We passed an order forbidding any authority to remove seals without our consent, and, in spite of the prohibition, they broke into a storehouse under sequestration,.... forced the locks and pillaged, under our own eyes, the very house we occupy. And who are these devastators? Two commissioners of the Committee who emptied the storehouse without our warrant, and even without having any power from the Committee."—It is a sack in due form, and day after day; it began on the 10th of October, 1793; it continued after, without interruption, and we have just seen that, on Floréal 28, year II., that is to say, April 26, 1794, after one hundred and twenty-three days, it is still maintained.
The last mad scramble and the most extensive of all.—In spite of the subterfuges of its agents, the Republic, having stolen immensely, and although robbed in its turn, could still hold on to a great deal; and first, to articles of furniture which could not be easily abstracted, to large lots of merchandise, also to the vast spoil of the palaces, chateaux and churches; next, and above all, to real estate, fixtures and buildings. To meet its expenses it put all that up for sale, and whoever wants anything has only to come forward as a buyer, the last bidder becoming the legal owner and at a cheap rate. The wood cut down in one year very often pays for a whole forest.33132Sometimes a chateau can be paid for by a sale of the iron-railings of the park, or the lead on the roof.—Here are found chances for a good many bargains, and especially with objects of art. "The titles alone of the articles carried off, destroyed or injured, would fill volumes."33133On the one hand, the commissioners on inventories and adjudications, "having to turn a penny on the proceeds of sales," throw on the market all they can, "avoiding reserving" objects of public utility and sending collections and libraries to auction with a view to get their percentages. On the other hand, nearly all these commissioners are brokers or second-hand dealers who alone know the value of rarities, and openly depreciate them in order to buy them in themselves, "and thus ensure for themselves exorbitant profits." In certain cases the official guardians and purchasers who are on the look-out take the precaution to disfigure "precious articles" so as to have them bought by their substitutes and accomplices: "for instance, they convert sets of books into odd volumes, and take machines to pieces; the tube and object-glass of a telescope are separated, which pieces the rogues who have bought them cheap know how to put together again." Often, in spite of the seals, they take in advance antiques, pieces of jewelry, medals, enamels and engraved stones;" nothing is easier, for "even in Paris in Thermidor, year II., agents of the municipality use anything with which to make a stamp, buttons, and even large pennies, so that whoever has a sou can remove and re-stamp the seals as he pleases;" having been successful, "they screen their thefts by substituting cut pebbles and counterfeit stones for real ones." Finally, at the auction sales, "fearing the honesty or competition of intelligent judges, they offer money (to these) to stay away from the sales; one case is cited where they have knocked a prospective bidder down." In the meantime, at the club, they shout with all their might; this, with the protection of a member of the municipality or of the Revolutionary Committee, shelters them from all suspicion. As for the protector, he gets his share without coming out into the light. Accuse, if you dare, a republican functionary who secretly, or even openly, profits by these larcenies; he will show clean hands.—Such is the incorruptible patriot, the only one of his species, whom the representatives discover at Strasbourg, and whom they appoint mayor at once. On the 10th of Vendémiaire, year III.,33134there is found "in his apartments" a superb and complete assortment of ecclesiastical objects, "forty-nine copes and chasubles, silk or satin, covered with gold or silver; fifty-four palles of the same description;" a quantity of "reliquaries, vases and spoons, censers, laces, silver and gold fringe, thirty-two pieces of silk," etc. None of these fine things belong to him; they are the property of citizen Mouet, his father. This prudent parent, taking his word for it, "deposited them for safe keeping in his son's house during the month of June, 1792 (old style);"—could a good son refuse his father such a slight favor? It is very certain that, in '93 and '94, during the young man's municipal dictatorship, the elder did not pay the Strasbourg Jew brokers too much, and that they did business in an off-hand way. By what right could a son and magistrate prevent his father, a free individual, from looking after "his own affairs" and buying according to trade principles, as cheap as he could?
If such are the profits on the sale of personal property, what must they be on the sale of real estate?—It is on this traffic that the fortunes of the clever terrorists are founded. It accounts for the "colossal wealth peaceably enjoyed," after Thermidor, of the well-known "thieves" who, before Thermidor, were so many "little Robespierres," each in his own canton, "the patriots" who, around Orleans, "built palaces," who, "exclusives" at Valenciennes, "having wasted both public and private funds, possess the houses and property of emigrants, knocked down to them at a hundred times less than their value."33135On this side, their outstretched fingers shamelessly clutch all they can get hold of; for the obligation of each arrested party to declare his name, quality and fortune, as it now is and was before the Revolution, gives local cupidity a known, sure, direct and palpable object.—At Toulouse, says a prisoner,33136"the details and value of an object were taken down as if for a succession," while the commissioners who drew up the statement, "our assassins, proceeded, beforehand and almost under our eyes, to take their share, disputing with each other on the choice and suitableness of each object, comparing the cost of adjudication with the means of lessening it, discussing the certain profits of selling again and of the transfer, and consuming in advance the pickings arising from sales and leases."—In Provence, where things are more advanced and corruption is greater than elsewhere, where the purport and aims of the Revolution were comprehended at the start, it is still worse. Nowhere did Jacobin rulers display their real character more openly, and nowhere, from 1789 to 1799, was this character so well maintained. At Toulon, the demagogues in the year V., as in the year II., are33137"former workmen and clerks in the Arsenal who had become 'bosses' by acting as informers and through terrorism, getting property for nothing, or at an insignificant price, and plotting sales of national possessions, petty traders from all quarters with stocks of goods acquired in all sorts of ways, through robberies, through purchases of stolen goods from servants and employees in the civil, war and navy departments, and through abandoned or bought-up claims; in a word, men who, having run away from other communes, pass their days in coffee-houses and their nights in houses of ill-fame."—At Draguignan, Brignolles, Vidauban, Fréjus, at Marseilles, after Thermidor, the intermittent returns to Terrorism always restore the same quarries of the justiciary and the police to office.33138"Artisans, once useful, but now tired of working, and whom the profession of paid clubbists, idle guardians," and paid laborers "has totally demoralized," scoundrels in league with each other and making money out of whatever they can lay their hands on, like thieves at a fair, habitually living at the expense of the public, "bestowing the favors of the nation on those who share their principles, harboring and aiding many who are under the ban of the law and calling themselves model patriots,33139that is, in the pay of gambling hells and houses of prostitution."—In the rural districts, the old bands "consisting of hordes of homeless brigands" who worked so well during the anarchy of the Constituent and Legislative assemblies, form anew during the anarchy of the Directory; they make their appearance in the vicinity of Apt "commencing with petty robberies and then, strong in the impunity and title of sans-culottes, break into farm-houses, rob and massacre the inmates, strip travelers, put to ransom all who happen to cross their path, force open and pillage houses in the commune of Gorges, stop women in the streets, tear off their rings and crosses," and attack the hospital, sacking it from top to bottom, while the town and military officers, just like them, allow them to go on.33140—Judge by this of their performances in the time of Robespierre, when the vendors and administrators of the national possessions exercised undisputed control. Everywhere, at that time, in the departments of Var, Bouches-du-Rhône, and Vaucluse, "a club of would-be patriots" had long prepared the way for their exactions. It had "paid appraisers for depreciating whatever was put up for sale, and false names for concealing real purchasers; "a person not of their clique, was excluded from the auction-room; if he persisted in coming in they would, at one time, put him under contribution for the privilege of bidding," and, at another time, make him promise not to bid above the price fixed by the league, while, to acquire the domain, they paid him a bonus. Consequently, "national property" was given away "for almost nothing," the swindlers who acquired it never being without a satisfactory warrant for this in their own eyes. Into whose hands could the property of anti-revolutionists better fall than into those of patriots? According to Marat, the martyr apostle and canonised saint of the Revolution, what is the object of the Revolution but to give to the lowly the fortunes of the great?33141In all national sales everywhere, in guarding sequestrations, in all revolutionary ransoms, taxes, loans and seizures, the same excellent argument prevails; nowhere, in printed documents or in manuscripts, do I find any revolutionary committee which is at once terrorist and honest. Only, it is rare to find specific and individual details regarding all the members of the same committee.—Here, however, is one case, where, owing to the lucky accident of an examination given in detail, one can observe in one nest, every variety of the species and of its appetites, the dozen or fifteen types of the Jacobin hornet, each abstracting what suits him from whatever he lights on, each indulging in his favorite sort of rapine.—At Nantes, "Pinard, the great purveyor of the Committee,33142orders everything that each member needs for his daily use to be carried to his house."—"Gallou takes oil and brandy," and especially "several barrels from citizen Bissonneau's house."—"Durassier makes domiciliary visits and exacts contributions;" among others "he compels citizen Lemoine to pay twenty-five hundred livres, to save him from imprisonment."—"Naud affixes and removes seals in the houses of the incarcerated, makes nocturnal visits to the dwellings of the accused and takes what suits him."—"Grandmaison appropriates plate under sequestration, and Bachelier plate given as a present."—"Joly superintends executions and takes all he can find, plate, jewelry, precious objects."—"Bolognié forces the return of a bond of twenty thousand livres already paid to him."—Perrochaux demands of citoyenne Ollemard-Dudan "fifty thousand livres, to prevent her imprisonment," and confiscates for his own benefit sixty thousand livres worth of tobacco, in the house of the widow Daigneau-Mallet, who, claiming it back, is led off by him to prison under the pretext of interceding for her.—Chaux frightens off by terrorism his competitors at auction sales, has all the small farms on the Baroissière domain knocked down to him, and exclaims concerning a place which suits him: "I know how to get it! I'll have the owner arrested. He'll be very glad to let me have his ground to get out of prison.' "—The collection is complete, and gathered on a table, it offers specimens which can be found scattered all over France.
The Armed Force, the National Guard and the Gendarmerie.—Its purgation and composition.—The Revolutionary Armies inParis and in the departments.—Quality of the recruits.—Their employment.—Their expeditions into the countrysideand the towns.—Their exploits in the vicinity of Paris andLyons.—The company of Maratists, the American Hussars andthe German Legion at Nantes.—General character of theRevolutionary government and of the administrative staff ofthe Reign of Terror.
The last manipulators of the system remain, the hands which seize, the armed force which takes bodily hold of men and things.—The first who are employed for this purpose are the National Guard and the ordinary gendarmerie. Since 1790, these bodies are of course constantly weeded out until only fanatics and robots are left;33143nevertheless, the weeding-out continues as the system develops itself. At Strasbourg,33144on Brumaire 14, the representatives have dismissed, arrested and sent to Dijon the entire staff of the National Guard to serve as hostages until peace is secured; three days afterwards, considering that the cavalry of the town had been mounted and equipped at its own expense, they deem it aristocratic, bourgeois, and "suspect," and seize the horses and put the officers in arrest.—At Troyes, Rousselin, "National civil commissioner," dismisses, for the same reason, and with not less dispatch, all of the gendarmes at one stroke, except four, and "puts under requisition their horses, fully equipped, also their arms, so as to at once mount well known and tried sans-culottes." On principle, the poor sans-culottes, who are true at heart and in dress, alone have the right to bear arms, and should a bourgeois be on duty he must have only a pike, care being taken to take it away from him the moment he finishes his rounds.33145
But, alongside of the usual armed force, there is still another, much better selected and more effective, the reserve gendarmerie, a special, and, at the same time, movable and resident body, that is to say, the "revolutionary army," which, after September 5, 1793, the government had raised in Paris and in most of the large towns.—That of Paris, comprising six thousand men, with twelve hundred cannoneers, sends detachments into the provinces—two thousand men to Lyons, and two hundred to Troyes;33146Ysabeau and Tallien have at Bordeaux a corps of three thousand men; Salicetti, Albitte and Gasparin, one of two thousand men at Marseilles; Ysoré and Duquesnoy, one of one thousand men at Lille; Javogues, one of twelve hundred at Montbrison. Others, less numerous, ranging from six hundred down to two hundred men, hold Moulins, Grenoble, Besançon, Belfort, Bourg, Dijon, Strasbourg, Toulouse, Auch and Nantes.33147When, on March 27, 1794, the Committee of Public Safety, threatened by Hébert, has them disbanded for being Hébertists, in any of them are to remain at least as a nucleus, under various forms and names, either as kept by the local administration under the title of "paid guards,"33148or as disbanded soldiers, loitering about and doing nothing, getting themselves assigned posts of rank in the National Guard of their town on account of their exploits; in this way they keep themselves in service, which is indispensable, for it is through these that the régime is established and lasts. "The revolutionary army,33149say the orders and decrees promulgated, "is intended to repress anti-revolutionaries, to execute, whenever it is found necessary, revolutionary laws and measures for public safety," that is to say, "to guard those who are shut up, arrest 'suspects,' demolish chateaux, pull down belfries, ransack vestries for gold and silver objects, seize fine horses and carriages," and especially "to seek for private stores and monopolies," in short, to exercise manual constraint and strike every one on the spot with physical terror.—We readily see what sort of soldiers the revolutionary army is composed of.
Naturally, as it is recruited by voluntary enlistment, and all candidates have passed the purifying scrutiny of the clubs, it comprises none but ultra-Jacobins. Naturally, the pay being forty sous a day, it comprises none but the very lowest class. Naturally, as the work is as loathsome as it is atrocious, it comprises but few others33150than those out of employment and reduced to an enlistment to get a living, "hairdressers without customers, lackeys without places, vagabonds, wretches unable to earn a living by honest labor," "thick and hard hitters" who have acquired the habit of bullying, knocking down and keeping honest folks under their pikes, a gang of confirmed scoundrels making public brigandage a cloak for private brigandage, inhabitants of the slums glad to bring down their former superiors into the mud, and themselves take precedence and strut about in order to prove by their arrogance and self-display that they, in their turn, are princes.—"Take a horse, the nation pays for it!"33151said the sans-culottes of Bordeaux to their comrades in the street, who, "in a splendid procession," of three carriages, each drawn by six horses, escorted by a body on horseback, behind, in front, and each side, conducting Riouffe and two other "suspects" to the Réole prison. The commander of the squad who guards prisoners on the way to Paris, and who "starves them along the road to speculate on them," is an ex-cook of Agen, having become a gendarme; he makes them travel forty leagues extra, "purposely to glorify himself," and "let all Agen see that he has government money to spend, and that he can put citizens in irons." Accordingly, in Agen, "he keeps constantly and needlessly inspecting the vehicle," winking at the spectators, "more triumphant than if he had made a dozen Austrians prisoners and brought them along himself." At last, to show the crowd in the street the importance of his capture, he summons two blacksmiths to come out and rivet, on the legs of each prisoner, a cross-bar cannon-ball weighing eighty pounds.33152The more display these henchmen make of their brutality, the greater they think themselves. At Belfort, a patriot of the club dies, and a civic interment takes place; a detachment of the revolutionary army joins the procession; the men are armed with axes; on reaching the cemetery, the better to celebrate the funeral, "they cut down all the crosses (over the graves) and make a bonfire of them, while the carmagnole ends this ever memorable day."33153—Sometimes the scene, theatrical and played by the light of flambeaux, makes the actors think that they have performed an extraordinary and meritorious action, "that they have saved the country." "This very night," writes the agent at Bordeaux,33154nearly three thousand men have been engaged in an important undertaking, with the members of the Revolutionary Committee and of the municipality at the head of it. They visited every wholesale dealer's store in town and in the Faubourg des Chartrons, taking possession of their letter-books, sealing up their desks, arresting the merchants and putting them in the Seminiare.... Woe to the guilty!"—If the prompt confinement of an entire class of individuals is a fine thing for a town, the seizure of a whole town itself is still more imposing. Leaving Marseilles with a small army,33155commanded by two sans-culottes, they surround Martigne and enter it as if it were a mill. The catch is superb; in this town of five thousand souls there are only seventeen patriots; the rest are Federalists or Moderates. Hence a general disarmament and domiciliary visits. The conquerors depart, carrying off every able-bodied boy, "five hundred lads subject to the conscription, and leave in the town a company of sans-culottes to enforce obedience." It is certain that obedience will be maintained and that the garrison, joined to the seventeen patriots, will do as they like with their conquest.
In effect, all, both bodies and goods, are at their disposal, and they consequently begin with the surrounding countryside, entering private houses to get at their stores, also the farmhouses to have the grain threshed, in order to verify the declarations of their owners and see if these are correct: if the grain is not threshed out at once it will be done summarily and confiscated, while the owner will be sentenced to twelve months in irons; if the declaration is not correct, he is condemned as a monopolist and punished with death. Armed with this order,33156each band takes the field and gathers together not only grain, but supplies of every description. "That of Grenoble, the agent writes,33157does wonderfully; in one little commune alone, four hundred measures of wheat, twelve hundred eggs, and six hundred pounds of butter had been found. All this was quickly on the way to Grenoble." In the vicinity of Paris, the forerunners of the throng, provided "with pitchforks and bayonets, rush to the farms, take oxen out of their stalls, grab sheep and chickens, burn the barns, and sell their booty to speculators."33158"Bacon, eggs, butter and chickens—the peasants surrender whatever is demanded of them, and thenceforth have nothing that they can take to market. They curse the Republic which has brought war and famine on them, and nevertheless they do what they are told: on being addressed, 'Citizen peasant, I require of you on peril of your head,'... it is not possible to refuse."33159—Accordingly, they are only too glad to be let off so cheaply. On Brumaire 19, about seven o'clock in the evening, at Tigery, near Corbeil, twenty-five men "with sabers and pistols in their belts, most of them in the uniform of the National Guards and calling themselves the revolutionary army," enter the house of Gibbon, an old ploughman, seventy-one years of age, while fifty others guard all egress from it, so that the expedition may not be interfered with. Turlot, captain, and aid-de-camp to General Henriot, wants to know where the master of the house is.—"In his bed," is the reply.—"Wake him up."—The old man rises.—Give up your arms."—His wife hands over a fowling-piece, the only arm on the premises. The band immediately falls on the poor man, "strikes him down, ties his hands, and puts a sack over his head," and the same thing is done to his wife and to eight male and two female servants. "Now, give us the keys of your closets;" they want to be sure that there are no fleur-de-lys or other illegal articles. They search the old man's pockets, take his keys, and, to dispatch business, break into the chests and seize or carry off all the plate, "twenty-six table-dishes, three soup-ladles, three goblets, two snuff-boxes, forty counters, two watches, another gold watch and a gold cross." "We will draw up a procès-verbal of all this at our leisure in Meaux. Now, where's your silver? If you don't say where it is, the guillotine is outside and I will be your executioner." The old man yields and merely requests to be untied. But it is better to keep him bound, "so as to make him 'sing.'" They carry him into the kitchen and "put his feet into a heated brazier." He shouts with pain, and indicates another chest which they break open and then carry off what they find there, "seventy-two francs in coin and five or six thousand livres in assignats, which Gibbon had just received for the requisitions made on him for corn." Next, they break open the cellar doors, set a cask of vinegar running, carry wine upstairs, eat the family meal, get drunk and, at last, clear out, leaving Gibbon with his feet burnt, and garroted, as well as the other eleven members of his household, quite certain that there will be no pursuit.33160—In the towns, especially in federalist districts, however, these robberies are complicated with other assaults. At Lyons, whilst the regular troops are lodged in barracks, the revolutionary army is billeted on the householders, two thousand vile, sanguinary blackguards from Paris, and whom their general, Ronsin himself, calls "scoundrels and brigands," alleging, in excuse for this, that "honest folks cannot be found for such business." How they treat their host, his wife and his daughters may be imagined; contemporaries glide over these occurrences and, through decency or disgust, avoid giving details.33161Some simply use brutal force; others get rid of a troublesome husband by the guillotine; in the most exceptional cases they bring their wenches along with them, while the housekeeper has to arouse herself at one o'clock at night and light a fire for the officer who comes in with the jolly company.—And yet, there are others still worse, for the worst attract each other. We have seen the revolutionary committee at Nantes, also the representative on mission in the same city; nowhere did the revolutionary Sabbat rage so furiously, and nowhere was there such a traffic in human lives. With such band-leaders as Carrier and his tools on the Committee, one may be sure that the instrumentalists will be worthy.
Accordingly, several members of the Committee themselves oversee executions and lend a hand in the massacres.—One of these, Goullin, a creole from St. Domingo, sensual and nervous, accustomed to treating a Negro as an animal and a Frenchman as a white Negro, a Septembriseur on principle, chief instigator and director of the "drownings," goes in person to empty the prison of Bouffay, and, verifying that death, the hospital or releases, had removed the imprisoned for him, adds, of his own authority, fifteen names, taken haphazard, to reach his figures.—Joly, a commissioner on the Committee, very expert in the art of garroting, ties the hands of prisoners together two and two and conducts them to the river.33162—Grand-maison, another member of the Committee, a former dancing-master, convicted of two murders and pardoned before the Revolution, strikes down with his saber the imploring hands stretched out to him over the planks of the lighter.33163—Pinard, another Committee-commissioner, ransoms, steals off into the country and himself kills, through preference, women and children.33164Naturally, the three bands which operate along with them, or under their orders, comprise only men of their species. In the first one, called the Marat company, each of the sixty members swears, on joining it, to adopt Marat's principles and carry out Marat's doctrine. Goullin,33165one of the founders, demands in relation to each member, "Isn't there some one still more rascally? For we must have that sort to bring the aristocrats to reason!"33166After Frimaire 5 "the Maratists" boast of their arms being "tired out" with striking prisoners with the flat of their sabers to make them march to the Loire,33167and we see that, notwithstanding this fatigue, the business suited them, as their officers tried to influence Carrier to be detailed on the "drowning" service and because it was lucrative. The men and women sentenced to death, were first stripped of their clothes down to the shirt, and even the shift; it would be a pity to let valuable objects go to the bottom with their owners, and therefore the drowners divide these amongst themselves; a wardrobe in the house of the adjutant Richard is found full of jewelry and watches.33168This company of sixty must have made handsome profits out of the four or five thousand drowned.-The second band, called "the American Hussars," and who operated in the outskirts, was composed of blacks and mulattos, numerous enough in this town of privateers. It is their business to shoot women, whom they first violate; "they are our slaves," they say; "we have won them by the sweat of our brows." "Those who have the misfortune to be spared, become in their hands mad in a couple of days; in any event they are re-arrested shortly afterwards and shot.—The last band, which is styled "The German Legion," is formed out of German deserters and mercenaries speaking little or no French. They are employed by the Military Commission to dispatch the Vendeans picked up along the highways, and who are usually shot in groups of twenty five. "I came," says an eye-witness,33169"to a sort of gorge where there was a semi-circular quarry; there, I noticed the corpses of seventy-five women naked and lying on their backs." The victims of that day consisted of girls from sixteen to eighteen years of age. One of them says to her conductor, "I am sure you are taking us to die," and the German replies in his broken jargon, probably with a coarse laugh," No, it is for a change of air. They are placed in a row in front of the bodies of the previous day and shot. Those who do not fall, see the guns reloaded; these are again shot and the wounded dispatched with the butt ends of the muskets. Some of the Germans then rifle the bodies, while others strip them and "place them on their backs."—To find workmen for this task, it is necessary to descend, not only to the lowest wretches in France but, again, to the brutes of a foreign race and tongue, and yet lower still, to an inferior race degraded by slavery and perverted by license.
Such, from the top to the bottom of the ladder, at every stage of authority and obedience, is the ruling staff of the revolutionary government.33170Through its recruits and its work, through its morals and modes of proceeding, it evokes the almost forgotten image of its predecessors, for there is an image of it in the period from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century. At that time also, society was frequently overcome and ravaged by barbarians; dangerous nomads, malevolent outcasts, bandits turned into soldiers suddenly pounced down on an industrious and peaceful population. Such was the case in France with the "Routiers" and the "Tard-venus," at Rome with the army of the Constable of Bourbon, in Flanders with the bands of the Duke of Alba and the Duke of Parma, in Westphalia and in Alsace, with Wallenstein's veterans, and those of Bernard of Saxe-Weimar. They lived upon a town or province for six months, fifteen months, two years, until the town or province was exhausted. They alone were armed, master of the inhabitants, using and abusing things and persons according to their caprices. But they were declared bandits, calling themselves scorchers, (ecorcheurs) riders and adventurers, and not pretending to be humanitarian philosophers. Moreover, beyond an immediate and personal enjoyment, they demanded nothing; they employed brutal force only to satiate their greed, their cruelty, their lust.—The latter add to private appetites a far greater devastation, the systematic and gratuitous ravages enforced upon them by the superficial theory with which they are imbued.
3301 (return)[ "The Revolution," II., pp. 298-304, and p. 351.]
3302 (return)[ "The Revolution," II., pp.298-304, and p. 351. Should the foregoing testimony be deemed insufficient, the following, by those foreigners who had good opportunities for judging, may be added: (Gouverneur Morris, letter of December 3, 1794.) "The French are plunged into an abyss of poverty and slavery, a slavery all the more degrading because the men who have plunged them into it merit the utmost contempt."—Meissner, "Voyage à Paris," (at the end of 1795,) p. 160. "The (revolutionary) army and the revolutionary committees were really associations organized by crime for committing every species of injustice, murder, rapine, and brigandage with impunity. The government had deprived all men of any talent or integrity of their places and given these to its creatures, that is to say, to the dregs of humanity."—Baron Brinckmann, Chargé d'Affaires from Sweden. (Letter of July 11, 1799.) "I do not believe that the different classes of society in France are more corrupt than elsewhere; but I trust that no people may ever be ruled by as imbecile and cruel scoundrels as those that have ruled France since the advent of its new state of freedom... The dregs of the people, stimulated from above by sudden and violent excitement, have everywhere brought to the surface the scum of immorality."]
3303 (return)[ Fleury, "Babeuf," 139, 150.—Granier de Cassagnac, "Histoire du Directoire," II., 24-170.—(Trial of Babeuf, passim.) The above quotations are from documents seized in Babeuf's house, also from affidavits made by witnesses, and especially by captain Grizel.]
3304 (return)[ Moniteur, session of September 5, 1793. "Since our virtue, our moderation, our philosophic ideas, are of no use to us, let us be brigands for the good of the people; let us be brigands!"]
3305 (return)[ Babeuf, "Le Tribun du Peuple," No.40. Apologia for the men of September, "who have only been the priests, the sacrificers of a just immolation for public security. If anything is to be regretted it is that a larger and more general Second of September did not sweep away all starvers and all despoilers."]
3306 (return)[ Granier de Cassagnac, II., 90. (Deposition of Grisel.) Rossignol said, "That snuff-box is all I have left, here it is so that I may exist."—"Massard owned a pair of boots which he could not collect because he had no money with which to pay the shoemaker."]
3307 (return)[ Archives Nationales, Cf. 31167. (Report of Robin, Nivôse 9.): "The women always had a deliberative voice in the popular assemblies of the Pantheon section," and in all the other clubs they attended the meetings.]
3308 (return)[ Moniteur, XIX., 103. (Meeting of the Jacobin club, Dec. 28, 1793.) Dubois-Crancé introduces the following question to each member who is subjected to the weeding-out vote: "What have you done that would get you hung in case of a counter revolution?"]
3309 (return)[ Ibid., XVII., 410. (Speech by Maribon-Montaut, Jacobin club, Brumaire 21, year II.)]
3310 (return)[ Dauban, "Paris in 1794," 142. (Police report of Ventôse 13, year II.)]
3311 (return)[ Morellet, "Mémoires," II. 449.]
3312 (return)[ Dauban, ib.,, 35. (Note drawn up in January, 1794, probably by the physician Quêvremont de Lamotte.)—Ibid., 82.—Cf. Morellet, II., 434-470. (Details on the issue of certificates of civism, in September, 1793.)]
3313 (return)[ Archives Nationales, F.7, 31167. (Report by Latour-Lamontagne, Ventôse 1, year II.): "It is giving these associations too much influence; it is destroying the jurisdiction of the general assemblies (of the section.) We find accordingly, that these are being deserted and that the plotters and intriguers succeed in making popular clubs the centers of public business in order to control affairs more easily."]
3314 (return)[ Dauban, ibid., 203. (Report by Bacon-Tacon, Ventose 19.) "In the general assembly of the Maison Commune section all citizens of any rank in the companies have been weeded out. The slightest stain of incivism, the slightest negligence in the service, caused their rejection. Out of twenty-five who passed censorship-nineteen at least were rejected....Most of them due to their trade such as eating-house keeper, shoe-maker, cook, carpenter, tailor etc."]
3315 (return)[ Ibid., 141. (Report by Charmont, Ventôse 12.)—Ibid, 140. "There is only one way, it is said at the Café des Grands Hommes, on the boulevard, to keep from being arrested, and that is to scheme for admission into the civil and revolutionary committees when there happens to be a vacancy. Before salaries were attached to these places nobody wanted them; since that, there are disputes as to who shall be appointed."]
3316 (return)[ Ibid., 307. (Report of Germinal 7.)]
3317 (return)[ Wallon, "Histoire du Tribunal Revolutionaire," IV., 129.]
3318 (return)[ Archives Nationales, AF., II., 46. (Act of the Committee of Public Safety, Prairial 15.): "Citizens Pillon, Gouste and Né, members of the Revolutionary committee of the Marat section, are removed. Their duties will be performed by citizens Martin, Majon and Mirel. Mauvielle, rue de la Liberté, No. 32, is appointed on the said Revolutionary Committee to complete it, as it was only composed of eleven members."—And other similar acts.]
3319 (return)[ Duverger, decree of Frimaire 14, year II. "The application of revolutionary laws and measures of general security and public safety is confided to the municipalities and revolutionary committees." See, in chapter II., the extent of the domain thus defined. It embraces nearly everything. It suffices to run through the registers of a few of the revolutionary committees, to verify this enormous power and see how they interfere in every detail of individual life]
3320 (return)[ Archives Nationales, F.7, 31167. (Report, Nivôse 1, year II., by Leharival.)]
3321 (return)[ Dauban, "Paris en 1794," 307. (Report of March 29, 1794.) It here relates to the "Piques" Section, Place Vendome.]
3322 (return)[ Dauban, ib., 308. (Note found among Danton's papers and probably written by the physician, Quevremont de Lamotte.)]
3323 (return)[ Dauban, ib., 125. (Report of Bérard, Ventôse 10.) In the words of a woman belonging to the Bonne-Novelle section: "My husband has been in prison four months. And what for? He was one of the first at the Bastille; he has always refused places so that the good sans-culottes might have them, and, if he has made enemies, it was because he was unwilling to see these filled by ignoramuses or new-comers, who, vociferating and apparently thirsting for blood, have created a barrier of partisans around them."]
3324 (return)[ Dauban, ibid., 307. (Report of March 29, 1794.)]
3325 (return)[ Ibid., 150. (Report of Ventôse 14.)—Archives Nationales, F.7, 31167. (Reports of Nivôse 9 and 25.): "A great many citizens are found in the sections who are called out after the meeting, to get forty sous. I notice that most of them are masons, and even a few coach drivers belonging to the nation, who can do without the nation's indemnity, which merely serves them for drink to make them very noisy."—"The people complain, because the persons to whom the forty sous are given, to attend the section assemblies do nothing all day, being able to work at different trades.... and they relay upon these forty sous."]
3326 (return)[ Dauban, ibid., 312. (Note by Quevremont.)—Moniteur, XVIII., 568, (Meeting of the commune, Frimaire 11, year II.): "The Beaurepaire section advertises that wishing to put a stop to the cupidity of the wine-dealers of the arrondissement, it has put seals on all their cellars."]
3327 (return)[ Dauban, ibid., 345. (Order of the day by Henriot, Floreal 9.)]
3328 (return)[ Mallet-Dupan, II., 56. (March, 1794.)]
3329 (return)[ Buchez et Roux, XXVII., 10. (Speech by Barbaroux, May 14, 1793.)—Report on the papers found in Robespierre's apartment by Courtois, 285. (Letter by Collot d'Herbois Frimaire 3, year II., demanding that Paris Jacobins be sent to him at Lyons.) "If I could have asked for our old ones I should have done... but they are necessary at Paris, almost all of them having been made mayors."]
3330 (return)[ Meissner, "Voyage à Paris," (at the end of 1795,) 160. "Persons who can neither read nor write obtain the places of accountants of more or less importance."? Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol. 324. (Denunciations of Pio to the club, against his colleagues.)—Dauban, ibid., 35. (Note by Quevremont, Jan., 1794.): "The honest man who knows how to work cannot get into the ministerial bureaux, especially those of the War and Navy departments, as well as those of the Commune and of the Departments, without having a lump in his throat.—Offices are mostly filled by creatures of the Commune who very often have neither talent nor integrity. Again, the denunciations, always welcomed, however frivolous and baseless they may be, turn everything upside down."]
3331 (return)[ Moniteur, XXIV., 397 (Speech of Dubois-Crancé in the Convention Floréal 16, year III.)—Archives Nationales, F.7, 31167. (Report by Rolin, Nivôse 7, year II.) "The same complaints are heard against the civil Commissioners of the section, most of whom are unintelligent, not even knowing how to read."]
3332 (return)[ Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol. 1411. (August, 1793.) "Plan adopted" for the organization of the Police, "excepting executive modifications." In fact, some months later, the number of claqueurs, male and female, is much greater, and finally reaches a thousand. (Beaulieu, "Essais," V., l10.)—The same plan comprehends fifteen agents at two thousand four hundred francs, "selected from the frequenters of the clubs," to revise the daily morning lists; thirty at one thousand francs, for watching popular clubs, and ninety to twelve hundred francs for watching the section assemblies.]
3333 (return)[ Archives Nationales, F.7, 4436. (Letter of Bouchotte, Minister of war, Prairial 5, year II.) "The appointment of Ronsin, as well as of all his staff, again excited public opinion. The Committee, to assure itself, sent the list to the Jacobin club, where they were accepted."—Ibid., AF.,II., 58. "Paris, Brumaire II, year II., club of the Friends of Liberty and Equality, in session at the former Jacobin club, rue St. Honoré. List of the citizens who are to set out for Lyons and act as national commissioners. (Here follow their names.) All the citizens designated have undergone the inspection of the said club, at its meeting this day." (Here follow the signatures of the President and three secretaries.)—"Journal des Débats et Correspondence de la Société des Jacobins, No.543, 5th day of the 3rd month of the year II.—In relation to the formation of a new Central club, "Terrasson is of opinion that this club may become liberticide, and demands a committee to examine into it and secure its extinction. The committee demanded by Terrasson is appointed."—It is evident that they hold on energetically to this monopoly.—Cf. Moniteur, XIX., 637. (Ventôse 13.) Motion adopted in the Jacobin club, obliging the ministers to turn out of office any individual excluded from the club.]
3334 (return)[ Dauban, ibid., 307. (Report of Germinal 9.)]
3335 (return)[ Moniteur, XXII. 353. (Session of Brumaire 20, year III. Reclamation made by M. Bélanger at the bar of the Convention.)]
3336 (return)[ Archives Nationales, AF., II., 40. (Acts passed by the Committee of Public Safety at the dates indicated.) Beaulieu, "Essais," v., 200. (Ibid.) The registers of the Committee of Public Safety contain a number of similar gratuities paid to provincial clubs and patriots, for instance, AF., II. 58, (Brumaire 8), fifty thousand francs to Laplanche, and, (Brumaire 9), fifty thousand francs to Couthon, "to maintain public spirit in Calvados, to revive public spirit in Lyons, to aid, as required, the less successful patriots who zealously devote their time to the service of their country."]
3337 (return)[ Dauban, ibid., 171, (report of Ventôse 17), and 243, (report of Ventôse 25), on the civil-committees and revolutionary committees, who order meat served to them before serving it to the sick, and who likewise serve the good friends of their wives.? Ibid., 146. (Report of Ventôse 10.)... Archives Nationales F.7, 2475. (Register of the deliberations of the revolutionary committee of the Piques sections, Brumaire 27, year II.) "The Committee orders that the two-horse cab belonging to Lemarche be henceforth at the service of the section and of the Committee when measures of security are concerned." In this register, and others of the same series, we clearly see the inside of a committee and its vast despotism. Style and orthography, with almost all, are of the same low order.]
3338 (return)[ Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol. 1411. (Report of Aug.21 and 22, 1793.) "General Henriot sent me several.... who made use of the authority of the Committee of Public Safety and General Security, as well as of that which he delegated to me, to make domiciliary visits at the houses of individuals who were not assured patriots; but that did not warrant their receiving money and even abstracting it."]
3339 (return)[ Dauban, ibid., 36 and 48. (Case of the Notary, Brichard.)]
3340 (return)[ Cf. "The Revolution," II., 302, 303.—Mercier, "Paris pendant la Revolution," I., 151.—Moniteur, XVIII., 660. (Session of Frimaire 24, speech by Lecomtre in the Convention.)—On robberies and the bribes paid, see, among other documents, "Mémoires sur les Prisons," I., 290. (Eighty thousand francs of bribes given to the head of the police force by Perisial, keeper of an eating-house, for the privilege of feeding prisoners in St. Lazare.)]
3341 (return)[ Buchez et Roux, XXXV., 77. (Trial of Fouquier-Tinville.) Testimony of Robillard: "Another day, in the general assembly, he struck a citizen with his saber."]
3342 (return)[ Buchez et Roux, XXXV., 407. (Lists in Robespierre's handwriting.)]
3343 (return)[ Miot de Melito, "Mémoires," I., 46-51.-Buchot is not the only one of his species in the ministry of Foreign Affairs. In the archives of this ministry, vol. 324, may be found the sayings and doings of a certain Pio, an Italian refugee who slipped into the place, simulating poverty, and displaying patriotism, and who denounces his chief and colleagues.-The ex-notary Pigeot, condemned to twenty years in irons and put in the pillory, Frimaire 9, year III., will come to the surface; he is encountered under the Directory as introducer of ambassadors.-Concerning one of the envoys of the Directory to Switzerland, here is a note b~ Mallet-Dupan. ("Anecdotes manuscrites," October, 1797.) "The Directonal ambassador, who has come to exact from the Swiss the expulsion of the body-guard, is named Mingot, of Belfort, a relation of Reubell's, former body-guard to M. le Comte d'Artois.-He came to Zurich with a prostitute, a seamstress of Zurich, established in Berne. He was living with her at the expense of the Zurich government. Having invited the family of this creature, that is to say a common horse-driver with his wife and some other persons, to dinner, they drank and committed such excesses that the driver's wife, who was big with child, gave birth to it in the midst of the banquet. This creature gave Mingot a disease which has laid him up at Basle."]
3344 (return)[ "The Revolution," II., 338, 348, 354.]
3345 (return)[ Martel, "Types Révolutionnaires," 136-144.—The Minister of War appoints Henriot brigadier-general, July 3, 1793, and major-general on the 19th of September, and says in a postscript, "Please communicate your service record to me," unknown in the ministry because they were of no account.—On the orgies at Choisy-sur-Seine, V. (Archives, W2, 500-501), see investigation of Thermidor 18 and 19, year II., made at Boisy-sur-Seine by Blache, agent of the committee of General Security. Boulanger, brigadier-general, and Henriot's first lieutenant, was an ex-companion jeweller.]
3346 (return)[ Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol. 1411. Orders of the day by Henriot, September 16, Vendémiaire 29, year II., and Brumaire 19, year II. Many of these orders of the day are published in Dauban, ("Paris en 1794"), p. 33. "Let our enemies pile up their property, build houses and palaces, let them have them, what do we care, we republicans, we do not want them! All we need to shelter us is a cabin, and as for wealth, simply the habits, the virtues and the love of our country. Headquarters, etc."—P. 43: "Yesterday evening a fire broke out in the Grand Augustins.... Everybody worked at it and it was put out in a very short time. Under the ancient regime the fire would have lasted for days. Under the system of freemen the fire lasted only an hour. What a difference!.. Headquarters, etc."]
3347 (return)[ Wallon, "Histoire du Tribunal Révolutionnaire de Paris," V.252, 420. (Names and qualifications of the members of the Commune of Paris, guillotined Thermidor 10 and 11.) The professions and qualifications of some of its members are given in Lymery's Biographical Dictionary, in Morellet's Memoirs and in Arnault's Souvenirs.??Moniteur?? XVI., 719. (Verdicts of the Revolutionary Tribunal, Fructidor 15, year II.) Forty-three members of the civil or revolutionary committees, sectional commissioners, officers of the National Guard and of the cannoneers, signed the list of the council-general of the commune as present on the 9th of Thermidor and are put on trial as Robespierre's adherents. But they promptly withdrew their signatures, all being acquitted except one. They are leaders in the Jacobin quarter and are of the same sort arid condition as their brethren of the Hôtel-de-ville. One only, an ex-collector of rentes, may have had an education; the rest are carpenters, floor-tilers, shoemakers, tailors, wine-dealers, eating-house keepers, cartmen, bakers, hair-dressers, and joiners. Among them we find one ex-stone-cutter, one ex-office runner, one ex-domestic and two sons of Samson the executioner.]
3348 (return)[ Morellet, "Mémoires," I., 436-472.]
3349 (return)[ On the ascendancy of the talkers of this class see Dauban ("Paris en 1794," pp. 118-143). Details on an all-powerful clothes-dealer in the Lombards Section. If we may believe the female citizens of the Assembly "he said everywhere that whoever was disagreeable to him should be turned out of the popular club." (Ventôse 13, year II.)]
3350 (return)[ Arnault, "Souvenirs d'un Sexagénaire," III., 111. Details on another member of the commune, Bergot, ex-employee at the Halle-aux-Cuirs and police administrator, may be found in "Mémoires des Prisons," I., 232, 239, 246, 289, 290. Nobody treated the prisoners more brutally, who protested against the foul food served out to them, than he. "It is too good for bastards who are going to be guillotined.".... "He got drunk with the turnkeys and with the commissioners themselves. One day he staggered in walking, and spoke only in hiccoughs: he would go in that condition. The house-guard refused to recognize him; he was arrested" and the concierge had to repeat her declarations to make the officer of the post "give up the hog."]
3351 (return)[ "Mémoires sur les Prisons," I., 211. (" Tableau Historique de St. Lazare.") The narrator is put into prison in the rue de Sèvres in October, 1793.—II., 186. ("An historical account of the jail in the rue de Sèvres.") The narrator was confined there during the last months of the Reign of Terror.]
3352 (return)[ A game of chance.]
3353 (return)[ "Un Séjour en France de 1792 à 1795," 281. "We had an appointment in the afternoon with a person employed by the committee on National Domains; he was to help my friend with her claims. This man was originally a valet to the Marquise's brother; on the outbreak of the Revolution he set up a shop, failed and became a rabid Jacobin, and, at last, member of a revolutionary committee. As such, he found a way.... to intimidate his creditors and obtain two discharges of his indebtedness without taking the least trouble to pay his debts.".... "I know an old lady who was kept in prison three months for having demanded from one of these patriots three hundred livres which he owed her." (June 3, 1795.) "I have generally noticed that the republicans are either of the kind I have just indicated, coffee-house waiters, jockeys, gamblers, bankrupts, and low scribblers, or manual laborers more earnest in their principles, more ignorant and more brutal, all spending what they have earned in vulgar indulgence."]
3354 (return)[ Schmidt, "Tableaux Historiques de la Revolution Française," II., 248, 249. (Agent's reports, Frimaire 8, year 111.) "The prosecution of Carrier is approved by the public, likewise the condemnation of the former revolutionary committee called the "BonnetRouge." Ten of its members are condemned to twenty years in irons. The public is overjoyed."—Ibid., (Frimaire 9), "The people rushed in crowds to the square of the old commune building to see the members of the former revolutionary committee of the Bonnet-Rouge sections, who remained seated on the bench until six o'clock, in the light of flambeaux. They had to put up with many reproaches and much humiliation."—"Un Sejour en France," 286, (June 6, 1795). "I have just been interrupted by a loud noise and cries under my window; I heard the names Scipio and Solon distinctly pronounced in a jeering and insulting tone of voice. I sent Angelique to see what was the matter and she tells me that it is a crowd of children following a shoemaker of the neighborhood who was member of a revolutionary committee... and had called himself Scipio Solon. As he had been caught in several efforts at stealing he could no longer leave his shop without being reviled for his robberies and hooted at under his Greek and Roman names."]
3355 (return)[ Barère, "Mémoires," II., 324.]
3356 (return)[ Montieur, XXII., 742. (Report by Cambon, Frimaire 6, year II.) Ibid., 22.—Report by Lindet, September 20, 1794): "The land and navy forces, war and other services, deprive agricultural pursuits and other professions of more than one million five hundred thousand citizens. It would cost the Republic less to support six million men in all the communes."—"Le Departement des Affaires étrangères," by Fr. Masson, 382. (According to "Paris à la fin du dix-huitieme siecle," by Pujoulx, year IX.): "At Paris alone there are more than thirty thousand (government) clerks; six thousand at the most do the necessary writing; the rest cut away quills, consume ink and blacken paper. In old times, there were too many clerks in the bureaux relatively to the work; now, there are three times as many, and there are some who think that there are not enough."]
3357 (return)[ "Souvenirs de M. Hua," a parliamentary advocate, p.96. (A very accurate picture of the small town Coucy-le-Chateau, in Aisne, from 1792 to 1794.)—"Archives des Affaires étrangères," vol.334. (Letter of the agents, Thionville, Ventôse 24, year II.) The district of Thionville is very patriotic, submits to the maximum and requisitions, but not to the laws prohibiting outside worship and religious assemblies. "The apostles of Reason preached in vain to the people, telling them that, up to this time, they had been deceived and that now was the time to throw off the yoke of prejudice: 'we are willing to believe that, thus far, we have been deceived, but who will guarantee us that you will not deceive us in your turn?'"]