, and a few blows too many are not out of place in securing the rule of the right party.—For example, on the false report of order being disturbed at Château-Renard, Bertin and Rebecqui send off a detachment of men, while the municipal body in uniform, followed by the National Guard, with music and flags, comes forth to meet and salute it. Without uttering a word of warning, the Marseilles troop falls upon the cortège, strikes down the flags, disarms the National Guard, tears the epaulettes off the officers' shoulders, drags the mayor to the ground by his scarf, pursues the counselors, sword in hand, puts the mayor and syndic-attorney in arrest, and, during the night, sacks four dwellings, the whole under the direction of three Jacobins of the place under indictment for recent crimes or misdemeanors. Henceforth at Château-Renard they will look twice before subjecting patriots to indictment.2432—At Vélaux "the country house of the late seignior is sacked, and everything is carried away, even to the tiles and window-glass." A troop of two hundred men "overrun the village, levy contributions, and put all citizens who are well-off under bonds for considerable sums." Camoïn, the Marseille chief, one of the new department administrators, who is in the neighborhood, lays his hand on everything that is fit to be taken, and, a few days after this, 30,000 francs are found in his carpet-bag.-Taught by the example others follow and the commotion spreads. In every borough or petty town the club profits by these acts to satiate its ambition its greed, and its hatred. That of Apt appeals to its neighbors, whereupon 1,500 National Guards of Gordes, St. Saturnin, Gouls and Lacoste, with a thousand women and children armed with clubs and scythes, arrive one morning before the town. On being asked by whose orders they come in this fashion, they reply, "by the orders which their patriotism has given them."—"The fanatics," or partisans of the sworn priests, "are the cause of their journey": they therefore "want lodgings at the expense of the fanatics only." The three day's occupation results for the latter and for the town in a cost of 20,000 livres.2433They begin by breaking everything in the church of the Récollets, and wall up its doors. They then expel unsworn ecclesiastics from the town, and disarm their partisans. The club of Apt, which is the sole authority, remains in session three days: "the municipal bodies in the vicinity appear before it, apologize for themselves, protest their civism, and ask as a favor that no detachment be sent to their places. Individuals are sent for to be interrogated"; several are proscribed, among whom are administrators, members of the court, and the syndic-attorney. A number of citizens have fled;—the town is purged, while the same purging is pursued in numbers of places in and out of the district.2434It is, indeed, attractive business. It empties the purses of the ill-disposed, and fills the stomachs of patriots; it is agreeable to be well entertained, and especially at the expense of one's adversaries; the Jacobin is quite content to save the country through a round of feastings. Moreover, he has the satisfaction of playing king among his neighbors, and not only do they feed him for doing them this service, but, again, they pay him for it.2435—All this is enlivening, and the expedition, which is a "sabbath," ends in a carnival. Of the two Marseilles divisions, one, led back to Aix, sets down to "a grand patriotic feast," and then dances fandangoes, of which "the principal one is led off by the mayor and commandant";2436the other makes its entry into Avignon the same day, with still greater pomp and jollity.
How they obtain recruits.—Their robberies in the Comtat.—The Avignon municipality in flight or in prison.—Murder ofLécuyer and the Glacière massacre.—Entry of the murderers,supported by their Marseilles allies.—Jacobin dictatorshipin Vaucluse and the Buches-du-Rhône.
Nowhere else in France was there another nest of brigands like it: not that a great misery might have produced a more savage uprising; on the contrary, the Comtat, before the Revolution, was a land of plenty. There was no taxation by the Pope; the taxes were very light, and were expended on the spot. "For one or two pennies, one here could have meat, bread, and wine."2437But, under the mild and corrupt administration of the Italian legates, the country had become "the safe asylum of all the rogues in France, Italy, and Genoa, who by means of a trifling sum paid to the Pope's agents, obtained protection and immunity." Smugglers and receivers of stolen goods abounded here in order to break through the lines of the French customs. "Bands of robbers and assassins were formed, which the vigorous measures of the parliaments of Aix and Grenoble could not wholly extirpate. Idlers, libertines, professional gamblers,"2438kept-cicisbeos, schemers, parasites, and adventurers, mingle with men with branded shoulders, the veterans "of vice and crime, "the scapegraces of the Toulon and Marseilles galleys." Ferocity here is hidden in debauchery, like a serpent hidden in its own slime, here all that is required is some chance event and this bad place will be transformed into a death trap.
The Jacobin leaders, Tournal, Rovère, the two Duprats, the two Mainvielles, and Lécuyer, readily obtain recruits in this sink.—They begin, aided by the rabble of the town and of its suburbs, peasants enemies of the octroi, vagabonds opposed to order of any kind, porters and watermen armed with scythes, turnspits and clubs, by exciting seven or eight riots. Then they drive off the legate, force the Councils to resign, hang the chiefs of the National Guard and of the conservative party,2439and take possession of the municipal offices.—After this their band increases to the dimensions of an army, which, with license for its countersign and pillage for its pay, is the same as that of Tilly and Wallenstein, "a veritable roving Sodom, at which the ancient city would have stood aghast." Out of 3,000 men, only 200 belong in Avignon; the rest are composed of French deserters, smugglers, fugitives from justice, vagrant foreigners, marauders and criminals, who, scenting a prey, come from afar, and even from Paris;2440along with them march the women belonging to them, still more base and bloodthirsty. In order to make it perfectly plain that with them murder and robbery are the order of the day, they massacred their first general, Patrix, guilty of having released a prisoner, and elected in his place an old highway tramp named Jourdan, condemned to death by the court at Valence, but who had escaped on the eve of his execution, and who bore the nickname of Coupe-tête, because he is said to have cut off the heads at Versailles of two of the King's guards.2441—Under such a commander the troop increases until it forms a body of five or six thousand men, which stops people in the streets and forcibly enrolls them; they are called Mandrins, which is severe for Mandrin,2442because their war is not merely on public persons and property, as his was, but on the possessions, the proprieties, and the lives of private individuals. One detachment alone, at one time, extorts in Cavaillon 25,000 francs, in Baume 12,000, in Aubignon 15,000, in Pioline 4,800, while Caumont is taxed 2,000 francs a week. At Sarrians, where the mayor gives them the keys, they pillage houses from top to bottom, carry off their plunder in carts, set fire, violate and slay with all the refinements of torture of so many Hurons. An old lady of eighty, and a paralytic, is shot at arms length, and left weltering in her blood in the midst of the flames. A child five years of age is cut in two, its mother decapitated, and its sister mutilated; they cut off the ears of the curé, set them on his brow like a cockade, and then cut his throat, along with that of a pig, and tear out the two hearts and dance around them.2443After this, for fifty days around Carpentras, to which they lay siege in vain, the unprovoked, cruel instincts of the chauffeurs manifested at a later date, the ancient cannibalistic desires which sometimes reappear in convicts, and the perverted and over-strained sensuality found in maniacs, have full play.
On beholding the monster it has nourished, Avignon, in alarm, utters cries of distress.2444But the brute, which feels its strength, turns against its former abettors, shows its teeth, and exacts its daily food. Ruined or not, Avignon must furnish its quota. "In the electoral assembly, Mainvielle the younger, elected elector, although he is only twenty-two, draws two pistols from his belt and struts around with a threatening air."2445Duprat, the president, the better to master his colleagues, proposes to them to leave Avignon and go to Sorgues, which they refuse to do; upon this he orders cannon to be brought, promises to pay those who will accompany him, drags along the timid, and denounces the rest before an upper national court, of which he himself has designated the members. Twenty of the electors thus denounced are condemned and proscribed; Duprat threatens to enter by force and have them executed on the spot, and, under his leadership, the army of Mandrins advances against Avignon.—Its progress is arrested, and, for two months, restrained by the two mediating commissioners for France; they reduce its numbers, and it is on the point of being disbanded, when the brute again boldly seizes its prey, about to make its escape. On the 21st of August, Jourdan, with his herd of miscreants, obtains possession of the palace. The municipal body is driven out, the mayor escapes in disguise, Tissot, the secretary, is cut down, four municipal officers and forty other persons are thrown into prison, while a number of houses belonging to the fugitives and to priests are pillaged, and thus supply the bandits with their first financial returns.2446—Then begins the great fiscal operation which is going to fill their pockets. Five front men, chosen by Duprat and his associates, compose, with Lécuyer as secretary, a provisional municipal body, which, taxing the town 300,000 francs and suppressing the convents, offers the spoils of the churches for sale. The bells are taken down, and the hammers of the workmen engaged in breaking them to pieces are heard all day long. A strong-box full of plate, diamonds, and gold crosses, left with the director of the Mont-de-Piété, on deposit, is taken and carried off to the commune; a report is spread that the valuables pawned by the poor had been stolen by the municipality, and that those "robbers had already sent away eighteen trunks full of them." Upon this the women, exasperated at the bare walls of the churches, together with the laborers in want of work or bread, all the common class, become furious, assemble of their own accord in the church of the Cordeliers, summon Lécuyer to appear before them, drag him from the pulpit and massacre him.2447
This time there seems to be an end of the brigand party, for the entire town, the populace and the better class, are against them, while the peasants in the country shoot them down wherever they come across them.—Terror, however, supplies the place of numbers, and, with the 350 hired killers bravos still left to them, the extreme Jacobins undertake to overcome a city of 30,000 souls. Mainvielle the elder, dragging along two cannon, arrives with a patrol, fires at random into the already semi-abandoned church, and kills two men. Duprat assembles about thirty of the towns-people, imprisoned by him on the 31st of August, and, in addition to these, about forty artisans belonging to the Catholic brotherhoods, porters, bakers, coopers, and day-laborers, two peasants, a beggar, a few women seized haphazard and on vague denunciations, one of them, "because she spoke ill of Madame Mainvielle." Jourdan supplies the executioners; the apothecary Mende, brother-in-law of Duprat, plies them with liquor, while a clerk of Tournal, the newsman, bids them "kill all, so that there shall be no witnesses left." Whereupon, at the reiterated orders of Mainvielle, Tournal, Duprat, and Jourdan, with a complications of hilarious lewdness,2448the massacre develops itself on the 16th of October and following days, during sixty-six hours, the victims being a couple of priests, three children, an old man of eighty, thirteen women, two of whom are pregnant, in all, sixty-one persons, with their throats slit or knocked out and then cast one on top of each other into the Glacière hole, a mother on the body of her infant, a son on the body of his father, all finished off with rocks, the hole being filled up with stones and covered over with quicklime on account of the smell.2449In the meantime about a hundred more, killed in the streets, are pitched into the Sorgues canal; five hundred families make their escape. The ousted bandits return in a body, while the assassins who are at the head of them, enthroned by murder, organize for the benefit of their new band a legal system of brigandage, against which nobody defends himself.2450
These are the friends of the Jacobins of Arles and Marseilles, the respectable men whom M. d'Antonelle has come to address in the cathedral at Avignon.2451These are the pure patriots, who, with their hands in the till and their feet in gore, caught in the act by a French army, the mask torn off through a scrupulous investigation, universally condemned by the emancipated electors, also by the deliberate verdict of the new mediating commissioners,2452are included in the amnesty proclaimed by the Legislative Assembly a month before their last crime.—But the sovereigns of the Bouches-du-Rhône do not regard the release of their friends and allies as a pardon: something more than pardon and forgetfulness must be awarded to the murderers of the Glacière. On the 29th of April, 1792, Rebecqui and Bertin, the vanquishers of Arles, enter Avignon2453along with a cortége, at the head of which are from thirty to forty of the principal murderers whom the Legislative Assembly itself had ordered to be recommitted to prison, Duprat, Mainvielle, Toumal, Mende, then Jourdan in the uniform of a commanding general crowned with laurel and seated on a white horse, and, lastly, the dames Duprat, Mainvielle and Tournal, in dashing style, standing on a sort of triumphal chariot; during the procession the cry is heard, "The Glacière will be full this time!"—On their approach the public functionaries fly; twelve hundred persons abandon the town. Forthwith each terrorist, under the protection of the Marseilles bayonets, resumes his office, like a man at the head of his household. Raphel, the former judge, along with his clerk, both with warrants of arrest against them, publicly officiate, while the relatives of the poor victims slain on the 16th of October, and the witnesses that appeared on the trial, are threatened in the streets; one of them is killed, and Jourdan, king of the department for an entire year, begins over again on a grand scale, at the head of the National Guard, and afterwards of the police body, the same performance which, on a small scale, he pursued under the ancient régime, when, with a dozen "armed and mounted" brigands, he traversed the highways, forced open lonely houses at night, and, in one château alone, stole 24,000 francs.
Uniform process of the Jacobin conquest.—Preconceivedformation of a Jacobin State.
The Jacobin conquest takes place like this: already in during April, 1792, through acts of violence almost equal to those we have just described, it spreads over more than twenty departments and, to a smaller degree, over the other sixty.2454The composition of the parties is the same everywhere. On one side are the irresponsible of all conditions,
"squanderers who, having consumed their own inheritance, cannot tolerate that of another, men without property to whom disorder is a door open to wealth and public office, the envious, the ungrateful whose obligations to their benefactors the revolution cancels, the hot-headed, all those enthusiastic innovators who preach reason with a dagger in their hand, the poor, the brutal and the wretched of the lower class who, possessed by one leading anarchical idea, one example of immunity, with the law dumb and the sword in the scabbard, are stimulated to dare all things
On the other side are the steady-going, peaceable class, minding their own business, upper and lower middle class in mind and spirit,
"weakened by being used to security and wealth, surprised at any unforeseen disturbance and trying to find their way, isolated from each other by diversity of interests, opposing only tact and caution to persevering audacity in defiance of legitimate means, unable either to make up their mind or to remain inactive, perplexed over sacrifices just at the time when the enemy is going to render it impossible to make any in the future, in a word, bringing weakness and egoism to bear against the liberated passions, great poverty and hardened immorality."2455
The issue of the conflict is everywhere the same. In each town or canton an aggressive squad of unscrupulous fanatics and resolute adventurers imposes its rule over a sheep-like majority which, accustomed to the regularity of an old civilization, dares neither disturb order for the sake of putting and end to disorder, or get together a mob to put down another mob. Everywhere the Jacobin principle is the same.
"Your system," says one of the department Directories to them,2456"is to act imperturbably on all occasions, even after a constitution is established, and the limitations to power are fixed, as if the empire would always be in a state of insurrection, as if you were granted a dictatorship essential for the city's salvation, as if you were given such full power in the name of public safety."
Everywhere are Jacobin tactics the same. At the outset they assume to have a monopoly of patriotism and, through the brutal destruction of other associations, they are the only visible organ of public opinion. Their voice, accordingly, seems to be the voice of the people; their control is established on that of the legal authorities; they have taken the lead through persistent and irresistible misdeeds; their crimes are consecrated by exemption from punishment.
"Among officials and agents, good or bad, constituted or not constituted, that alone governs which is inviolable. Now the club, for a long time, has been too much accustomed to domineering, to annoying, to persecuting, to wreaking vengeance, for any local administration to regard it in any other light than as inviolable."2457
They accordingly govern and their indirect influence is promptly transformed into direct authority.—Voting alone, or almost alone, in the primary meetings, which are deserted or under constraint, the Jacobins easily choose the municipal body and the officers of the National Guard.2458After this, through the mayor, who is their tool or their accomplice, they have the legal right to launch or arrest the entire armed force and they avail themselves of it.—Two obstacles still stand in their way. One the one hand, however conciliatory or timid the Directory of the district or department may be, elected as it is by electors of the second degree, it usually contains a fair proportion of well-informed men, comfortably off, interested in keeping order, and less inclined than the municipality to put up with gross violations of the law. Consequently the Jacobins denounce it to the National Assembly as an unpatriotic and anti-revolutionary center of "bourgeois aristocracy." Sometimes, as at Brest,2459they shamefully disobey orders which are perfectly legal and proper, often repeated and strictly formal; afterward, still more shamefully, they demand of the Minister if, "placed in the cruel alternative of giving offense to the hierarchy of powers, or of leaving the commonwealth in danger, they ought to hesitate." Sometimes, as at Arras, they impose themselves illegally on the Directory in session and browbeat it so insolently as to make it a point of honor with the latter to solicit its own suspension.2460Sometimes, as a Figeac, they summon an administrator to their bar, keep him standing three-quarters of an hour, seize his papers and oblige him, for fear of something worse, to leave the town.2461Sometimes, as at Auch, they invade the Directory's chambers, seize the administrators by the throat, pound them with their fists and clubs, drag the president by the hair, and, after a good deal of trouble, grant him his life.2462—On the other hand, the gendarmerie and the troops brought for the suppression of riots, are always in the way of those who stir up the rioters. Consequently, they expel, corrupt and, especially purify the gendarmerie together with the troops. At Cahors they drive out a sergeant of the gendarmerie, "alleging that he keeps company with none but aristocrats."2463At Toulouse, without mentioning the lieutenant-colonel, whose life they threaten by anonymous letters and oblige to leave the town, they transfer the whole corps to another district under the pretense that "its principles are adverse to the Constitution."2464At Auch, and at Rennes, through the insubordination which they provoke among the men, they exhort resignations from their officers. At Perpignan, by means of a riot which they foment, they seize, beat and drag to prison, the commandant and staff whom they accuse "of wanting to bombard the town with five pounds of powder."2465—Meanwhile, through the jacquerie, which they let loose from the Dordogne to Aveyron, from Cantal to the Pyrenees and the Var, under the pretence of punishing the relatives of émigrés and the abettors of unsworn priests, they create an army of their own made up of robbers and the destitute who, in anticipation of the exploits of the coming revolutionary army, freely kill, burn, pillage, hold to ransom and prey at large on the defenseless flock of proprietors of every class and degree.2466
In this operation each club has its neighbors for allies, offering to them or receiving from them offers of men and money. That of Caen tenders its assistance to the Bayeux association for expelling unsworn priests, and to help the patriots of the place "to rid themselves of the tyranny of their administrators."2467That of Besançon declares the three administrative bodies of Strasbourg "unworthy of the confidence with which they have been honored," and openly enters into a league with all the clubs of the Upper and Lower Rhine, to set free a Jacobin arrested as a fomenter of insurrections.2468Those of the Puy-de-Dôme and neighboring departments depute to and establish at Clermont a central club of direction and propaganda.2469Those of the Bouches-du-Rhône treat with the commissioners of the departments of Drôme, Gard, and Hérault, to watch the Spanish frontier, and send delegates of their own to see the state of the fortifications of Figuières.2470—There is no recourse to the criminal tribunals. In forty departments, these are not yet installed, in the forty-three others, they are cowed, silent, or lack money and men to enforce their decisions.2471
Such is the foundation of the Jacobin State, a confederation of twelve hundred oligarchies, which maneuver their proletariat clients in obedience to the word of command dispatched from Paris. It is a complete, organized, active State, with its central government, its active force, its official journal, its regular correspondence, its declared policy, its established authority, and its representative and local agents; the latter are actual administrators alongside of administrations which are abolished, or athwart administrations which are brought under subjection.—In vain do the latest ministers, good clerks and honest men, try to fulfill their duties; their injunctions and remonstrances are only so much waste paper.2472They resign in despair, declaring that,
"in this overthrow of all order,... in the present weakness of the public forces, and in the degradation of the constituted authorities,... it is impossible for them to maintain the life and energy of the vast body, the members of which are paralyzed."—
When the roots of a tree are laid bare, it is easy to cut it down; now that the Jacobins have severed them, a push on the trunk suffices to bring the tree to the ground.
2401 (return)[ De Loménie, "Les Mirabeaus," I. 11. (Letter of the Marquis de Mirabeau).]
2402 (return)[ "Archives Nationales," F7, 7171, No. 7915. Report on the situation in Marseilles, by Miollis, commissioner of the Directory in the department, year V. Nivôse 15. "A good many strangers from France and Italy are attracted there by the lust of gain, a love of pleasure, the want of work, a desire to escape from the effects of ill conduct. .. Individuals of both sexes and of every age, with no ties of country or kindred, with no profession, no opinions, pressed by daily necessities that are multiplied by debauched habit, seeking to indulge these without too much effort, the means for this being formerly found in the many manual operations of commerce, gone astray during the Revolution and, subsequently, scared of the dominant party, accustomed unfortunately at that time to receiving pay for taking part in political strife, and now reduced to living on almost gratuitous distributions of food, to dealing in small wares, to the menial occupations which chance rarely presents—in short, to swindling. Such is what the observer finds in that portion of the population of Marseilles most in sight; eager to profit by whatever occurs, easily won over, active through its necessities, flocking everywhere, and appearing very numerous... The patriot Escalon had twenty rations a day; Féri, the journalist, had six; etc... Civil officers and district commissioners still belong, for the most part, to that class of men which the Revolution had accustomed to live without work, to making those who shared their principles the beneficiaries of the nation's favors, and finally, to receiving contributions from gambling halls and brothels. These commissioners give notice to their protégés, even the crooks, when warrants against them are to be enforced."]
2403 (return)[ Blanc-Gilly, "Réveil d'alarme d'un député de Marseilles" (cited in the Memoirs" of Barbaroux, 40, 41). Blanc-Gilly must have been acquainted with these characters, inasmuch as he made use of them in the August riot, 1789, and for which he was indicted.—Cf. Fabre "Histoire de Marseilles," II. 422.]
2404 (return)[ "Archives Nationales," F7, 3197. Correspondence of Messrs. Debourge, Gay, and Lafitte, commissioners sent to Provence to restore order in accordance with an act of the National Assembly. Letter of May 10, 1791. Letter of May 10. 1791, and passim.]
2405 (return)[ Mayor Martin, says Juste, was a sort of Pétion, weak and vain.—Barbaroux, clerk of the municipality, is the principal opponent of M. Lieutaud.—The municipal decree referred to is dated Sept. 10, 1790.]
2406 (return)[ "Archives Nationales," F7, 3197. Letters of three commissioners, April 13, 17, 18, and May 10, 1791.]
2407 (return)[ Blanc-Gilly, "Réveil d'Alarme." Ibid., "Every time that the national guard marched outside the city walls, the horde of homeless brigands never failed to close up in their rear and carry devastation wherever they went."]
2408 (return)[ "Archives Nationales," F7, 3197. Correspondence of the three commissioners, letter of May 10,1791. "The municipality of Marseilles obeys only the decrees it pleases, and for eighteen months has not paid a cent into the city treasury.-Proclamation of April 13.—Letters of April 13 and 18.]
2409 (return)[ "Archives Nationales," letter of the municipal officers of Marseilles to the minister, June 11, 1791.—They demand the recall of the three commissioners, one of their arguments being as follows: "In China, every mandarin against whom public opinion is excited is dismissed from his place; he is regarded as an ignorant instructor, who is incapable of gaining the love of children for their parent."]
2410 (return)[ "Archives Nationales," letter of the commissioners, May 25, 1791. "It is evident, on recording the proceedings at Aix and Marseilles, that only the accusers and the judges were guilty."—Petition of the prisoners, Feb. 1. "The municipality, in despair of our innocence and not knowing how to justify its conduct, is trying to buy up witnesses. They say openly that it is better to sacrifice one innocent man than disgrace a whole body. Such ale the speeches of the sieur Rebecqui, leading man, and of Madame Elliou, wife of a municipal officer, in the house of the sieur Rousset."]
2411 (return)[ Letter of M. Lieutaud to the commissioners, May 11 and 18, 1791. "If I have not fallen under the assassin's dagger I owe my preservation to your strict orders and to the good behavior of the national guard and the regular troops... At the hearing of the case today, the prosecutor on the part of the commune ventured to threaten the court with popular opinion and its avenging fury... The people, stirred up against us, and brought there, shouted, 'Let us seize Lieutaud and take him there by force and if he will not go up the steps, we will cut his head off!' The hall leading to the courtroom and the stairways were filled with barefooted vagabonds."—Letter of Cabrol, commander of the national guard, and of the municipal officers to the commissioners, May 21. That picket-guard of fifty men on the great square, is it not rather the cause of a riot than the means of preventing one? A requisition to send four national guards inside the prison, to remain there day and night, is it not insulting citizen soldiers, whose function it is to see that the laws are maintained, and not to do jail duty?"]
2412 (return)[ Letter of M. d'Olivier, lieutenant-colonel of the Ernest regiment, May 28.—Extracts from the papers of the secretary to the municipality, May 28 (Barbaroux is the clerk).—Letter of the commissions, May 29]
2413 (return)[ Letter of the commissioners, June 29.]
2414 (return)[ Letter of M. Laroque-Dourdan, naval commander at Marseilles, Oct. 18, 1791. (in relation to the departure of the Swiss regiment).]
2415 (return)[ The elections are held on the 13th of November, 1791. Martin, the former mayor, showed timidity, and Mouraille was elected in his place.]
2416 (return)[ "Archives Nationales." F 7 3197. Letter (printed) of the Directory to the Minister of War, Jan. 4, 1792.—Letter of the municipality of Marseilles to the Directory, Jan. 4, and the Directory's reply.—Barbaroux, "Mémoires," 19.—Here we see the part played by Barbaroux at Marseilles. Guadet played a similar part at Bordeaux. This early political period is essential for a comprehension of the Girondists.]
2417 (return)[ "Archives Nationales." F7, 3195. Official report of the municipality of Aix (on the events of Feb. 26). March 1st.—Letter of M. Villardy, president of the directory, dated Avignon, March 10. (He barely escaped assassination at Aix.)—Ibid., F7,3196. Report of the district administrators of Arles, Feb. 28 (according to private letters from Aix and Marseilles).—Barbaroux, "Mémoires" (collection of Berville and Barrière), 106. (Narrative of M. Watteville, major in the Ernest regiment. Ibid., 108) (Report from M. de Barbentane, commanding general). These two documents show the liberalism, want of vigor, and the usual indecision of the superior authorities, especially the military authorities—Mercure de France, March 24, 1792 (letters from Aix).]
2418 (return)[ "Archives Nationales," F7, 3196. Dispatches of the new Directory to the Minister, March 24 and April 4, 1792. "Since the departure of the Directory, our administrative assembly is composed of only six members, notwithstanding our repeated summons to every member of the Council... Only three members of the Council consent to act with us; the reason is a lack of pecuniary means." The new Directory, consequently, passes a resolution to indemnify members of the Council. This, indeed, is contrary to a royal proclamation of Jan. 15; but "this proclamation was wrested from the King, on account of his firm faith. You must be aware that, in a free nation, the influence of a citizen on his government must not be estimated by his fortune; such a principle is false, and destructive of equality of rights. We trust that the King will consent to revoke his proclamation."]
2419 (return)[ Ib., Letters of Borelly, vice-president of the Directory, to the Minister, April 10, 17, and 30, 1792.—Letter from another administrator, March 10. "They absolutely want us to march against Arles, and to force us to give the order."—Ibid., F7, 3195. Letters from Aix, March 12 and 16, addressed to M. Verdet.]
2420 (return)[ "Archives Nationales," F7, 3195. Letter of the administrators of the department Council to the Minister, March 10, "The Council of the administration is surprised, sir, at the fa1se impressions given you of the city of Marseilles; it should be regarded as the patriotic buckler of the department... If the people of Paris did not wait for orders to destroy the Bastille and begin the Revolution, can you wonder that in this fiery climate the impatience of good citizens should make them anticipate legal orders, and that they cannot comply with the slow forms of justice when their personal safety and the safety of the country is in peril?"]
2421 (return)[ "Archives Nationales." F7, 3197. Dispatches of the three commissioners, passim, and especially those of May 11, June 10 and 19, 1791 (on affairs in Arles). "The property-owners were a long time subject to oppression. A few of the factions maintained a reign of terror over honest folks, who trembled in secret."]
2422 (return)[ Ibid., Dispatch of the commissioners, June 19: "One of the Mint gang causes notes to be publicly distributed (addressed to the unsworn) in these words: 'If you don't "piss-off" you will have to deal with the gang from the Mint.'"]
2423 (return)[ "Archives Nationales." F7, 3198. Narration (printed) of what occurred at Arles, June 9 and 10, 1791.—Dispatch of M. Ripert, royal commissioner, Aug. 5, 1791.—F 7, 3197. Dispatch of the three commissioners, June 19. "Since then, many of the farm laborers have taken the same oath. It is this class of citizens which most eagerly desires a return to order. "—Other dispatches to the same effect, Oct. 24 and 29, and Dec. 14, 1791.—Cf. "The French Revolution," I. 301, 302.]
2424 (return)[ "Archives Nationales." F7, 3196. Dispatch of the members of the Directory of Arles and the municipal officers to the Minister, March 3, 1792 (with a printed diatribe of the Marseilles municipality)]
2425 (return)[ Ibid., F7, 3198. Dispatches of the procureur—syndic of the department to the Minister, Aix, Sept. 14, 15, 20, and 23, 1791. The electoral assembly declared itself permanent, the constitutional authorities being fettered and unrecognized.—Dispatch of the members of the military bureau and correspondence with the Minister, Arles, Sept.17, 1791.]
2426 (return)[ Ibid., Dispatch of the commandant of the Marseilles detachment to the Directory of the department, Sept. 22, 1791: "I feel that our proceedings are not exactly legal, but I thought it prudent to acquiesce in the general desire of the battalion."]