Chapter I: Jacobin Government (2)

Here, as at Paris, on the 20th of June, 10th of August, 2nd of September, 3rd of May and 2nd of June, as at every critical moment of the Revolution in Paris and the provinces, habits of subordination and of amiability, stamped on a people by a provident monarchy and a time-honored civilization, have blunted in man the foresight of danger, his aggressive instinct, his independence and the faculty of depending upon himself only, the willingness to help one another and of saving himself. Inevitably, when anarchy brings a nation back to the state of nature, the tame animals will be eaten by the savage ones,--these are now let loose and immediately they show their true nature.

VIII. The Reasons for the Terror.

The last local resistance.--Political orthodoxy of the
insurgent towns.--They stipulate but one condition.--Reasons
of State for granting this.--Party arguments against it.

If the men of the "Mountain" had been statesmen, or even sensible men, they would have shown themselves humane, if not for the sake of humanity, at least through calculation; for in this France, so little republican, all the republican strength is not too great for the founding of the Republic, while, through their principles, their culture, their social position and their number, the Girondins form the élite and the force, the flower and the sap of the party.--The death-cry of the "Mountain" against the insurgents of Lozére[1169] and Vendée can be understood: they had raised the king's white flag; they accepted leaders and instructions from Coblentz and London. But neither Bordeaux, Marseilles nor Lyons are royalist, or in alliance with the foreigner.

"We, rebels!" write the Lyonnese;[1170] "Why we see no other than the tri-color flag waving; the white cockade, the symbol of rebellion, has never been raised within our walls. We, royalists! Why, shouts of 'Long live the Republic' are heard on all sides, and, spontaneously (in the session of July 2nd) we have all sworn to fall upon whoever should propose a king.... Your representatives tell you that we are anti-revolutionaries, we who have accepted the Constitution. They tell you that we protect émigrés when we have offered to surrender all those that you might indicate. They tell you that our streets are filled with refractory priests, when we have not even opened the doors of Pierre-en-Cize (prison) to the thirty-two priests confined there by the old municipality, without indictment, without any charge whatever against them, solely because they were priests."

Thus, at Lyons, the pretended aristocrats were, then, not only republicans but democrats and radicals, loyal to the established régime, and submissive to the worst of the revolutionary laws, while the same state of things prevailed at Bordeaux, at Marseilles and even at Toulon.[1171] And furthermore, they accepted the outrages of May 31 and June 2;[1172] they stopped contesting the usurpations of Paris; they no longer insisted on the return of the excluded deputies. On the 2nd of August at Bordeaux, and the 30th of July at Lyons, the Committee-Extraordinary of Public Safety resigned; there no longer existed any rival assembly opposed to the Convention. After the 24th of July,[1173] Lyons solemnly recognized the supreme and central authority, reserving nothing but its municipal franchises.--And better still, in striking testimony of political orthodoxy, the Council-General of the department prescribed a civic festival for the 10th of August analogous to that of Paris. The Lyonnese, already blockaded, indulged in no hostile manifestation; on the 7th of August they marched out of their advanced positions to fraternize with the first body of troops sent against them.[1174] They conceded everything, save on one point, which they could not yield without destruction, namely, the assurance that they should not be given up defenseless to the arbitrary judgment of their local tyrants, to the spoliation, proscriptions and revenge of the Jacobin rabble. In sum, at Marseilles and Bordeaux, especially at Lyons and Toulon, the sections had revolted only on that account; acting promptly and spontaneously, the people had thrust aside the knife which a few ruffians aimed at their throats; they had not been, and were not now, willing to be "Septemberised," that was their sole concern. Provided they were not handed over to the butchers bound hand and foot, they would open their gates. On these minimum terms the "Mountain" could terminate the civil war before the end of July. It had only to follow the example of Robert Lindet who, at Evreux the home of Buzot, at Caen the home of Charlotte Corday and the central seat of the fugitive Girondins, established permanent obedience through the moderation he had shown and the promises he had kept.[1175] The measures that had pacified the most compromised province would have brought back the others, and through this policy, Paris, without striking a blow, would have secured the three largest cities in France, the capital of the South-west, that of the South, and the capital of the Center.

On the contrary, should Paris persist in imposing on them the domination of its local Jacobins there was a risk of their being thrown into the arms of the enemy. Rather than fall back into the hands of the bandits who had ransomed and decimated them, Toulon, starved out, was about to receive the English within its walls and surrender to them the great arsenal of the South. Not less famished, Bordeaux might be tempted to demand aid from another English fleet; a few marches would brings the Piedmontese army to Lyons; France would then b cut in two, while the plan of stirring up the South against the North was proposed to the allies by the most clear-sighted of their councilors.[1176] Had this plan been carried out it is probably that the country would have been lost.--In any event, there was danger in driving the insurgents to despair: for, between the unbridled dictatorship of their victorious assassins and the musketry of the besieging army, there could be no hesitation by men of any feeling; it was better to be beaten on the ramparts than allow themselves to be bound for the guillotine; brought to a stand under the scaffold, their sole resource was to depend on themselves to the last.--Thus, through its unreasonableness, the "Mountain" condemns itself to a number of sieges or blockades which lasted several months,[1177] to leaving Var and Savoy unprotected, to exhausting the arsenals, to employing against Frenchmen[1178] troops and munitions needed against foreigners, and all this at the moment the foreigner was taking Valenciennes[1179] and Mayence, when thirty thousand royalist were organizing in Lozére, when the great Vendean army was laying siege to Nantes, when each new outbreak of fighting was threatening to connect the flaming frontier with the conflagration in the Catholic countries.[1180]--With a jet of cold water aptly directed, the "Mountain" could extinguish the fires it had kindled in the great republican towns; otherwise, nothing remained but to let them increase at the risk of consuming the whole country, with no other hope than that they might at last die out under a mass of ruins, and with no other object but to rule over captives and the dead.

But this is precisely the Jacobin aim; for, he is not satisfied with less than absolute submission; he must rule at any cost, just as he pleases, by fair means or foul, no matter over what ruins. A despot by instinct and installation, his dogma has consecrated him King; he is King by natural and divine right, in the name of eternal verity, the same as Philip II., enthroned by his religious system and blessed by his Holy Office. Hence he can abandon no jot or title of his authority without a sacrifice of principle, nor treat with rebels, unless they surrender at discretion; simply for having risen against legitimate authority, they are traitors and villains. And who are greater rascals the renegades who, after three years of patient effort, just as the sect finally reaches its goal, oppose its accession to power![1181] At Nîmes, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Toulon, and Lyons, not only have they interfered with or arrested the blow which Paris struck, but they have put down the aggressors, closed the club, disarmed the fanatical and imprisoned the leading Maratists; and worse still, at Lyons and at Toulon, five or six massacreurs, or promoters of massacre, Châlier and Riard, Jassaud, Sylvestre and Lemaille, brought before the courts, have been condemned and executed after a trial in which all the forms were strictly adhered to.--That is the inexpiable crime; for, in this trial, the "Mountain" is involved; the principles of Sylvestre and Châlier are its principles; what is accomplished in Paris, they have attempted in the provinces; if they are guilty, it is also guilty; it cannot tolerate their punishment without assenting to its own punishment. Accordingly,

* it must proclaim them heroes and martyrs,

* it must canonize their memory,[1182]

* it must avenge their tortures,

* it must resume and complete their assaults,

* it must restore their accomplices to their places,

* it must render them omnipotent,

* it must force each rebel city to accept the rule of its rabble and villains.

It matters little whether the Jacobins be a minority, whether at Bordeaux, they have but four out of twenty-eight sections on their side, at Marseilles five out of thirty-two, whether at Lyons they can count up only fifteen hundred devoted adherents.[1183] Suffrages are not reckoned, but weighed, for legality is founded, not on numbers, but on patriotism, the sovereign people being composed wholly of sans-culottes. So much the worse for towns where the anti-revolutionary majority is so great; they are only more dangerous; under the republican demonstrations is concealed the hostility of old parties and of the "suspect" classes, the Moderates, the Feuillants and Royalists, merchants, men of the legal profession, property-owners and muscadins.[1184] These towns are nests of reptiles and must be crushed out.

IX. Destruction of Rebel Cities

Bordeaux.--Marseilles.--Lyons.---Toulon.

Consequently, obedient or disobedient, they are crushed out. They are declared traitors to the country, not merely the members of the departmental committees, but, at Bordeaux, all who have "aided or abetted the Committee of Public Safety;" at Lyons, all administrators, functionaries, military or civil officers who "convoked or tolerated the Rhône-et-Loire congress," and furthermore, "every individual whose son, clerk, servant, or even day-laborer, may have borne arms or contributed the means of resistance," that is to say, the entire National Guard who took up arms, and nearly all the population which gave its money or voted in the sections.[1185]--By virtue of this decree, all are "outlaws," or, in other words subject to the guillotine just on the establishment of their identity, and their property confiscated. Consequently, at Bordeaux, where not a gun had been fired, the mayor Saige, and principal author of the submission, is at once led to the scaffold without any form of trial,[1186] while eight hundred and eighty-one others succeed him amidst the solemn silence of a dismayed population.[1187] Two hundred prominent merchants are arrested in one night; more than fifteen hundred persons are imprisoned; all who are well off are ransomed, even those against who no political charge could be made; nine millions of fines are levied against "rich egoists." One of these,[1188] accused of "indifference and moderatism," pays twenty thousand francs "not to be harnessed to the car of the Revolution;" another "convicted of having shown contempt for his section and for the poor by giving thirty livres per months," is taxed at one million two hundred thousand livres, while the new authorities, a crooked mayor and twelve knaves composing the Revolutionary Committee, traffic in lives and property.[1189] At Marseilles, says Danton,[1190] the object is "to give the commercial aristocracy an important lesson;" we must "show ourselves as terrible to traders as to nobles and priests;" consequently, twelve thousand of them are proscribed and their possessions sold.[1191] From the first day the guillotine works as fast as possible; nevertheless, it does not work fast enough for Representative Fréron who finds the means for making it work faster.

"The military commission we have established in place of the revolutionary tribunal," he writes, "works frightfully fast against the conspirators.... They fall like hail under the sword of the law. Fourteen have already paid for their infamous treachery with their heads. To-morrow, sixteen more are to be guillotined, all chiefs of the legion, notaries, sectionists, members of the popular tribunal; to-morrow, also, three merchants will dance the carmagnole, and they are the ones we are after."[1192]

Men and things, all must perish; he wishes to demolish the city and proposes to fill up the harbor. Restrained with great difficulty, Fréron contents himself with a destruction of "the haunts" of the aristocracy, two churches, the concert-hall, the houses around it, and twenty-three buildings in which the rebel sections had held their meetings.

At Lyons, to increase the booty, the representatives had taken pains to encourage the manufacturers and merchants with vague promises; these opened their shops and brought their valuable goods, books and papers out of their hiding-places. No time is lost in seizing the plunder; "a list of all property belonging to the rich and to anti-revolutionaries" is drawn up, which is "confiscated for the benefit of the patriots of the city;" in addition to this a tax of six millions is imposed, payable in eight days, by those whom the confiscation may have still spared;[1193] it is proclaimed, according to principle, that the surplus of each individual belongs by right to the sans-culottes, and whatever may have been retained beyond the strictly necessary, is a robbery by the individual to the detriment of the nation.[1194] In conformity with this rule there is a general rounding up, prolonged for ten months, which places the fortunes of a city of one hundred and twenty thousand souls in the hands of its scoundrels. Thirty-two revolutionary committees "whose members are thick as thieves select thousands of guards devoted to them."[1195] In confiscated dwellings and warehouses, they affix seals without an inventory; they drive out women and children "so that there shall be no witnesses;" they keep the keys; they enter and steal when they please, or install themselves for a revel with prostitutes.--Meanwhile, the guillotine is kept going, and people are fired at and shot down with grape-shot. The revolutionary committee officially avow one thousand six hundred and eighty-two acts of murder committed in five months,[1196] while a confederate of Robespierre's privately declare that there were six thousand.[1197]

Blacksmiths are condemned to death for having shod the Lyonnese cavalry, firemen for having extinguished fires kindled by republican bombshells, a widow for having paid a war-tax during the siege, market women for "having shown disrespect to patriots." It is an organized "Septembrisade" made legal and lasting; its authors are so well aware of the fact as to use the word itself in their public correspondence.[1198]--At Toulon it is worse, people are slaughtered in heaps, almost haphazard. Notwithstanding that the inhabitants the most compromised, to the number of four thousand, take refuge on board English vessels, the whole city, say the representatives, is guilty. Four hundred workmen in the navy-yard having marched out to meet Fréron, he reminds them that they kept on working during the English occupation of the town, and he has them put to death on the spot. An order is issued to all "good citizens to assemble in the Champ de Mars on penalty of death." They come there to the number of three thousand; Fréron, on horseback, surrounded by cannon and troops, arrives with about a hundred Maratists, the former accomplices of Lemaille, Sylvestre, and other well-known assassins, who form a body of local auxiliaries and counselors; he tells them to select out of the crowd at pleasure according to their grudge, fancy, or caprice; all who are designated are ranged along a wall and shot. The next morning, and on the following days, the operation is renewed: Fréron writes on the 16th of Nivose that "eight hundred Toulonese have already been shot." ... "A volley of musketry," says he, in another letter, and after that, volley after volley, until "the traitors are all gone." Then, for three months after this, the guillotine dispatches eighteen hundred persons; eleven young women have to mount the scaffold together, in honor of a republican festival; an old woman of ninety-four is borne to it in an armchair. The population, initially of twenty-eight thousand people, is reduced to six or seven thousand only.

All this is not enough; the two cities that dared maintain a siege must disappear from the French soil. The Convention decrees that "the city of Lyons shall be destroyed: every house occupied by a rich man shall be demolished; only the dwellings of the poor shall remain, with edifices specially devoted to industry, and monuments consecrated to humanity and public education."[1199] The same at Toulon: "the houses within the town shall be demolished; only the buildings that are essential for army and navy purposes, for stores and munitions, shall be preserved."[11100] Consequently, a requisition is made in Var and the neighboring departments for twelve thousand masons to level Toulon to the ground.--At Lyons, fourteen thousand laborers pull down the Chateau Pierre-Encize; also the superb houses on Place Bellecour, those of the Quai St.-Clair, those of the Rues de Flandre and de Bourgneuf, and many others; the cost of all this amounts to four hundred thousand livres per decade; in six months the Republic expends fifteen millions in destroying property valued at three or four hundred millions, all belonging to the Republic.[11101] Since the Mongols of the fifth and thirteenth centuries, no such vast and irrational waste had been seen--such frenzy against the most profitable fruits of industry and human civilization.--Again, one can understand how the Mongols, who were nomads, desired to convert the soil into one vast steppe. But, to demolish a town whose arsenal and harbor is maintained by it, to destroy the leaders of manufacturing interests and their dwellings in a city where its workmen and factories are preserved, to keep up a fountain and stop the stream which flows from it, or the stream without the fountain, is so absurd that the idea could only enter the head of a Jacobin. His imagination has run so wild and his prevision become so limited that he is no longer aware of contradictions; the ferocious stupidity of the barbarian and the fixed idea of the inquisition meet on common ground; the earth is not big enough for any but himself and the orthodox of his species. Employing absurd, inflated and sinister terms he decrees the extermination of heretics: not only shall their monuments, dwellings and persons be destroyed, but every vestige of them shall be eradicated and their names lost to the memory of man.[11102]

"The name of Toulon shall be abolished; that commune shall henceforth bear the name of Port-la-Montagne."--"The name of Lyons shall be stricken off the list of towns belonging to the Republic; the remaining collection of houses shall henceforth bear the name of Ville-Affranchie. A column shall be erected on the ruins of Lyons bearing this inscription: 'Lyons made war on Liberty! Lyons is no more!'"

X. Destruction of the Girondin party

Destruction of the Girondin party.--Proscription of the
Deputies of the "Right".--Imprisonment of the 73.--Execution
of the 21.--Execution, suicide, or flight of the rest.

In all this there is no intention to spare in Paris the chiefs of the insurrection or of the party, either deputies or ministers; on the contrary, the object is to complete the subjection of the Convention, to stifle the murmurs of the "Right," to impose silence on Ducos, Boyer-Fonfrède, Vernier, and Couhey, who still speak and protest.[11103] Hence the decrees of arrest or death, launched weekly from the top of the "Mountain," fall on the majority like guns fired into a crowd. Decrees of accusation follow: on the 15th of June, against Duchâtel, on the 17th against Barbaroux, on the 23rd against Brissot, on the 8th of July against Devérité and Condorcet, on the 14th against Lauze-Deperret and Fauchet, on the 30th against Duprat Jr., Valée and Mainvielle, on the 2nd of August against Rouyer, Brunel and Carra; Carra, Lauze-Deperret and Fauchet, present during the session, are seized on the spot, which is plain physical warning: none is more effective to check the unruly.--Decrees are passed on the 18th of July accusing Coustard, on the 28th of July against Gensonné, La Source, Vergniaud, Mollevaut, Gardien, Grangeneuve, Fauchet, Boilleau, Valazé, Cussy, Meillan; each being aware that the tribunal before which he must appear is the waiting room to the guillotine.--Decrees of condemnation are passed on the 12th of July against Birotteau, the 28 of July against Buzot, Barbaroux, Gorsas, Lanjuniais, Salles, Louvet, Bergoeing, Pétion, Guadet, Chasset, Chambon, Lidon, Valady, Defermon, Kervelégen, Larivière, Rabaut-Saint-Étienne, and Lesage; pronounced outlaws and traitors, they are to be led to the scaffold without trial as soon as they can be got hold of.--Finally, on the 3rd of October, a great haul of the net in the Assembly itself sweeps off the benches all the deputies that still seem capable of any independence: the first thing is to close the doors of the hall, which is done by Amar, reporter of the Committee of General Security;[11104] then, after a declamatory and calumnious speech, which lasts two hours, he reads off names on two lists of proscriptions: forty-five deputies, more or less prominent among the Girondins, are to be at once summoned before the revolutionary tribunal; seventy-three others, who have signed secret protests against the 31st of May and 2nd of June, are to be put in jail. No arguing! the majority dares not even express an opinion. Some of the proscribed attempt to exculpate themselves, but they are not allowed to be heard; none but the Montagnards have the floor, and they do no more than add to the lists, each according to personal enmity; Levasseur has Vigée put down, and Duroi adds the name of Richon. One their names being called, all the poor creatures who happen to be inscribed, quietly advance and "huddle together within the bar of the house, like lambs destined to slaughter," and here they are separated into two flocks; on the one hand the seventy-three, and on the other, the ten or twelve who, with the Girondins already kept under lock and key, are to furnish the sacramental and popular number, the twenty-two traitors, whose punishment is a requirement of the Jacobin imagination;[11105] on the left, the batch for the prison; on the right, the batch for the guillotine.

To those who might be tempted to imitate them or defend them this is a sufficient lesson.--Subject to the boos, hisses and insults from the hags lining the streets, the seventy-three[11106] are conducted to the prisoners' room in the town hall. This, already full, is where they pass the night standing on benches, scarcely able to breathe. The next day they are crammed into the prison for assassins and robbers, "la Force," on the sixth story, under the roof; in this narrow garret their beds touch each other, while two of the deputies are obliged to sleep on the floor for lack of room. Under the skylights, which serve for windows, and at the foot of the staircase are two pig-pens; at the end of the apartment are the privies, and in one corner a night-tub, which completes the poisoning of the atmosphere already vitiated by this crowded mass of human beings. The beds consist of sacks of straw swarming with vermin; they are compelled to endure the discipline,[11107] rations and mess of convicts. And they are lucky to escape at this rate: for Amar takes advantage of their silent deportment to tax them with conspiracy; other Montagnards likewise want to arraign them at the revolutionary Tribunal: at all events, it is agreed that the Committee of General Security shall examine their records and maintain the right of designating new culprits amongst them. For ten months they thus remain under the knife, in daily expectation of joining the twenty-two on the Place de la Révolution.--With respect to the latter, the object is not to try them but to kill them, and the semblance of a trial is simply judicial assassination; the bill of indictment against them consists of club gossip; they are accused of having desired the restoration of the monarchy, of being in correspondence with Pitt and Coburg;[11108] of having excited Vendée to insurrection. The betrayal of Dumouriez is imputed to them, also the murder of Lepelletier, and the assassination of Marat; while pretended witnesses, selected from amongst their personal enemies, come and repeat, like a theme agreed upon, the same ill-contrived fable: nothing but vague allegations and manifest falsehoods, not one definite fact, not once convincing document; the lack of proof is such that the trial has to be stopped as soon as possible. "You brave b----forming the court," writes Hébert, "don't trifle away your time. Why so much ceremony in shortening the days of wretches whom the people have already condemned?" Care is especially taken not to let them have a chance to speak. The eloquence of Vergniaud and logic of Guadet might turn the tables at the last moment. Consequently, a prompt decree authorizes the tribunal to stop proceedings as soon as the jury becomes sufficiently enlightened, which is the case after the seventh session of the court, the record of death suddenly greeting the accused, who are not allowed to defend themselves. One of them, Valazé, stabs himself in open court, and the next day the national head-chopper strikes off the remaining twenty heads in thirty-eight minutes.--Still more expeditious are the proceedings against the accused who avoid a trial. Gorsas, seized in Paris on the 8th of October, is guillotined the same day. Birotteau, seized at Bordeaux, on the 24th of October, mounts the scaffold within twenty-four hours. The others, tracked like wolves, wandering in disguise from one hiding-place to another, and most of them arrested in turn, have only choice of several kinds of death. Cambon is killed in defending himself. Lidon, after having defended himself, blows out his brains, Condorcet takes poison in the guard-room of Bourg-la-Reine. Roland kills himself with his sword on the highway. Clavière stabs himself in prison. Rébecqui is found drowned in the harbor of Marseilles, and Pétion and Buzon half eaten by wolves on a moor of Saint-Emilion. Valady is executed at Périgueux, Dechézeau at Rochefort, Grangeneuve, Guadet, Salle and Barbaroux at Bordeaux, Coustard, Cussy, Rabout-Saint-Étienne, Bernard, Masuyer, and Lebrun at Paris. Even those who resigned in January, 1793, Kersaint and Manuel, atone with their lives for the crime of having sided with the "Right" and, of course, Madame Roland, who is taken for the leader of the party, is one of the first to be guillotined.[11109]--Of the one-hundred and eighty Girondins who led the Convention, one hundred and forty have perished or are in prison, or fled under sentence of death. After such a curtailment and such an example the remaining deputies cannot be otherwise than docile;[11110] neither in the central nor in the local government will the "Mountain" encounter resistance; its despotism is practically established, and all that remains is to proclaim this in legal form.

XI. Institutions of the Revolutionary Government

Institutions of the Revolutionary Government.--Its
principle, objects, proceedings, tools and structure.--The
Committee of Public Safety.--Subordination of the Convention
and ministry.--The use of the Committee of General Security
and the Revolutionary Tribunal.--Administrative
centralization.--Representatives on Mission, National Agents
and Revolutionary Committees.--Law of Lése-majesty.
--Restoration and Aggravation of the institutions of the old
monarchy.

After the 2nd of August, on motion of Bazire, the Convention decrees "that France is in revolution until its independence is recognized." which means[11111] that the period of hypocritical phrases has come to an end, that the Constitution was merely a signboard for a fair, and that the charlatans who had made use of it no longer need it, that it is to be put away in the store containing other advertising material, that individual, local and parliamentary liberties are abolished, that the government is arbitrary and absolute, that no institution, law, dogma, or precedent affords any guarantee for it against the rights of the people, that property and lives are wholly at its mercy, that there are no longer any rights of man.--Six weeks later, when, through the protest of the forty-five and the arrest of the seventy-three, obedience to the Convention is assured, all this is boldly and officially announced in the tribune. "Under the present circumstances of the Republic," says St. Just, "the Constitution cannot be implemented as this would enable attacks on liberty to take place because it would lack the violent measures necessary to repress these." We are no longer to govern "according to maxims of natural peace and justice; these maxims are only valid among the friends of liberty;" but they are not applicable between patriots and the malevolent. The latter are "outside our sovereignty," are lawless, excluded from the social pact, slaves in rebellion, to be punished or imprisoned, and, amongst the malevolent must be placed "the indifferent[11112]".--"You are to punish whoever is passive in the Republic and does nothing for it;" for his passivity is treason and ranks him among other public enemies. Now, between the people and its enemies, there is nothing in common but the sword; steel must control those who cannot be ruled "by justice"; the monarchical and neutral majority must be repressed (comprimé);

"The Republic will be founded only when the sans-culottes,[11113] the sole representatives of the nation, the only citizens, "shall rule by right of conquest."[11114]

The meaning of this is more than clear. The régime of which St. Just presents the plan, is that by which every oligarchy of invaders installs and maintains itself over a subjugated nation. Through this régime, in Greece, ten thousand Spartans, after the Dorian invasion, mastered three hundred thousand helots and périocques; through this régime, in England, sixty thousand Normans, after the battle of Hastings, mastered two million Saxons; through this régime in Ireland, since the battle of the Boyne, two hundred thousand English Protestants have mastered a million of Catholic Irish; through this régime, the three hundred thousand Jacobins of France will master the seven or eight millions of Girondins, Feuillants, Royalists or Indifferents.

This system of government is a very simple one and consist in maintaining the subject population in a state of extreme helplessness and of extreme terror. To this end, it is disarmed;[11115] it is kept under surveillance; all action in common is prohibited; its eyes should always be directed to the up-lifted ax and to the prison doors always open; it is ruined and decimated.--For the past six months all these rigors are decreed and applied,--disarmament of "suspects," taxes on the rich, the maximum against traders, requisitions on land-owners, wholesale arrests, rapid executions of sentences, arbitrary penalties of death, and publicized, multiplied tortures. For the past six months, all sorts of executive instruments are set up and put into operation: The Committee of Public Safety, the Committee of General Security, ambulating proconsuls with full power, local committees authorized to tax and imprison at will, a revolutionary army, a revolutionary tribunal. But, for lack of internal harmony and of central impulsion, the machine only half works, the power not being sufficient and its action not sufficiently sweeping and universal.

"You are too remote from the conspiracies against you," says St. Just;[11116] "it is essential that the sword of the law should everywhere be rapidly brandished and your arm be everywhere present to arrest crime.... The ministers confess that, beyond their first and second subordinates, they find nothing but inertia and indifference."--"A similar apathy is found in all the government agents," adds Billaud-Varennes;[11117] "the secondary authorities which are the strong points of the Revolution serve only to impede it." Decrees, transmitted through administrative channels, arrive slowly and are indolently applied. "You are missing that co-active force which is the principle of being, of action, of execution.... Every good government should possess a center of willpower and the levers connected with it.... Every government activity should exclusively originate from the central source."--

"In ordinary governments," says Couthon, finally,[11118] "the right of electing belongs to the people; you cannot take it away from them. In extraordinary governments all impulsion must come from the center; it is from the convention that elections must issue.... You would injure the people by confiding the election of officials to them, because you would expose them to electing men that would betray them."

--The result is that the constitutional maxims of 1789 give way to radically opposed maxims; instead of subjecting the government to the people, the people is made subject to the government. The hierarchy of the ancient régime is re-established under revolutionary terms, and henceforth all powers, much more formidable than those of the ancient régime, cease to be delegated from the depths to the summit and will henceforth instead be delegated from the summit to the bottom.

At the summit, a committee of twelve members, similar to the former royal council, exercises collective royalty; nominally, authority is divided amongst the twelve; it is, in practice, concentrated in a few hands. Several members occupy only a subaltern position, and amongst these, Barère, who, official secretary and mouthpiece, is always ready to make a speech or draft an editorial; others, with special functions, Jean Bon St. André, Lindet, and above all, Prieur de la Côte d'Or and Carnot, confine themselves each to his particular department, navy, war, supplies, with blank signatures, for which they give in return their signatures to the political leaders; the latter, called "the statesmen," Robespierre, Couthon, Saint-Just, Collot d'Herbois, Billaud-Varennes, are the real rulers providing overall direction. It is true that their mandate has to be renewed monthly; but this is a certainty, for, in the present state of the Convention, its vote, required beforehand, becomes an almost vain formality. More submissive than the parliament of Louis XIV., the Convention adopts, without discussion, the decrees which the Committee of Public Safety present to it ready made. It is no more than a registry-office, and scarcely that, for it has relinquished its right of appointing its own committees, that office being assigned to the Committee of Public Safety; it votes as a whole all lists of names which the Committee send in.[11119] Naturally, none but the creatures of the latter and the faithful are inscribed; thus, the whole legislative and parliamentary power belongs to it.--As to executive and administrative power, the ministers have become mere clerks of the Committee of Public Safety; "they come every day at specified hours to receive its orders and acts;[11120] "they submit to it "the list with explanations, of all the agents" sent into the departments and abroad; they refer to it every minute detail; they are its scribes, merely its puppets, so insignificant that they finally lose their title, and for the "Commission on External Relations" a former school-master is taken, an inept clubbist, bar-fly and the pillar of the billiard-room, scarcely able to read the documents brought to him to sign in the café where he passes his days.[11121]--Thus is the second power in the State converted by the Committee into a squad of domestics, while the foremost one is converted into an audience of claqueurs.

To make them do their duty, it has two hands.--One, the right, which seizes people unawares by the collar, is the Committee of General Security, composed of twelve extreme Montagnards, such as Panis, Vadier, Le Bas, Geoffroy, David, Amar, La Vicomterie, Lebon and Ruhl, all nominated, that is to say, appointed by it, being its confederates and subalterns. They are its lieutenants of police, and once a week they come and take part in its labors, as formerly the Sartines, and the Lenoirs assisted the Comptroller-general. A man who this secret committee deems a "suspect," is suddenly seized, no matter who, whether representative, minister, or general, and finds himself the next morning behind the bars in one of the ten new Bastilles.--There, the other hand seizes him by the throat; this is the revolutionary tribunal, an exceptional court like the extraordinary commissions of the ancient régime, only far more terrible. Aided by its police gang, the Committee of Public Safety itself selects the sixteen judges and sixty jurymen[11122] from among the most servile, the most furious, or the most brutal of the fanatics:[11123] Fouquier-Tinville, Hermann, Dumas, Payan, Coffinhal, Fleuriot-Lescot, and, lower down on the scale, apostate priests, renegade nobles, disappointed artists, infatuated studio-apprentices, journeymen scarcely able to write their names, shoemakers, joiners, carpenters, tailors, barbers, former lackeys, an idiot like Ganney, a deaf man like Leroy-Dix-Août; their names and professions indicate all that is necessary to be told: these men are licensed and paid murderers. The Jurymen themselves are allowed eighteen francs a day, so that they may attend to their business more leisurely. This business consists in condemning without proof, without any pleadings, and scarcely any examination, in a hurry, in batches, whoever the Committee of Public Safety might send to them, even the most confirmed Montagnards: Danton, who contrived the tribunal, will soon discover this.--it is through these two government institutions that the Committee of Public Safety keeps every head under the cleaver and each head, to avoid being struck off, bows down,[11124] in the provinces as well as in Paris.

This has happened when the existing local hierarchy was replaced by new authorities making the omnipotent will of the Committee present everywhere. Directly or indirectly, "for all government measures or measures of public safety, all that relates to persons and the general and internal police, all constituted bodies and all public functionaries, are placed under its inspection."[11125] You may imagine how the risk of being guillotined weighed upon them.

To suppress in advance any tendency to administrative inertia, it has had withdrawn from the too powerful, too much respected, department governments, "too inclined to federalism," their departmental dominance and their "political influence."[11126] It reduces these to the levying of taxes and the supervision of roads and canals; it purges them out through its agents; it even purges out the governments of municipalities and districts. To suppress beforehand all probability of popular opposition, it has had the sessions of the sections reduced to two per week; it installs in these sections, for about forty sous a day, a majority of sans-culottes; it orders the suspension "until further directives" of all municipal elections.[11127]

Finally, to have full control on the spot, it appoints its own men, first, the commissioners and the representatives on missions, a sort of temporary corps of directors sent into each department with unlimited powers;[11128] next, a body of national agents, a sort of permanent body of sub-delegates, through whom in each district and municipality it replaces the procureurs-syndics.[11129] To this army of functionaries is added in each town, bourg or large village, a revolutionary committee, paid three francs a day per member, charged with the application of its decrees, and required to make reports thereon. Never before was such a vast and closely woven network cast from above to envelope and keep captive twenty-six million people. Such is the real constitution which the Jacobins substitute for the constitution they have prepared for show. In the arsenal of the monarchy which they destroyed they took the most despotic institutions--centralization, Royal Council, lieutenants of police, special tribunals, intendants and sub-delegates; they disinterred the antique Roman law of lèse-majesty, refurbished old blades which civilization had dulled, aiming them at every throat and now wielded at random against liberties, property and lives. It is called the "revolutionary government;" according to official statements it is to last until peace is secured; in the minds of genuine Jacobins it must continue until all the French have been regenerated in accordance with the formula.

*****

[Footnote 1101: Titus Flavious Clemens, (Greek writer born in Athens around 150 and dead in Cappadoce in 250) He lived in Alexandria. (SR).]

[Footnote 1102: The words of Marat.]

[Footnote 1103: After the Constitution is completed, said Legendre, in the Jacobin club, we will make the federalists dance.]

[Footnote 1104: Archives Nationales, F.I.C.. 56, (Circular of Gohier, Minister of Justice, to the French people, July 6, 1793). "Certain persons are disposed to pervert the events of May 31 and June 2, by atrocious exaggerations and the grossest fables, and prevent the fortunate results they present from being seen. They are absolutely determined to see nothing but violations of the liberty of the people's representatives in a step which was specially designed to hasten on the Constitutional Act on which the liberty of all is established. Of what consequence is it who are the authors of the Constitution presented to you? What does it matter whether it issues from a mountain amidst lightning and the rolling thunder, like the Tables of the Law given to the Hebrews, or whether it comes, like the laws given to the early Romans, inspired in the tranquil asylum of a divinity jealous of his religious surroundings? Is this constitution worthy of a free people? That is the only question which citizens who wear the livery of no party need examine!"]

[Footnote 1105: Buchez et Roux, XXVIII., 177. (report by Hérault Séchelles, June 10, 1793). Ibid, XXXI., 400. (Text of constitution submitted to discussion June 11th, and passed June 24th.)]

[Footnote 1106: De Sybel, II., 331. (According to the facsimile published in the Quarterly Review). "Hérault says that he and four of his colleagues are ordered to furnish the draft of a constitution by Monday."]

[Footnote 1107: Report by Hérault-Séchelles. (Buchez et Roux, XXVIII. 178.)]

[Footnote 1108: Buchez et Roux, XXXI, 400. (Articles of the Declaration of Rights, 1, 7, 9, 11, 27, 31, 35)]

[Footnote 1109: Buchez et Roux, XXVIII., 178. Report by Hérault-Séchelles. "Each of us had the same desire, that of attaining to the greatest democratic result. The sovereignty of the people and the dignity of man were constantly in our minds... A secret sentiment tells us that our work is perhaps the most popular that ever existed."]

[Footnote 1110: Archives Nationales, B. II., 23. (Table of votes by the commission appointed to collect the procès-verbaux of the adoption of the constitution, August 20, 1793.)--Number of primary assemblies sending in their procès-verbaux, 6,589 (516 cantons have not yet sent theirs in).--Number of voters on call, 1,795,908; Yes, 1,784,377; Noes, 11,531.--Number of primary assemblies voting Yes unanimously, not on call of names, 297.--At Paris, 40,990 voters, at Troyes, 2,491, at Limoges, 2,137.--Cf. For details and motives of abstention, Sauzay IV. pp. 157-161. Albert Babeau, II, pp. 83 and 84. Moniteur, XVII., 375 (speech by the representative Desvars).]

[Footnote 1111: Ibid., Moniteur, XVII., 20. (report by Barrère on the convocation of the primary assemblies, June 17, 1793.) Ibid., 102 (Report of Cambon, July 11). "It is now a fortnight since you demanded a Constitution. Very well, here it is.... Respect for persons and property is amply secured in it. Yes, more definitely than in any other constitution. Does it provide for its own revision? Yes, for in six weeks, we can convoke the primary assemblies and express our desire for the reform that may appear necessary.--Will the popular wish be respected? Yes, the people then will make definitive laws."]

[Footnote 1112: Guillon de Montléon, I., 282, 309.--Buchez et Roux, XXVIII, 356, 357 (Journal de Lyon Nos. 223 and 224.) "The acceptance of the Constitution was neither entire nor very sincere; people took credit to themselves for accepting a vicious and sketchy production." Meillan, "Mémoires," 120. (In July he leaves Caen for Quimper). "Although we were assured that we should pass only through Maratist towns, we had the satisfaction of finding nearly all the inhabitants regarding Marat with horror. They had indeed accepted the Constitution offered by the Committee of Public Safety, but solely to end the matter and on conditions which would speak well for them; for, everywhere the renewal of the Convention was exacted and the punishment of assaults made on it." This desire, and others analogous to it, are given in the procès-verbaux of many of the primary assemblies (Archives Nationales, B. II., 23); for example, in those of the thirteen cantons of Ain. A demand is made, furthermore, for the reintegration of the Twenty-two, the abolition of the revolutionary tribunal, the suppression of absolute proconsulates, the organization of a department guard for securing the future of the Convention, the discharge of the revolutionary army, etc.]

[Footnote 1113: Moniteur, XVII., 20. Report of Barère: "The Constitutional act is going to draw the line between republicans and royalists."]

[Footnote 1114: Archives Nationales, F.I.C., 54. (Circular of the Minister, Gohier, July 6, 1793.) "It is to-day that, summoned to the alter of the country, those who desire the Republic will be known by name, and those who do not desire it, whether they speak or keep silent, will be equally known."]

[Footnote 1115: Sauzay, IV., 160, 161. (Article by the Vidette.) Consequently, "all the unconstitutionalists nobles and priests considered it a duty to go the assemblies and joyfully accept a constitution which guaranteed liberty and property to everybody."]

[Footnote 1116: "Journal des Débats de la Société des Jacobins," No. For July 27, 1793 (correspondence, No. 122).]

[Footnote 1117: Moniteur, XVII., 156, 163.]

[Footnote 1118: Sauzay, IV., 158: "The motives for judgments were thus stated by judges themselves."]

[Footnote 1119: Moniteur, XVII., 40, 48, 72, 140, 175, 194, 263. (Cf. Speeches by Chaumette, July 14, and Report by Gossoin, August 9).--Archives Nationales, B. II., 23. Negative votes in Ardèche 5, in Aude 5, Moselle 5, Saône-et-Loire 5, Côte-d'Or 4, Creuse 4, Haut-Rhin 4, Gers 4, Haute-Garonne 3, Aube 2, Bouches-du-Rhône 2, Cantal 2, Basses-Alpes 1, Haute-Marne 1, Haute-Vienne 1, Var 0, Seine 0.--The details and circumstances of voting are curious. In the department of Aube, at Troyes, the second section in agreement with the third, excluded "suspects" from the vote. At Paris, the section "Gardes Française," Fourcroy president, announces 1,714 voters, of which 1,678 are citizens and 36 citoyennes. In the "Mont Blanc" section, the secretary signs as follows: Trone segretaire general de la semblé.]

[Footnote 1120: Moniteur, XVII., 375. (Session of the convention, August 11, 1793). Chabot: "I demand a law requiring every man who does not appear at a primary meeting to give good reason for his absence; also, that any man who has not favored the Constitution, be declared ineligible to all constitutional franchises." Ibid., 50. (Meeting of the Commune, July 4th). Leonard Bourdon demands, in the name of his section, the Gravilliers, a register on which to inscribe those who accept the Constitution, "in order that those who do not vote for it may be known."--Souzay, IV. 159. M. Boillon, of Belleherbe, is arrested "for being present at the primary assembly of the canton of Vaucluse, and when called upon to accept the Constitutional act, leaving without voting."]

[Footnote 1121: Moniteur, XVII., 11. (Instructions on the mode of accepting the Constitution).--Sauzay IV., 158.--Moniteur, XVII., 302. (Speech by Garat, August 2.) "I have dispatched commissioners to push the Constitutional Act through the primary assemblies."--Durand- Maillane. 150. "The envoys of the departments were taken from the sans-culotterie then in fashion, because they ruled in the Convention."]

[Footnote 1122: Sauzay, IV., 158.]

[Footnote 1123: Moniteur, XVII., 363. (Report of Gossuin to the Convention, August 9). "There are primary assemblies which have extended their deliberations beyond the acceptance of the Constitution. This acceptance being almost unanimous, all other objects form matter for petitions to be entrusted to competent committees."--Ibid., 333. (Speech of Delacroix). "The anti-revolutionary delegates sent by the conspirators we had in the Convention must be punished. (August 6.).]

[Footnote 1124: Moniteur, ibid., 333. Speech and motions of Bazire, August 8.--XIX., 116. Report of Vouland, January 2, 1794. The pay of Maillard and his acolytes amounted to twenty-two thousand livres.--XVIII., 324. (Session of August 5. Speeches of Gossuin, Thibault and Lacroix.)--Ibid., 90. (Session of Germinal 8, year III.) Speech by Bourdon de l'Oise: "We have been obliged to pick men out of the envoys in order to find those disposed for rigorous measures."]

[Footnote 1125: Moniteur, XVII., 330. Ordinance of the Commune, August 6.]

[Footnote 1126: Moniteur, XVII., 332. (Session of the Convention, August 6.)--Cf. the "Diurnal" of Beaulieu, August 6. Beaulieu mentions several deputations and motions of the same order, and states the alarm of the "Mountain."--Durand-Maillane, "Mémoires," 151. "Among the envoys from the departments were sensible men who, far from approving of all the steps taken by their brethren, entertained and manifested very contrary sentiments. These were molested and imprisoned."--"Archives des Affaires étrangères," vol. 1411. (Report of the agents of August 10 and 11.) The department commissioners... seemed to us in the best disposition. There are some intriguers among them, however; we are following up some of them, and striving by fraternizing with them to prevent them from being seduced or led away by the perfidious suggestions of certain scoundrels, the friends of federalism, amongst them.... A few patriotic commissioners have already denounced several of their brethren accused of loving royalty and federalism."]

[Footnote 1127: Buchez et Roux, XXVIII., 408.]

[Footnote 1128: Moniteur., XVII., 330. (Act passed by the Commune, August 6.)]

[Footnote 1129: Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol. 1411. (Reports of agents, Aug. 10 and 11). "Citizens are, to-day, eager to see who shall have a commissioner at his table: who shall treat him the best. .. the Commissioners of the primary assemblies come and fraternise with them in the Jacobin club. They adopt their maxims, and are carried away by the energy of the good and true republican sans-culottes in the clubs."]

[Footnote 1130: Moniteur, XVII., 307, 308. (Report of Couthon to the Convention, Aug. 2.) "You would wound, you would outrage these Republicans, were you to allow the performance before them of an infinity of pieces filled with insulting allusions to liberty."]

[Footnote 1131: Ibid. 124. (Session of Aug. 5.)]

[Footnote 1132: Ibid., 314; (Letter of Lhuillier, Aug. 4.)--322, Session of the Commune, Aug. 4th; 332, (Session of the Convention, Aug. 6).--Buchez et Roux, XXVIII., 409. (Meeting of the Jacobin Club, Aug. 5th).]

[Footnote 1133: Buchez et Roux, 411 (Article in the Journal de la Montagne.)]

[Footnote 1134: Moniteur, XVII., 348.]

[Footnote 1135: "Le Féderation" was in 1790 "the Association of the National Guards." (SR).]

[Footnote 1136: Buchez et Roux, XVIII., 415 and following pages.]

[Footnote 1137: Ibid., 352.--Cf. Beaulieu, "Diurnal," Aug. 9.]

[Footnote 1138: On the mechanical character of the festivals of the Revolution read the programme of "The civic fete in honor of Valor and Morals," ordered by Fouché at Nevers, on the 1st day of the 1st decade of the 2nd month of the year II. (De Martel, "Etude sur Fouché," 202); also, the programme of the "Fete de l'Etre Supréme," at Sceaux, organized by the patriot Palloy, Presidial 20, year II. (Dauban, Paris en 1794, p.187).]

[Footnote 1139: It cost one million two hundred thousand francs, besides the traveling expenses of eight thousand delegates.]

[Footnote 1140: Buchez et Roux, XXVIII., 439, and following pages. Procès verbal of he National Festival of the 10th of August.--Dauban "La Demagogie en 1791." (Extract from the Republican Ritual.)]

[Footnote 1141: Moniteur, XVII., 366. (Session of Aug. 11. Speech by Lacroix and decree in conformity therewith.)]

[Footnote 1142: Ibid., 374. "Remember that you are accountable to the nation and the universe for this sacred Ark. Remember that it is your duty to die rather than suffer a sacrilegious hand....."]

[Footnote 1143: Buchez et Roux, XXVIII., 358. It is evident from the context of the speech that Robespierre and the Jacobins were desirous of maintaining the Convention because they foresaw Girondist elections.]

[Footnote 1144: Moniteur, XVII., 382. (Session of Aug. 12. Speech by Lacroix).]

[Footnote 1145: Ibid., 387.--Cf. Ibid., 410, session of August 16. The delegates return there to insist on a levy, en masse, the levy of the first class not appearing sufficient to them. (levy means mobilization of all men)--Buchez et Roux, XXVIII., 464. Delegate Royer, Curé of Chalons-sur-Saone, demands that the aristocrats "chained together in sixes" be put in the front rank in battle "to avoid the risks of sauve qui peut."]

[Footnote 1146: Decrees of August 14 and 16.]

[Footnote 1147: Moniteur, XVII., 375.]

[Footnote 1148: Riouffe, "Mémoires," 19: "An entire generation, the real disciples of Jean-Jacques, Voltaire and Diderot, could be, and was annihilated, to a large extent under the pretext of federalism."]

[Footnote 1149: Moniteur, XVII., 102. (Speech by Cambon, July 11, 1793). Archives Nationales, AF. II., 46. (Speech of General Wimpffen to the "Société des amis de la Liberté et de l'Egalité," in session at Cherbourg, June 25, 1793). "Sixty-four departments have already revoked the powers conferred on their representatives." Meillan, "Mémoires," 72: "The archives of Bordeaux once contained the acts passed by seventy-two departments, all of which adhered to measures nearly the same as those indicted in our documents."]

[Footnote 1150: Buchez et Roux, XVIII., 148.--Meillan, 70, 71.--Guillon de Montléon, I., 300 (on Lyons) and I., 280 (on Bordeaux). Archives Nationales, AF II., 46. (Deliberations of the Nantes section July 5).--Letter of Merlin and Gillet, representatives on mission, Lorient, June 12. Dissatisfaction at the outrages of May 31 and June 2, was so manifest that the representatives on mission Merline, Gillet, Savestre, and Cagaignac print on the 14th of June a resolution authorising one of their body to go to the Convention and protest "in their name" against the weakness shown by it and against the ursurpations of the Paris commune.--Sauzay, IV., 260. At Besançon, in a general assembly of all the administrative, judicial and municipal bodies of the department joined to the commissioners of the section, protest "unanimously" on the 15th of June.]