32133 (return)[ Ibid., XXXIV., 204. (Deposition of Lamarie.)]
32134 (return)[ Ibid., 183. (Deposition of Caux.)]
32135 (return)[ Mallet-Dupan, "Mémoires," II., 6. (Memorial of Feb. I, 1794.) On André Dumont, "Un Séjour en France," 158, 171.—On Merlin de Thionville, Michelet, VI., 97.]
32136 (return)[ De Martel, "Fouché" 100.]
32137 (return)[ Mallet-Dupan, II., 46.]
32138 (return)[ Buchez et Roux, XXXII., 413, 423. (Letter of Julien to Robespierre.)]
32139 (return)[ Archives Nationales, AF., II., III. An order issued by Bourbotte, Tours, Messidor 5, year II., "requiring the district administration to furnish him personally, as well as for the citizens attached to his commission, forty bottles of red wine and thirty of white wine, to be taken from the cellars of emigrés, or from those of persons condemned to death; and, besides this, fifty bottles of common wine other than white or red."—On the 2nd of Messidor, ale is drunk and there is a fresh order for fifty bottles of red wine, fifty of common wine, and two bottles of brandy.—De Martel, "Fouché," 419, 420.—Moniteur, XXIV., 604. (Session of Prairial 13, par III.) "Dugué reads the list of charges brought against Mallarmé. He is accused.... of having put in requisition whatever pleased him for his table and for other wants, without paying for anything, not even for the post-horses and postillions that carried him."—Ibid. 602. Report of Perès du Gers. "He accuses Dartigoyte... of having taken part with his secretaries in the auction of the furniture of Daspe, who had been condemned; of having kept the most valuable pieces for himself, and afterwards fixing their price; of having warned those who had charge of the sale that confinement awaited whoever should bid on the articles he destined for himself."—Laplanche, ex-Benedictine, said in his mission in Loiret, that "those who did not like the Revolution must pay those who make it."]
32140 (return)[ Buchez et Roux, XXXII., 426. (Extract from the Memoirs of Sénart.)—Hamel, III., 565. (Description of Teresa's domicile by the Marquis de Paroy, a petitioner and eye-witness.)]
32141 (return)[ The reader might read about Tallien in the book written by Thérèse Chatrles-Vallin: "Tallien," "Le mal-aimé de la Révolution", Ed. Jean Picollec, Paris 1997. (SR).]
32142 (return)[ Buchez et Roux, XXXIII., 12. (Extract from the Memoirs of Sénart.) "The certified copies of these drafts are on file with the committee of General Security."]
32143 (return)[ Report of Courtois, 360. (Letters of Julien to Robespierre, Pluviôse 15 and 16, year II.)—Buchez et Roux, XXXIV., 199, 200, 202, 203, 211. (Depositions of Villemain, Monneron, Legros, Robin.)—Berryat Saint-Prix, 35. (Depositions of Fourrier, and of Louise Courant, sempstress.)]
32144 (return)[ See, on Tallien," Mémoires de Sénart."—On Javogues, Moniteur, XXIV., 461, Floreal 24, III. Petition against Javogues, with several pages of signatures, especially those of the inhabitants of Montbrison: "In the report made by him to the Convention he puts down coin and assignats at seven hundred and seventy-four thousand six hundred and ninety-six francs, while the spoils of one person provided him with five hundred thousand francs in cash."—On Fouché, De Martel, 252.—On Dumont, Mallet-Dupan, "Manuscript notes." (January, 1795.) On Rovère, Michelet, VI., 256.—Carnot, II., 87. (According to the Memoirs of the German Olsner, who was in Paris under the Directory:) "The tone of Barras' Salon was that of a respectable gambling house; the house of Reubell resembled the waiting-room of an inn at which the mail-coach stops."]
32145 (return)[ Buchez et Roux, XXXII., 391, and XXXIII., 9. (Extracts from the Memoirs of Sénart.)]
32146 (return)[ Carnot, "Mémoires," I. 416. Carnot, having shown to the Committee of Public Safety, proofs of the depredations committed on the army of the North, Saint-Just got angry and exclaimed: "It is only an enemy of the Republic that would accuse his colleagues of depredations, as if patriots hadn't a right to everything!"]
32147 (return)[ As to Caligula see Suetonius and Philo.—With respect to Hakem, see "L'Exposé de la Religion des Druses," by M. de Sacy.]
32148 (return)[ Saint-Just, speaking in the Convention, says: "What constitutes a republic is the utter destruction of whatever is opposed to it."]
32149 (return)[ Orders issued by Saint-Just and Lebas for the departments of Pas-de-Calais, Nord, la Somme et l'Aisne.—Cf. "Histoire de l'Alsace," by Stroebel, and "Recueil de pieces authentiques pour servir à l'histoire de la Révolution à Strasbourg," 3 vols.-Archives Nationales AF., II., 135, orders issued Brumaire 10, year II., and list of the one hundred and ninety-three persons taxed.]
32150 (return)[ Buchez et Roux, XXXI., 32. (Saint-Just's reply to Mayor Monet.)—De Sybel, II., 447, 448. At the first interview Saint-Just said to Schneider: "Why use so much ceremony? You know the crimes of the aristocrats? In the twenty-four hours taken for one investigation you might have twenty-four condemned."]
32151 (return)[ "Journal de marche du sergent Fricasse," p.34. (Narrative by Marshal Soult.)]
32152 (return)[ Cf. in the Bible, the story of Ahasuerus who, out of respect for his own majesty, can-not retract the order he has issued against the Jews, but he turns the difficulty by allowing them to defend themselves.]
32153 (return)[ Mallet-Dupan, II., 47.]
32154 (return)[ Berryat Saint-Prix, "La Justice Revolutionnaire," XVII.-Marcelin Boudet, "Les Conventionnels d'Auvergne," 269.—Moniteur, Brumaire 27, year III., report by Calès.]
32155 (return)[ Paris, "Histoire de Joseph Lebon," I., 371; II., 341, 344.-De Martel, "Fouché," 153.—Berryat Saint-Prix, 347, 348.]
32156 (return)[ Berryat Saint-Prix, 390.—Ibid., 404. (On Soubrié, executioner at Marseilles, letter of Lazare Giraud, public prosecutor): "I put him in the dungeon for having shed tears on the scaffold, in executing the anti-revolutionists we sent to be executed."]
32157 (return)[ Moniteur, XVIII., 413. (Session of the Convention, letter of Lequinio and Laignelot, Rochefort, Brumaire 17, year II.) "We have appointed the patriot Anse guilloteneur and we have invited him, in dining with us, to come and assume his prescribed powers, and water them with a libation in honor of the Republic."—Paris, II., 72.]
32158 (return)[ Marcelin Boudet, 270. (Testimony of Bardanèche de Bayonne.)]
32159 (return)[ Guil1on, "Histoire de la ville de Lyons pendant la Revolution," II., 427, 431, 433.]
32160 (return)[ "Mémoire du Citoyen Fréron," (in the Barrière collection,) p.357. (Testimony of a survivor.)]
32161 (return)[ Paris, II., 32]
32162 (return)[ Delandine, "Tableaux des prisons de Lyons," p.14.]
32163 (return)[ Camille Boursier, "Essai sur la Terreur en Anjou," 164. (Letter of Boniface, ex-Benedictine, president of the Revolutionary committee, to Representative Richard, Brumaire 3, year II.) "We send you the said Henri Verdier, called de la Saurinière.... It will not be long before you will see that we make the guillotine a present.... The Committee begs you to send him sacram sanctam guillotinam, and the republican minister of his worship... Not an hour of the day passes that new members do not come to us whom we desire to initiate in its mysteries, (sic)."]
32164 (return)[ Thibaudeau, "Histoire du Terrorisme dans le départment de la Vienne," 34, 48.—Berryat Saint-Prix, 239.]
32165 (return)[ Archives Nationales F.7, 4435. (Letter of Lebon, Floréal 23, year II.)—Paris, I. 241.]
32166 (return)[ Buchez et Roux, XXXIV., 184, 200. (Depositions of Chaux, Monneron and Villemain.)]
32167 (return)[ Register of the Revolutionary Tribunal of Nantes, copied by M. Chevrier. (M. Chevrier has kindly sent me his manuscript copy.)—Berryat Saint-Prix, 94.—Archives Nationales, F7. 4591. (Extract from the acts of the Legislative Committee, session of Floréal 3, year III. Restitution of the confiscated property of Alexander Long to his son.) Dartigoyte, at Auch, did what Carrier did at Nantes. "It follows from the above abstract duly signed that on the 27th Germinal, year II., between eight and nine o'clock in the evening, Alexandre Long, Sr., was put to death on the public square of the commune of Auch by the executioner of criminal sentences, without any judgment having been rendered against the said Long."—In many places an execution becomes a spectacle for the Jacobins of the town and a party of pleasure. For instance, at Arras, on the square devoted to executions, a gallery was erected for spectators with a room for the sale of refreshments, and, during the execution of M. de Montgon, the "Ça ira" is played on the bass drum. (Paris, II., 158, and I., 159.) A certain facetious representative has rehearsals of the performance in his own house. "Lejeune, to feed his bloodthirsty imagination, had a small guillotine put up, on which he cut off the heads of all the poultry consumed at his table.... Often, in the middle of the repast, he had it brought in and set to work for the amusement of his guests." (Moniteur, XXIV., 607, session of June 1, 1795, letter from the district of Besançon, and with the letter, the confirmatory document.) "This guillotine, says the reporter, is deposited with the Committee of Legislation."]
The administrative body at Paris.—Composition of the groupout of which it was recruited.—Deterioration of thisgroup.—Weeding-out of the Section Assemblies.—Weeding outof the popular clubs.—Pressure of the government.
To provide these local sovereigns with the subordinate lieutenants and agents which they require, we have the local Jacobin population, and we have seen the composition of the recruits,3301
* the distressed and the perverted of every class and degree, especially the lowest,
* the castaways,
* envious and resentful subordinates,
* small shopkeepers in debt,
* the migrating, high-living workers,
* barflies,
* vagrants,
* men of the gutters,
* street-walkers,
—in short, every species of "anti-social vermin," male and female,3302including a few honest crack-brains into which the fashionable theory had freely found its way; the rest, and by far the largest number, are veritable beasts of prey, speculating on the established order of things and adopting the revolutionary faith only because it provides food for their appetites.—In Paris, they number five or six thousand, and, after Thermidor, there is about the same number, the same appetites rallying them around the same dogma,3303levelers and terrorists, "some because they are poor, others because they have broken off the habit of working at their trade," furious with "the scoundrels who own a coach house, against the rich and the hoarders of objects of prime necessity." Many of them "having soiled themselves during the Revolution, ready to do it again provided the rich rascals, monopolists and merchants can all be killed," all "frequenters of popular clubs who think themselves philosophers, although most of them are unable to read," at the head of them the remnant of the most notorious political bandits,
* the famous post-master, Drouet, who, in the tribune at the Convention, declared himself a "brigand,"3304
* Javogues, the robber of Montbrison and the "Nero of Ain,"
* the drunkard Casset, formerly a silk-worker and later the pasha of Thionville,
* Bertrand, the friend of Charlier, the ex-mayor and executioner of Lyons,
* Darthé, ex-secretary of Lebon and the executioner at Arras,
* Rossignol and nine other Septembriseurs of the Abbaye and the Carmelites, and, finally, the great apostle of despotic communism,
* Babeuf, who, sentenced to twenty years in irons for the falsification of public contracts, and as needy as he is vicious, rambles about Paris airing his disappointed ambitions and empty pockets along with the swaggering crew who, if not striving to reach the throne by a new massacre,3305tramp through the streets slipshod, for lack of money "to redeem a pair of boots at the shoemakers," or to sell some snuff-box their last resource, for a morning dram.3306
In this class we see the governing rabble fully and distinctly. Separated from its forced adherents and the official robots who serve it as they would any other power, it stands out pure and unalloyed by any neutral influx; we recognize here the permanent residue, the deep, settled slime of the social sewer. It is to this sink of vice and ignorance that the revolutionary government betakes itself for its staff-officers and its administrative bodies.
Nowhere else could they be found. For the daily task imposed upon them, and which must be done by them, is robbery and murder; excepting the pure fanatics, who are few in number, only brutes and blackguards have the aptitudes and tastes for such business. In Paris, as in the provinces, it is from the clubs or popular associations in which they congregate, that they are sought for.—Each section of Paris contains one of these clubs, in all forty-eight, rallied around the central club in the Rue St. Honoré, forty-eight district alliances of professional rioters and brawlers, the rebels and blackguards of the social army, all the men and women incapable of devoting themselves to a regular life and useful labor,3307especially those who, on the 31st of May and 2nd of June, had aided the Paris Commune and the "Mountain" in violating the Convention. They recognize each other by this sign that, "each would be hung in case of a counter-revolution,"3308laying it down "as an incontestable fact that, should a single aristocrat be spared, all of them would mount the scaffold."3309They are naturally wary and they stick together: in their clique "everything is done on the basis of good fellowship;"3310no one is admitted except on the condition of having proved his qualifications "on the 10th of August and 31st of May."3311And, as they have made their way into the Commune and into the revolutionary committees behind victorious leaders, they are able, through the certificates of civism which these arbitrarily grant or refuse, to exclude, not only from political life but, again, from civil life, whoever is not of their party.
"See," writes one of Danton's correspondents,3312"the sort of persons who easily obtain these certificates,—the Ronsins, the Jourdans, the Maillards, the Vincents, all bankrupts, keepers of gambling-hells and cut-throats. Ask these individuals whether they have paid the patriotic contribution, whether they regularly pay the usual taxes, whether they give to the poor of their sections, to the volunteer soldiers, etc.; whether they mount guard or see it regularly done, whether they have made a loyal declaration for the forced loan. You will find that they have not.... The Commune issues certificates of civism to its satellites and refuses them to the best citizens."
The monopoly is obvious; they make no attempt to conceal it; six weeks later,3313it becomes official: several revolutionary committees decide not to grant certificates of civism to citizens who are not members of a popular club." And strict exclusion goes on increasing from month to month. Old certificates are canceled and new ones imposed, which new certificates have new formalities added to them, a larger number of endorsers being required and certain kinds of guarantees being rejected; there is greater strictness in relation to the requisite securities and qualifications; the candidate is put off until fuller information can be obtained about him; he is rejected at the slightest suspicion:3314he is only too fortunate if he is tolerated in the Republic as a passive subject, if he is content to be taxed and taxed when they please, and if he is not sent to join the "suspects" in prison; whoever does not belong to the band does not belong to the community.
Amongst themselves and in their popular club it is worse, for
"the eagerness to get any office leads to every one denouncing each other; "3315
consequently, at the Jacobin club in the rue St. Honoré, and in the branch clubs of the quarter, there is constant purging, and always in the same sense, until the faction is cleansed of all honest or passable alloy and only a minority remains, which has its own way at every balloting. One of them announces that, in his club, eighty doubtful members have already been gotten rid of; another that, in his club, one hundred are going to be excluded.3316On Ventose 23, in the "Bon-Conseil" club, most of the members examined are rejected: "they are so strict that a man who cannot show that he acted energetically in critical times, cannot form part of the assembly; he is set aside for a mere trifle." On Ventôse 13, in the same club, "out of twenty-six examined, seven only are admitted; one citizen, a tobacco dealer, aged sixty-eight, who has always performed his duty, is rejected for having called the president Monsieur, and for having spoken in the tribune bareheaded; two members, after this, insisted on his being a Moderate, which is enough to keep him out." Those who remain, consist of the most restless and most loquacious, the most eager for office, the self-mutilated club being thus reduced to a nucleus of charlatans and scoundrels.
To these spontaneous eliminations through which the club deteriorates, add the constant pressure through which the Committee of Public Safety frightens and degrades it. The lower the revolutionary government sinks, and the more it concentrates its power, the more servile and sanguinary do its agents and employees become. It strikes right and left as a warning; it imprisons or decapitates the turbulent among its own clients, the secondary demagogues who are impatient at not being principal demagogues, the bold who think of striking a fresh blow in the streets, Jacques Roux, Vincent, Momoro, Hébert, leaders of the Cordeliers club and of the Commune. After these, the indulgent who are disposed to exercise some discernment or moderation in terrorism, Camille Desmoulins, Danton and their adherents; and lastly, many others who are more or less doubtful, compromised or compromising, wearied or eccentric, from Maillard to Chaumette, from Antonelle to Chabot, from Westermann to Clootz. Each of the proscribed has a gang of followers, and suddenly the whole gang are obliged to do a volte-face; those who were able to show initiative, grovel, while those who could show mercy, become hardened. Henceforth, amongst the subaltern Jacobins, the roots of independence, humanity, and loyalty, hard to extirpate even in an ignoble and cruel nature, are eradicated even to the last fiber, the revolutionary staff, already so debased, becoming more and more degraded, until it is worthy of the office assigned to it. The confidants of Hébert, those who listen to Chaumette, the comrades of Westermann, the officers of Ronsin, the faithful readers of Camille, the admirers and devotees of Danton, all are bound to publicly repudiate their incarcerated friend or leader and approve of the decree which sends him to the scaffold, to applaud his calumniators, to overwhelm him on trial: this or that judge or juryman, who is one of Danton's partisans, is obliged to stifle a defense of him, and, knowing him to be innocent, pronounce him guilty; one who had often dined with Desmoulins is not only to guillotine him, but, in addition to this, to guillotine his young widow. Moreover, in the revolutionary committees, at the Commune, in the offices of the Committee of General Safety, in the bureau of the Central Police, at the headquarters of the armed force, at the revolutionary Tribunal, the service to which they are compelled to do becomes daily more onerous and more repulsive. To denounce neighbors, to arrest colleagues, to go and seize innocent persons, known to be such, in their beds, to select in the prisons the thirty or forty unfortunates who form the daily food of the guillotine, to "amalgamate" them haphazard, to try them and condemn them in a lot, to escort octogenarian women and girls of sixteen to the scaffold, even under the knife-blade, to see heads dropping and bodies swinging, to contrive means for getting rid of a multitude of corpses, and for removing the too-visible stains of blood. Of what species do the beings consist, who can accept such a task, and perform it day after day, with the prospect of doing it indefinitely? Fouquier-Tinville himself succumbs. One evening, on his way to the Committee of Public Safety, "he feels unwell" on the Pont-Neuf and exclaims: "I think I see the ghosts of the dead following us, especially those of the patriots I have had guillotined!"3317And at another time: "I would rather plow the ground than be public prosecutor. If I could, I would resign."—The government, as the system becomes aggravated, is forced to descend lower still that it may find suitable instruments; it finds them now only in the lowest depths: in Germinal, to renew the Commune, in Floréal, to renew the ministries, in Prairial, to re-compose the revolutionary Tribunal, month after month, purging and re-constituting the committees of each quarter3318of the city. In vain does Robespierre, writing and re-writing his secret lists, try to find men able to maintain the system; he always falls back on the same names, those of unknown persons, illiterate, about a hundred knaves or fools with four or five second-class despots or fanatics among them, as malevolent and as narrow as himself.—The purifying crucible has been used too often and for too long a time; it has overheated; what was sound, or nearly so, in the elements of the primitive fluid has been forcibly evaporated; the rest has fermented and become acid; nothing remains in the bottom of the vessel but the lees of stupidity and wickedness, their concentrated and corrosive dregs.
Quality of subaltern leaders.—How they rule in the sectionassemblies.—How they seize and hold office.
Such are the subordinate sovereigns3319who in Paris, during 14 months dispose as they please, of fortunes, liberties and lives.—And first, in the section assemblies, which still maintain a semblance of popular sovereignty, they rule despotically and uncontested.—
"A dozen or fifteen men wearing a red cap,3320well-informed or not, claim the exclusive right of speaking and acting, and if any other citizen with honest motives happens to propose measures which he thinks proper, and which really are so, no attention is paid to these measures, or, if it is, it is only to show the members composing the assemblage of how little account they are. These measures are accordingly rejected, solely because they are not presented by one of the men in a red cap, or by somebody like themselves, initiated in the mysteries of the section."
"Sometimes," says one of the leaders,3321"we find only ten members of the club at the general assembly of the section; but there are enough of us to intimidate the rest. Should any citizen of the section make a proposition we do not like, we rise and shout that he is an schemer, or a signer (of former constitutional petitions). In this way we impose silence on those who are not in line with the club."—
Since September, 1793, operation is all the easier because the majority, is now composed of beasts of burden, ruled with an iron hand.
"When something has to be effected that depends on intrigue or on private interest,3322the motion is always put by one of the members of the Revolutionary Committee of the section, or by one of those fanatical patriots who join in with the Committee, and otherwise act as its spies. Immediately the ignorant men, to whom Danton has allowed forty sous for each meeting, and who, from now on crowd an assembly, where they never came before, welcome the proposition with loud applause, shouting and demanding a vote, and the act is passed unanimously, notwithstanding the contrary opinions of all well-informed and honest citizens. Should any one dare make an objection, he would run the risk of imprisonment as a suspect,3323after being treated as an aristocrat or federalist, or at least, refused a certificate of civism, ( a serious matter) if he had the misfortune to need one, did his survival depend on this, either as employee or pensioner."—In the Maison-Commune section, most of the auditory are masons, "excellent patriots," says one of the clubbists of the quarter:3324they always vote on our side; we make them do what we want." Numbers of day-laborers, cab-drivers, cartmen and workmen of every class, thus earn their forty sous, and have no idea that anything else might be demanded from them. On entering the hall, when the meeting opens, they write down their names, after which they go out "to take a drink," without thinking themselves obliged to listen to the rigmarole of the orators; towards the end, they come back, make all the noise that is required of them with their lungs, feet and hands, and then go and "take back their card and get their money."3325—With paid applauders of this stamp, they soon get the better of any opponents, or, rather, all opposition is suppressed beforehand. "The best citizens keep silent" in the section assemblies, or "stay away;" these are simply "gambling-shops" where "the most absurd, the most unjust, the most impolitic of resolutions are passed at every moment.3326Moreover, citizens are ruined there by the unlimited sectional expenditure, which exceeds the usual taxation and the communal expenses, already very heavy. At one time, some carpenter or locksmith, member of the Revolutionary Committee, wants to construct, enlarge or decorate a hall, and it is necessary to agree with him. Again, a poor speech is made, full of exaggeration and political extravagance, of which three, four, five and six thousand impressions are ordered to be printed. Then, to cap the climax, following the example of the Commune, no accounts are rendered, or, if this is done for form's sake, no fault must be found with them, under penalty of suspicion, etc."—The twelve leaders, proprietors and distributors of civism, have only to agree amongst themselves to share the profits, each according to his appetite; henceforth, cupidity and vanity are free to sacrifice the common weal, under cover of the common interest.—The pasture is vast and it is at the disposal of the leaders. In one of his orders of the day, Henriot says:3327
"I am very glad to announce to my brethren in arms that all the positions are at the disposal of the government. The actual government, which is revolutionary, whose intentions are pure, and which merely desires the happiness of all,.... will search everywhere, even into the attics for virtuous men,.... poor and genuine sans-culottes." And there is enough to satisfy them thirty-five thousand places of public employment in the capital alone:3328it is a rich mine; already, before the month of May, 1793, "the Jacobin club boasted of having placed nine thousand agents in the administration,"3329and since the 2nd of June, "virtuous men, poor, genuine sans-culottes," arrive in crowds from "their garrets," dens and hired rooms, each to grab his share.—They besiege and install themselves by hundreds the ancient offices in the War, Navy and Public-Works departments, in the Treasury and Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Here they rule, constantly denouncing all the remaining, able employees thus creating vacancies in order to fill them.3330Then there are twenty new administrative departments which they keep for themselves: commissioners of the first confiscation of national property, commissioners of national property arising from emigrants and the convicted, commissioners of conscripted carriage-horses, commissioners on clothing, commissioners on the collecting and manufacturing of saltpeter, commissioners on monopolies, civil-commissioners in each of the forty-eight sections, commissioners on propagandas in the departments, Commissioners on provisions, and many others. Fifteen hundred places are counted in the single department of subsistence in Paris,3331and all are salaried. Here, already, are a number of desirable offices.—Some are for the lowest rabble, two hundred, at twenty sous a day, paid to "stump-speakers," employed to direct opinion in the Palais-Royal, also among the Tuileries groups, as well as in the tribunes of the Convention and of the Hôtel-de-Ville;3332two hundred more at four hundred francs per annum, to waiters in coffee-houses, gambling-saloons and hotels, for watching foreigners and customers; hundreds of places at two, three, and five francs a day with meals, for the guardians of seals, and for garrisoning the domiciles of "suspects"; thousands, with premiums, pay, and full license, for brigands who, under Ronsin, compose the revolutionary army, and for the gunners, paid guard and gendarmes of Henriot.—The principal posts, however, are those which subject lives and freedom to the discretion of those who occupy them: for, through this more than regal power, they possess all other power, and such is that of the men composing the forty-eight revolutionary committees, the bureaus of the Committee of General Security and of the Commune, and the staff-officers of the armed force. They are the prime-movers and active incentives of the system of Terror, all picked Jacobins and tested by repeated selection, all designated or approved by the Central Club, which claims for itself the monopoly of patriotism, and which, erected into a supreme council of the party, issues no patent of orthodoxy except to its own henchmen.3333
They immediately assume the tone and arrogance of dictatorship. " Pride has reached its highest point:3334... One who, yesterday, had no post and was amiable and honest, has become haughty and insolent because, deceived by appearances, his fellow-citizens have elected him commissioner, or given him some employment or other." Henceforth, he behaves like a Turkish agha amongst infidels, and, in command, carries things out with a high hand.—On the 20th of Vendémiaire, year II., "in the middle of the night," the committee of the Piques section summons M. Bélanger, the architect. He is notified that his house is wanted immediately for a new Bastille.—"But, said he, 'I own no other, and it is occupied by several tenants; it is decorated with models of art, and is fit only for that purpose.'—'Your house or you go to prison!'—'But I shall be obliged to indemnify my tenants.'—'Either your house or you go to prison; as to indemnities, we have vacant lodgings for your tenants, as well as for yourself, in (the prisons of) La Force, or Sainte-Pélagie.' Twelve sentinels on the post start off at once and take possession of the premises; the owner is allowed six hours to move out and is forbidden, henceforth, to return; the bureaus, to which he appeals, interpret his obedience as 'tacit adhesion,' and, very soon, he himself is locked up."3335—Administrative tools that cut so sharply need the greatest care, and, from time to time, they are carefully oiled:3336on the 20th of July, 1793, two thousand francs are given to each of the forty-eight committees, and eight thousand francs to General Henriot, "for expenses in watching anti-revolutionary maneuvers;" on the 7th of August, fifty thousand francs "to indemnify the less successful members of the forty-eight committees;" three hundred thousand francs to Gen. Henriot "for thwarting conspiracies and securing the triumph of liberty;" fifty thousand francs to the mayor, "for detecting the plots of the malevolent;" on the 10th of September, forty thousand francs to the mayor, president and procureur-syndic of the department, "for measures of security;" on the 13th of September, three hundred thousand francs to the mayor "for preventing the attempts of the malevolent;" on the 15th of November, one hundred thousand francs to the popular clubs, "because these are essential to the propagation of sound principles."—Moreover, besides gratuities and a fixed salary, there are the gratifications and perquisites belonging to the office.3337Henriot appoints his comrades on the staff of paid spies and denunciators, and, naturally, they take advantage of their position to fill their pockets; under the pretext of incivism, they multiply domiciliary visits, make the master of the house ransom himself, or steal what suits them on the premises.3338—In the Commune, and on the revolutionary-committees, every extortion can be, and is, practiced.
"I know," says Quevremont, "two citizens who have been put in prison, without being told why, and, at the end of three weeks or a month, let out and do you know how? By paying, one of them, fifteen thousand livres, and the other, twenty-five thousand.... Gambron, at La Force, pays one thousand five hundred livres a month for a room not to live amongst lice, and besides this, he had to pay a bribe of two thousand livres on entering. This happened to many others who, again, dared not speak of it, except in a whisper."3339
Woe to the imprudent who, never concerning themselves with public affairs, and relying on their innocence, discard the officious broker and fail to pay up at once! Brichard, the notary, having refused or tendered too late, the hundred thousand crowns demanded of him, is to put his head "at the red window."—And I omit ordinary rapine, the vast field open to extortion through innumerable inventories, sequestrations and adjudications, through the enormities of contractors, through hastily executed purchases and deliveries, through the waste of two or three millions given weekly by the government to the Commune for supplies for the capital, through the requisitions of grain which give fifteen hundred men of the revolutionary army an opportunity to clean out all the neighboring farms, as far as Corbeil and Meaux, and benefit by this after the fashion of the chauffeurs.3340—With such a staff, these anonymous thefts cannot surprise us. Babeuf, the falsifier of public contracts, is secretary for provisions to the Commune; Maillard, the Abbaye Septembriseur, receives eight thousand francs for his direction, in the forty-eight sections, of the ninety-six observers and leaders of public opinion; Chrétien, whose smoking-shop serves as the rendezvous of rowdies, becomes a juryman at eighteen francs a day in the revolutionary Tribunal, and leads his section with uplifted saber;3341De Sade, professor of crimes, is now the oracle of his quarter, and, in the name of the Piques Section, he reads addresses to the Convention.