Chapter 3

FOOTNOTES:[16]Galignani's Paris Guide.[17]History of French Revolution, by E.E. Crowe, vol. ii., p. 150.—Enc. Am.[18]The Duke of St. Simon, who was one of the council of the regency, in his admirable memoirs, gives the following sketch of Dubois: "Dubois was a little, thin, meagre man, with a polecat visage. All the vices, falsehood, avarice, licentiousness, ambition, and the meanest flattery contended in him for the mastery. He lied to such a degree as to deny his own actions when taken in the fact. In spite of his debauchery he was very industrious. His wealth was immense, and his revenue amounted to millions."[19]Women of France, p. 91.[20]Women of France, p. 170.[21]Historical View of the French Revolution, by J. Michelet, vol. i., p. 46.

FOOTNOTES:

[16]Galignani's Paris Guide.

[17]History of French Revolution, by E.E. Crowe, vol. ii., p. 150.—Enc. Am.

[18]The Duke of St. Simon, who was one of the council of the regency, in his admirable memoirs, gives the following sketch of Dubois: "Dubois was a little, thin, meagre man, with a polecat visage. All the vices, falsehood, avarice, licentiousness, ambition, and the meanest flattery contended in him for the mastery. He lied to such a degree as to deny his own actions when taken in the fact. In spite of his debauchery he was very industrious. His wealth was immense, and his revenue amounted to millions."

[19]Women of France, p. 91.

[20]Women of France, p. 170.

[21]Historical View of the French Revolution, by J. Michelet, vol. i., p. 46.

CHAPTER IV.

DESPOTISM AND ITS FRUITS.

Assumptions of the Aristocracy.—Molière.—Decay of the Nobility.—Decline of the Feudal System.—Difference between France and the United States.—Mortification of Men of Letters.—Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau.—Corruption of the Church.—Diderot.—The Encyclopedists.—Testimony of De Tocqueville.—Frederic II. of Prussia.—Two Classes of Opponents of Christianity.—Enormity of Taxation.—Misery of the People.—"Good old Times of the Monarchy!"

Havinggiven a brief sketch of the character of Louis XV., let us now contemplate the condition of France during his long reign. It has been estimated that the privileged class in both Church and State consisted of but one hundred and fifty thousand. It was their doctrine, enforced by the most rigorous practice, that the remaining twenty-five millions of France were created but to administer to their luxury; that this was the function which Providence intended them to perform. Every office which could confer honor and emolument in the Church, the army, the State, or the Court, was filled by the members of an aristocracy who looked with undisguised contempt upon all those who were not high-born, however opulent or however distinguished for talents and literary culture. Louis XV., surrounded by courtesans and debauched courtiers, deemed it presumption in Voltaire to think of sitting at the same table with the king. "I can give pensions to Voltaire, Montesquieu, Fontinelle, and Maupertius," said the king, "but I can not dine and sup withthese people."[22]

The courtiers of Louis XIV. manifested in the most offensive manner the mortification which they felt in being obliged to receive Molière, the most distinguished comic dramatist of France, to their table. No degree of genius could efface the ignominy of not being nobly born.[23]But, notwithstanding the arrogance of the nobles, they, as a class, had fallen into contempt. All who could support a metropolitan establishment had abandoned their chateaux and repaired to Paris. The rural castle was shut up, silence reigned in its halls, and grass waved in its court-yard. The bailiff only was left behind to wring the last farthing from the starving tenantry. Many of the noble families were in decay. Their poverty rendered their pride only the more contemptible. Several of the provinces contained large numbers of these impoverished aristocratic families, who had gradually parted with their lands, and who were living in a state of very shabby gentility. They were too proud to work and too poor to live without working. Turgot testifies that in the Province of Limousin there were several thousand noble families, not fifteen of whom had an income of four thousand dollars a year.[24]One of the crown officers wrote in 1750:

"The nobility of this section are of very high rank, but very poor, and as proud as they are poor. The contrast between their former and their present condition is humiliating. It is a very good plan to keep them poor, in order that they shall need our aid and serve our purposes. They have formed a society into which no one can obtain admission unless he can prove four quarterings. It is not incorporated by letters patent, but it is tolerated, as it meets but once a year and in the presence of the intendant. These noblemen hear mass, after which they return home, some on their Rosinantes, some on foot. You will enjoy this comical assembly."

In days of feudal grandeur the noble was indeed the lord and master of the peasantry. He was their government and their sole protector from violence. There was then reason for feudal service. But now the noble was a drone. He received, and yet gave nothing, absolutely nothing, in return. The peasant despised as well as hated him, and derisively called him thevulture.

The feudal system is adapted only to a state of semi-barbarism. It can no more survive popular intelligence than darkness can exist after the rising of the sun. When, in the progress of society, nobles cease to be useful and become only drones; when rich men, vulgar in character, can purchase titles of nobility, so that the nobles cease to be regarded as a peculiar and heaven-appointed race; when men from the masses, unennobled, acquire opulence, education, and that polish of manners which place them on an equality with titled men; when men of genius and letters, introduced into the saloons of the nobles, discover their own vast superiority to their ignorant, frivolous, and yet haughty entertainers; and when institutions of literature, science, and art create an aristocracy of scholarship where opulence, refinement, and the highest mental culture combine their charms, then an hereditary aristocracy, which has no support but its hereditary renown, must die. Its hour is tolled.

Such was the state of France at the close of the reign of Louis XV. It is estimated that there were in France at that time five hundred thousand well-informed citizens.[25]This fact explains both the outbreak of the Revolution and its failure. They were too many to submit to the arrogance of the nobles; hence the insurrection. They were too few to guide and control the infuriated masses when the pressure was taken from them, and hence the reign of terror, the anarchy and blood. The United States, with a population about the same as that of France in the morning of her Revolution, has four or five millions of intelligent and well-educated men. These men support our institutions. But for them, the republic would be swept away like chaff before the wind.

As we have before said, men of letters were patronized by the king and the court, but it was a patronage which seemed almost an insult to every honorable mind. The haughty duke would look down condescendingly, and even admiringly, upon the distinguished scholar, and would admit him into his saloon as a curiosity. High-born ladies would smile upon him, and would condescend to take his arm and listen to his remarks. But such mingling with society stung the soul with a sense of degradation, and none inveighedwith greater bitterness against aristocratic assumption than those men of genius who had been most freely admitted into the halls of the great. They were thus exasperated to inquire into the origin of ranks, and their works were filled with eulogiums of equality and fraternity.

It was this social degradation which was one of the strongest incentives to revolution. This united all the industrial classes in France, all who had attained wealth, and all men of intellectual eminence, in the cry for reform. Equality of rights was the great demand thus forced from the heart of the nation.Fraternitybecame the watch-word of the roused and rising masses.[26]

Thought was the great emancipator. Men of genius were the Titans who uphove the mountains of prejudice and oppression. They simplified political economy, and made it intelligible to the popular mind. Voltaire assailed with keenest sarcasm and the most piercing invectives the corruptions of the Church, unjustly, and most calamitously for the interests of France, representing those corruptions as Christianity itself. Montesquieu popularized and spread before the nation those views of national policy which might render a people prosperous and happy; and Rousseau, with a seductive eloquence which the world has never seen surpassed, excited every glowing imagination with dreams of fascinating but unattainable perfection. Nearly all the revolutionary writers represented religion not merely as a useless superstition, but as one of the worst scourges of the state. Thus they took from the human heart the influence which alone can restrain passion and humanize the soul.

They represented man but as a lamb, meek and innocent, dumb before his shearers, and seeking only to live harmlessly and happily in the outflowings of universal benevolence and love. This lamb-like man needed no more religion than does the butterfly or the robin. He was to live his joyous day, unrestrained by customs, or laws, or thoughts of the future, and then was to pass away like the lily or the rose, having fulfilled his function. Death an eternal sleep, was the corner-stone of their shallow and degrading philosophy. The advocates of this sentimentalism were amazed when they found the masses, brutalized by ignorance and ages of oppression, and having been taught that there was no God before whom they were to stand in judgment, come forth into the arena of the nations, not as lambs, but as wolves, thirsting for blood and reckless in devastation. Libertines in France are still infidels, but they have seen the effect of their doctrines, and no longer dare to proclaim them. "Where is the Frenchman of the present day," says De Tocqueville, "who would write such books as those of Diderot or Helvetius?"[27]

Unfortunately, fatally for the liberties of France, the leading writers were infidels. Mistaking the corruptions of Christianity for Christianity itself, they assailed religion furiously, and succeeded in eradicating from men's souls all apprehensions of responsibility to God. Nothing could more effectually brutalize and demonize the soul of man. And yet the Papal Church,as a towering hierarchy, had become so corrupt, such an instrument of oppression, and such a support of despotism, that no reform could have been accomplished but by its overthrow.[28]It was the monarch's right arm of strength; it was the rampart which was first to be battered down.

The Church had no word of censure for vice in high places. It spread its shield before the most enormous abuses, and, by its inquisitorial censorship of the press, protected the most execrable institutions. The Church, enervated by wealth and luxurious indulgence, had also become so decrepit as to invite attack. No man could summon sufficient effrontery to attempt her defense. The only reply which bloated and debauched ecclesiastics could make to their assailants was persecution and the dungeon. There were a few truly pious men in the Church; they did, however, but exhibit in clearer contrast the general corruption with which they were surrounded.

Diderot, though educated by the Jesuits—perhapsbecausehe was educated by the Jesuits—commenced his career by an attack upon Christianity in hisPensées Philosophiques. He was sent to prison, and his book burned by the public executioner. Still, multitudes read and so warmly applauded that he was incited to form the plan of the celebrated Encyclopedia which was to contain a summary of all human knowledge. In this grand enterprise he allied with him the ablest scholars and writers of the day—Mably, Condillac, Mercier, Raynal, Buffon, Helvetius, D'Alembert, and others. Nearly all these men, despising theChurch, were unbelievers inChristianity. They consequently availed themselves of every opportunity to assail religion. The court, alarmed, laid a prohibition upon the work, but did not dare to punish the writers, as they were too numerous and powerful. Thus infidelity soon became a fashion. Notwithstanding the prohibition, the work was soon resumed, and became one of the most powerful agents in ushering in the Revolution.

"Christianity was hated by these philosophers," writes De Tocqueville, "less as a religious doctrine than as a political institution; not because the ecclesiastics assumed to regulate the concerns of the other world, but because they were landlords, seigneurs, tithe-holders, administrators in this; not because the Church could not find a place in the new society which was being established, but because she then occupied a place of honor, privilege, and might in the society which was to be overthrown."

Christianity is the corner-stone of a true democracy. It is the unrelenting foe of despotism, and therefore despotism has invariably urged its most unrelenting warfare against the Bible. When papacy became the great spiritual despotism which darkened the world, the Bible was the book which it hated and feared above all others. With caution this corrupt hierarchy selected a few passages upon submission and obedience, which it allowed to be read to the people, while the majestic principles of fraternity, upon which its whole moral code is reared, were vigilantly excluded from the public mind. The peasant detected with a Bible was deemed as guilty as if caught with the tools of a burglar or the dies of a counterfeiter.

It was impossible, however, to conceal the fact that the Bible was the advocate of purity of heart and life. Its teachings created a sense of guilt in the human soul which could not be effaced. Corrupt men were consequently eager to reject the Bible, that they might appease reproachful conscience. Frederick II., of Prussia, an atheist and a despiser of mankind, became the friend and patron of Voltaire in his envenomed assaults upon Christianity. Louis XV., anxious to maintain friendly political relations with Prussia, hesitated to persecute the recognized friend of the Prussian king. The courtiers, generally with joy, listened to those teachings of unbelief which relieved them from the restraints of Christian morality. Thus Christianity had two classes of vigorous assailants. The first were those who knew not how to discriminate between Christianity and its corruptions. They considered Christianity and the Papal Church as one, and endeavored to batter the hateful structure down as a bastille of woe. Another class understood Christianity as a system frowning upon all impurity, and pressing ever upon the mind a final judgment. They were restive under its restraints, and labored for its overthrow that guilt might find repose in unbelief.

Astonishment is often expressed at the blindness with which the upper classes of the Old Régime allowed their institutions to be assailed. "But where," asks De Tocqueville, "could they have learned better. Ruling classes can no more acquire a knowledge of the dangers they have to avoid, without free institutions, than their inferiors can discern the rights they ought to preserve in the same circumstances."[29]

The measureless extravagance of the court had plunged the nation into a state of inextricable pecuniary embarrassment. The whole burden of the taxes, in myriad forms, for the support of the throne in Oriental luxury, for the support of the nobles, who were perhaps the most profligate race of men the world has ever known; for the support of the Church, whose towering ecclesiastics, performing no useful functions, did not even affect the concealment of their vices, and who often vied with the monarch himself in haughtiness and grandeur; for the support of the army, ever engaged in extravagant wars, and employed to keep the people in servitude—all these taxes so enormous as to sink the mass of the people in the lowest state of poverty, debasement, and misery, fell upon the unprivileged class alone.

Taxes ran into every thing. The minister who could invent a new tax was applauded as a man of genius. All the offices of the magistracy were sold. Judges would pay an enormous sum for their office, and remunerate themselves a hundred-fold by selling their decisions. Thus justice became a farce. Titles of nobility were sold, which, introducing the purchaser intothe ranks of the privileged class, threw the heavier burden upon the unprivileged. All the trades and professions were put up for sale. Even the humble callings of making wigs, of weighing coal, of selling pork, were esteemed privileges, and were sold at a high price. There was hardly any thing which a man could do, which he was not compelled to buy the privilege of doing. A person who undertook to count the number of these offices or trades for which a license was sold, growing weary of his task, estimated them at over three hundred thousand.[30]

An army of two hundred thousand tax-gatherers devoured every thing. To extort substance from the starving people the most cruel expedients were adopted. All the energies of galleys, gibbets, dungeons, and racks were called into requisition. When the corn was all absorbed, the cattle were taken. The ground, exhausted for want of manure, became sterile. Men, women, and children yoked themselves to the plow. Deserts extended, the population died off, and beautiful France was becoming but a place of graves.

The people thus taxed owned but one third of the soil, the clergy and the nobles owning the other two thirds. From this one third the people paid taxes and feudal service to the nobles, tithes to the clergy, and imposts to the king. They enjoyed no political rights, could take no share in the administration, and were ineligible to any post of honor or profit. No man could obtain an office in the army unless he brought a certificate, signed by four nobles, that he was of noble blood.

The imposition of the tax was entirely arbitrary. No man could tell one year what his tax would be the next. There was no principle in the assessment except to extort as much as possible. The tax-gatherers would be sent into a district to collect one year one million of francs, perhaps the next year it would be two millions. No language can describe the dismay in the humble homes of the peasants when these cormorants, armed with despotic power, darkened their doors. The seed-corn was taken, the cow was driven off, the pig was taken from the pen. Mothers plead with tears that food might be left for their children, but the sheriff, inured to scenes of misery, had a heart of rock. He always went surrounded by a band of bailiffs to protect him from violence. Fearful was the vengeance he could wreak upon any one who displeased him.

The peasant, to avoid exorbitant taxation, assumed the garb of poverty, dressed his children in rags, and carefully promoted the ruin and dilapidation of his dwelling. "Fear," writes de Tocqueville, "often made the collector pitiless. In some parishes he did not show his face without a band of bailiffs and followers at his back. 'Unless he is sustained by bailiffs,' writes an intendant in 1764, 'the taxables will not pay. At Villefranche alone six hundred bailiffs and followers are always kept on foot.'"[31]

Indeed, the government seemed to desire to keep the people poor. Savages will lop off the leg or the arm of a prisoner that he may be more helplessly in their power. Thus those despotic kings would desolate their realms with taxation, and would excite wars which would exhaust energy and paralyze industry, that the people thus impoverished and kept in ignorance might bow more submissively to the yoke. The wars which in endless monotony are inscribed upon the monuments of history were mostly waged by princes to engross the attention of their subjects. When a despot sees that public attention is directed, or is likely to be directed, to any of his oppressive acts, he immediately embarks in some war, to divert the thoughts of the nation. This is the unvarying resource of despotism. After a few hundred thousand of the people have been slaughtered, and millions of money squandered in the senseless war, peace is then made. But peace brings but little repose to the people. They must now toil and starve that they may raise money to pay for the expenses of the war. Such, in general, has been the history of Europe for a thousand years. Despots are willing that billows of blood should surge over the land, that the cries of the oppressed may thus be drowned.

So excessive was the burden of taxation, that it has been estimated by a very accurate computation that, if the produce of an acre of land amounted to sixteen dollars, the king took ten, the duke, as proprietor, five, leaving one for the cultivator.[32]Thus, if we suppose a peasant with his wife and children to have cultivated forty acres of land, the proceeds of which, at sixteen dollars per acre, amounted to six hundred and forty dollars, the king and the duke and the Church took six hundred of this, leaving but forty dollars for the support of the laborers.

Let us suppose a township in the United States containing twenty square miles, with five thousand inhabitants. Nearly all these are cultivators of the soil, and so robbed by taxes that they can only live in mud hovels and upon the coarsest food. Clothed in rags, they toil in the fields with their bareheaded and barefooted wives and daughters. The huts of these farmers are huddled together in a miserable dirty village. In the village there are a few shop-keepers, who have acquired a little property, and have become somewhat intelligent. There is also a physician, and a surgeon, and a poor, dispirited, half-starved parish priest. Upon one of the eminences of the town there is a lordly castle of stone, with its turrets and towers, its park and fish-pond. This massive structure belongs to the duke. Weary of the solitude of the country, he has withdrawn from the castle, and is living with his family in the metropolis, indulging in all its expensive dissipations. His purse can only be replenished by the money which he can extort from the cultivators of the land who surround his castle; and his expenses are so enormous that he is ever harassed by an exhausted purse.

For a few weeks in the summer he comes down to his castle, from the metropolis, with his city companions, to engage in rural sports. Wild boars, deer, rabbits, and partridges abound in his park. The boars and the deer range the fields of the farmers, trampling down and devouring their crops; but the farmer must not harm them, lest he incur the terrible displeasure of the duke. The rabbits and the partridges infest the fields of grain; but the duke has issued a special injunction that the weedsevenmust not be disturbed, lest the brooding partridges should be frightened away, to the injury of his summer shooting.

Perhaps one half of the land in the township belongs to the duke, and the farmers are mere tenants at will. During past ages, about half of the land has been sold and is owned by those who till it. But even they have to pay a heavy ground-rent annually to the duke for the land which they have bought. If a farmer wishes to purchase a few acres from his neighbor, he must first pay a sum to the duke for permission to make the purchase. For three or four days in the week the farmer is compelled, as feudal service, to work in the fields of the duke, without remuneration. When he has gathered in the harvest on his own land, a large portion of it he must cart to the granaries of the duke as a tax. If he has any grain to be ground, or grapes to press, or bread to bake, he must go to the mill, the wine-press, and the oven of the duke, and pay whatever toll he may see fit to extort. Often even the use of hand-mills was prohibited, and the peasant had to purchase the privilege of bruising his grain between two stones. He could not even dip a bowl of water from the sea, and allow it to evaporate to get some salt, lest he should interfere with the monopoly of the king. If he wishes to take any of his produce to market, he must pay the duke for permission to travel on the highway. Thus robbed under the name of custom and law, the farmer toils joylessly from the cradle to the grave, with barely sufficient food and shelter to keep him in respectable working order; and when he dies, he leaves his children to the same miserable doom. Such was the condition of the great mass of the French people during the long reign of Louis XV.

This intolerable bondage spread all through the minutiæ of social life. It was, of course, impossible but that the masses of the people should be in the lowest state of ignorance and indigence. Their huts, destitute of all the necessities of civilized life, were dark and comfortless, and even the merriment with which they endeavored at times to beguile their misery was heartless, spasmodic, and melancholy.[33]

In the year 1785, Thomas Jefferson wrote from Paris to Mrs. Trist, of Philadelphia, "Of twenty millions of people supposed to be in France, I am of opinion that there are nineteen millions more wretched, more accursed in every circumstance of human existence, than the most conspicuously wretched individual of the whole United States."[34]

Again he writes, in the same year, to M. Bellini, a Florentine gentleman who was professor in William and Mary College, "I find the general state of humanity here most deplorable. The truth of Voltaire's observation offers itself perpetually, that every man here must be either the hammer or the anvil."

FOOTNOTES:[22]Madame Campan's Memoirs of Marie Antoinette, vol. i., p. 388.[23]Ib.[24]"Men of rank sold their land piecemeal to the peasantry, reserving nothing but seigneurial rents, which furnished a nominal but not a substantial competency."—The Old Régime, De Tocqueville, p. 103.[25]History of the French Revolution, by M. Rabaud de St. Etienne, p. 188.[26]"A lord," writes Montesquieu, bitterly, "is a man who sees the king, speaks to the minister, has ancestors, debts, and pensions."[27]The Old Régime, by De Tocqueville, p. 18."It is a singularity worth remarking that the Gospel is nothing but a declaration of rights. Its mysteries were a long time hidden, because they attacked the priests and the great."—M. Rabaud de St. Etienne, p. 174.[28]"Shall we say, then, Woe to Philosophism that it destroyed Religion, what it called 'extinguishing the abomination'—écraser l'infâme? Woe rather to those that made the Holy an abomination and extinguishable."—Carlyle, French Revolution, i., 56.[29]Old Régime, p. 175.Count Segur, a peer of France, in his Memoirs, has very frankly described the feelings with which he and the young nobles who were his companions regarded the writings of the philosophers:"We felt disposed to adopt with enthusiasm the philosophical doctrines professed by literary men, remarkable for their boldness and their wit. Voltaire seduced our imagination. Rousseau touched our hearts. We felt a secret pleasure in seeing that their attacks were directed against an old fabric which presented to us a Gothic and ridiculous appearance. We were pleased with this petty war, although it was undermining our own ranks and privileges and the remains of our ancient power. But we felt not these attacks personally. It was, as yet, but a war of words and paper, which did not appear to us to threaten the superiority of existence which we enjoyed, consolidated as we thought it by a possession of many centuries."[30]History of the Revolution of France, by M. Rabaud de St. Etienne.[31]For appalling proof of the sufferings of the tax-payers, turn to the pages of Michelet, of De Tocqueville, of any writer upon theOld Régime.[32]Arthur Young, vol. i., p. 574; Marshall's Travels, vol. iv., p. 322.[33]"Care must be taken not to misunderstand the gayety which the French have often exhibited in the greatest affliction. It is a mere attempt to divert the mind from the contemplation of misfortune which seems inevitable."—The Old Régime, by De Tocqueville, p. 167.[34]Life of Jefferson, by Henry T. Randall, vol. i., p. 432.

FOOTNOTES:

[22]Madame Campan's Memoirs of Marie Antoinette, vol. i., p. 388.

[23]Ib.

[24]"Men of rank sold their land piecemeal to the peasantry, reserving nothing but seigneurial rents, which furnished a nominal but not a substantial competency."—The Old Régime, De Tocqueville, p. 103.

[25]History of the French Revolution, by M. Rabaud de St. Etienne, p. 188.

[26]"A lord," writes Montesquieu, bitterly, "is a man who sees the king, speaks to the minister, has ancestors, debts, and pensions."

[27]The Old Régime, by De Tocqueville, p. 18."It is a singularity worth remarking that the Gospel is nothing but a declaration of rights. Its mysteries were a long time hidden, because they attacked the priests and the great."—M. Rabaud de St. Etienne, p. 174.

[27]The Old Régime, by De Tocqueville, p. 18.

"It is a singularity worth remarking that the Gospel is nothing but a declaration of rights. Its mysteries were a long time hidden, because they attacked the priests and the great."—M. Rabaud de St. Etienne, p. 174.

[28]"Shall we say, then, Woe to Philosophism that it destroyed Religion, what it called 'extinguishing the abomination'—écraser l'infâme? Woe rather to those that made the Holy an abomination and extinguishable."—Carlyle, French Revolution, i., 56.

[29]Old Régime, p. 175.Count Segur, a peer of France, in his Memoirs, has very frankly described the feelings with which he and the young nobles who were his companions regarded the writings of the philosophers:"We felt disposed to adopt with enthusiasm the philosophical doctrines professed by literary men, remarkable for their boldness and their wit. Voltaire seduced our imagination. Rousseau touched our hearts. We felt a secret pleasure in seeing that their attacks were directed against an old fabric which presented to us a Gothic and ridiculous appearance. We were pleased with this petty war, although it was undermining our own ranks and privileges and the remains of our ancient power. But we felt not these attacks personally. It was, as yet, but a war of words and paper, which did not appear to us to threaten the superiority of existence which we enjoyed, consolidated as we thought it by a possession of many centuries."

[29]Old Régime, p. 175.

Count Segur, a peer of France, in his Memoirs, has very frankly described the feelings with which he and the young nobles who were his companions regarded the writings of the philosophers:

"We felt disposed to adopt with enthusiasm the philosophical doctrines professed by literary men, remarkable for their boldness and their wit. Voltaire seduced our imagination. Rousseau touched our hearts. We felt a secret pleasure in seeing that their attacks were directed against an old fabric which presented to us a Gothic and ridiculous appearance. We were pleased with this petty war, although it was undermining our own ranks and privileges and the remains of our ancient power. But we felt not these attacks personally. It was, as yet, but a war of words and paper, which did not appear to us to threaten the superiority of existence which we enjoyed, consolidated as we thought it by a possession of many centuries."

[30]History of the Revolution of France, by M. Rabaud de St. Etienne.

[31]For appalling proof of the sufferings of the tax-payers, turn to the pages of Michelet, of De Tocqueville, of any writer upon theOld Régime.

[32]Arthur Young, vol. i., p. 574; Marshall's Travels, vol. iv., p. 322.

[33]"Care must be taken not to misunderstand the gayety which the French have often exhibited in the greatest affliction. It is a mere attempt to divert the mind from the contemplation of misfortune which seems inevitable."—The Old Régime, by De Tocqueville, p. 167.

[34]Life of Jefferson, by Henry T. Randall, vol. i., p. 432.

CHAPTER V.

THE BASTILLE.

Absolute Power of the King.—Lettres de Cachet.—The Bastille.—Cardinal Balue.—Harancourt.—Charles of Armanac.—Constant de Renville.—Duke of Nemours.—Dungeons of the Bastille.—Oubliettes.—Dessault.—M. Massat.—M. Catalan.—Latude.—The Student.—Apostrophe of Michelet.

Themonarchy was now so absolute that the king, without any regard to law, had the persons and the property of all his subjects entirely at his disposal. He could confiscate any man's estate. He could assign any man to a dungeon for life without trial and even without accusation. To his petted and profligate favorites he was accustomed to give sealed writs,lettres de cachet, whose blanks they could fill up with any name they pleased. With one of these writs the courtiers could drag any man who displeased them to one of the dungeons of the Bastille, where no light of the sun would ever gladden his eyes again. Of these sealed writs we shall speak hereafter. They were the most appalling instruments of torture despotism ever wielded.

The Bastille.At the eastern entrance of Paris stood this world-renowned fortress and prison. In gloomy grandeur its eight towers darkened the air, surrounded by a massive wall of stone nine feet thick and a hundred feet high. The whole was encircled by a ditch twenty-five feet deep and one hundred and twenty feet wide. The Bastille was an object exciting universal awe. No one could ever pass beneath its shadow without thinking of the sighs which ceaselessly resounded through all its vaults. It was an ever-present threat, the great upholder of despotic power, with its menace appalling even the boldest heart. It is easy to brave death from the bullet or the guillotine; but who can brave the doom of Cardinal Balue, who, for eleven years, was confined in an iron cage, so constructed that he could find no possible position for repose; or the fate of Harancourt, who passed fifteen years in a cage within the Bastille, whose iron bars required in their riveting the labors of nineteen men for twenty days? To be thus torn from wife, children, and home, and to be consigned for life to the unearthly woe of such a doom must terrify even the firmest soul. It is painful to dwell upon these details, but they must be known in explanation of the scenes of violence and blood to which they finally gave birth.

Charles of Armanac, for no crime whatever of his own, but because hisbrotherhad offended Charles XI., was thrown into prison. For fourteen years he lingered in the dungeon, until his reason was dethroned and his spirit was bewildered and lost in the woes of the maniac. Constant de Renville, a Norman gentleman, was accused, while in exile in Holland, of writing a satirical poem against France. For eleven years he was immured in one of the most loathsome dungeons of the Bastille. He appears to have been a man of true piety, and upon his release wrote an account of the horrors of his prison-house, which thrilled the ear of Europe.

The Duke of Nemours was accused of an intrigue against Louis XI. He was dragged from the presence of his wife, exciting in her such terror that she fell into convulsions and died. After two years' imprisonment he was condemned to be executed. A scaffold was erected with openings beneath the planks, and his three children were placed beneath the planks, bareheaded, clothed in white robes, and with their hands bound behind their backs, that the blood of their beheaded father might drop upon them, and that his anguish might be increased by witnessing the agony of his children. The fearful tragedy being over, these tender children, the youngest of whom was but five years of age, were again locked up in one of the gloomiest vaults of the Bastille, where they remained for five years. Upon the death of Louis XI. they were released. The two eldest, however, emaciate with privation and woe, soon died. The youngest alone survived.

Imagination can not conceive of an abode more loathsome than some of these horrible dens. The cold stone walls, covered with the mould of ages, were ever dripping with water. The slimy floor swarmed with reptiles and all kinds of vermin who live in darkness and mire. A narrow slit in the wall, which was nine feet thick, admitted a few straggling rays of light, but no air to ventilate the apartment where corruption was festering. A little straw upon the floor or upon a plank supported by iron bars fixed in the wall afforded the only place for repose. Ponderous double doors, seven inches thick and provided with enormous locks and bolts, shut the captive as effectually from the world and from all knowledge of what was passing in the world as if he were in his grave. His arrest was frequently conducted so secretly that even his friends had no knowledge of what had become of him; they could make no inquiries at the gloomy portals of the Bastille, and the unhappy captive was left to die unknown and forgotten in his dungeon. If by any happy chance he was liberated, he was first compelled to take an oath never to repeal what he had seen, or heard, or suffered within the walls of the Bastille.

Thus any person who became obnoxious to the king or any of his favorites was immediately transferred to these dungeons of despair. Cardinal Richelieu filled its cells with the victims of his tyranny. The captive immediately received the name of his cell, and his real name was never uttered within the precincts of the Bastille.

The Bastille was often full to overflowing, but there were other Bastilles in France sufficiently capacious to meet all the demands of the most inexorable tyranny.

It is the more necessary to dwell upon these details since the Bastille was the mailed hand with which aristocratic usurpation beat down all resistance and silenced every murmur. The Bastille, with its massive walls and gloomy towers and cannon frowning from every embrasure, was the terrific threat which held France in subjection. It was the demon soul of demoniac despotism. So awful was the terror inspired, that frequently the victim was merely enjoined by one of the warrants bearing the seal of the king to go himself to the dungeon. Appalled and trembling in every nerve, he dared not for one moment disobey. Hastening to the prison, he surrendered himself to its glooms, despairingly hoping, by prompt obedience, to shorten the years of his captivity.

There were vaults in the Bastille and other prisons of France calledoubliettes, into which the poor victim was dropped and left to die forgotten. These were usually shaped like a bottle, with a narrow neck and expanding beneath. In one of these tombs of massive stone, twenty-two feet deep and seventeen or eighteen feet in diameter, with a narrow neck through which the captive could be thrust down, the inmate was left in Egyptian darkness amid the damp and mould of ages, and, trampling upon the bones of those who had perished before him, to linger through weary hours of starvation and woe until death came to his relief. Sometimes he thus lingered for years, food being occasionally thrown down to him.

There were twenty bastilles in France. In Paris, besides the Bastille, there were thirty prisons, where people might be incarcerated without sentence, trial, or even accusation. The convents were amply supplied with dungeons. All these prisons were at the disposal of the Jesuits. They were instruments of torture. The wretched victim, once consigned to those cells, was enshrouded by the oblivion of the tomb. The rich man was robbed of his wealth and taken there to be forgotten and to die. Beauty, whose virtue bribes could not destroy, was dragged to those apartments to minister to the lust of merciless oppressors. The shriek of despair, smothered by walls of stone and doors of iron, reached only the ear of God.[35]

During the reign of Louis XV. one hundred and fifty thousand of theselettres de cachetwere issued, making an average of two thousand five hundred annually.[36]The king could not refuse a blank warrant to his mistress or to a courtier. All those who had influence at court could obtain them. They were distributed as freely as in this country members of Congress have distributed their postage franks. St. Florentin alone gave away fifty thousand. These writs were often sold at a great price. Any man who could obtain one had his enemy at his disposal. One can hardly conceive of a more awful despotism. Such were "the good old times of the monarchy," as some have insanely called them. Even during the mild reign of Louis XVI. fourteen thousandlettres de cachetwere issued. Let us enter the prison and contemplate the doom of the captive.

A gentleman by the name of Dessault offended Richelieu by refusing to execute one of his atrocious orders. At midnight a band of soldiers entered his chamber, tore him from his bed, and dragged him through the dark streets to the Bastille, and there consigned him to a living burial in one of its cold damp tombs of iron and stone. Here in silence and solitude, deprived of all knowledge of his family, and his family having lost all trace of him, he lingered eleven years.

"Oh, who can tell what days, what nights he spentOf tideless, waveless, sailless, shoreless woe!"

At last his jailer ventured to inform him that Richelieu was on a dying bed. Hoping that in such an hour the heart of the haughty cardinal might be touched with sympathy, he wrote to him as follows:

"My lord, you are aware that for eleven years you have subjected me to the endurance of a thousand deaths in the Bastille—to sufferings whichwould excite compassion if inflicted even upon the most disloyal subject of the king. How much more then should I be pitied, who am doomed to perish here for disobeying an order, which, obeyed, would have sent me to the final judgment with blood-stained hands, and would have consigned my soul to eternal misery. Ah! could you but hear the sobs, the lamentations, the groans which you extort from me, you would quickly set me at liberty. In the name of the eternal God, who will judge you as well as me, I implore you, my lord, to take pity on my woe, and, if you wish that God should show mercy to you, order my chains to be broken before your death-hour comes. When that hour arrives you will no longer be able to do me justice, but will persecute me even in your grave."

The iron-hearted minister was unrelenting, and died leaving his victim still in the dungeon. There Dessault remainedfifty yearsafter the death of Richelieu. He was at length liberated, after having passed sixty-one years in a loathsome cell but a few feet square. The mind stands aghast in the contemplation of such woes. All this he suffered as the punishment of hisvirtues. The mind is appalled in contemplating such a doom. Even the assurance that after death cometh the judgment affords but little relief. Michelet, an unbeliever in Christian revelation, indignantly exclaims, "though a sworn enemy to barbarous fictions about everlasting punishment, I found myself praying to God to construct a hell for tyrants."

When we remember that during a single reign one hundred and fifty thousand were thus incarcerated; that all the petted and profligate favorites of the king, male and female, had these blank warrants placed in their hands, which they could fill up with any name at their pleasure; that money could be thus extorted, domestic virtue violated, and that every man and every family was thus placed at the mercy of the vilest minions of the court, we can only wonder that the volcano of popular indignation did not burst forth more speedily and more desolatingly. It is true that in many other countries of Europe the state of affairs was equally bad, if not worse. But in France wealth and intelligence had made great advances, while in central and northern Europe the enslaved people were so debased by ignorance that they had no consciousness of the rights of which they were defrauded.

The court demanded of a rich man, M. Massat, six hundred thousand livres ($120,000). Stunned by the ruinous demand, he ventured to remonstrate. He was dragged to the Bastille, where the vermin of his dungeon could alone hear his murmurs. M. Catalan, another man of wealth, after experiencing the horrors of such an imprisonment for several months, was glad to purchase his ransom for six millions of livres ($1,200,000).[37]

The money thus extorted was squandered in the most shameless profligacy. The king sometimes expended two hundred thousand dollars for a single night's entertainment at Versailles. The terrors of the Bastille frowned down all remonstrances. A "stone doublet" was the robe which the courtiers facetiously remarked they had prepared for murmurers.

On the 1st of May, 1749, a gentleman of the name of Latude was arrested by one of theselettres de cachet, and thrown into the Bastille. He was then but twenty years of age, and had given offense to Madame de Pompadour,by pretending that a conspiracy had been formed against her life. For thirty-five years he remained in prison enduring inconceivable horrors. In 1784, several years after the death of both the mistress and her subject king, he was liberated and wrote an account of his captivity. It was a tale of horror which thrilled the ear of Europe. Eloquently, in view of the letters of Latude, Michelet represents the people as exclaiming,

"Holy, holy Revolution, how slowly dost thou come! I, who have been waiting for thee a thousand years in the furrows of the Middle Ages, what! must I wait still longer? Oh, how slowly time passes! Oh, how have I counted the hours! Wilt thou never arrive?"

A young man, in a Jesuit College, in a thoughtless hour, composed a satirical Latin distich, making merry with the foibles of the professors and of the king. Alettre de cachetwas immediately served upon him, and forthirty-one years, until youth and manhood were giving place to old age, he remained moaning in living burial in one of the dungeons of the Bastille. One of the first acts of the Revolution was to batter down these execrable walls and to plow up their very foundations.

In view of the facts here revealed one can not but be amazed at the manner in which many have spoken of the French Revolution, as if it were merely an outburst of human depravity. "Burke had no idea," writes De Tocqueville, "of the state in which the monarchy, he so deeply regretted, had left us." Michelet, glowing with the indignation which inflamed the bosoms of his fathers, exclaims, "Our fathers shivered that Bastille to pieces, tore away its stones with bleeding hands, and flung them afar. Afterward they seized them again, and, having hewn them into a different form, in order that they might be trampled under foot by the people forever, built with them the Bridge of Revolution."[38]

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