Chapter III: THE RULERS. (continued) (3)

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,[33156] each band takes the field and gathers together not only grain, but supplies of every description. "That of Grenoble, the agent writes,[33157] does 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.[33161] Some 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.[33164] Naturally, 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,[33165] one 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!"[33166] After 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,[33167] and 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.[33168] This 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.[33170] Through 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.

*****

[Footnote 3301: "The Revolution," II., pp. 298-304, and p. 351.]

[Footnote 3302: "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."]

[Footnote 3303: 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.]

[Footnote 3304: 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!"]

[Footnote 3305: 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."]

[Footnote 3306: 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."]

[Footnote 3307: 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.]

[Footnote 3308: 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?"]

[Footnote 3309: Ibid., XVII., 410. (Speech by Maribon-Montaut, Jacobin club, Brumaire 21, year II.)]

[Footnote 3310: Dauban, "Paris in 1794," 142. (Police report of Ventôse 13, year II.)]

[Footnote 3311: Morellet, "Mémoires," II. 449.]

[Footnote 3312: 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.)]

[Footnote 3313: 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."]

[Footnote 3314: 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."]

[Footnote 3315: 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."]

[Footnote 3316: Ibid., 307. (Report of Germinal 7.)]

[Footnote 3317: Wallon, "Histoire du Tribunal Revolutionaire," IV., 129.]

[Footnote 3318: 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.]

[Footnote 3319: 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]

[Footnote 3320: Archives Nationales, F.7, 31167. (Report, Nivôse 1, year II., by Leharival.)]

[Footnote 3321: Dauban, "Paris en 1794," 307. (Report of March 29, 1794.) It here relates to the "Piques" Section, Place Vendome.]

[Footnote 3322: Dauban, ib., 308. (Note found among Danton's papers and probably written by the physician, Quevremont de Lamotte.)]

[Footnote 3323: 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."]

[Footnote 3324: Dauban, ibid., 307. (Report of March 29, 1794.)]

[Footnote 3325: 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."]

[Footnote 3326: 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."]

[Footnote 3327: Dauban, ibid., 345. (Order of the day by Henriot, Floreal 9.)]

[Footnote 3328: Mallet-Dupan, II., 56. (March, 1794.)]

[Footnote 3329: 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."]

[Footnote 3330: 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."]

[Footnote 3331: 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."]

[Footnote 3332: 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.]

[Footnote 3333: 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.]

[Footnote 3334: Dauban, ibid., 307. (Report of Germinal 9.)]

[Footnote 3335: Moniteur, XXII. 353. (Session of Brumaire 20, year III. Reclamation made by M. Bélanger at the bar of the Convention.)]

[Footnote 3336: 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."]

[Footnote 3337: 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.]

[Footnote 3338: 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."]

[Footnote 3339: Dauban, ibid., 36 and 48. (Case of the Notary, Brichard.)]

[Footnote 3340: 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.)]

[Footnote 3341: 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."]

[Footnote 3342: Buchez et Roux, XXXV., 407. (Lists in Robespierre's handwriting.)]

[Footnote 3343: 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."]

[Footnote 3344: "The Revolution," II., 338, 348, 354.]

[Footnote 3345: 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.]

[Footnote 3346: 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."]

[Footnote 3347: 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.]

[Footnote 3348: Morellet, "Mémoires," I., 436-472.]

[Footnote 3349: 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.)]

[Footnote 3350: 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."]

[Footnote 3351: "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.]

[Footnote 3352: A game of chance.]

[Footnote 3353: "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."]

[Footnote 3354: 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."]

[Footnote 3355: Barère, "Mémoires," II., 324.]

[Footnote 3356: 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."]

[Footnote 3357: "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?'"]

[Footnote 3358: Lagros: "La Révolution telle qu'elle est." (Unpublished correspondence of the committee of Public Safety, I., 366. Letter of Prieur de la Marne.) "In general, the towns are patriotic; but the rural districts are a hundred leagues removed from the Revolution.. .. Great efforts will be necessary to bring them up to the level of the Revolution."]

[Footnote 3359: According to the statistics of 1866 (published in 1869) a district of one thousand square kilometres contains on an average, thirty-three communes above five hundred souls, twenty-three from five hundred to one thousand, seventeen bourgs and small towns from one thousand to five thousand, and one average town, or very large one, about five thousand. Taking into account the changes that have taken place in seventy years, one may judge from these figures of the distribution of the population in 1793. This distribution explains why, instead of forty-five thousand revolutionary committees, there were only twenty-one thousand five hundred.]

[Footnote 3360: "Souvenirs des M. Hua," 179. "This country (Coucy-le-Chateau) protected by its bad roads and still more by its nullity, belonged to that small number in which the revolutionary turmoil was least felt."]

[Footnote 3361: Among other documents of use in composing this picture I must cite, as first in importance, the five files containing all the documents referring to the mission of the representative Albert, in Aisne and Marne. (Ventôse and Germinal, year III.) Nowhere do we find more precise details of the sentiments of the peasant, of the common laborer and of the lower bourgeois from 1792 to 1795. (Archives Nationales, D. PP 2 to 5.)]

[Footnote 3362: Daubari, "La Demagogie en 1793," XII. (The expression of an old peasant, near Saint-Émilion, to M. Vatel engaged in collecting information on the last days of Petion, Guadet and Buzot.)]

[Footnote 3363: Archives Nationales, D. p I., 5. (Petition of Claude Defert, miller, and national agent of Turgy.) Numbers of mayors, municipal officers, national agents, administrators and notables of districts and departments solicit successors, and Albert compels many of them to remain in office.--(Joint letter of the entire municipality of Landreville; letter of Charles, stone-cutter, mayor of Trannes; Claude Defert, miller, national agent of Turgy; of Elegny, meat-dealer; of a wine-grower; municipal official at Merrex, etc.) The latter writes: "The Republic is great and generous; it does not desire that its children should ruin themselves in attending to its affairs; on the contrary, its object is to give salaried (emolumentaires) places to those who have nothing to live on."--Another, Mageure, appointed mayor of Bar-sur-Seine writes, Pluviôse 29, year III.: "I learned yesterday that some persons of this community would like to procure for me the insidious gift of the mayoralty," and he begs Albert to turn aside this cup.]

[Footnote 3364: "Souvenirs de M. Hua," 178-205. "M. P..., mayor of Crépy-au-Mont, knew how to restrain some low fellows who would have been only too glad to revolutionize his village.... And yet he was a republican.... One day, speaking of the revolutionary system, he said: 'They always say that it will not hold on; meanwhile, it sticks like lice.' "--"A general assembly of the inhabitants of Coucy and its outskirts was held, in which everybody was obliged to undergo an examination, stating his name, residence, birth-place, present occupation, and what he had done during the Revolution." Hua avoids telling that he had been a representative in the Legislative Assembly, a recognized fact in the neighborhood: "Not a voice was raised to compromise me."--Ibid., 183. (Reply of the Coucy Revolutionary Committee to that of Meaux.)]

[Footnote 3365: "Frochot," by Louis Passy, 175. (Letter of Pajot, member of the Revolutionary committee of Troyes, Vendémiaire, year III.)--Archives Nationales, F.7, 4421. (Register of the Revolutionary committee of Troyes.) Brumaire 27, year II. Incarceration of various suspects, among others of "Lerouge, former lawyer, under suspicion of having constantly and obstinately refused revolutionary offices." Also, a person named Corps, for "having refused the presidency of the district tribunal at the time of its organization, under the pretext of consulting the Chambre des Comptes; also for being the friend of suspects, and for having accepted office only after the Revolution had assumed an imposing character."]

[Footnote 3366: Marcelin Boudet, "Les conventionnels d'Auvergne," 161. (Justification of Etienne Bonarmé, the last months of 1794.)]

[Footnote 3367: Pans, "Histoire de Joseph Lebon," II., 92. (Declaration by Guérard, lawyer, appointed judge at Cambrai, by the Cambrai Revolutionary committee.)--Ibid., 54. (Declaration by Lemerre, appointed juryman without his knowledge, in the Cambrai court.) "What was my surprise, I, who never was on a jury in my life! The summons was brought to me at a quarter to eleven (à onze heur moin un car--specimen of the orthography) and I had to go at eleven without having time to say good-by to my family."]

[Footnote 3368: Report by Courtois on the papers found in Robespierre's domicile, 370. (Letter of Maignet to Payan, administrator of the department of Drôme, Germinal 20, year II.) "You know the dearth of subjects here. .. Give me the names of a dozen outspoken republicans... . If you cannot find them in this department (Vaucluse) hunt for them either in the Drôme or the Isère, or in any other. I should like those adapted to a revolutionary tribunal. I should even like, in case of necessity, to have some that are qualified to act as national agents."]

[Footnote 3369: Archives des Affaires étrangères, vols. 322 to 334, and 1409 to 1411.--These agents reside in Nîmes, Marseilles, Toulouse, Tarbes, Bordeaux, Auch, Rochefort, Brest, Bergues, Givet, Metz, Thionville, Strasbourg, Colmar, Belfort and Grenoble, and often betake themselves to towns in the vicinity.--The fullest reports are those of Chepy, at Grenoble, whose correspondence is worthy of publication; although an ultra Jacobin, he was brought before the revolutionary Tribunal as a moderate, in Ventôse, year II. Having survived (the Revolution) he became under the Empire a general commissary of Police at Brest. Almost all of them are veritable Jacobins, absolutist at bottom, and they became excellent despotic tools.]

[Footnote 3370: Buchez et Roux, XXX., 425.--Twenty-four commissioners, drawn by lot from the Jacobins of Paris, are associated with Collot d'Herbois. One of them, Marino, becomes president of the temporary Committee of Surveillance, at Lyons. Another, Parrien, is made president of the Revolutionary Committee.--Archives Nationales, AF., II., 59. (Deliberations in the Paris Jacobin club, appointing three of their number to go to Tonnerre and request the Committee of Public Safety "to give them the necessary power, to use it as circumstances may require, for the best good of the Republic." Frimaire 6, year II.)--"Order of the Committee of Public Safety, allowing two thousand francs to the said parties for their traveling expenses."--Archives des Affaires Étrangères, vol. 333. The agents sent to Marseilles affix their signatures, "sans-culottes, of Paris," and one of them, Brutus, becomes president of the Marseilles revolutionary tribunal.]

[Footnote 3371: Archives Nationales, AF., II., 49. Papers relating to the revolutionary tax of Belfort, giving all the amounts and names. (Brumaire 30, year II.) Here is the formula: "citizen X... (male or female) will pay in one hour the sum of--, under penalty of being considered suspect and treated as such."--"Recueil des Pièces Authentiques concernant la Révolution à Strasbourg," I., 128, 187. (Expressions of the representative Baudot in a letter dated Brumaire 29, year II.)]

[Footnote 3372: Archives Nationales: the acts and letters of the representatives on mission are classed by departments.--On the delegates of the representatives on mission, I will cite but one text. (Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol. 333, letter of Garrigues, Auch, Pluviôse 24, year II.): "A delegate of Dartigoyte goes to l'Isle and, in the popular club, wants the curé of the place to get rid of his priestly attributes. The man answers, so they tell me, that he would cheerfully abstain from his duties, but that, if, in addition to this, they used force he would appeal to the convention, which had no idea of interfering with freedom of opinion. 'Very well,' replied Dartigoyte emissary, 'I appeal to a gendarme,' and he at once ordered his arrest."]

[Footnote 3373: Lallier, "Une commission D'énquete et de Propagande," p.7. (It is composed of twelve members, selected by the club of Nantes, who overrun the district of Ancenis, six thousand francs of fees being allowed it.)--Babeau, II., 280. (Dispatch of sixty commissioners, each at six francs a day by the Troyes administration, to ascertain the state of the supplies on hand, Prairial, year II.)]

[Footnote 3374: For example, at Bordeaux and at Troyes.--Archives Nationales F7, 4421. Register of the Revolutionary committee of Troyes, fol. 164. Two members of the committee travel to the commune of Lusigny, dismiss the mayor and justice, and appoint in the place of the latter "the former curé of the country, who, some time ago, abjured sacerdotal fanaticism."--Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol.332. (Letter of Desgranges, Bordeaux, Brumaire 15, year II.) The representatives have just instituted "a revolutionary committee of surveillance composed of twelve members, selected with the greatest circumspection. All the committees established in the department are obliged to correspond with it, and fulfill its requisitions."]

[Footnote 3375: Archives Nationales, AF., II, 58. (Letter of Javogues to Collot d'Herbois, Brumaire 28, year II.)]

[Footnote 3376: "Recueil des Pièces Authentiques," etc., I., 195. (Acts passed Jan.21, 1793.)]

[Footnote 3377: Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol. 326. (Letters from Brutus, September 24; from Topino-Lebrun, jr., September 25 and October 6, 1793.--Vol. 330. Letters from Brutus, Nivôse 6, year II.) The character of the agent is often indicated orthographically. For example, vol.334, letter from Galon-Boyer, Brumaire 18, year II. "The public spirit is generally bad. Those who claim to be patriots know no restraint. The rest are lethargic and federalism appears innate."]

[Footnote 3378: Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol.1411. (Letter of Haupt, Brumaire 26, year II.)--Vol. 333. (Letter of Blessman and Haüser, Pluviôse 4, year II.)]

[Footnote 3379: Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol. 333. (Letter of Chartres and of Caillard, Cornmune Aifranchie, Nivôse 21.)--Vol. 331. (Letters of Desgranges, at Bordeaux, Brumaire 8 and Frimaire 3.) "The offerings in plate and coin multiply indefinitely; all goes right. The court-martial has condemned Dudon to death, son of the ex-procureur-général in the former parliament at Bordeaux, Roullat, procureur-syndic of the department, Sallenave, merchant. These executions excite sympathy, but nobody murmurs."]

[Footnote 3380: Ibid., vol. 333. (Letter of Cuny, sr., Nivôse 20.) Vols. 331, 332. (Letters of Chepy, passim, and especially those dated Frimaire II.)--Vol. 329. (Letter of Chépy, August 24, 1793.) "At Annecy, the women have cut down the liberty-pole and burnt the archives of the club and of the commune. At Chambéry, the people wanted to do the same thing."--Ibid. (September 18, 1793.) "The inhabitants around Mont Blanc show neither spirit nor courage; the truth is, an anti-revolutionary spirit animates all minds."--Ibid. (Letter of August 8, 1793.) "Not only have the citizens of Grenoble, who were drawn by lot, not set out on the expedition to Lyons, but, even of those who have obeyed the laws, several have returned with their arms and baggage. No commune between St. Laurent and Lyons would march. The rural municipalities, badly tainted with the federal malady, ventured to give the troops very bad quarters, especially those who had been drafted."]

[Footnote 3381: Ibid. (Letter of Cuny, jr., Brest, Brumaire 6.) "There are, in general, very few patriots at Brest; the inhabitants are nearly all moderates."--(Letter of Gadolle, Dunkirk, July 26, 1793.)--(Letter of Simon, Metz, Nivôse, year II.) "Yesterday, on the news of the capture of Toulon being announced in the theatre,... I noticed that only about one-third of the spectators gave way to patriotic enthusiasm; the other two-thirds remained cold, or put on a long face."]

[Footnote 3382: Ibid. (Letter of Haupt, Belfort, September 1, 1793.)]

[Footnote 3383: Report by Courtois on the papers found in Robespierre's domicile, p. 274. (Letter of Darthé, Ventôse 29, year II.)]

[Footnote 3384: "Tableau des Prisons de Toulouse," by citizen Pescayre (published in year III.), p.101.]

[Footnote 3385: Archives Nationales, F.7, 4421. (Register of the Revolutionary Committee, established at Troyes, Brumaire II, year II.)--Albert Babeau, vol. II., passim.--Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol. 332, Chépy (letter, Brumaire 6, Grenoble). "The sections had appointed seven committees of surveillance. Although weeded out by the club, they nevertheless alarmed the sans-culottes.... Representative Petit-Jean has issued an order, directing that there shall be but one committee at Grenoble composed of twenty-one members. This measure is excellent and ensures the triumph of sans-culotteism."--Archives Nationales, F.7, 4434. (Letter of Pérrieu to Brissot, Bordeaux, March 9, 1793.) Before June 2, the national club "of Bordeaux, composed of Maratists, did not comprise more than eight or ten individuals at most."--Moniteur, XXII., 133. (Speech by Thibeaudeau on the popular club of Poitiers, Vendémiaire II, year III.)--Ibid. (Session of Brumaire 5, year III., letter of Calès, and session of Brumaire 17, year III., report by Calès.) "The popular club of Dijon made all neighboring administrative bodies, citizens and districts tremble. All were subject to its laws, and three or four men in it made them. This club and the municipality were one body." "The Terror party does not exist here, or, if it does exist, it does not amount to much: out of twenty thousand inhabitants there are not six who can legitimately be suspected of belonging to it."]

[Footnote 3386: Baroly, "Les Jacobins Demasqués," (IV. 8vo., of 8pp., year II). "The Jacobin club, with its four hundred active members at Paris, and the four thousand others in the provinces, not less devoted, represent the living force of the Revolution."]

[Footnote 3387: Archives Nationales, D. P I., 10. (Orders of representatives Delacroix, Louchet, and Legendre, Nivôse 12, year II.) "On the petition of the Committee of Surveillance of Evreux, which sets forth that all its members are without means, and that it will be impossible for them to continue their duties since they are without resources for supporting their families," the representatives allow three of them two hundred and seventy francs each, and a fourth one hundred and eighty francs, as a gratuity (outside of the three francs a day.)]

[Footnote 3388: Ibid. AF., II., 111. (Order of Albitte and La Porte, Prairial 18, year II.)]

[Footnote 3389: Albert Babeau, II., 154-157.--Moniteur, XXII. 425. (Session of Brumaire 13, year III. Speech by Cambon.) "A government was organized in which surveillance alone cost 591 millions per annum. Every man who tilled the ground or worked in a shop, at once abandoned his pursuit for a place on the Revolutionary Committees... where he got five francs a day."]

[Footnote 3390: "Tableau des Prisons de Toulouse," by citizen Pescare, 162, 166, 435.]

[Footnote 3391: Berryat Saint-Prix, "La Justice Révolutionaire," (second edition) p. XIX.--Ibid., XIV. At Rochefort there is on the revolutionary tribunal a mason, a shoemaker, a caulker, and a cook; at Bordeaux, on the military commission, an actor, a wine-clerk, a druggist, a baker, a journeyman-gilder, and later, a cooper and a leather-dresser.]

[Footnote 3392: I heard these expressions during my conversations with old peasants.--Archives Nationales, AF.,II., 111. (Order of the Representative Ichon, Messidor 18, year II.) "The popular club of Chinon will be immediately regenerated. Citizens (I omit their names), the following showing their occupations: shoemaker, policeman. sabot-maker, cooper, carter, shoemaker, joiner, butcher carpenter and mason, will form the committee which is to do the weeding-out and choose successors among those that offer to become members of the club."? Ibid., D., PI, 10. (Orders of the Representatives Delacroix, Louchet and Legendre, on mission in the department of Seine-Inférieure for the purpose of removing, at Conchez, the entire administration, and for forming there a new revolutionary committee, with full powers, Frimaire 9, year II.) The members of the committee, the nature of which is indicated, are two coopers, one gardener, two carpenters, one merchant, a coach-driver and a tailor. (One finds in the archives, in the correspondence of the representatives, plenty of orders appointing authorities of the same sort.)]

[Footnote 3393: Albert Babeau, II., 296.]

[Footnote 3394: The French text reads: "Sa profession est fame de Paillot-Montabert; son revenu est vivre de ses revenus; ces relation son d'une fame nous ny portons point d'atantion; ces opignons nous les présumons semblable à ceux de son mary."]

[Footnote 3395: Archives Nationales, F7, 4421. Order of the Committee of Surveillance of the third section of Troyes, refusing civic certificates to seventy-two persons, or sending them before the central committee as "marchands d'argant, aristocrate, douteux, modére, intrigant, egoiste fanatique. Fait et areté par nous, membre du Comité."--Ib., Mémoire des Commissaires de la 5e seiscion dite de la liberté nommé par le citoyen de Baris (Paris) pour faire les visite de l'argenteri ché les citoyens de la liste fait par les citoyens Diot et Bailly et Jaquin savoir depence du 13 et 14 et 15 Frimaire pour leur nouriture du troyes jour monte à 24 fr.]

[Footnote 3396: Albert Babeau, II., 154.]

[Footnote 3397: Archives Nationales, D., PI, 5. (Mission of Representative Albert, in Aube and in Marne.)--These notes are made on the spot, with a thorough knowledge of the situation, by zealous republicans who are not without common-sense and of average honesty, (chiefly in Pluviôse and Ventôse, year III).--Letter of Albert to the directories of the two departments, Prairial 3, year II. "I am satisfied, during the course of my mission, of the necessity of reorganizing the municipalities throughout both departments."]

[Footnote 3398: Ibid. Orders of Albert, Ventôse 5, and Pluviôse 29, year III., reorganizing the courts and administrations in the districts of Ervy, Arcis and Nogent-sur-Seine, with a tabular statement of the names of those removed and the reasons for so doing.]

[Footnote 3399: Petition of Jean Nicolas Antoine, former member of the Directory of the district of Troyes for twenty-eight months. (Ventose 9, year II I.) Shut up in Troyes, he asks permission to go to Paris, "I have a small lot of goods which it is necessary for me to sell in Paris. It is my native town and I know more people there than anywhere else."-Ibid. Information furnished on Antoine by the Conseil-general of the Commune of Troyes.]

[Footnote 33100: Archives Nationales, AF., II., 59. (Memorials dated Messidor 28, year II., by an emissary of the Committee of Public Safety, sent to Troyes, Prairial 29, to report on the situation of things and on the troubles in Troyes.)--Albert Babeau, II., 203, 205 and 112, 122.--Cf. 179. "Gachez, intoxicated, about eleven o'clock at night, with several women as drunk as himself, compelled the keeper of the Temple of Reason to open the doors, threatening him with the guillotine."--Ibid., 166. He addressed the sans-culottes in the popular club: "Now is the time to put yourselves in the place of the rich. Strike, and don't put it off!"--Ibid., 165." 42,633 livres were placed in the hands of Gachez and the committee, as secret revolutionary service money.... Between December 4 and 10 Gachez received 20,000 livres, in three orders, for revolutionary expenses and provisional aid.... The leaders of the party disposed of these sums without control and, it may be added, without scruple; Gachez hands over only four thousand livres to the sectional poor-committee. On Nivôse 12, there remains in the treasury of the poor fund only 3738 livres, 12 000 having been diverted or squandered."]

[Footnote 33101: "Frochot," by Louis Passy, 172. (Letter of Pajot, member of the revolutionary committee of Aignay-le-Duc.) "Denunciations occupied most of the time at our meetings, and it is there that one could see the hatreds and vengeance of the colleagues who ruled us."]