The French Revolution, Volume 1. The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2
by
Hippolyte A. Taine
Part 8 out of 9
He escapes with his wife through the only door which is left
unguarded, wanders about all night, exposed to the gun-shots of the
squads which are on his track, and reaches Lyons only on the
following day. - ?Meanwhile the pillagers send him notice that if
he does not abandon his rentals, they will cut down his forests and
burn up everything on his estate. The chateau, indeed, is fired
three distinct times, while, in the interval, the band sack another
chateau at Bayère, and, on again passing by that of M. de Chaponay,
demolish a dam which had cost 10,000 livres. - The public
prosecutor, for his part, remains quiet, notwithstanding the appeals
to him: he doubtless says to himself that a gentleman whose house
has been searched is lucky to have saved his life, and that others,
like M. Guillin-Dumoutet, for example, have not been as fortunate.
The latter gentleman, formerly captain of a vessel belonging to the
India Company, afterwards Commandant at Senegal, now retired from
active life, occupied his chateau of Poleymieux with his young wife
and two infant children, his sisters, nieces, and sister-in-law -
in all, ten women belonging to his family and domestic service -
one Negro servant and himself; an old man of sixty years of age;
here is a haunt of militant conspirators which must be disarmed as
soon as possible.[15] Unfortunately, a brother of M. Guillin,
accused of treason to the nation, had been arrested ten months
previously, which was quite sufficient for the clubs in the
neighborhood. In the month of December, 1790, the chateau had
already been ransacked by the people of the parishes in the
vicinity: nothing was found, and the Department first censured and
afterwards interdicted these arbitrary searches. On this occasion
they will manage things better. - On the 26th of June, 1791, at
ten o'clock in the morning, the municipal body of Poleymicux, along
with two other bodies in their scarves, and three hundred National
Guards, are seen approaching, under the usual pretext of searching
for arms. Madame Guillin presents herself; reminds them of the
interdict of the Department, and demands the legal order under which
they act. They refuse to give it. M. Guillin descends in his turn
and offers to open his doors to them if they will produce the order.
They have no order to show him. During the colloquy a certain man
named Rosier, a former soldier who had deserted twice, and who is
now in command of the National Guard, seizes M. Guillin by the
throat; the old captain defends himself; presents a pistol at the
man, which misses fire, and then, throwing the fellow off, withdraws
into the house, closing the door behind him. - Soon after this, the
tocsin sounds in the neighborhood, thirty parishes start up, and two
thousand men arrive. Madame Guillin, by entreaties, succeeds in
having delegates appointed, chosen by the crowd, to inspect the
chateau. These delegates examine the apartments, and declare that
they can find nothing but the arms ordinarily kept on hand. This
declaration is of no effect: the multitude, whose excitement is
increased by waiting, feel their strength, and have no idea of
returning empty-handed. A volley is fired, and the chateau windows
are riddled with balls. As a last effort Madame Guillin, with her
two children in her arms, comes out, and going to the municipal
officers, calls upon them to do their duty. Far from doing this
they retain her as a hostage, and place her in such a position that,
if there is firing from the chateau, she may receive the bullets.
Meanwhile, the doors are forced, the house is pillaged from top to
bottom, and then set on fire; M. Guillin, who seeks refuge in the
keep, is almost reached by the flames. At this moment, some of the
assailants, less ferocious than the rest, prevail upon him to
descend, and they answer for his life. Scarcely has he shown
himself when others fall on him; they cry that he must be killed,
that he has a life-rent of 36,000 francs from the State, and "this
will be so much saved for the nation." "He is hacked to pieces
alive;" his head is cut off and borne upon a pike; his body is cut
up, and sent piece by piece to each parish; several wash their hands
in his blood, and besmear their faces with it. It seems as if
tumult, clamor, incendiarism, robbery, and murder had aroused in
them not only the cruel instincts of the savage, but the carnivorous
appetites of the brute; some of them, seized by the gendarmerie at
Chasselay, had roasted the dead man's arm and dined upon it.[16] -
Madame Guillin, who is saved through the compassion of two of the
inhabitants of the place, succeeds, after encountering many dangers,
in reaching Lyons; she and her children lost everything, "the
chateau, its dependencies, the crop of the preceding year, wine,
grain, furniture, plate, ready money, assignats, notes, and
contracts." Ten days later, the department gives notice to the
National Assembly that "similar projects are still being plotted and
arranged, and that there are (always) threats of burning chateaux
and rent-rolls;" that no doubt of this can possibly exist: "the
inhabitants of the country only await the opportunity, to renew
these scenes of horror."[17]
IV.
The nobles obliged to leave the rural districts. - They take
refuge in towns. - The dangers they incur. - The eighty-two
gentlemen of Caen
Amidst these multiplied and reviving Jacqueries there is nothing
left but flight, and the nobles, driven out of the rural districts,
seek refuge in the towns. But here also a jacquerie awaits them. As
the effects of the Constitution are developed, successive
administrations become feebler and more partial; the unbridled
populace has become more excitable and more violent; the enthroned
club has become more suspicious and more despotic. Henceforth the
club, through or in opposition to the administrative bodies, leads
the populace, and the nobles will find it as hostile as the
peasants. All their reunions, even when liberal, are closed like
that in Paris, through the illegal interference of mobs, or through
the iniquitous action of the popular magistrates. All their
associations, even when legal and salutary, are broken up by brute
force or by municipal intolerance, They are punished for having
thought of defending themselves, and slaughtered because they try to
avoid assassination. - Three or four hundred gentlemen, who were
threatened on their estates, sought refuge with their families in
Caen;[18] and they trusted to find one there, for, by three
different resolutions, the municipal body promised them aid and
protection. Unfortunately, the club thinks otherwise, and, on
August 23, 1791, prints and posts up a list of their names and
residences, declaring that since "their suspected opinions have
compelled them to abandon the rural districts," they are emigrants
in the interior;" from which it follows that "their conduct must be
scrupulously watched," because "it may be the effect of some
dangerous plot against the country." Fifteen are especially
designated; among others "the former curé of Saint-Loup, the great
bloodhound of the aristocrats, and all of them very suspicious
persons, harboring the worst intentions." - Thus denounced and
singled out, it is evident that they can no longer sleep peacefully:
moreover, now that their addresses are published, they are openly
threatened with domiciliary visits and violence. As to the
administrative authorities, their intervention cannot be expected
on; the department itself gives notice to the minister that, as the
law stands, it cannot put the chateau in the hands of the
regulars,[19] as this would, it is said, excite the National Guard.
Besides, how without an army is this post to be wrested from the
hands which hold it? It is impossible with only the resources which
the Constitution affords us." Thus, in the defense of the oppressed,
the Constitution is a dead letter. - Hence it is that the
refugees, finding protection only in themselves, undertake to help
each other. No association can be more justifiable, more pacific,
more innocent. Its object is "to demand the execution of the laws
constantly violated, and to protect persons and property." In each
quarter they will try to bring together "all good citizens;" they
will form a committee of eight members, and, in each committee,
there will always be "an officer of justice or a member of the
administrative body with an officer or subaltern of the National
Guard." Should any citizen be attacked in person or property the
association will draw up a petition in his favor. Should any
particular act of violence require the employment of public force,
the members of the district will assemble under the orders of the
officer of justice and of the National Guard to enforce obedience.
"In all possible cases" they "will avoid with the greatest care any
insult of individuals; they will consider that the object of the
meeting is solely to ensure public peace, and that protection from
the law to which every citizen is entitled." - In short, they are
volunteer constables. Turn the inquiry which way they will, a
hostile municipality and a prejudiced tribunal can put no other
construction upon it; they find nothing else. The only evidence
against one of the leaders is a letter in which he tries to prevent
a gentleman from going to Coblentz, striving to prove to him that he
will be more useful at Caen. The principal evidence against the
association is that of a townsman whom they wished to enroll, and of
whom they demanded his opinions. He had stated that he was in favor
of the execution of the laws; upon which they told him: "In this
case you belong to us, and are more of an aristocrat than you think
you are. Their aristocracy, in effect, consists wholly in the
suppression of brigandage. No claim is more unpalatable, because it
interposes an obstacle to the arbitrary acts of a party which thinks
it has a right to do as it pleases. On the 4th of October the
regiment of Aunis left the town, and all good citizens were handed
over to the militia, "in uniform or not," they alone being armed.
That day, for the first time in a long period, M. Bunel, the former
curé of Saint-Jean, with the consent and assistance of his sworn
successor, officiates at the mass. There is a large gathering of
the orthodox, which causes uneasiness among the patriots. The
following day M. Bunel is to say mass again; whereupon, through the
municipal authorities, the patriots forbid him to officiate, to
which he submits. Nevertheless, for lack of due notice, a crowd of
the faithful have arrived and the church is filled. A dangerous
mob! The patriots and National Guards arrive "to preserve order,"
which has not been disturbed, and which they alone disturb.
Threatening words are exchanged between the servants of the nobles
and the National Guard. The latter draw their swords, and a young
man is hewn down and trampled on; M. de Saffrey, who comes to his
assistance unarmed, is himself cut down and pierced with bayonets,
and two others are wounded. - Meanwhile, in a neighboring street,
M. Achard de Vagogne, seeing a man maltreated by armed men,
approaches, in order to make peace. The man is shot down and M.
Achard is covered with saber and bayonet gashes: "there is not a
thread on him which is not dyed with the blood that ran down even
into his shoes." In this condition he is led to the chateau along
with M. de Saifrey. Others break down the door of the house of M.
du Rosel, an old officer of seventy-five years, of which fifty-nine
have been passed in the service, and pursue him even over the wall
of his garden. A fourth squad seizes M. d'Héricy, another venerable
officer, who, like M. du Rosel, was ignorant of all that was going
on, and was quietly leaving for his country seat. - The town is
full of tumult, and, through the orders of the municipal
authorities, the general alarm is sounded.
The time for the special constables to act has come; about sixty
gentlemen, with a number of merchants and artisans, set out.
According to the rules of their association, and with significant
scruple, they beg an Officer of the National Guard, who happens to
be passing, to put himself at their head; they reach the Place
Saint-Sauveur, encounter the superior officer sent after them by the
municipal authorities, and, at his first command, follow him to the
Hôtel-de-Ville. On reaching this, without any resistance on their
part, they are arrested, disarmed, and searched. The rules and
regulations of their league are found on their persons; they are
evidently hatching a counter-revolution. The uproar against them is
terrible. "To keep them safe," they are conducted to the chateau,
while many of them are cruelly treated on the way by the crowd.
Others, seized in their houses - M. Levaillant and a servant of M.
d'Héricy - are carried off bleeding and pierced with bayonets.
Eighty-two prisoners are thus collected, while fears are constantly
entertained that they may escape. "Their bread and meat are cut up
into little pieces, to see that nothing is concealed therein; the
surgeons, who are likewise treated as aristocrats, are denied access
to them." Nocturnal visits are, at the same time, paid to their
houses; every stranger is ordered to present himself at the Hôtel-
de-Ville, to state why he comes to the town to reside, and to give
up his arms; every nonjuring priest is forbidden to say mass. The
Department, which is disposed to resist, has its hands tied and
confesses its powerlessness. "The people," it writes, "know their
strength: they know that we have no power; excited by disreputable
citizens, they permit whatever serves their passions or their
interests; they influence our deliberations, and force us to those
which, under other circumstances, we should carefully avoid." -
Three days after this the victors celebrate their triumph "with
drums, music, and lighted torches; the people are using hammers to
destroy on the mansions the coats-of-arms which had previously been
covered over with plaster;" the defeat of the aristocrats is
accomplished. - And yet their innocence is so clearly manifest
that the Legislative Assembly itself cannot help recognizing it.
After eleven weeks of durance the order is given to set them free,
with the exception of two, a youth of less than eighteen years and
an old man, almost an octogenarian, on whom two letters,
misunderstood, still leave a shadow of suspicion. - But it is not
certain that the people are disposed to give them up. The National
Guard refuses to discharge them in open daylight and serve as their
escort. Even the evening before numerous groups of women, a few men
mingled with them, talk of murdering all those fellows the moment
they set foot outside the chateau." They have to be let out at two
o'clock in the morning, secretly, under a strong guard, and to leave
the town at once as six months before they left the rural districts.
- Neither in country nor in the town[20] are they under the
protection of civil or religious law; a gentleman, who is not
compromised in the affair, remarks that their situation is worse
than that of Protestants and vagabonds during the worst years of the
Ancient Régime. of them and who abuse the use of them? Why should
one be on an equality for purposes of payment, and distinguished
"Does not the law allow (nonjuring) priests the liberty of saying
mass? Why then can we not listen to their mass except at the risk of
our lives? Does not the law command all citizens to preserve the
public peace? Why then are those whom the cry to arms has summoned
forth to maintain public order assailed as aristocrats? Why is the
refuge of citizens which the laws have declared sacred, violated
without orders, without accusation, without any appearance of wrong-
doing? Why are all prominent citizens and those who are well off
disarmed in preference to others? Are weapons exclusively made for
those but lately deprived only for purposes of annoyance and insult"
He has spoken right. Those who now rule form an aristocracy in an
inverse sense, contrary to the law, and yet more contrary to
nature.[21] For, by a violent inversion, the lower grades in the
graduated scale of civilization and culture now are found uppermost,
while the superior grades are found at the uniform. The Constitution
having suppressed inequality, this has again arisen in an inverse
sense. The populace, both of town and country, taxes, imprisons,
pillages, and slays more arbitrarily, more brutally, more unjustly
than feudal barons, and for its serfs or villains it has its ancient
chieftains.
V.
Persecutions in private life.
Let us suppose that, in order not to excite suspicion, they are
content to be without arms, to form no more associations, not to
attend elections, to shut themselves up at home, to strictly confine
themselves within the harmless precincts of domestic life. The same
distrust, the same animosity, still pursues them there. - At
Cahors,[22] where the municipal authorities, in spite of the law,
had just expelled the Carthusians who, under legal sanction, chose
to remain and live in common, two of the monks, before their
departure, give to M. de Beaumont, their friend and neighbor, four
dwarf pear-trees and some onions in blossom in their garden. On the
strength of this, the municipal body decree that
"the sieur Louis de Beaumont, formerly count, is guilty of having
audaciously and maliciously damaged national property," condemns him
to pay a fine of three hundred livres, and orders "that the four
pear-trees, pulled up in the so-called Carthusian garden, be brought
on the following day, Wednesday, to the door of the said sieur de
Beaumont, and there remain for four consecutive days, guarded, day
and night, by two fusiliers, at the expense of the said sieur de
Beaumont; and upon the said trees shall be placed the following
inscription, to wit: Louis de Beaumont, destroyer of the national
property. And the judgment herewith rendered shall be printed to
the number of one thousand copies, read, published, and posted at
the expense of the said sieur de Beaumont, and duly addressed
throughout the department of Lot to the districts and municipalities
thereof, as well as to all societies of the Friends of the
Constitution and of Liberty."
Every line of this legal invective discloses the malignant envy of
the local recorder, who revenges himself for having formerly bowed
too low. - The following year, M. de Beaumont, having formally and
under notarial sanction bought a church which was sold by the
district, along with the ornaments and objects of worship it
contained, the mayor and municipal officers, followed by a lot of
workmen, come and carry away and destroy everything -
confessionals, altars, and even the saint's canonised body, which
had been interred for one hundred and fifty years: so that, after
their departure, "the edifice resembled a vast barn filled with
ruins and rubbish."[23] It must be noted that, at this very time, M.
de Beaumont is military commandant at Perigord. The treatment he
undergoes shows what is in reserve for ordinary nobles. I do not
recommend them to attend official sales of property.[24] - Will
they even be free in their domestic enjoyments, and on entering a
drawing-room are they sure of quietly passing an evening there? -
At Paris, even, a number of persons of rank, among them the
ambassadors of Denmark and Venice, are listening to a concert in a
mansion in the Faubourg Saint-Honoré given by a foreign virtuoso,
when a cart enters the court loaded with fifty bundles of hay, the
monthly supply for the horses. A patriot, who sees the cart driven
in, imagines that the King is concealed underneath the hay, and that
he has come there for the purpose of plotting with the aristocrats
about his flight. A mob gathers, and the National Guard arrives,
along with a commissioner, while four grenadiers stand guard around
the cart. The commissioner, in the meantime, inspects the hotel; he
sees music-stands, and the arrangements for a supper; comes back,
has the cart unloaded, and states to the people that he has found
nothing suspicious. The people do not believe him, and demand a
second inspection. This is made by twenty-four delegates; the
bundles of hay, moreover, are counted, and several of them are
unbound, but all in vain. Disappointed and irritated, having
anticipated a spectacle, the crowd insists that all the invited
guests, men and women, should leave the house on foot, and only get
into their carriages at the end of the street. "First comes a file
of empty carriages;" next, "all the guests in their evening attire,
and the ladies in full dress, trembling with fear, with downcast
eyes, between two rows of men, women, and children, who stare them
in the face, and overwhelm them with insults."[25]
Suspected of holding secret meetings, and called to account in his
own house, has the noble at least the right to frequent a public
saloon, to eat in a restaurant, and to take the fresh air in a
balcony? - The Vicomte de Mirabeau, who has just dined in the
Palais-Royal, stands at the window to take the air, and is
recognized; there is a gathering, and the cry is soon heard, "Down
with Mirabeau-Tonneau (barrel-Mirabeau)!"[26] "Gravel is flung at
him from all sides, and occasionally stones. One of the window-
panes is broken by a stone. Immediately picking up the stone, he
shows it to the crowd, and, at the same time, quietly places it on
the sill of the window, in token of moderation." There is a loud
outcry; his friends force him to withdraw inside, and Bailly, the
mayor, comes in person to quiet the aggressors. In this case there
are good reasons for their hatred. The gentleman whom they stone is
a bon-vivant, large and fat, fond of rich epicurean Suppers; and on
this account the populace imagine him to be a monster, and even
worse, an ogre. With regard to these nobles, whose greatest
misfortune is to be over-polished and too worldly, the over-excited
imagination revives its old nursery tales. - M. de Montlosier,
living in the Rue Richelieu, finds that he is watched on his way to
the National Assembly. One woman especially, from thirty to thirty-
two years of age, who sold meat at a stall in the Passage Saint-
Guillaume, "regarded him with special attention. As soon as she saw
him coming she took up a long, broad knife which she sharpened
before him, casting furious looks at him." He asks his housekeeper
what this means. Two children of that quarter have disappeared,
carried off by gipsies, and the report is current that M. de
Montlosier, the Marquis de Mirabeau, and other deputies of the
"right," meet together "to hold orgies in which they eat little
children."
In this state of public opinion there is no crime which is not
imputed to them, no insult which is not freely bestowed on them.
"Traitors, tyrants, conspirators, assassins," such is the current
vocabulary of the clubs and newspapers in relation to them.
"Aristocrat" signifies all this, and whoever dares to refute the
calumny is himself an aristocrat. - At the Palais-Royal, it is
constantly repeated that M. de Castries, in his last duel, made use
of a poisoned sword, and an officer of the navy who protests against
this false report is himself accused, tried on the spot, and
condemned "to be shut up in the guard-house or thrown into the
fountain."[27] - The nobles must beware of defending their honor
in the usual way and of meeting an insult with a challenge! At
Castelnau, near Cahors,[28] one of those who, the preceding year,
marched against the incendiaries, M. de Bellud, Knight of Saint-
Louis, on coming down the public square with his brother, a
guardsman, is greeted with cries of "The aristocrat! to the lamp
post !" His brother is in a morning coat and slippers, and not
wishing to get into trouble they do not reply. A squad of the
National Guard, passing by, repeats the cry, but they still remain
silent. The shout continues, and M. de Bellud, after some time has
elapsed, begs the captain to order his men to be quiet. He refuses,
and M. de Bellud demands satisfaction outside the town. At these
words the National Guards rush at M. de Bellud with fixed bayonets.
His brother receives a saber-cut on the neck, while he, defending
himself with his sword, slightly wounds the captain and one of the
men. The two brothers, alone against the whole body, fight on,
retreating to their house, in which they are blockaded. Towards
seven o'clock in the evening, two or three hundred National Guards
from Cahors arrive to reinforce the besiegers. The house is taken,
and the guardsman, escaping across the fields, sprains his ankle and
is captured. M. de Bellud, who has found his way into another
house, continues to defend himself there: the house is set on fire
and burnt, together with two others alongside of it. Taking refuge
in a cellar he still keeps on firing. Bundles of lighted straw are
thrown in at the air-holes. Almost suffocated, he springs out,
kills his first assailant with a shot from one pistol, and himself
with another. His head is cut off with that of his servant. The
guardsman is made to kiss the two heads, and, on his demanding a
glass of water, they fill his mouth with the blood which drops from
the severed head of his brother. The victorious gang then set out
for Cahors, with the two heads stuck on bayonets, and the guardsman
in a cart. It comes to a halt before a house in which a literary
circle meets, suspected by the Jacobin club. The wounded man is
made to descend from the cart and is hung: his body is riddled with
balls, and everything the house contains is broken up, "the
furniture is thrown out of the windows, and the house pulled down."
- Every popular execution is of this character, at once prompt and
complete, similar to those of an Oriental monarch who, on the
instant, without inquiry or trial, avenges his offended majesty,
and. for every offense, knows no other punishment than death. At
Tulle, M. de Massy,[29] lieutenant of the "Royal Navarre," having
struck a man that insulted him, is seized in the house in which he
took refuge, and, in spite of the three administrative bodies, is at
once massacred. - At Brest, two anti-revolutionary caricatures
having been drawn with charcoal on the walls of the military coffee-
house, the excited crowd lay the blame of it on the officers; one of
these, M. Patry, takes it upon himself, and, on the point of being
torn to pieces, attempts to kill himself. He is disarmed, but, when
the municipal authorities come to his assistance, they find him
"already dead through an infinite number of wounds," and his head is
borne about on the end of a pike.[30] -
VI.
Conduct of officers. - Their self-sacrifice.- Disposition of the
soldiery. - Military outbreaks.- Spread and increase of
insubordination. - Resignation of the officers.
Much better would it be to live under an Eastern king, for he is not
found everywhere, nor always furious and mad, like the populace.
Nowhere are the nobles safe, neither in public nor in private life,
neither in the country nor in the towns, neither associated together
nor separate. Popular hostility hangs over them like a dark and
threatening cloud from one end of the territory to the other, and the
tempest bursts upon them in a continuous storm of vexations, outrages,
calumnies, robberies, and acts of violence; here, there, and almost
daily, bloody thunderbolts fall haphazard on the most inoffensive
heads, on an old man asleep, on a Knight of Saint-Louis taking a
walk, on a family at prayers in a church. But, in this aristocracy,
crushed down in some places and attacked everywhere, the thunderbolt
finds one predestined group which attracts it and on which it constantly
falls, and that is the corps of officers.
VI.
Conduct of the officers. - Their self-sacrifice. - Disposition
of the soldiery. - Military outbreaks. - Spread and increase of
insubordination. - Resignation of the officers.
With the exception of a few fops, frequenters of drawing-rooms, and
the court favorites who have reached a high rank through the
intrigues of the antechamber, it was in this group, especially in
the medium ranks, that true moral nobility was then found. Nowhere
in France was there so much tried, substantial merit. A man of
genius, who associated with them in his youth, rendered them this
homage: many among them are men possessing " the most amiable
characters and minds of the highest order."[31] Indeed, for most of
them, military service was not a career of ambition, but an
obligation of birth. It was the rule in each noble family for the
eldest son to enter the army, and advancement was of but little
consequence. He discharged the debt of his rank; this sufficed for
him, and, after twenty or thirty years of service, the order of
Saint-Louis, and sometimes a meager pension, were all he had a right
to expect. Amongst nine or ten thousand officers, the great
majority coming from the lower and poorer class of provincial
nobles, body-guards, lieutenants, captains, majors, lieutenant-
colonels, and even colonels, have no other pretension. Satisfied
with favors[32] restricted to their subordinate rank, they leave the
highest grades of the service to the heirs of the great families, to
the courtiers or to the parvenus at Versailles, and content
themselves with remaining the guardians of public order, and the
brave defenders of the State. Under this system, when the heart is
not depraved it becomes exalted; it is made a point of honor to
serve without compensation; there is nothing but the public welfare
in view, and all the more because, at this moment, it is the
absorbing topic of all minds and of all literature. Nowhere has
practical philosophy, that which consists in a spirit of abnegation,
more deeply penetrated than among this unrecognized nobility. Under
a polished, brilliant, and sometimes frivolous exterior, they have a
serious soul ; the old sentiment of honor is converted into one of
patriotism. Set to execute the laws, with force in hand to maintain
peace through fear, they feel the importance of their mission, and,
for two years, fulfill its duties with extraordinary moderation,
gentleness, and patience, not only at the risk of their lives, but
amidst great and multiplied humiliations, through the sacrifice of
their authority and self-esteem, through the subjection of their
intelligent will to the dictation and incapacity of the masters
imposed upon them. For a noble officer to respond to the
requisitions of an extemporized bourgeois municipal body,[33] to
subordinate his competence, courage, and prudence to the blunders
and alarms of five or six inexperienced, frightened, and timid
attorneys, to place his energy and daring at the service of their
presumption, feebleness, and lack of decision, even when their
orders or refusal of orders are manifestly absurd or injurious, even
when they are opposed to the previous instructions of his general or
of his minister, even when they end in the plundering of a market,
the burning of a chateau, the assassination of an innocent person,
even when they impose upon him the obligation of witnessing crime
with his sword sheathed and arms folded,[34] - this is a hard
task. It is hard for the noble officer to see independent, popular,
and bourgeois troops organized in the face of his own troops, rivals
and even hostile, in any case ten times as numerous and no less
exacting than sensitive - hard to be expected to show them
deference and extend civilities to them, to surrender to them posts,
arsenals, and citadels, to treat their chiefs as equals, however
ignorant or unworthy, and whatever they may be - here a lawyer,
there a Capuchin, elsewhere a brewer or a shoemaker, most generally
some demagogue, and, in many a town or village, some deserter or
soldier drummed out of his regiment for bad conduct, perhaps one of
the noble's own men, a scamp whom he has formerly discharged with
the yellow cartridge, telling him to go and be hung elsewhere. It
is hard for the noble officer to be publicly and daily calumniated
on account of his rank and title, to be characterized as a traitor
at the club and in the newspapers, to be designated by name as an
object of popular suspicion and fury, to be hooted at in the streets
and in the theater, to submit to the disobedience of his men, to be
denounced, insulted, arrested, fleeced, hunted down and slaughtered
by them and by the populace, to see before him a cruel, ignoble, and
unavenged death - that of M. de Launay, murdered at Paris -
that of M. de Belzunce, murdered at Caen - that of M. de
Beausset, murdered at Marseilles - that of M. de Voisins,
murdered at Valence - that of M. de Rully, murdered at Bastia, or
that of M. de Rochetailler, murdered at Port-au-Prince.[35] All
this is endured by the officers among the nobles. Not one of the
municipalities, even Jacobin, can find any pretext which will
warrant the charge of disobeying orders. Through tact and deference
they avoid all conflict with the National Guards. Never do they
give provocation, and, even when insulted, rarely defend themselves.
Their gravest faults consist of imprudent conversations, vivacious
expressions and witticisms. Like good watch-dogs amongst a
frightened herd which trample them under foot, or pierce them with
their horns, they allow themselves to be pierced and trampled on
without biting, and would remain at their post to the end were they
not driven away from it.
All to no purpose: doubly suspicious as members of a proscribed
class, and as heads of the army, it is against them that public
distrust excites the most frequent explosions, and so much the more
as the instrument they handle is singularly explosive. Recruited by
volunteer enlistment "amongst a passionate, turbulent, and somewhat
debauched people," the army is composed of "all that are most fiery,
most turbulent, and most debauched in the nation."[36] Add to these
the sweepings of the alms-houses, and you find a good many
blackguards in uniform! When we consider that the pay is small, the
food bad, discipline severe, no promotion, and desertion endemic, we
are no longer surprised at the general disorder: license, to such
men, is too powerful a temptation. With wine, women, and money they
have from the first been made turncoats, and from Paris the
contagion has spread to the provinces. In Brittany,[37] the
grenadiers and chasseurs of Ile-de-France "sell their coats, their
guns, and their shoes, exacting advances in order to consume it in
the tavern;" fifty-six soldiers of Penthièvre "wanted to murder
their officers," and it is foreseen that, left to themselves, they
will soon, for lack of pay, "betake themselves to the highways, to
rob and assassinate." In Euree-et-Loir, the dragoons,[38] with saber
and pistols in hand, visit the farmers' houses and take bread and
money, while the foot soldiers of the "Royal-Comtois" and the
dragoons of the "Colonel-Général" desert in bands in order to go to
Paris, where amusement is to be had. The main thing with them is
"to have a jolly time." In fact, the extensive military
insurrections of the earliest date, those of Paris, Versailles,
Besançon, and Strasbourg, began or ended with a revel. - Out of
these depths of gross desires there has sprung up natural or
legitimate ambitions. A number of soldiers, for twenty years past,
have learned how to read, and think themselves qualified to be
officers. One quarter of those enlisted, moreover, are young men
born in good circumstances, and whom a caprice has thrown into the
army. They choke in this narrow, low, dark, confined passage where
the privileged by birth close up the issue, and they will march over
their chiefs to secure advancement. These are the discontented, the
disputants, the orators of the mess-room, and between these barrack
politicians and the politicians of the street an alliance is at once
formed. - Starting from the same point they march on to the same
end, and the imagination which has labored to blacken the Government
in the minds of the people, blackens the officers in the minds of
the soldiers.
The Treasury is empty and there are arrears of pay. The towns,
burdened with debt, no longer furnish their quotas of supplies; and
at Orleans, with the distress of the municipality before them, the
Swiss of Chateauvieux were obliged to impose on themselves a
stoppage of one sou per day and per man to have wood in winter.[39]
Grain is scarce, the flour is spoilt, and the army bread, which was
bad, has become worse. The administration, worm-eaten by old
abuses, is deranged through the new disorder, the soldiers suffering
as well through its dissolution as through their extravagance. -
They think themselves robbed and they complain, at first with
moderation; and justice is done to their well-founded claims. Soon
they exact accounts, and these are made out for them. At Strasbourg,
on these being verified before Kellermann and a commissioner of the
National Assembly, it is proved that they have not been wronged out
of a sou; nevertheless a gratification of six francs a head is given
to them, and they cry out that they are content and have nothing
more to ask for. A few months after this fresh complaints arise,
and there is a new verification: an ensign, accused of embezzlement
and whom they wished to hang, is tried in their presence; his
accounting is tidy; none of them can cite against him a proven
charge, and, once more, they remain silent. On other occasions,
after hearing the reading of registers for several hours, they yawn,
cease to listen, and go outside to get something to drink. - But
the figures of their demands, as these have been summed up by their
mess-room calculators, remain implanted in their brains; they have
taken root there, and are constantly springing up without any
account or refutation being able to extirpate them. No more writings
nor speeches - what they want is money: 11,000 livres for the
Beaune regiment, 39,500 livres for that of Forez, 44,000 livres for
that of Salm, 200,000 livres for that of Chateauvieux, and similarly
for the rest. So much the worse for the officers if the money-chest
does not suffice for them; let them assess each other, or borrow on
their note of hand from the municipality, or from the rich men of
the town. - For greater security, in divers places, the soldiers
take possession of the military chest and mount guard around it: it
belongs to them, since they form the regiment, and, in any case, it
is better that it should be in their hands than in suspected hands.
- Already, on the 4th of June, 1790, the Minister of War announces
to the Assembly that "the military body threatens to fall into a
perfect state of anarchy." His report shows "the most incredible
pretensions put forth in the most plain-spoken way - orders
without force, chiefs without authority, the military chest and
flags carried away, the orders of the King himself openly defied,
the officers condemned, insulted, threatened, driven off; some of
them even captive amidst their own troops, leading a precarious life
in the midst of disgust and humiliations, and, as the climax of
horror, commanders having their throat cut under the eyes and almost
in the arms of their own soldiers."
It is much worse after the July Federation. Entertained, flattered,
and indoctrinated at the clubs, their delegates, inferior officers
and privates, return to the regiment Jacobins; and henceforth
correspond with the Jacobins of Paris, "receiving their instructions
and reporting to them,"[40] - Three weeks later, the Minister of
War gives notice to the National Assembly that there is no limit to
the license in the army. "Couriers, the bearers of fresh
complaints, are arriving constantly." In one place "a statement of
the fund is demanded, and it is proposed to divide it." Elsewhere, a
garrison, with drums beating, leaves the town, deposes its officers,
and comes back sword in hand. Each regiment is governed by a
committee of soldiers. "It is in this committee that the detention
of the lieutenant-colonel of Poitou has been twice arranged; here it
is that 'Royal-Champagne' conceived the insurrection" by which it
refused to recognize a sub-lieutenant sent to it. "Every day the
minister's cabinet is filled with soldiers who are sent as
representatives to him, and who proudly come and intimate to him the
will of their constituents." Finally, at Strasbourg, seven
regiments, each represented by three delegates, formed a military
congress. The same month, the terrible insurrection of Nancy breaks
out - three regiments in revolt, the populace with them, the
arsenal pillaged, three hours of furious fighting in the streets,
the insurgents firing from the windows of the houses and from the
cellar openings, five hundred dead among the victors, and three
thousand among the vanquished. - The following month, and for
six weeks,[41] there is another insurrection, less bloody, but more
extensive, better arranged and more obstinate, that of the whole
squadron at Brest, a mutiny of twenty thousand men, at first against
their admiral and their officers, then against the new penal code
and against the National Assembly itself. The latter, after
remonstrating in vain, is obliged not only not to take rigorous
measures, but again to revise its laws.[42]
>From this time forth, I cannot enumerate the constant outbreaks in
the fleet and in the army. - Authorized by the minister, the
soldier goes to the club, where he is repeatedly told that his
officers, being aristocrats, are traitors. At Dunkirk, he is
additionally taught how to get rid of them. Clamors, denunciations,
insults, musket-shots - these are the natural means, and they are
put in practice: but there is another, recently discovered, by which
an energetic officer of whom they are afraid may be driven away.
Some patriotic bully is found who comes and insults him. If the
officer fights and is not killed, the municipal authorities have him
arraigned, and his chiefs send him off along with his seconds "in
order not to disturb the harmony between the soldier and the
citizen." If he declines the proposed duel, the contempt of his men
obliges him to quit the regiment. In either case he is got out of
the way.[43] - They have no scruples in relation to him. Present
or absent, a noble officer must certainly be plotting with his
emigrant companions; and on this a story is concocted. Formerly, to
prove that sacks of flour were being thrown into the river, the
soldiers alleged that these sacks were tied with blue cords (cordons
bleus). Now, to confirm the belief that an officer is conspiring
with Coblentz, it suffices to state that he rides a white horse; a
certain captain, at Strasbourg, barely escapes being cut to pieces
for this crime; "the devil could not get it out of their heads that
he was acting as a spy, and that the little grey-hound" which
accompanies him on his rides "is used to make signals. " - One
year after, at the time when the National Assembly completes its
work, M. de Lameth, M. Fréteau, and M. Alquier state before it that
Luckner, Rochambeau, and the most popular generals, "no longer are
responsible for anything." The Auvergne regiment has driven away its
officers and forms a separate society, which obeys no one. The
second battalion of Beaune is on the point of setting fire to Arras.
It is almost necessary to lay siege to Phalsbourg, whose garrison
has mutinied. Here, "disobedience to the general's orders is
formal." There "are soldiers who have to be urged to stand sentinel;
whom they dare not put in confinement for discipline; who threaten
to fire on their officers; who stray off the road, pillage
everything, and take aim at the corporal who tries to bring them
back." At Blois, a part of the regiment "has just arrived without
either clothes or arms, the soldiers having sold all on the road to
provide for their debauchery." One among them, delegated by his
companions, proposes to the Jacobins at Paris to "de-aristocratise"
the army by cashiering all the nobles. Another declares, with the
applause of the club, that "seeing how the palisades of Givet are
constructed, he is going to denounce the Minister of War at the
tribunal of the. sixth arrondissement of Paris."
It is manifest that, for noble officers, the situation is no longer
tenable. After waiting patiently for twenty-three months, many of
them left through conscientiousness, when the National Assembly,
forcing a third oath upon them, struck out of the formula the name
of the King, their born general.[44] - Others depart at the end
of the Constituent Assembly, "because they risk being hung." A large
number resign at the end of 1791 and during the first months of
1792, in proportion as the new code and the new recruiting system
for the army develop their results.[45] In fact, on the one hand,
through the soldiers and inferior officers having a voice in the
election of their chiefs and a seat in the military courts, "there
is no longer the shadow of discipline; verdicts are given from pure
caprice; the soldier contracts the habit of despising his superiors,
of whose punishments he has no fear, and from whom he expects no
reward; the officers are paralyzed to such a degree as to become
entirely superfluous personages." On the other hand, the majority of
the National Volunteers are composed of "men bought by the communes
" and administrative bodies, worthless characters of the street-
corners, rustic vagabonds forced to march by lot or bribery,"[46]
and along with them, enthusiasts and fanatics to such an extent
that, from March, 1792, from the spot of their enlistment to the
frontier, their track is everywhere marked by pillage, robbery,
devastation, and assassinations. Naturally, on the road and at the
frontier, they denounce, drive away, imprison, or murder their
officers, and especially the nobles. 3/4 And yet, in this
extremity, numbers of noble officers, especially in the artillery
and engineer corps, persist in remaining at their posts, some
through liberal ideas, and others out of respect for their
instructions; even after the 10th of August, even after the 2nd of
September, even after the 21st of January, like their generals
Biron, Custine, de Flers, de Broglie, and de Montesquiou, with the
constant perspective of the guillotine that awaits them on leaving
the battlefield and even in the ministerial offices of Carnot.
VII.
Emigration and its causes. - The first laws against the emigrants.
It is, accordingly, necessary that the officers and nobles should go
away, should go abroad; and not only they, but also their families.
"Gentlemen who have scarcely six hundred livres income set out on
foot,"[47] and there is no doubt as to the motive of their
departure. "Whoever will impartially consider the sole and
veritable causes of the emigration," says an honest man, "will find
them in anarchy. If the liberty of the individual had not been
daily threatened, if;" in the civil as in the military order of
things, "the senseless dogma, preached by the factions, that crimes
committed by the mob are the judgments of heaven, had not been put
in practice, France would have preserved three fourths of her
fugitives. Exposed for two years to ignominious dangers, to every
species of outrage, to innumerable persecutions, to the steel of the
assassin, to the firebrands of incendiaries, to the most infamous
charges, 'to the denouncement of' their corrupted domestics, to
domiciliary visits" prompted by the commonest street rumor, "to
arbitrary imprisonment by the Committee of Inquiry," deprived of
their civil rights, driven out of primary meetings, "they are held
accountable for their murmurs, and punished for a sensibility which
would touch the heart in a suffering criminal." - " Resistance is
nowhere seen; from the prince's throne to the parsonage of the
priest, the tempest has prostrated all malcontents in resignation."
Abandoned "to the restless fury of the clubs, to informers, to
intimidated officials, they find executioners on all sides where
prudence and the safety of the State have enjoined them not even to
see enemies. . . . Whoever has detested the enormities of
fanaticism and of public ferocity, whoever has awarded pity to the
victims heaped together under the ruins of so many legitimate rights
and odious abuses, whoever, finally, has dared to raise a doubt or a
complaint, has been proclaimed an enemy of the nation. After this
representation of malcontents as so many conspirators, every crime
committed against them has been legitimated in public opinion.[48]
The public conscience, formed by the factions and by that band of
political corsairs who would be the disgrace of a barbarous nation,
have considered attacks against property and towns simply as
national justice, while, more than once, the news of the murder of
an innocent person, or of a sentence which threatened him with
death, has been welcomed with shouts of joy Two systems of natural
right, two orders of justice, two standards of morality were
accordingly established; by one of these it was allowable to do
against one's fellow-creature, a reputed aristocrat, that which
would be criminal if he were a patriot. . . . Was it foreseen
that, at the end of two years, France, teeming with laws, with
magistrates, with courts, with citizen-guards, bound by solemn oaths
in the defense of order and the public safety, would still and
continually be an arena in which wild beasts would devour unarmed
men " - With all, even with old men, widows and children, it is a
crime to escape from their clutches. Without distinguishing between
those who fly to avoid becoming a prey, and those who arm to attack
the frontier, the Constituent and Legislative Assemblies alike
condemn all absentees. The Constituent Assembly[49] trebled their
real and personal taxes, and prescribed that there should be a
triple lien on their rents and dues. The Legislative Assembly
sequestrates, confiscates, and puts into the market their
possessions, real and personal, amounting to nearly fifteen hundred
millions of cash value. Let them return and place themselves under
the knives of the populace; otherwise they and their posterity shall
all be beggars. - At this stroke indignation overflows, and a
bourgeois who is liberal and a foreigner, Mallet du Pan,
exclaims,[50] "What! twenty thousand families absolutely ignorant of
the Coblentz plans and of its assemblies, twenty thousand families
dispersed over the soil of Europe by the fury of clubs, by the
crimes of brigands, by constant lack of security, by the stupid and
cowardly inertia of petrified authorities, by the pillage of
estates, by the insolence of it cohort of tyrants without bread or
clothes, by assassinations and incendiarism, by the base servility
of silent ministers, by the whole series of revolutionary scourges,
- what' these twenty thousand desolate families, women and old men,
must see their inheritances become the prey of national robbery!
What! Madame Guillin, who was obliged to fly with horror from the
land where monsters have burnt her dwelling, slaughtered and eaten
her husband, and who live with impunity by the side of her home -
shall Madame Guillin see her fortune confiscated for the benefit of
the communities to which she owes her dreadful misfortunes! Shall M.
de Clarac, under penalty of the same punishment, go and restore the
ruins of his chateau, where an army of scoundrels failed to smother
him!" - So much the worse for them if they dare not come back!
They are to undergo civil death, perpetual banishment, and, in case
the ban be violated, they will be given up to the guillotine. In
the same case with them are others who, with still greater
innocence, have left the territory, magistrates, ordinary rich
people, burgesses, or peasants, Catholics, and particularly one
entire class, the nonjuring clergy, from the cardinal archbishop
down to the simple village vicar, all prosecuted, then despoiled,
then crushed by the same popular oppression and by the same
legislative oppression, each of these two persecutions exciting and
aggravating the other to such an extent that, at last, the populace
and the law, one the accomplice of the other, no longer leave a roof
nor a piece of bread, nor an hour's safety to a gentleman or to a
priest.[51]
VIII.
Attitude of the non-juring priests. - How they become distrusted.
- Illegal arrests by local administrations. - Violence or
complicity of the National Guards. - Outrages by the populace. -
Executive power in the south. - The sixth jacquerie. - Its two
causes. - Isolated outbreaks in the north, east, and west, -
General eruption in the south and in the center.
The ruling passion flings itself on all obstacles, even those placed
by itself across its own track. Through a vast usurpation the
minority of non-believers, indifferent or lukewarm, has striven to
impose its ecclesiastical forms on the Catholic majority, and the
situation thereby created for the Catholic priest is such that
unless he becomes schismatic, he cannot fail to appear as an enemy.
In vain has he obeyed! He has allowed his property to be taken, he
has left his parsonage, he has given the keys of the church to his
successor, he has kept aloof; he does not transgress, either by
omission or commission, any article of any decree. In vain does he
avail himself of his legal right to abstain from taking an oath
repugnant to his conscience. This alone makes him appear to refuse
the civic oath in which the ecclesiastical oath is included, to
reject the constitution which he accepts in full minus a parasite
chapter, to conspire against the new social and political order of
things which he often approves of; and to which he almost always
submits.[52] In vain does he confine himself to his special and
recognized domain, the spiritual direction of things. Through this
alone he resists the new legislators who pretend to furnish a
spiritual guidance, for, by virtue of being orthodox, he must
believe that the priest whom they elect is excommunicated, that his
sacraments are vain; and, in his office as pastor, he must prevent
his sheep from going to drink at an impure source. In vain might he
preach to them moderation and respect. Through the mere fact that
the schism is effected, its consequences unfold them selves, and the
peasants will not always remain as patient as their pastor. They
have known him for twenty years; he has baptized them and married
them; they believe that his is the only true mass; they are not
satisfied to be obliged to attend another two or three leagues away,
and to leave the church, their church which their ancestors built,
and where from father to son they have prayed for centuries, in the
hands of a stranger, an intruder and heretic, who officiates before
almost empty benches, and whom gendarmes, with guns in their hands,
have installed. Assuredly, as he passes through the street, they
will look upon him askance: it is not surprising that the women and
children soon hoot at him, that stones are thrown at night through
his windows, that in the strongly Catholic departments, Upper and
Lower Rhine, Doubs and Jura, Lozère, Deux-Sêvres and Vendée,
Finistère, Morbihan, and Côtes-du-Nord, he is greeted with universal
desertion, and then expelled through public ill-will. It is not
surprising that his mass is interrupted and that his person is
threatened;[53] that disaffection which thus far had only reached
the upper class, descends to the popular strata; that, from one end
of France to the other, a sullen hostility prevails against the new
institutions; for now the political and social constitution is
joined to the ecclesiastical constitution like an edifice to its
spire, and, through this sharp pinnacle, seeks the storm even within
the darkening clouds of heaven. The evil all springs out of this
unskillful, gratuitous, compulsory fusion, and, consequently, from
those who effected it.
But never will a victorious party admit that it has made a mistake.
In its eyes the nonjuring priests are alone culpable; it is
irritated against their factious conscience; and, to crush the
rebellion even in the inaccessible sanctuary of personal conviction,
there is no legal or brutal act of violence which it will not allow
itself to commit.
Behold, accordingly, a new sport thrown open; and the game is
immensely plentiful. For it comprises not only the black or gray
robes, more than forty thousand priests, over thirty thousand nuns,
and several thousand monks, but also the devoted orthodox, that is
to say the women of the low or middle class, and, without counting
provincial nobles, a majority of the serious, steady bourgeoisie, a
majority of the peasantry-almost the whole population of several
provinces, east, west, and in the south. A name is bestowed on
them, as lately on the nobles; it is that of fanatic, which is
equivalent to aristocrat, for it also designates public enemies
likewise placed by it beyond the pale of the law.
Little does it matter whether the law favors them, for it is
interpreted against them, arbitrarily construed and openly violated
by the partial or intimidated administrative bodies which the
Constitution has withdrawn from the control of the central authority
and subjected to the authority of popular gatherings. From the
first months of 1791, the hounding begins; the municipalities,
districts, and departments themselves often take the lead in beating
up the game. Six months later, the Legislative Assembly, by its
decree of November 29,[54] sounds the tally-ho, and, in spite of the
King's veto, the hounds on all sides dash forward. During the month
of April, 1792, forty-two departments pass against nonjuring priests
"acts which are neither prescribed nor authorized by the
Constitution," and, before the end of the Legislative Assembly,
forty-three others will have followed in their train. - Through
this series of illegal acts, without offense, without trial, non-
jurors are everywhere in France expelled from their parishes,
relegated to the principal town of the department or district, in
some places imprisoned, put on the same footing with the emigrants,
and despoiled of their property, real and personal.[55] Nothing
more is wanting against them but the general decree of deportation
which is to come as soon as the Assembly can get rid of the King.
In the meantime, the National Guards, who have extorted the laws,
endeavor to aggravate them in their application; and there is
nothing strange in their animosity. Commerce is at a standstill,
industry languishes, the artisan and shopkeeper suffer, and, in
order to account for the universal discontent, it is attributed to
the insubordination of the priest. Were it not for his stubbornness
all would go well, since the Constitution is perfect, and he is the
only one who does not accept it. But, in not accepting it, he
attacks it. He, therefore, is the last obstacle in the way of
public happiness; he is the scapegoat, let us drive the obnoxious
creature away! And the urban militia, sometimes on its own
authority, sometimes instigated by the municipal body its
accomplice; is seen disturbing public worship, dispersing
congregations, seizing priests by the collar, pushing them by the
shoulders out of the town, and threatening them with hanging if they
dare to return. At Douay,[56] with guns in hand, they force the
directory of the department to order the closing of all the
oratories and chapels in hospitals and convents. At Caen, with
loaded guns and with a cannon, they march forth against the
neighboring parish of Verson, break into houses, gather up fifteen
persons suspected of orthodoxy - canons, merchants, artisans,
workmen, women, girls, old men, and the infirm - cut off their
hair, strike them with the but-ends of their muskets, and lead them
back to Caen fastened to the breach of the cannon; and all this
because a nonjuring priest still officiated at Verson, and many
pious persons from Caen attended his mass: Verson, consequently, is
a focal center of counter-revolutionary gatherings. Moreover, in
the houses which were broken into, the furniture was smashed, casks
stove in, and the linen, money, and plate stolen, the rabble of Caen
having joined the expedition. - Here, and everywhere, there is
nothing to do but to let this rabble have its own way; and as it
operates against the possessions, the liberty; the life, and the
sense of propriety of dangerous persons, the National Militia is
careful not to interfere with it. Consequently, the orthodox, both
priests and believers, men and women, are now at its mercy, and,
thanks to the connivance of the armed force, which refuses to
interpose, the rabble satisfy on the proscribed class its customary
instincts of cruelty, pillage, wantonness, and destructiveness.
Whether public or private, the order of the day is always to hinder
worship, while the means employed are worthy of those who carry them
out. - Here, a nonjuring priest having had the boldness to
minister to a sick person, the house which he has just entered is
taken by assault, and the door and windows of a house occupied by
another priest are smashed.[57] There, the lodgings of two workmen,
who are accused of having had their infants baptized by a refractory
priest, are sacked and nearly demolished. Elsewhere, a mob refuses
to allow the body of an old curé, who had died without taking the
oath, to enter the cemetery. Farther on, a church is assaulted
during vespers, and everything is broken to pieces: on the following
day it is the turn of a neighboring church, and, in addition, a
convent of Ursuline nuns is devastated. - At Lyons, on Easter-day,
1791, as the people are leaving the six o'clock mass, a troop, armed
with whips, falls upon the women.[58] Stripped, bruised, prostrated,
with their heads in the dirt, they are not left until they are
bleeding and half-dead; one young girl is actually at the point of
death; and this sort of outrage occurs so frequently that even
ladies attending the orthodox mass in Paris dare not go out without
sewing up their garments around them in the shape of drawers. -
Naturally, to make the most of the prey offered to them, hunting
associations are formed. These exist in Montpellier, Arles, Uzès,
Alais, Nîmes, Carpentras, and in most of the towns or burgs of Gard,
Vaucluse, and l'Hérault, in greater or less number according to the
population of the city: some counting from ten to twelve, and others
from two to three hundred determined men, of every description:
among them are found "strike-hards" (tape-dur), former brigands, and
escaped convicts with the brand still on their backs. Some of them
oblige their members to wear a medal as a visible mark of
recognition; all assume the title of executive power, and declare
that they act of their own authority, and that it is necessary to
"quicken the law."[59] Their pretext is the protection of sworn
priests; and for twenty months, beginning with April, 1791, they
operate to this effect with heavy knotted dubs garnished with iron
points," without counting sabers and bayonets. Generally, their
expeditions are nocturnal. Suddenly, the houses of "citizens
suspected of a want of patriotism," of nonjuring ecclesiastics, of
the monks of the Christian school, are invaded; everything is broken
or stolen, and the owner is ordered to leave the place in twenty-
four hours: sometimes, doubtless through an excess of precaution, he
is beaten to death on the spot. Besides this, the band also works
by day in the streets, lashes the women, enters the churches saber
in hand, and drives the nonjuring priest from the altar. All of
this is done with the connivance and in the sight of the paralyzed
or complaisant authorities, by a sort of occult and complementary
government, which not only supplies what is missing in the
ecclesiastical law, but also searches the pockets of private
individuals. - At Nîmes, under the leadership of a patriotic
dancing-master, not content with "decreeing proscriptions, killing,
scourging, and often murdering," these new champions of the Gallican
Church undertake to reanimate the zeal of those liable to
contribution. A subscription having been proposed for the support
of the families of the volunteers about to depart, the executive
power takes upon itself to revise the list of offerings: it
arbitrarily taxes those who have not given, or who, in its opinion,
have given too little some "poor workmen fifty livres, others two
hundred, three hundred, nine hundred, and a thousand, under penalty
of wrecked houses and severe treatment." Elsewhere, the volunteers
of Baux and other communes near Tarascon help themselves freely,
and, "under the pretext that they are to march for the defense of
the country, levy enormous contributions on proprietors," on one
four thousand, and on another five thousand livres. In default of
payment, they carry away all the grain on one farm, even to the
reserve seed, threatening to make havoc with everything, and even to
burn, in case of complaint, so that the owners dare not say a word,
while the attorney-general of the neighboring department, afraid on
his own account, begs that his denunciation may be kept secret. -
>From the slums of the towns the jacquerie has spread into the rural
districts. This is the sixth and the most extensive seen for three
years.[60]
Two spurs impel the peasant on. - On the one hand he is frightened
by the clash of arms, and the repeated announcements of an
approaching invasion. The clubs and the newspapers since the
declaration of Pilnitz, and the Orators in the Legislative Assembly
for four months past, have kept him alarmed with their trumpet-
blasts, and he urges on his oxen in the furrow with cries of "Woa,
Prussia!" to one, and to the other, "Gee up, Austria!" Austria and
Prussia, foreign kings and nobles in league with the emigrant
nobles, are going to return in force to re-establish the salt-tax,
the excise, feudal-dues, tithes, and to retake national property
already sold and re-sold, with the aid of the gentry who have not
left, or who have returned, and the connivance of non-juring priests
who declare the sale sacrilegious and refuse to absolve the
purchasers. - On the other hand, Holy Week is drawing near, and
for the past year qualms of conscience have disturbed the
purchasers. Up to March 24, 1791, the sales of national property
had amounted to only 180 millions; but, the Assembly having
prolonged the date of payment and facilitated further sales in
detail, the temptation proves too strong for the peasant; stockings
and buried pots are all emptied of their savings. In seven months
the peasant has bought to the amount of 1,346 millions,[61] and
finally possesses in full and complete ownership the morsel of land
which he has coveted for so many years, and sometimes an unexpected
plot, a wood, a mill, or a meadow. At the present time he has to
settle accounts with the church, and, if the pecuniary settlement is
postponed, the Catholic settlement comes on the appointed day.
According to immemorial tradition he is obliged to take the
communion at Easter,[62] his wife also, and likewise his mother; and
if he, exceptionally, does not think this of consequence, they do.
Moreover, he requires the sacraments for his old sick father, his
new-born child, and for his other child of an age to be confirmed.
Now, communion, baptism, confession, all the sacraments, to be of
good quality, must proceed from a safe source, just as is the case
with flour and coin; there is only too much counterfeit money now in
the world, and the sworn priests are daily losing credit, like the
assignats. There is no other course to pursue, consequently, but to
resort to the non-juror, who is the only one able to give valid
absolutions. And it so happens that he not only refuses this, but
be is said to be inimical to the whole new order of things. - In
this dilemma the peasant falls back upon his usual resource, the
strength of his arms; he seizes the priest by the throat, as
formerly his lord, and extorts an acquittance for his sins as
formerly for his feudal dues. At the very least he strives to
constrain the non-jurors to swear, to close their separatist
churches, and bring the entire canton to the same uniform faith. -
Occasionally also he avenges himself against the partisans of the
non-jurors, against chateaux and houses of the opulent, against the
nobles and the rich, against proprietors of every class.
Occasionally, likewise, as, since the amnesty of September, 1791,
the prisons have been emptied, as one-half of the courts are not yet
installed,[63] as there has been no police for thirty months, the
common robbers, bandits, and vagrants, who swarm about without
repression or surveillance, join the mob and fill their pockets.
Here, in Pas-de-Calais,[64] three hundred villagers, headed by a
drummer, burst open the doors of a Carthusian convent, steal
everything, eatables, beverages, linen, furniture, and effects,
whilst, in the neighboring parish, another band operates in the same
fashion in the houses of the mayor and of the old curé, threatening
"to kill and burn all," and promising to return on the following
Sunday. - There, in Bas-Rhin, near Fort Louis, twenty houses of
the aristocrats are pillaged. - Elsewhere in Ile-et-Vilaine,
bodies of rural militia, combined, go from parish to parish, and,
increasing in numbers in consequence of their very violence until
they form bands of two thousand men. They close churches, drive
away nonjuring priests, remove clappers from the bells, eat and
drink what they please at the expense of the inhabitants, and often,
in the houses of the mayor or tax-registrar, indulge in the pleasure
of breaking everything to pieces. Should any public officer
remonstrate with them they shout, "At the aristocrat!" One of these
unlucky counselors is struck on the back with the but-end of a
musket, and two others have guns aimed at them; the chiefs of the
expedition are in no better predicament, and, according to their own
admission, if they are at the head of the mob it is to make sure
they themselves will not be pillaged or hung. The same spectacle
presents itself in Mayenne, in Orne, in Moselle, and in the
Landes.[65] - These, however, are but isolated irruptions, and
very mild; in the south and in the center, the plague is apparent in
an immense leprous spot, which extending from Avignon to Perigueux,
and from Aurillac to Toulouse, suddenly covers, nearly without with
any discontinuity, ten departments, Vaucluse, Ardèche, Gard, Cantal,
Corrèze, Lot, Dordogne, Gers, Haute-Garonne, and Hérault. Vast
rural masses are set in motion at the same time, on all sides and
owing to the same causes: the approach of war and the coming of
Easter. - In Cantal, at the assembly of the canton held at
Aurillac for the recruitment of the army,[66] the commander of a
village National Guard demands vengeance "against those who are not
patriots," and the report is spread that an order has come from
Paris to destroy the chateaux. Moreover, the insurgents allege that
the priests, through their refusal to take the oath, are bringing
the nation into civil war: "we are tired of not having peace on
their account; let them become good citizens, so that everybody may
go to mass." On the strength of this, the insurgents enter houses,
put the inhabitants to ransom, not only priests and former nobles,
"but also those who are suspected of being their partisans, those
who do not attend the mass of the constitutional priest," and even
poor people, artisans and tillers of the ground, whom they tax five,
ten, twenty, and forty francs, and whose cellars and bread-bins they
empty. Eighteen chateaux are pillaged, burnt, or demolished, and
among others, those of several gentlemen and ladies who have not
left the country. One of these, M. d'Humières, is an old officer of
eighty years; Madame de Peyronenc saves her son only by disguising
him as a peasant; Madame de Beauclerc, who flies across the
mountain, sees her sick child die in her arms. At Aurillac, gibbets
are set up before the principal houses; M. de Niossel, a former
lieutenant of a criminal court, put in prison for his safety, is
dragged out, and his severed head is thrown on a dunghill; M.
Collinet, just arrived from Malta, and suspected of being an
aristocrat, is ripped open, cut to pieces, and his head is carried
about on the end of a pike. Finally, when the municipal officers,
judges, and royal commissioner commence proceedings against the
assassins, they find themselves in such great danger that they are
obliged to resign or to run away. In like manner, in Haute-
Garonne,[67] it is also "against non-jurors and their followers"
that the insurrection has begun. This is promoted by the fact that
in various parishes the constitutional curé belongs to the club, and
demands the riddance of his adversaries. One of them at Saint-Jean-
Lorne, "mounted on a cart, preaches pillage to a mob of eight
hundred persons." Each band, consequently, begins by expelling
refractory priests, and by forcing their supporters to attend the
mass of the sworn priest. - ?But such success, wholly abstract and
barren, is of little advantage, and peasants in a state of revolt
are not satisfied so easily. When parishes march forth by the dozen
and devote their day to the service of the public, they must have
some compensation in wood, wheat, wine, or money,[68] and the
expense of the expedition may be defrayed by the aristocrats. Not
merely the upholders of non-jurors are aristocrats, as, for example,
an old lady here and there, "very fanatical, and who for forty years
has devoted all her income to acts of philanthropy," "but well-to-do
persons, peasants or gentlemen;" for, "by keeping their wine and
grain unsold in their cellars and barns, and by not undertaking more
work than they need, so as to deprive workmen in the country of
their means of subsistence," they design "to starve out" the poor
folk. Thus, the greater the pillage, the greater the service to the
public. According to the insurgents, it is important "to diminish
revenues enjoyed by the enemies of the nation, in order that they
may not send their revenues to Coblentz and other places out of the
kingdom." Consequently, bands of six or eight hundred or a thousand
men overrun the districts of Toulouse and Castelsarrasin. All
proprietors, aristocrats, and patriots are put under contribution.
Here, in the house of "the philanthropic but fanatical old maid,
they break open everything, destroy the furniture, taking away
eighty-two bushels of wheat and sixteen hogsheads of wine."
Elsewhere, at Roqueferrière, feudal title-deeds are burnt, and a
chateau is pillaged. Farther on, at Lasserre, thirty thousand
francs are exacted and the ready money is all carried off. Almost
everywhere the municipal officers, willingly or unwillingly,
authorize pillaging. Moreover, "they cut down provisions to a price
in assignats very much less than their current rate in silver," and
they double the price of a day's work. In the meantime, other bands
devastate the national forests, and the gendarmes, in order not to
be called aristocrats, have no idea but of paying court to the
pillagers.
After all this, it is manifest that property no longer exists for
anybody except for paupers and robbers. - In effect, in
Dordogne,[69] under the pretext of driving away nonjuring priests,
frequently mobs gather to pillage and rob whatever comes in their
way. . . . All the grain that is found in houses with
weathercocks is sequestrated." The rustics exploit, as communal
property, all the forests, all the possessions of the emigrants; and
this operation is radical; for example, a band, on finding a new
barn of which the materials strike them as good, demolish it so as
to share with each other the tiles and timber. - In Corrèze,
fifteen thousand armed peasants, who have come to Tulle to disarm
and drive off the supporters of the non-jurors, break everything in
suspected houses, and a good deal of difficulty is found in sending
them off empty-handed. As soon as they get back home, they sack the
chateaux of Saint-Gal, Seilhac, Gourdon, Saint-Basile, and La
Rochette, besides a number of country-houses, even of absent
plebeians. They have found a quarry, and never was the removal of
property more complete. They carefully carry off, says an official
statement, all that can be carried - furniture, curtains, mirrors,
clothes-presses, pictures, wines, provisions, even floors and wooden
panels, "down to the smallest fragments of iron and wood-work,"
smashing the rest, so that nothing "remains of the house but its
four walls, the roof and the staircase." In Lot, where for two years
the insurrection is permanent, the damage is much greater. During
the night between the 30th and 31st of January, "all the best houses
in Souillac" are broken open, "sacked and pillaged from top to
bottom,"[70] their owners being obliged to fly, and so many
outbreaks occur in the department, that the directory has no time to
render an account of them to the minister. Entire districts are in
revolt; as, "in each commune all the inhabitants are accomplices,
witnesses cannot be had to support a criminal prosecution, and crime
remains unpunished." In the canton of Cabrerets, the restitution of
rents formerly collected is exacted, and the reimbursement of
charges paid during twenty years past. The small town of Lauzerte
is invaded by surrounding bodies of militia, and its disarmed
inhabitants are at the mercy of the Jacobin suburbs. For three
months, in the district of Figeac, "all the mansions of former
nobles are sacked and burnt;" next the pigeon-cots are attacked,
"and all country-houses which have a good appearance." Barefooted
gangs "enter the houses of well-to-do people, physicians, lawyers,
merchants, burst open the doors of cellars, drink the wine," and
riot like drunken victors. In several communes these expeditions
have become a custom; "a large number of individuals are found in
them who live on rapine alone," and the club sets them the example.
For six months, in the principal town, a coterie of the National
Guard, called the Black Band, expel all persons who are displeasing
to them, "pillaging houses at will, beating to death, wounding or
mutilating by saber-strokes, all who have been proscribed in their
assemblies," and no official or advocate dares lodge a complaint.
Brigandage, borrowing the mask of patriotism, and patriotism
borrowing the methods of brigandage, have combined against property
at the same time as against the ancient régime, and, to free
themselves from all that inspires them with fear, they seize all
which can provide them with booty.
And yet this is merely the outskirts of the storm; the center is
elsewhere, around Nîmes, Avignon, Arles, and Marseilles, in a
country where, for a long time, the conflict between cities and the
conflict between religions have kindled and accumulated malignant
passions.[71] Looking at the three departments of Gard, Bouches-de-
Rhône and Vaucluse, one would imagine one's self in the midst of a
war with savages. In fact, it is a Jacobin and plebeian invasion,
and, consequently, conquest, dispossession, and extermination, -
in Gard, a swarm of National Guards copy the jacquerie: the dregs of
the Comtat come to the surface and cover Vaucluse with its scum; an
army of six thousand from Marseilles sweeps down on Arles. - In
the districts of Nîmes, Sommières, Uzès, Alais, Jalais, and Saint-
Hippolyte, title-deeds are burnt, proprietors put to ransom, and
municipal officers threatened with death if they try to interpose;
twenty chateaux and forty country-houses are sacked, burnt, and
demolished. - The same month, Arles and Avignon,[72] given up to
the bands of Marseilles and of the Comtat, see confiscation and
massacres approaching. - Around the commandant, who has received
the order to evacuate Aries,[73] "the inhabitants of all parties"
gather as suppliants, "clasping his hands, entreating him with tears
in their eyes not to abandon them; women and children cling to his
boots," so that he does not know how to free himself without hurting
them; on his departure twelve hundred families emigrate. After the
entrance of the Marseilles band we see eighteen hundred electors
proscribed, their country-houses on the two banks of the Rhone
pillaged, "as in the times of Saracen pirates," a tax of 1,400,000
livres levied on all people in good circumstances, absent or
present, women and girls promenaded about half-naked on donkeys and
publicly whipped." "A saber committee" disposes of lives, proscribes
and executes: it is the reign of sailors, porters, and the dregs of
the populace. - At Avignon,[74] it is that of simple brigands,
incendiaries and assassins, who, six months previously, converted
the Glacière[75] into a charnel-house. They return in triumph and
state that "this time the Glacière will be full." Five hundred
families had already sought asylum in France before the first
massacre; now, the entire remainder of the honest bourgeoisie,
twelve hundred persons, take to flight, and the terror is so great
that the small neighboring towns dare not receive emigrants. In
fact, from this time forth, both departments throughout Vaucluse and
Bouches-de-Rhône are a prey: Bands of two thousand armed men, with
women, children, and other volunteer followers, travel from commune
to commune to live as they please at the expense of "fanatics." The
well-bred people are not the only ones they despoil. Plain
cultivators, taxed at 10,000 livres, have sixty men billeted on
them; their cattle are slain and eaten before their eyes, and
everything in their houses is broken up; they are driven out of
their lodgings and wander as fugitives in the reed-swamps of the
Rhone, awaiting a moment of respite to cross the river and take
refuge in the neighboring department.[76] Thus, from the spring of
1792, if any citizen is suspected of unfriendliness or even of
indifference towards the ruling faction, if, through but one opinion
conscientiously held, he risks the vague possibility of mistrust or
of suspicion, he undergoes popular hostility, pillage, exile, and
worse besides; no matter how loyal his conduct may be, nor how loyal
he may be at heart, no matter that he is disarmed and inoffensive;
it is all the same whether it be a noble, bourgeois, peasant, aged
priest, or woman; and this while public peril is yet neither great,
present, nor visible, since France is at peace with Europe, and the
government still subsists in its entirety.
IX.
General state of opinion. - The three convoys of non-juring
priests on the Seine. - Psychological aspects of the Revolution.
What will it be, then, now when the peril, already become palpable
and serious, is daily increasing, now when war has begun, when
Lafayette's army is falling back in confusion, when the Assembly
declares the country in danger, when the King is overthrown, when
Lafayette defects and goes abroad, when the soil of France is
invaded, when the frontier fortresses surrender without resistance,
when the Prussians are entering Champagne, when the insurrection in
La Vendée adds the lacerations of civil war to the threats of a
foreign war, and when the cry of treachery arises on all sides? -
Already, on the 14th of May, at Metz,[77] M. de Fiquelmont, a former
canon, seen chatting with a hussar on the Place Saint-Jacques, was
charged with tampering with people on behalf of the princes, carried
off in spite of a triple line of guards, and beaten, pierced, and
slashed with sticks, bayonets, and sabers, while the mad crowd
around the murderers uttered cries of rage: and from month to month,
in proportion as popular fears increase, popular imagination becomes
more heated and its delirium grows. - You can see this yourself by
one example. On the 31st of August, 1792,[78] eight thousand non-
juring priests, driven out of their parishes, are at Rouen, a town
less intolerant than the others, and, in conformity with the decree
which banishes them, are preparing to leave France. Two vessels
have just carried away about a hundred of them; one hundred and
twenty others are embarking for Ostend in a larger vessel. They
take nothing with them except a little money, some clothes, and one
or at most two portions of their breviary, because they intend to
return soon. Each has a regular passport, and, just at the moment
of leaving, the National Guard have made a thorough inspection so as
not to let a suspected person escape. It makes no difference. On
reaching Quilleboeuf the first two convoys are stopped. A report
has spread, indeed, that the priests are going to join the enemy and
enlist, and the people living round about jump into their boats and
surround the vessels. The priests are obliged to disembark amidst a
tempests of "yells, blasphemies, insults, and abuse:" one of them, a
white-headed old man, having fallen into the mud, the cries and
shouts redouble; if he is drowned so much the better, there will be
one less! On landing all are put in prison, on bare stones, without
straw or bread, and word is sent to Paris to know what must be done
with so many cassocks. In the meantime the third vessel, short of
provisions, has sent two priests to Quilleboeuf and to Pont-Audemer
to have twelve hundred pounds of bread baked: pointed out by the
village militia, they are chased out like wild beasts, pass the
night in a wood, and find their way back with difficulty empty-
handed. The vessel itself being signaled, is besieged. "In all the
municipalities on the banks of the river drums beat incessantly to
warn the population to be on their guard. The appearance of an
Algerian or Tripolitan corsair on the shores of the Adriatic would
cause less excitement. One of the seamen of the vessel published a
statement that the trunks of the priests transported were full of
every kind of arms." and the country people constantly imagine that
they are going to fall upon them sword and pistol in hand. For
several long days the famished convoy remains moored in the stream,
are carefully watched. Boats filled with volunteers and peasants
row around it uttering insults and threats: in the neighboring
meadows the National Guards form themselves in line of battle.
Finally, a decision is arrived at. The bravest, well armed get into
skiffs, approach the vessel cautiously, choose the most favorable
time and spot, rush on board, and take possession; and are perfectly
astonished to find neither enemies nor arms. - Nevertheless, the
priests are confined on board, and their deputies, must make their
appearance before the mayor. The latter, a former usher and good
Jacobin, being the most frightened, is the most violent. He refuses
to stamp the passports, and, seeing two priests approach, one
provided with a sword-cane and the other with an iron-pointed stick,
thinks that there is to be a sudden attack. "Here are two more of
them," he exclaims with terror; "they are all going to land. My
friends, the town is in danger! " - On hearing this the crowd
becomes alarmed, and threatens the deputies; the cry of "To the lamp
post!" is heard, and, to save them, National Guards are obliged to
conduct them to prison in the center of a circle of bayonets. -
It must be noted that these madmen are "at bottom the kindest people
in the world." After the boarding of the ship, one of the most
ferocious, by profession a barber, seeing the long beards of these
poor priests, instantly cools down, draws forth his tools, and good-
naturedly sets to work, spending several hours in shaving them. In
ordinary times ecclesiastics received nothing but salutations; three
years previously they were "respected as fathers and guides." But at
the present moment the rustic, the man of the lower class, is out of
his bearings. Forcibly and against nature, he has been made a
theologian, a politician, a police captain, a local independent
sovereign; and in such a position his head is turned. Among these
people who seem to have lost their senses, only one, an officer of
the National Guard, remains cool; he is, besides, very polite, well-
behaved, and an agreeable talker; he comes in the evening to comfort
the prisoners and to take tea with them in prison; in fact, he is
accustomed to tragedies and, thanks to his profession, his nerves
are in repose - this person is the executioner. The others, "whom
one would take for tigers," are bewildered sheep; but they are not
the less dangerous; for, carried away by their delirium, they bear
down with their mass on whatever gives them umbrage. - On the
road from Paris to Lyons[79] Roland's commissioners witness this
terrible fright. "The people are constantly asking what our
generals and armies are doing; they have vengeful expressions
frequently on their lips. Yes, they say, we will set out, but we
must (at first) purge the interior."
Something appalling is in preparation. The seventh jacquerie is
drawing near, this one universal and final - at first brutal, and
then legal and systematic, undertaken and carried out on the
strength of abstract principles by leaders worthy of the means they
employ. Nothing like it ever occurred in history; for the first
time we see brutes gone mad, operating on a grand scale and for a
long time, under the leadership of blockheads who have become
insane.
There is a certain strange malady commonly encountered in the
quarters of the poor. A workman, over-taxed with work, in misery
and badly fed, takes to drink; he drinks more and more every day,
and liquors of the strongest kind. After a few years his nervous
system, already weakened by spare diet, becomes over-excited and out
of balance. An hour comes when the brain, under a sudden stroke,
ceases to direct the machine; in vain does it command, for it is no
longer obeyed; each limb, each joint, each muscle, acting separately
and for itself starts convulsively through discordant impulses.
Meanwhile the man is gay; he thinks himself a millionaire, a king,
loved and admired by everybody; he is not aware of the mischief he
is doing to himself he does not comprehend the advice given him, he
refuses the remedies offered to him, he sings and shouts for entire
days, and, above all, drinks more than ever. - At last his face
grows dark and his eyes become blood-shot. Radiant visions give way
to black and monstrous phantoms; he sees nothing around him hut
menacing figures, traitors in ambush, ready to fall upon him
unawares, murderers with upraised arms ready to cut his throat,
executioners preparing torments for him; and he seems to be wading
in a pool of blood. So he precipitates, and, in order that he
himself may not be killed, he kills. No one is more to be dreaded,
for his delirium sustains him; his strength is prodigious, his
movements unforeseen, and he endures, without heeding them,
suffering and wounds under which a healthy man would succumb. -
France, like such a madman, exhausted by fasting under the monarchy,
drunk by the unhealthy drug of the Social-Contract, and by countless
other adulterated or fiery beverages, is suddenly struck with
paralysis of the brain; at once she is convulsed in every limb
through the incoherent play and contradictory twitching of her
discordant organs. At this time she has traversed the period of
joyous madness, and is about to enter upon the period of somber
delirium: behold her capable of daring, suffering, and doing all,
capable of incredible exploits and abominable barbarities, the
moment her guides, as erratic as herself, indicate an enemy or an
obstacle to her fury.
THE END.
__________________________________________________________________
NOTES:
[1] Moniteur, XI. 763. (Sitting of March 28, 1792.) - "Archives
Nationales," F7, 3235. (Deliberation of the Directory of the
Department, November 29, 1791, and January 27, 1792. - Petition
of the Municipality of Mende and of forty-three others, November 30,
1791.)
[2] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3198. Minutes of the meeting of the
municipal officers of Arles, September 2, 1791. - Letters of the
Royal Commissioners and of the National Assembly, October 24,
November 6, 14, 17, 21, and December 21, 1791. - The
Commissioners, to be impartial, attend in turn a mass by a nonjuring
priest and one by a priest of the opposite side. "The church is
full" with the former and always empty with the latter.
[3] "Mémoire" of M. Mérilhon, for Froment, passim. - Report of M.
Alquier, p. 54. - De Dampmartin, I. 208.
[4] - De Dampmartin, I. 208.They would exclaim to the catholic
peasants: "Allons, mes enfants, Vive le Roi!" (shouts of enthusiasm):
"those wretches of democrats, let us make an example of them, and
restore the sacred rights of the throne and the altar!" - "As you
please," replied the rustics in their patois, "but we must hold fast
to the Revolution, for there are some good things about it." - They
remain calm, refuse to march to the assistance of Uzès, and withdraw
into their mountains on the first sign of the approach of the
National Guard.
[5] This is what the author Soljenitsyne observed about his Russian
countrymen in an interview with M. Pivot in the French television in
1998. (SR.)
[6] Dauban, "La Demagogie à Paris," p.598; Letter of M. de Brissac,
August 25, 1789.
[7] Moniteur, X. 339. (Journal de Troyes, and a letter from
Perpignan, November, 1791.)
[8] Mercure de France, No. for September 3, 1791. "Let Liberty be
presented to us, and all France will kneel before her; but noble and
proud hearts will eternally resist the oppression which assumes her
sacred mask. They will invoke liberty, but liberty without crime,
the liberty which is maintained without dungeons, without
inquisitors, without incendiaries, without brigands, without forced
oaths, without illegal coalitions, without mob outrages; that
liberty, finally, which allows no oppressor to go unpunished, and
which does not crush peaceable citizens beneath the weight of the
chains it has broken."
[9] Rivarol, "Mémoires," p.367. (Letter of M. Servan, published in
the "Actes des Apôtres.")
[10] The King's brother, later to become King of France under the
name of Louis XVIII. (SR.)
[11] "Archives Nationa1es," F7. 3257. Official reports,
investigations, and correspondence in relation with the affair of M.
Bussy (October, 1790).
[12] Mercure de France, May 15, 1790. (Letter of Baron de Bois-
d'Aisy, April 29, read in the National Assembly.) - Moniteur, IV.
302. Sitting of May 6. (Official statement of the Justice of the
Peace of Vitteaux, April 28.)
[13] "Archives Nationales," DXXIX. 4. Letter of M. Belin-
Chatellenot (near Asnay-le-Duc) to the President of the National
Assembly, July 1, 1791. "In the realm of liberty we live under the
most cruel tyranny, and in a state of the most complete anarchy,
while the administrative bodies and the police, still in their
infancy, seem to act only in fear and trembling. . . . So far,
in all crimes, they are more concerned with extenuating the facts,
than in punishing the offense. The result is that the guilty have
had no other restraint on them than a few gentle phrases like this:
Dear brothers and friends, you are in the wrong, be careful," etc.
- Ibid. , F7, 3229. Letter of the Directory of the Department of
Marne, July 13, 1791. (Searches by the National Guard in chateaux
and the disarming of formerly privileged persons.) "None of our
injunctions were obeyed." For example, there is breakage and
violence in the residence of M. Guinaumont at Merry, the gun, shot
and powder of the game-keeper even are carried off. "M. de
Guinaumont is without the means of defending himself against a mad
dog or any other savage brute that might come into his woods or into
his courtyard." The Mayor of Merry, with the National Guard, under
compulsion, tells them in vain that they are breaking the law. -
Petition of Madame d'Ambly, wife of the deputy, June 28, 1791. Not
having the guns which she had already given up, she is made to pay
150 francs.
[14] Archives Nationales," DXXIX. 4. Letters of the Administrators
of the Department of Rhône-et-Loire, July 6, 1791. (M. Vilet is one
of the signers.) - Mercure de France, October 8, 1791.
[15] Mercure de France, August 20, 1791, the article by Mallet du
Pan. "The details of the picture I have just sketched were all
furnished me by Madame Dumoutet herself." I am "authorized by her
signature to guarantee the accuracy of this narrative."
[16] Mercure de France, August 20, 1791, the article by Mallet du
Pan. "The proceedings instituted at Lyons confirmed this banquet of
cannibals."
[17] The letter of the Department ends with this either naïve or
ironical expression: "You have now only one conquest to make, that
of making the people obey and submit to the law."
[18] "Archives Nationales," P7, 3,200. See documents relating to
the affair of November 5, 1792, and the events which preceded it or
followed it, and among others "Lettres du Directoire et du
Procureur-syndic du Departement;" "Pétition et Mémoire pour les
Déténus;" "Lettres d'un Témoin," M. de Morant. - Moniteur, X.
356. "Minutes of the meeting de la Municipalité de Caen" and of the
"Directoire du Departement," XI.1264, 206. "Rapport de Guadet," and
documents of the trial. - "Archives Nationales," ibid. . -
"Lettres de M. Cahier," Minister of the Interior, January 26, 1792,
of M. C. D. de Pontécoulant, President of the Department
Directory, February 3, 1792. - Proclamation by the Directory.
[19] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3200. Letter of September 26, 1791.
- Letter found on one of the arrested gentlemen. "A cowardly
bourgeoisie, directors in cellars, a clubbist (Jacobin)
municipality, waging the most illegal war against us."
[20] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3200. Letter of the Attorney-
General of Bayeux, May 14, 1792, and of the Directory of Bayeux, May
21, 1792. - At Bayeux, likewise; the refugees are denounced and in
peril. According to their verified statements they scarcely
amounted to one hundred. "Several nonjuring priests, indeed, are
found among them. (But) the rest, for the most part, consist of the
heads of families who are known to reside habitually in neighboring
districts, and who have been forced to leave their homes after
having been, or fearing to become, victims of religious intolerance
or of the threats of factions and of brigands."
[21] Lenin has probably read this during his studies in Paris and
maybe been confirmed in his plan to create a new elite, an elite he
eventually began to make use of from 1917 and onwards, an elite
which continues to rule Russia and a great part of the world today.
(SR.)
[22] Mercure de France, June 4, 1790 (letter from Cahors, May 17,
and an Act of the Municipality, May 10, 1790).
[23] "Archives Nationales," F7,, 1223. Letter of count Louis de
Beaumont, November 9, 1791. His letter, in a very moderate tone,
thus end: "You must admit, sir, that it is very disagreeable and
even incredible, that the Municipal Officers should be the
originators of the disorders which occur in this town."
[24] Mercure de France, January 7, 1792. M. Granchier de Riom
petitions the Directory of his Department in relation to the
purchase of the cemetery, where his father had been interred four
years before; his object is to prevent it from being dug up, which
was decreed, and to preserve the family vault. He at the same time
wishes to buy the church of Saint-Paul, in order to insure the
continuance of the masses in behalf of his father's soul. The
Directory replies (December 5, 1791): "considering that the motives
which have determined the petitioner in his declaration are a
pretense of good feeling under which there is hidden an illusion
powerless to pervert a sound mind, the Directory decides that the
application of the sieur Granchier cannot be granted."
[25] De Ferrières, II. 268 (April 19, 1791).
[26] De Montlosier, II. 307, 309, 312.
[27] Moniteur, VI. 556. Letter of M d'Aymar, commodore, November 18,
1790.
[28] Mercure de France, May 28, and June 16, 1791 (letters from
Cahors and Castelnau, May 18).
[29] Mercure de France, number of May 28, 1791. At the festival of
the Federation, M. de Massy would not order his cavalry to put their
chapeaux on the points of their swords, which was a difficult
maneuver. He was accused of treason to the nation on account of
this, and obliged to leave Tulle for several months. - " Archives
Nationales," F7, 3204. Extract from the minutes of the tribunal of
Tulle, May 10, 1791.
[30] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3215, "Minutes of the meeting des
Officiers Municipaux de Brest," June 23, 1791.
[31] "Mémoires de Cuvier" ("Eloges Historiques," by Flourens), I,
177. Cuvier, who was then in Havre (1788), had pursued the higher
studies in a German administrative school. "M. de Surville," he
says, an officer in the Artuis regiment, has one of the must refined
minds and most amiable characters I ever encountered. There were a
good many of this sort among his comrades, and I am always
astonished how such men could vegetate in the obscure ranks of an
infantry regiment."
[32] De Dampmartin, I. 133. At the beginning of the year 1790,
"inferior officers said: 'We ought to demand something, for we have
at least as many grievances as our troopers,' " - M. de la
Rochejacquelein, after his great success in La Vendée, said: "I hope
that the King, when once he is restored, will give me a regiment."
He aspired to nothing more ("Mémoires de Madame de la
Rochejacquelein"). - Cf. "Un Officier royaliste au Service de la
Republique," by M. de Bezancenet, in the letters and biography of
General de Dommartin killed in the expedition to Egypt.
[33] Correspondence of MM. de Thiard, de Caraman, de Miran, de
Bercheny, etc., above cited, passim. - Correspondence of M. de
Thiard, May 5, 1780: "The town of Vannes has an authoritative style
which begins to displease me. It wants the King to furnish drum-
sticks. The first log of wood would provide these, with greater
ease and promptness."
[34] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3248, March 16, 1791. At Douai,
Nicolon, a grain-dealer, is hung because the municipal authorities
did not care to proclaim martial law. The commandant, M. de la
Noue, had not the right of ordering his men to move, and the murder
took place before his eyes.
[35] The last named, especially, died with heroic meekness (Mercure
de France, June 18, 1791). - Sitting of June 9, speeches by two
officers of the regiment of Port-au-Prince, one of them an eye-
witness.
[36] "De Dampmartin," II. 214. Desertion is very great, even in
ordinary times, supplying foreign armies with "a fourth of their
effective men." - Towards the end of 1789, Dubois de Crancé, an
old musketeer and one of the future "men of the mountain," stated to
the National Assembly that the old system of recruiting supplied the
army with "men without home or occupation, who often became soldiers
to avoid civil penalties" (Moniteur, II. 376, 381, sitting of
December 12, 1789).
[37] "Archives Nationales," KK, 1105, Correspondence of M. de
Thiard, September 4 and 7, 1789, November 20, 1789, April 28, and
May 29, 1790. "The spirit of insubordination which begins to show
itself in the Bassigny regiment is an epidemic disease which is
insensibly spreading among all the troops. . . . The troops are
all in a state of gangrene, while all the municipalities oppose the
orders they receive concerning the movements of troops."
[38] "Archives Nationales," H,1453. Correspondence of M. de
Bercheny, July 12, 1790.
[39] "Mémoire Justificatif" (by Grégoire), on behalf of two
soldiers, Emery and Delisle. - De Bouillé, "Mémoires." - De
Dampmartin, I.128, 144. - "Archives Nationales," KK, 1105,
Correspondence of M. de Thiard, July 2 and 9, 1790. - Moniteur,
sittings of September 3 and June 4, 1790.
[40] De Bouillé, p. 127. - Moniteur, sitting of August 6, 1790,
and that of May 27, 1790. - Full details in authentic documents
of the affair at Nancy, passim. - Report of M. Emmery, August 16,
1790, and other documents in Buchez and Roux, VII. 59-162. - De
Bezancenet, p.35. Letters of M. de Dommartin (Metz, August 4,
1790). "The Federation there passed off quietly, only, a short time
after, some soldiers of a regiment took it into their heads to
divide the (military) fund, and at once placed sentinels at the door
of the officer having charge of the chest, compelling him to open it
(désacquer). Another regiment has since put all its officers under
arrest. A third has mutinied, and wanted to take all its horses to
the market-place and sell them. . . . Everywhere the soldiers are
heard to say that if they want money they know where to find it."
[41] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3215, letters of the Royal
Commissioners, September 27, October 1, 4, 8, 11, 1790. the
commencement of the Revolution, had most to do with the
insurrections in the interior. "What means can four commissioners
employ to convince 20,000 men, most of whom are seduced by the real
enemies of the public welfare? In consequence of the replacing of
the men the crews are, for the most part, composed of those who are
almost ignorant of the sea, who know nothing of the rules of
subordination, and who, at the commencement of the Revolution, had
most to do with the insurrections in the interior."
[42] Mercure de France. October 2, 1790. Letter of the Admiral, M.
d'Albert de Rioms, September 16. The soldiers of the Majestueux
have refused to drill, and the sailors of the Patriote to obey. -
"I wished to ascertain beforehand if they had any complaint to make
against their captain? - No. - If they complained of myself? -
No. - If they had any complaints to make against their officers ?
- No. - It is the revolt of one class against another class;
their sole cry is 'Vive la Nation et les Aristocrates à la
lanterne!' The mob have set up a gibbet before the house of M. de
Marigny, major-general of marines; he has handed in his resignation.
M. d'Albert tenders his resignation." - Ibid, June 18, 1791
(letter from Dunkirk, June 3).
[43] De Dampmartin, I. 222, 219. Mercure de France, September 3,
1791. (Sitting of August 23.) - Cf. Moniteur (same date). "The
Ancient Régime," p.377.
[44] Marshal Marmont, "Mémoires," I. 24. "The sentiment I
entertained for the person of the King is difficult to define. . .
(It was) a sentiment of devotion of an almost religious character, a
profound respect as if due to a being of a superior order. At this
time the word king possessed a magic power in all pure and upright
hearts which nothing had changed. This delicate sentiment . . .
still existed in the mass of the nation, especially among the well-
born, who, sufficiently remote from power, were rather impressed by
its brilliancy than by its imperfections." De Bezancenet, 27.
Letter of M. de Dommartin, August 24, 1790. "We have just renewed
our oath. I hardly know what it all means. I, a soldier, know only
my King; in reality I obey two masters, who, we are told, will
secure my happiness and that of my brethren, if they agree
together."
[45] De Dampmartin, I. 179. See the details of his resignation
(III. 185) after June 20, 1792. - Mercure de France, April 14,
1792. Letter from the officers of the battalion of the Royal
chasseurs of Provence (March 9). They are confined to their
barracks by their soldiers, who refuse to obey their orders, and
they declare that, on this account, they abandon the service and
leave France.
[46] Rousset, "Les Volontaires de 1791 à 1794, p. 106. Letter of
M. de Biron to the minister (August, 1792); p.225, letter of Vezu,
commander of the 3rd battalion of Paris, to the army of the north
(July 24, 1793). - "A Residence in France from 1792 to 1795"
(September, 1792. Arras). See notes at the end of vol. II. for
the details of these violent proceedings.
[47] Mercure de France, March 5, June 4, September 3, October 22,
1791. (Articles by Mallet du Pan. - Ibid. , April 14, 1792. More
than six hundred naval officers resigned after the mutiny of the
squadron at Brest. "Twenty-two grave revolts in the ports on
shipboard remained unpunished, and several of them through the
decisions of the naval jury." "There is no instance of any
insurrection, in the ports or on shipboard, or any outrage upon a
naval officer, having been punished. . . . It is not necessary
to seek elsewhere for the causes of the abandonment of the service
by naval officers. According to their letters all offer their lives
to France, but refuse to command those who will not obey."
[48] This was done by Hitler against the Jews and by the Communists
against their "enemy" the bourgeois. (SR.)
[49] Duvergier, "Decrees of August 1-6, 1791; February 9-11, 1792;
March 30 to April 8, 1792; July 24-28, 1792; March 28 to April 5,
1793." - Report by Roland, January 6, 1793. He estimates this
property at 4,800 millions, of which 1,800 millions must he de-
ducted for the creditors of the emigrants; 3,000 millions remain.
Now, at this date, the assignats are at a discount of 55 per cent.
from their nominal figure.
[50] Mercure de France,, February 18, 1792.
[51] Already Tacitus noted some 2000 years ago that, "It is part of
human nature to hate the man you have hurt." (SR.)
[52] Cf. on this general attitude of the clergy, Sauzay, V. I.
and the whole of V. II. - Mercure de France, September 10, 1791:
"No impartial man will fail to see that, in the midst of this
oppression, amidst so many fanatical charges of which the reproach
of fanaticism and revolt is the pretext, not one act of resistance
has yet been manifest. Informers and municipal bodies, governed by
clubs, have caused a large number of non-jurors to be cast into
dungeons. All have come out of them, or groan there untried, and no
tribunal has found any of them guilty." - Report of M. Cahier,
Minister of the Interior, February 18, 1792. He declares that "he
had no knowledge of any priest being convicted by the courts as a
disturber of the public peace, although several had been accused."
- Moniteur May 6, 1792. (Report of Français de Nantes) "Not one
has been punished for thirty months."
[53] On these spontaneous brutal acts of the Catholic peasants, cf.
"Archives Nationales," F7, 3236 (Lozère, July-November, 1791).
Deliberation of the district of Florac, July 6, 1791, and the
official statement of the commissioner of the department on the
disturbances in Espagnac. On the 5th of July, Richard, a
constitutional curé, calls upon the municipality to proceed to his
installation. "The ceremony could not take place, owing to the
hooting, of the women and children, and the threats of various
persons who exclaimed: 'Kill him! strangle him, he is a Protestant,
is married, and has children;' and owing to the impossibility of
entering the church, the doors of which were obstructed by the large
number of women standing in front of them:"- On the 6th of July, he
is installed, but with difficulty. "Inside the church a crowd of
women uttered loud cries and bemoaned the removal of their old curé
On returning, in the streets, a large number of women, unsettled by
the sight of the constitutional cure, turned their faces aside . .
. and contented themselves with uttering disjointed words . -
without doing anything more than cover their faces with their
bonnets, casting themselves on the ground." - July 15. The clerk
will no longer serve at the mass nor ring the bells; the curé,
Richard, attempting to ring them himself, the people threaten him
with ill-treatment if he runs the risk. - September 8, 1791.
Letter from the curé of Fau, district of Saint-Chély. "That night I
was on the brink of death through a troop of bandits who took my
parsonage away from me, after having broken in the doors and
windows." - December 30, 1791. Another curé who goes to take
possession of his parsonage is assailed with stones by sixty women,
and thus pursued beyond the limits of the parish . - August 5,
1791. Petition of the constitutional bishop of Mende and his four
vicars. "Not a day passes that we are not insulted in the
performance of our duties. We cannot take a step without
encountering hooting. If we go out we are threatened with cowardly
assassination, and with being beaten with clubs."- F7, 3235 (Bas-
Rhin, letter from the Directory of the Department, April 9, 1792):
"Ten out of eleven, at least, of the Catholics refuse to recognize
sworn priests."
[54] Duvergier, decrees (not sanctioned) of November 29 and May 27,
1792. - Decree of August 26, 1792, after the fall of the throne.
- Moniteur, XII. 200 (sitting of April 23, 1793). Report of the
Minister of the Interior.
[55] Lallier, "Le District de Machecoul," p.261, 263. - "Archives
Nationales," F7, 3234. Demand of the prosecuting attorney of the
commune of Tonneins (December 21, 1791) for the arrest or expulsion
of eight priests "at the slightest act of internal or external
hostility." - Ibid., F7, 3264. Act of the Council-general of
Corrèze (July 16, 17, 18, 1792) to place in arrest all nonjuring
priests. - Between these two dates, act, of various kinds and of
increasing severity are found in nearly all the departments against
the non-jurors.
[56] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3250. Official statement by the
directory of the department, March 18, 1791, with all the documents
in relation thereto. - F7, 3200. Letter of the Directory of
Calvados, June 13, 1792, with the interrogations. The damages are
estimated at 15,000 livres.
[57] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3234. An Act of the Directory of
Lot, February 24, 1792, on the disturbances at Marmande. - F7,
3239, official statement of the municipal body of Rheims, November
5, 6, 7, 1791. The two workmen are a harness-maker and a wool-
carder. The priest who administered the baptism is put in prison as
a disturber of the public peace. - F7, 3219. Letter of the royal
commissioner at the tribunal of Castelsarrasin, March 5, 1792. -
F7, 3203. Letter of the directory of the district of La Rochelle,
June 1, 1792. "The armed force, a witness of these crimes and
summoned to arrest these persons in the act, refused to obey."
[58] Memorandum by Camille Jourdan (Sainte-Beuve, "Causeries du
Lundi," XII. 250). The guard refuses to give any assistance,
coming too late and merely "to witness the disorder, never to
repress it."
[59] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3217. Letters of the curé of Uzès,
January 29, 1792; of the curé of Alais, April 5, 1792; of the
administrators of Gard, July28, 1792; of the prosecuting attorney ,
M. Griolet, July 2, 1792 ; of Castanet, former gendarme, August 25,
1792; of M. Griolet, September 28, 1792. - Ibid. , F7, 3223.
Petition by M.M. Thueri and Devès in the name of the oppressed of
Montpellier, November 17, 1791; letter of the same to the minister,
October28, 1791; letter of M. Dupin, prosecuting attorney , August
23, 1791; Act of the Department, August 9, 1791; Petition of the
inhabitants of Courmonterral, August 25, 1791
[60] Moniteur, XII. 16, sitting of April 1, 1792. Speech by M.
Laureau. "Behold the provinces in flames, insurrection in nineteen
departments, and revolt everywhere declaring itself . . . The
only liberty is that of brigandage; we have no taxation, no order,
no government." Mercure de France, April 7, 1792. "More than twenty
departments are now participating in the horrors of anarchy and in a
more or less destructive insurrection."
[61] Moniteur, XII. 30. Speech by M. Caillasson. The total amount
of property sold up to November 1, 1791, is 1,526 millions; the
remainder for sale amounts to 669 millions.
[62] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3225. Letter of the Directory of
Ille-et-Vilaine, March 24, 1792. "The National Guards of the
district purposely expel all nonjuring priests, who have not been
replaced, under the pretext of the trouble they would not fail to
cause at Easter."
[63] Moniteur, XI. 420. (Sitting of February 18, 1792.) Report by
M. Cahier, Minister of the Interior.
[64] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3250. Deposition of the municipal
officers of Gosnay and Hesdiguel (district of Béthune), May 18,
1792. Six parishes took part in this expedition; the mayor's wife
had a rope around her neck, and came near being hung. - Moniteur,
XII, 154, April 15, 1792. - "Archives Nationales," F7, 3225.
Letter of the Directory of Ile-et-Vilaine, March 24, 1792, and
official statement of the commissioners for the district of Vitré;
letter of the same directory, April 21, 1792, and report of the
commissioners sent to Acigné, April 6.
[65] Moniteur, XII. 200. Report of M. Cahier, April 23, 1792. The
directories of these four departments refuse to cancel their illegal
acts, alleging that "their armed National Guards pursue refractory
priests."
[66] Mercure de France, April 7, 1792. Letters written from
Aurillac. - "Archives Nationales," F7, 3202. - Letter of the
directory of the district of Aurillac, March 27, 1792 (with seven
official statements); of the directory of the district of Saint-
Flour, March 19 (with the report of its commissioners); of M.
Duranthon, minister of justice, April 22; petition of M. Lorus,
municipal officer of Aurillac. - Letter of M. Duranthon, June 9,
1792. "I am just informed by the royal commissioner of the district
of Saint-Flour that, since the departure of the troops, the
magistrates dare no longer exercise their functions in the midst of
the brigands who surround them."
[67] "Archives Nationales," F7,, 3219. Letters of M. Niel,
administrator of the department of Haute-Garonne, February 27, 1792;
of M. Sainfal, March 4; of the directory of the department, March 1;
of the royal commissioner, tribunal of Castelsarrasin, March 13.
[68] The following are some examples of these rustic desires:
At Lunel, 4000 peasants and village National Guards strive to enter,
to hang the aristocrats. Their wives are along with them, leading
their donkeys with "baskets which they hope to carry away full."
("Archives Nationales," F7, 3523. Letter of the municipal body of
Lunel, November 4, 1791.)
At Uzès it is with great difficulty that they can rid themselves of
the peasants who came in to drive out the Catholic royalists. In
vain "were they given plenty to eat and to drink;" they go away "in
bad humor, especially the women who led the mules and asses to carry
away the booty, and who had not anticipated returning home with
empty hands." (De Dampmartin, I. 195.)
In relation to the siege of Nantes by the Vendéans: "An old woman
said to me, 'Oh, yes, I was there, at the siege. My sister and
myself had brought along our sacks. We counted on entering at least
as far as the Rue de la Casserie'" (the street of jeweler's shops).
(Michelet, V 211.)
[69] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3209. Letters of the royal
commissioner at the tribunal of Mucidan, March 7, 1792; of the
public prosecutor of the district of Sarlat, January. 1792. -
Ibid. , F7, 3204. Letters of the administrators of the district of
Tulle, April 15, 1792; of the directory of the department, April 18;
petition of Jacques Labruc and his wife, with official statement of
the justice of the peace, April 24. "All these acts of violence
were committed under the eyes of the municipal authorities. They
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