The French Revolution, Volume 3 The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4
by
Hippolyte A. Taine
Part 9 out of 12
that is to say, 608 000 persons deprived of their liberty. The first
two categories form a total of 433 000 persons, sufficiently near
Beaulieu's figures.
[14] Paris, "Histoire de Joseph Lebon," II., 371, 372, 375, 377, 379,
380. - "Les Angoisses de la Mort," by Poirier and Monjay of Dunkirk
(second edition, year III.). "Their children and trusty agents still
remained in prison; they were treated no better than ourselves. . .
. we saw children coming in from all quarters, infants of five years,
and, to withdraw them from paternal authority, they had sent to them
from time to time, commissioners who used immoral language with them."
[15] Mémoires sur les Prisons," (Barrière et Berville collection),
II., 354, and appendix F. Ibid., II., 2262. - The women were the
first to pass under rapiotage." (Prisons of Arras and that of Plessis,
at Paris.)
[16] Documents on Daunou," by Taillandier. (Narrative by Daunou, who
was imprisoned in turn in La Force, in the Madelonettes, in the
English Benedictine establishment, in the Hotel des Fermes, and in
Port-Libre.) - On prison management cf., for the provinces, "Tableaux
des Prisons de Toulouse," by Pescayre; "Un Sejour en France," and "Les
Horreurs des Prisons d'Arras," for Arras and Amiens; Alexandrines des
Echerolles, "Une Famille noble sous la Terreur," for Lyons; the trial
of Carrier for Nantes; for Paris, "Histoire des Prisons" by Nougaret,
4 vols., and the "Mémoires sur les Prisons," 2 vols.
[17] Testimony of Representative Blanqui, imprisoned at La Force, and
of Representative Beaulieu, imprisoned in the Luxembourg and at the
Madelonettes. - Beaulieu, "Essais," V., 290: "The conciergerie was
still full of wretches held for robbery and assassination, poverty-
stricken and repulsive. - It was with these that counts, marquises,
voluptuous financiers, elegant dandies, and more than one wretched
philosopher, were shut up, pell-mell, in the foulest cells, waiting
until the guillotine could make room in the chambers filled with camp-
bedsteads. They were generally put with those on the straw, on
entering, where they sometimes remained a fortnight... It was
necessary to drink brandy with these persons; in the evening, after
having dropped their excrement near their straw, they went to sleep in
their filth. . . . I passed those three nights half-sitting, half-
stretched out on a bench, one leg on the ground and leaning against
the wall." - Wallon, "La Terreur," II., 87. (Report of Grandpré on
the Conciergerie, March 17, 1793. "Twenty-six men collected into one
room, sleeping on twenty-one mattresses, breathing the foulest air and
covered with half-rotten rags." In another room forty-five men and ten
straw-beds; in a third, thirty-nine poor creatures dying in nine
bunks; in three other rooms, eighty miserable creatures on sixteen
mattresses filled with vermin, and, as to the women, fifty-four having
nine mattresses and standing up alternately. - The worst prisons in
Paris were the Conciergerie, La Force, Le Plessis and Bicêtre. -
"Tableau des Prisons de Toulouse," p. 316. "Dying with hunger, we
contended with the dogs for the bones intended for them, and we
pounded them up to make soup with."
[18] "Recueil de Pièces, etc.," i., p.3. (Letter of Frédéric Burger,
Prairial 2, year II.)
[19] Alfred Lallier, "Les Noyades de Nantes," p. 90. - Campardon,
"Histoire de Tribunal Révolutionnaire de Paris," (trial of Carrier),
II., 55. (Deposition of the health-officer, Thomas.) " I saw perish
in the revolutionary hospital (at Nantes) seventy-five prisoners in
two days. None but rotten mattresses were found there, on each of
which the epidemic had consumed more than fifty persons. At the
Entrepot, I found a number of corpses scattered about here and there.
I saw children, still breathing, drowned in tubs full of human
excrement."
[20] Narrative of the sufferings of unsworn priests, deported in 1794,
in the roadstead of Aix, passim.
[21] "Histoire des Prisons," I., 10. "Go and visit," says a
contemporary, (at the Conciergerie), the dungeons called 'the great
Cœsar,' 'Bombie,' 'St. Vincent.' ' Bel Air,' etc., and say whether
death is not preferable to such an abode." Some persons, indeed, the
sooner to end the matter, wrote to the public prosecutor, accusing
themselves, demanding a king and priests, and are at once guillotined,
as they hoped to be. - Cf. the narrative of "La Translation des 132
à Nantois Paris," and Riouffe, "Mémoires," on the sufferings of
prisoners on their way to their last prison.
[22] Berryat Saint-Prix, p. IX., passim.
[23] Campardon, II., 224.
[24] Berryat Saint-Prix, 445. - Paris, "Histoire de Joseph Lebon,"
II., 352. - Alfred Lallier, p. 90. - Buchez et Roux, XXXII., 394.
[25] Berryat Saint-Prix, pp.23, 24.
[26] Berryat Saint-Prix, p.458. "At Orange, Madame de Latour-Vidan,
aged eighty and idiotic for many years, was executed with her son. It
is stated that, on being led to the scaffold, she thought she was
entering a carriage to pay visits and so told her son." - Ibid., 471.
After Thermidor, the judges of the Orange commission having been put
on trial, the jury declared that " they refused to hear testimony for
the defense and did not allow the accused even informal lawyers to
defend them."
[27] Camille Boursier," La Terreur en Anjou," p.228. (Deposition of
Widow Edin.) "La Persac, a nun ill and infirm, was ready to take the
oath. Nicolas, Vacheron's agent, assisted by several other persons,
dragged her out of bed and put her on a cart; from ninety to ninety-
four others were shot along with her."
[28] Berryat Saint-Prix, p. 161. The following are samples of these
warrants: "S. (shot), Germinal 13, Widow Menard, seventy-two years
old, an old aristocrat, liking nobody, habitually living by herself."
- Warrant of the Marseilles committee, Germinal 28, year II.,
condemning one Cousinéri for having continually strayed off as if to
escape popular vengeance, to which he was liable on account of his
conduct and for having detested the Revolution." - Camille Boursier,
p.72, Floréal 15, year II., execution of "Gerard, guilty of having
scorned to assist at the planting of a Liberty-pole, in the commune of
Vouille, Sep., 1792, and inducing several municipal officers to join
him in his insolent and liberticide contempt."
[29] Wallon, "Histoire du Tribunal Révolutionnaire de Paris, V., 145.
[30] Ibid., v., 109. (Deposition of Madame de Maillé.) - V., 189.
(Deposition of Lhullier.) - Cf. Campardon, in the same affairs.
[31] Campardon, II., 189, 190, 193, 197. (Depositions of Beaulieu,
Duclos, Tirard, Ducray, etc.)
[32] Berryat Saint-Prix, 395. (Letter of Representative Moyse Bayle,)
- Ibid., 216. (Words of Representative Lecarpentier at Saint-Malo.)
"Why such delays? Of what use are these eternal examinations? What
need is there of going so deep into this matter? The name, profession
and the upshot, and the trial is over." - He publicly stated to the
informers: You don't know what facts you require to denounce the
Moderates? Well, a gesture, one single gesture, suffices."
[33] Letter of Payan to Roman Formosa, judge at Orange: "In the
commissions charged with punishing the conspirators, no formalities
should exist; the conscience of the judge is there as a substitute for
these. . . The commissions must serve as political courts; they
must remember that all the men who have not been on the side of the
Revolution are against it, since they have done nothing for the
country. . . I say to all judges, in the name of the country, do
not risk saving a guilty man." - Robespierre made the same declaration
in the Jacobin Club. Frimaire 19, year II.: "We judge, in politics,
with the suspicions of an enlightened patriotism."
[34] "Mémoires de Fréron" and on Fréron, (collection Barrière et
Berville,) p.364. Letter of Fréron, Toulon, Nivôse 16. "More than
eight hundred Toulonese have already been shot."
[35] Lallier, p.90. (The eleven distinct drownings ascertained by M.
Lallier extend up to Pluviôse 12, year II.)
[36] Moniteur, XXII., 227. (Official documents read in the
Convention, Ventôse 21, year III.) These documents authenticate an
ulterior drowning. Ventôse 9, year II., by order of Lefévre, adjutant
general, forty-one persons were drowned, among whom were two men
seventy-eight years of age and blind, twelve women, twelve young
girls, fifteen children, of which ten were between six and ten years
old, and five at the breast. The drowning took place in the Bourgneuf
bay.-Carrier says in the Convention, (Moniteur, XXII., p.578), in
relation to the drowning of pregnant women: "At Laval, Angers, Saumur,
Chaban-Gontier, everywhere the same things took place as at Nantes."
[37] Camille Boursier, p.159.
[38] Ibid., 203. Representative Francastel announces "the firm
determination to purge, to bleed freely this Vendean question." This
same Francastel wrote to General Grignon: "Make those brigands
tremble! Give them no quarter! The prisons in Vendée are overflowing
with prisoners! . . . The conversion of this country into a desert
must be completed. Show no weakness and no mercy. . . These are
the views of the Convention. . . . I swear that Vendée shall be
depopulated."
[39] Granier de Cassagnac, "His. du Directoire," II., 241. - (Letter
of General Hoche to the Minister of the Interior, Feb. 2, 1796.)
"Only one out of five remains of the population of 1789."
[40] Campardon, II., 247, 249, 251, 261, 321. (Examination of
Fouquier-Tinville, Cambon's words.)
[41] Article by Guffroy, in his journal Le Rougiff: "Down with the
nobles, and so much the worse for the good ones, if there are any! Let
the guillotine stand permanently throughout the Republic. Five
millions of inhabitants are enough for France!" - Berryat Saint-Prix,
445. (Letter of Fauvety, Orange, Prairial 14, year II.) "We have but
two confined in our arrondissement. What a trifle!" - Ibid., 447.
(Letter of the Orange Committee to the Committee of Public Safety,
Messidor 3.) As soon as the Committee gets fully agoing it is to try
all the priests, rich merchants and ex-nobles." - (Letter of Juge,
Messidor 2.) "Judging by appearances more than three thousand heads
will fall in the department." - Ibid., 311. At Bordeaux, a huge
scaffold is put up, authorized by the Military Committee, with seven
doors, two of which are large and like barn-doors, called a four-
bladed guillotine, so as to work faster and do more. The warrant and
orders for its construction bear date Thermidor 3 and 8, year II. -
Berryat Saint-Prix, 285. Letter of Representative Blutel, on mission
at Rochefort, after Thermidor: "A few men, sunk in debauchery and
crime, dared proscribe (here) virtues, patriotism, because it was not
associated with their sanguinary excitement: the tree of Liberty, they
said, required for its roots ten feet of human gore."
[42] "Recueil de Pièces Authentiques, concernant le Revolution à
Strasbourg," I., 174, 178. Examples of revolutionary taxes. - Orders
of Representatives Milhaud, Ruamps, Guyadin, approving of the
following contributions, Brumaire 20, year II.
On 3 individuals of Stutzheim.....................150,000 livres.
" 3 " Offenheim..... ...............30,000 "
"21 " Molsheim .....................367,000 "
" 17 " Oberenheim....................402,000 "
" 84 " Rosheim.......................503,000 "
" 10 " Mutzig........................114,000 "
Another order by Daum and Tisseraud, members of the committee who
temporarily replace the district administrators: "Whereas, it is owing
to the county aristocrats that the Republic supports the war," they
approve of the following taxes:
On the aristocrats of Geispolzheim, 400,000 livres.
ditto of Oberschœffolsheim 200,000 "
ditto of Düttlenheim 150,000 "
ditto of Duppigheim 100,000 "
ditto of Achenheim 100,000 "
List of contributions raised in the rural communes of the district of
Strasbourg, according to an assessment made by Stamm, procureur pro
tem. of the district, amounting to three millions one hundred and
ninety-six thousand one hundred livres.
[43] "Recueil des Pieces Authentiques," etc., I., 23. By order of the
representatives under date of Brumaire 25, year II. "The municipality
of Strasbourg stripped the whole commune of shoes in twenty-four
hours, sending for them from house to house." - Ibid.. p.32. Orders
of Representatives Lemaire and Baudot, Frimaire I, year II., declaring
that kitchen-utensils, boilers, sauce-pans, stew-pans, kettles and
other copper and lead vessels, as well as copper and lead not worked-
up, found at Strasbourg and in the departments, be levied on." -
Archives Nationales, AF., I., 92. (Orders of Taillefer, Brumaire 3,
year II. Villefranche 1'Avergnon.) Formation of a Committee of ten
persons directed to make domiciliary visits, and authorized to take
possession of all the iron, lead, steel and copper found in the houses
of "suspects," all of which kitchen utensils, are to be turned into
cannon. - Mallet-Dupan, "Mémoires," I., 15.
[44] Moniteur, XXV., 188. (Speech by Blutels, July 9, 1795.)
[45] "Recueil du Pièces Authentiques," etc., I., 24. - Grégoire,
reports on Vandalism, Fructidor 14, year II., and Brumaire 14, year
III. (Moniteur, XXII., 86 and 751.) - Ibid., Letter of December 24,
1796: "Not millions, but billions have been destroyed." - Ibid.,,
"Mémoires," I., 334: "It is incalculable, the loss of religious,
scientific and literary objects. The district administrations of
Blanc (Indre) notified me that to ensure the preservation of a
library, they had the books put in casks." - Four hundred thousand
francs were expended in smashing statues of the Fathers of the church,
forming a circle around the dome of the Invalides. - A great many
objects became worthless through a cessation of their use: for
example, the cathedral of Meaux was put up at auction and found no
purchaser at six hundred francs. The materials were valued at forty-
five thousand francs, but labor (for taking it down) was too high.
(Narrative by an inhabitant of Meaux.)
[46] Les Origines du Système Financier Actuel," by Eugene Sturm, p.53,
79.
[47] Meissner, "Voyage à Paris," (end of 1795), p. 65. "The class of
those who may have really gained by the Revolution.... is composed of
brokers, army contractors, and their subordinates, a few government
agents and fermiers, enriching themselves by their new acquisitions,
and who are cool and shrewd enough to hide their grain, bury their
gold and steadily refuse assignats." - Ibid., 68, 70. " On the road,
he asks to whom a fine chateau belongs, and they tell him with a
significant look, 'to a former scruffy wretch.' - 'Oh, monsieur,' said
the landlady at Vesoul, 'for every one that the Revolution has made
rich, you may be sure that it has made a thousand poor.'"
[48] The following descriptions and appreciations are the fruit of
extensive investigation, scarcely one tenth of the facts and texts
that have been of service being cited. I must refer the reader,
accordingly, to the series of printed and written documents of which I
have made mention in this and the three preceding volumes.
[49] "The Ancient Regime," book II., ch 2, § IV.
[50] Ibid., book IV., chs. I., II., III.
[51] Lacretelle, "Histoire de France au 18eme Siecle," V., 2. - -"
The Ancient Regime," pp. 163, 300.
[52] Morellet, "Mémoires," I., 166. (Letter by Rœderer to Beccaria's
daughter, May 20, 1797).
[53] Beccaria (Cesare Bonesana, marquis de) (Milan 1738 - id. 1794).
Italian jurist, whose "Traité des délits et des peines (1764)
contributed to the reforms and the softening of of European penal law.
(SR)
[54] Mallet-Dupan, "Mémoires," II., 493. "While the Duke of Orleans
was undergoing his examination he read a newspaper." - Ibid., 497.
"Nobody died with more firmness, spirit and dignity than the Duke of
Orleans. He again became a royal prince. On being asked in the
revolutionary tribunal whether he had any defense to make, he replied,
'Rather die to-day than to-morrow: deliberate about it.'" His request
was granted. - The Duc de Biron refused to escape, considering that,
in such a dilemma, it was not worth while. "He passed his time in
bed, drinking Bordeaux wine. . . . Before the tribunal, they asked
his name and he replied, 'Cabbage, turnip, Biron, as you like, one is
as good as the other.' 'How!' exclaimed the judges, 'you are
insolent!' 'And you - you are windbags! I Come to the point;
Guillotine, that is all you have to say, while I have nothing to
say.'" Meanwhile they proceeded to interrogate him on his pretended
treachery in Vendée, etc. "'You do not know what you are talking
about! You ignoramuses know nothing about war! Stop your questions. I
reported at the time to the Committee of Public Safety, which approved
of my conduct. Now, it has changed and ordered you to take my life.
Obey, and lose no more time.' Biron asked pardon of God and the King.
Never did he appear better than on the (executioner's) cart."
[55] Morellet, II., 31.-"Mémoires de la Duchesse de Tourzel," "de
Mlle. des Écherolles," etc.-Beugnot, "Mémoires, I., 200-203. "The
wittiest remarks, the most delicate allusions, the most brilliant
repartees were exchanged on each side of the grating. The
conversation was general, without any subject being dwelt on. There,
misfortune was treated as if it were a bad child to be laughed at,
and, in fact, they did openly make sport of Marat's divinity,
Robespierre's sacerdoce and the magistracy of Fouquier. They seemed
to say to all these bloody menials: 'You may slaughter us when you
please, but you cannot hinder us in being aimable'"-Archives
Nationales, F.7, 31167. (Report by the watchman, Charmont, Nivôse 29,
year II.) "The people attending the executions are very much surprised
at the firmness and courage they show (sic) on mounting the scaffold.
They say that it looks (sic) like going to a wedding. People cannot
get used to it, some declaring that it is supernatural."
[56] Sauzay, I.. introduction. - De Tocqueville, "L'Ancien Regime et
la Revolution," 166. "I have patiently read most of the reports and
debates of the provincial États,' and especially those of Languedoc,
where the clergy took much greater part than elsewhere in
administrative details, as well as the procès-verbaux of the
provincial assemblies between 1779 and 1787, and, entering on the
study with the ideas of my time, I was surprised to find bishops and
abbés, among whom were several as eminent for their piety as their
learning, drawing up reports on roads and canals, treating such
matters with perfect knowledge of the facts, discussing with the
greatest ability and intelligence the best means for increasing
agricultural products, for ensuring the well-being of the people and
the property of industrial enterprises, oftentimes much better than
the laymen who were interested with them in the same affairs."
[57] "The Ancient Regime," p.300. - " The Revolution," vol. I., p.
116. ??Buchez et Roux, I., 481. The list of notables convoked by the
King in 1787 gives an approximate idea of this social staff. Besides
the leading princes and seigniors we find, among one hundred and
thirty-four members, twelve marshals of France, eight Councillors of
State, five maîtres de requêtes, fourteen bishops and archbishops,
twenty presidents and seventeen procureurs géneraux des parlements, or
of royal councils, twenty-five mayors, prévôts des marchands,
capitouls, and equerries of large towns, the deputies of the "Etats"
of Burgundy, Artois, Brittany and Languedoc, three ministers and two
chief clerks. - The capacities were all there, on hand, for bringing
about a great reform; but there was no firm, strong, controlling hand,
that of a Richelieu or Frederic II.
[58] See "The Revolution II" Ed. Lafont page 617. US ediction P. 69.
(SR.)
[59] "Mémoires de Gaudin," duc de Gaëte.
[60] Mallet-Dupan, "Mémoires," II., 25, 24. "The War Committee is
composed of engineer and staff-officers, of which the principal are
Meussuer, Favart, St. Fief, d'Arcon, LafitteClavé and a few others.
D'Arcon directed the raising of the siege of Dunkirk and that of
Maubenge. . . . These officers were selected with discernment;
they planned and carried out the operations; aided by immense
resources, in the shape of maps, plans and reconnaissances preserved
in the war department, they really operated according to the
experience and intelligence of the great generals under the monarchy."
[61] Miot de Melito, "Mémoires," I., 47. - Andre Michel,
"Correspondance de MalletDupan avec la Cour de Vienne," I., 26.
(January 3, 1795.) "The Convention feels so strongly the need of
suitable aids to support the burden of its embarrassments as to now
seek for them among pronounced royalists. For instance, it has just
offered the direction of the royal treasury to M. Dufresne, former
chief of the department under the reign of the late King, and retired
since 1790. It is the same spirit and making a still more
extraordinary selection, which leads them to appoint M. Gerard de
Rayneval to the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, chief-clerk of
correspondence since the ministry of the Duc de Choiseul until that of
the Comte de Montmorin inclusive. He is a man of decided opinions and
an equally decided character; in 1790 I saw him abandon the department
through aversion to the maxims which the Revolution had forcibly
introduced into it.
[62] Marshal Marmont, "Mémoires." At nine years of age he rode on
horseback and hunted daily with his father.
[63] Among other manuscript documents, a letter of M. Symn de
Carneville, March II, 1781. (On the families of Carneville and
Montmorin-Saint-Herem, in 1789.) The latter family remains in France;
two of its members are massacred, two executed, a fifth "escaped the
scaffold by forestalling the justice of the people;" the sixth,
enlisted in the revolutionary armies, received a shot at nineteen
years of age which made him blind. The other family emigrated, and
its chiefs, the count and viscount Carneville commanded, one, a free
company in the Austrian service, and the other, a regiment of hussars
in Conde's army. Twelve officers of these two corps were brothers-in-
law, nephews, first-cousins and cousins of the two commanders, the
first of whom entered the service at fifteen, and the second at
eleven. - Cf. "Mémoires du Prince de Ligne." At seven or eight years
of age I had already witnessed the din of battle, I had been in a
besieged town, and saw three sieges from a window. A little older, I
was surrounded by soldiers; old retired officers belonging to various
services, and living in the neighborhood fed my passion.- Turenne said
"I slept on a gun-carriage at the age of ten. My taste for war was so
great as to lead me to enlist with a captain of the 'Royal Vaissiaux,'
in garrison two leagues off. If war had been declared I would have
gone off and let nobody know it. I joined his company, determined not
to owe my fortune to any but valorous actions." - Cf. also "Mémoires
du Maréchal de Saxe." A soldier at twelve, in the Saxon legion,
shouldering his musket, and marching with the rest, he completed each
stage on foot from Saxony to Flanders, and before he was thirteen took
part in the battle of Malplaquet.
[64] Alexandrine des Echerolles, "Un Famille Noble sous la Terreur,"
p.25. - Cf. "Correspondance de Madelle de Féring," by Honore
Bonhomme. The two sisters, one sixteen and the other thirteen,
disguised as men, fought with their father in Dumouriez' army. - See
the sentiment of young nobles in the works of Berquin and Marmontel.
(Les Rivaux d' Eux-meme.)
[65] " The Revolution," I., 158, 325. Ibid., the affair of M. de
Bussy, 306; the affair of the eighty-two gentlemen of Caen, 316. -
See in Rivarol ("Journal Politique Nationale") details of the
admirable conduct of the Body-guards at Versailles, Oct. 5 and 6,
1789.
[66] The noble families under the ancient regime may be characterized
as so many families of soldiers' children.
[67] "L'Ancien Régime et la Revolution," by M. de Tocqueville, p.169.
My judgment, likewise based on the study of texts, and especially
manuscript texts, coincides here as elsewhere with that of M. de
Tocqueville. Biographies and local histories contain documents too
numerous to be cited.
[68] Sauzay, I., introduction, and Ludovic Sciout, " Histoire de la
Constitution Civile du Clergé," I., introduction. (See in Sauzay,
biographical details and the grades of the principal ecclesiastical
dignitaries of the diocese Besançon.) The cathedral chapter, and that
of the Madeleine, could be entered only through nobility or promotion;
it was requisite for a graduate to have a noble for a father, or a
doctor of divinity, and himself be a doctor of divinity or in canon
law. Analogous titles, although lower down, were requisite for
collegiate canons, and for chaplains or familiars.
[69] The Revolution," I., 233. - Cf. Emile Ollivier, "L'Eglise et
l'Etat au Concile du Vatican," I., 134, II., 511.
[70] Morellet, "Mémoires," I., 8, 31. The Sorbonne, founded by Robert
Sorbon, confessor to St. Louis, was an association resembling one of
the Oxford or Cambridge colleges, that is to say, a corporation
possessing a building, revenues, rules, regulations and boarders; its
object was to afford instruction in the theological sciences; its
titular members, numbering about a hundred, were mostly bishops,
vicars-general, canons, curés in Paris and in the principal towns.
Men of distinction were prepared in it at the expense of the Church.
- The examinations for the doctorate were the tentative, the mineure,
the Sorbonique and the majeure. A talent for discussion and argument
was particularly developed. - Cf. Ernest Renan, "Souvenirs d'Enfance
et de Jeunesse," p.279, (on St. Sulpice and the study of Theology).
[71] Cf. the files of the clergy in the States-General, and the
reports of ecclesiastics in the provincial assemblies.
[72] "The Revolution," p.72. (Ed. Lafont I, p 223 etc.)
[73] In some dioceses, notably that of Besançon, the rural parishes
were served by distinguished men. (Sauzay, I., 16.) "It was not
surprising to encounter a man of European reputation, like Bergier, so
long curé of Flangebouche; an astronomer of great merit, like M.
Mongin, curé of la Grand'Combe des Bois, whose works occupy an
honorable place in Lalande's bibliography, all passing their lives in
the midst of peasants. At Rochejean, a priest of great intelligence
and fine feeling, M. Boillon, a distinguished naturalist, had
converted his house into a museum of natural history as well as into
an excellent school. . . . It was not rare to find priests
belonging to the highest social circles, like MM. de Trevillers, of
Trevillers, Balard de Bonnevaux of Bonétage, de Mesmay of Mesmay, du
Bouvot, at Osselle, cheerfully burying themselves in the depths of the
country, some on their family estates, and, not content to share their
income with their poor parishioners, but on dying, leaving them a
large part of their fortunes.
[74] De Tocqueville, "L'Ancien Regime," 134, 137.
[75] Terms signifying certain minor courts of law.
[76] Albert Babeau, "La Ville sous l'Ancien Régime," p. 26. -
(Advertisements in the "Journal de Troyes," 1784, 1789.) "For sale,
the place of councillor in the Salt-department at Sézannes. Income
from eight to nine hundred livres. Price ten thousand livres." - "A
person desires to purchase in this town (Troyes) an office in the
Magistracy or Finances, at from twenty-five thousand to sixty thousand
livres; cash paid down if required."
[77] De Tocqueville, "L'Ancien Régime," p.356. The municipal body of
Angers comprised, among other members, two deputies of the présidial,
two of the Forest and Streams department, two of the Election, two of
the Salt-department, two of the Customs, two of the Mint, two Council
judges. The system of the ancient regime, universally, is the
grouping together of all individuals in one body with a representative
of all these bodies, especially those of the notables. The municipal
body of Angers, consequently, comprises two deputies of the society of
lawyers and procureurs, two of the notarial body, one of the
University, one of the Chapter, a Syndic of the clerks, etc. - At
Troyes (Albert Babeau," Histoire de Troyes Pendant la Révolution,"
p.23.) Among the notables of the municipality may be found one member
of the clergy, two nobles, one officer of the bailiwick, one officer
of the other jurisdictions, one physician, one or two bourgeois, one
lawyer, one notary or procureur, four merchants and two members of the
trade guild.
[78] Albert Babeau, "La Ville," p.26. (Cf. note on preceding page.)
The Collector's Office at Reteil, in 1746, is sold at one hundred and
fifty thousand livres; it brings in from eleven thousand to fourteen
thousand livres. - The purchaser, besides, has to pay to the State
the "right of the golden marc" (a tax on the transfer of property); in
1762, this right amounted to nine hundred and forty livres for the
post of Councillor to the bailiwick of Troyes. D'Esprémenil,
councillor in the Paris Parliament, had paid fifty thousand livres for
his place, besides ten thousand livres taxation of the "golden marc."
[79] Emile Bos, "Les Avocats au conseil du Roi," p.340. Master
Peruot, procureur, was seated on the balcony of the Theatre Français
when Count Moreton Chabrillant arrives and wants his place. The
procureur resists and the count calls the guard, who leads him off to
prison. Master Peruot enters a complaint; there is a trial,
intervention of the friends of M. de Chabrillant before the garde des
sceaux, petitions of the nobles and resistance of the entire guild of
advocates and procureurs. M. de Chabrillant, senior, offers Peruot
forty thousand livres to withdraw his suit, which Peruot refuses to
do. Finally, the Count de Chabrillant is condemned, with six thousand
livres damages, (which are given to the poor and to prisoners), as
well as to the expense of printing two hundred impressions of the
verdict. - Duport de Cheverney, " Mémoires," (unpublished),
communicated by M. Robert de Crevecceur: "Formerly a man paid fifty
thousand livres for an office with only three hundred livres income;
the consideration, however, he enjoyed through it, and the certainty
of remaining in it for life, compensated him for the sacrifice, while
the longer he kept it, the greater was the influence of himself and
children."
[80] Albert Babeau, " La Ville," p. 27; - "Histoire de Troyes," p.
21. - This portrait is drawn according to recollections of childhood
and family narrations. I happen to have known the details of two or
three small provincial towns, one of about six thousand inhabitants
where, before 1800, nearly all the notables, forty families, were
relations; to-day all are scattered. The more one studies documents,
the more does Montesquieu's definition of the incentive of society
under the ancient régime seem profound and just, this incentive
consisting of honor. In the bourgeoisie who were confounded with the
nobility, namely the Parliamentarians, their functions were nearly
gratuitous; the magistrate received his pay in deference. (Moniteur,
V., 520. Session of August 30, 1790, speech by d'Espremenil.) "Here
is what it cost a Councillor; I take myself as an example. He paid
fifty thousand livres for his place, and ten thousand more for the tax
of the 'marc d'or.' He received three hundred and eighty-nine livres
ten sous salary, from which three hundred and sixty-seven livres
'capitation' had to be deducted. The King allowed us forty-five
livres for extra service of 'La Tournelle'. How about the fees? is
asked. The (grande chambre) superior court, asserted to have received
the largest amount, was composed of one hundred and eighty members;
the fees amounted to two hundred and fifty thousand livres, which were
not a burden on the nation, but on the litigants. M. Thouret, who
practiced in the Rouen parliament, will bear witness to this. I
appeal to him to say conscientiously what sum a Councillor derived
from his office - not five hundred livres . . . When a judgment
cost the litigant nine hundred livres the King's portion was six
hundred Iivres . . . To sum up, the profits of an office were seven
livres ten sous."
[81] Albert Babeau, "La Ville," ch. II., and "Histoire de Troyes,"
I., ch. 1. At Troyes, fifty merchants, notables, elected the judge-
consul and two consuls; the merchants' guild possessed its own hall
and had its own meetings. At Paris, the drapers, mercers, grocers,
furriers, hatters and jewelers formed the six bodies of merchants.
The merchants' guild everywhere took precedence of other industrial
communities and enjoyed special privileges. "The merchants," says
Loyseau, "hold rank (qualité d'honneur), being styled honorable men,
honest persons and bourgeois of the towns, qualifications not
attributed to husbandmen, nor to sergeants, nor to artisans, nor to
manual laborers." - On paternal authority and domestic discipline in
these old bourgeois families see the History of Beaumarchais and his
father. (" Beaumarchais," by M. de Lomenie, vol. I.)
[82] Albert Babeau, "Le village sous l'Ancien Régime," p. 56, ch.
III and IV., (on the village syndics), and pp. 357 and 359. " The
peasants had the right to deliberate on their own affairs directly and
to elect their principal agents. They understood their own needs,
were able to make a sacrifice for school and church . . . . for
repairs of the town clock and the belfry. They appointed their own
agents and generally elected the most capable." - Ibid, "La Ville sous
1'Ancien Regime," p.29. The artisans' guilds numbered at Paris one
hundred and twenty-four. at Amiens sixty-four, and at Troyes fifty,
also Chalons-sur-Marne, at Angers twenty-seven. The edicts of 1776
reduced them to forty-four at Paris, and to twenty as the maximum for
the principal towns within the jurisdiction of the Paris parliament.
- "Each guild formed a city within a city . . . Like the communes,
it had its special laws, its selected chiefs, its assemblies, its own
building or, at least, a chamber in common, its banner, coat-of-arms
and colors." - Ibid., " Histoire de Troyes Pendant la Revolution," I.,
13, 329. Trade guilds and corporations bear the following titles,
drawn up in 1789, from the files of complaints: apothecaries, jewelers
and watch-makers, booksellers and printers, master-barbers, grocers,
wax and candle-makers, bakers and tailors, master shoemakers, eating-
house-keepers, inn-keepers and hatters, master-masons and plasterers
in lime and cement, master-joiners, coopers and cabinet-makers,
master-cutlers, armorers, and polishers; founders, braziers, and pin-
makers; master-locksmiths, ironmongers, tinsmiths and other metal
workers, vinegar-makers, master-shearers, master rope-makers, master-
tanners, dealers and master-dyers and dressers; master saddle and
harness-makers, charcoal-burners, carters, paper-makers and band-box-
makers, cap-makers and associates in arts and trades. - In some towns
one or two of these natural guilds kept up during the Revolution and
still exist, as, for example, that of the butchers at Limoges.
[83] F. Leplay, "Les Ouvriers Européens," V., 456, 2nd ed., (on
workmen's guilds), Charpentier, Paris.
[84] F. Leplay, "Les Quvriers Européens," (2nd ed.) IV., 377, and the
monographs of four families (Bordier of Lower Brittany, Brassier of
Armagnac, Savonnier of Lower Provence, Paysan of Lavedan, ch. 7, 8
and 9). - Ibid., "L'Organization de la Famille," p.62, and the whole
volume. - M. Leplay, in his exact, methodical and profound
researches, has rendered a service of the highest order to political
science and, consequently, to history. He has minutely observed and
described the scattered fragments of the old organization of society;
his analysis and comparison of these fragments shows the thickness and
extent of the stratum almost gone, to which they belonged. My own
observations on the spot, in many provinces in France, as well as the
recollections of my youth, agree with M. Leplay's discoveries. - On
the stable, honest and prosperous families of small rural proprietors,
Cf. Ibid., p. 68, (Arthur Young's observation in Béarn), and p.75.
Many of these families existed in 1789, more of them than at the
present time, especially in Gascony, Languedoc, Auvergne, Dauphiny,
Franch-Comté, Alsace and Normandy. - Ibid., "L'Organization du
Travail," pp.499, 503, 508. (Effects of the "Code Civile" on the
transmission of a manufactory and a business establishment in France,
and on cultivation in Savoy; the number of suits in France produced by
the system of forced partition of property.)
[85] F. Leplay, "L'Organization de la Famille," p.212. (History of
the Mélonga family from 1856 to 1869 by M. Cheysson.) Also p.269.
(On the difficulty of partitions among ascendants, by M. Claudio
Jannet.)
[86] Rétif de la Bretonne, "Vie de mon Pere," (paternal authority in a
peasant family in Burgundy). The reader, on this point, may test the
souvenirs of his grand-parents. With reference to the bourgeoisie I
have cited the family of Beaumarchais. Concerning the nobles, see the
admirable letter by Buffon June 22, 1787, (correspondence of Buffon,
two vols., published by M. Nadaud de Buffon), telling his son how he
ought to act on account of his wife's behavior.
[87] Moniteur, XIX., 669.
[88] Dauban, " Paris en 1794," p.245. (Report by Bacon, Ventôse 25,
year II.)
[89] Ibid. (Report by Perrière, Ventôse 26.)
[90] Ironical, slang for a hog. TR.
[91] Ibid., 245. (Report by Bacon, speech of an orator to the general
assembly of the section "Contrat-Social," Ventôse 25.)
[92] "Un Sejour en France." (Sep., 1792.) Letter of a Parisian: "It is
not yet safe to walk the streets in decent clothes. I have been
obliged to procure and put on pantaloons, jacket, colored cravat and
coarse linen, before attempting to go outdoors." - Beaulieu, "Essais,"
V., 281. "Our dandies let their moustaches grow long; while they
rumpled their hair, dirtied their hands and donned nasty garments.
Our philosophers and literary men wore big fur caps with long fox-
tails dangling over their shoulders; some dragged great trailing
sabers along the pavement - they were taken for Tartars . . . . In
public assemblies, in the theatre boxes, nothing was seen in the front
rows but monstrous red bonnets. All the galériens of all the convict
prisons in Europe seem to have come and set the fashion in this superb
city which had given it to all Europe." - " Un Séjour en France," p.
43. (Amiens, September, 1792.) "Ladies in the street who are well-
dressed or wear colors that the people regard as aristocratic are
commonly insulted. I, myself, have been almost knocked down for
wearing a straw hat trimmed with green ribbons." - Nolhac, "Souvenirs
de Trois Années de la Révolution at Lyons," p.132. "It was announced
that whoever had two coats was to fetch one of them to the Section, so
as to clothe some good republican and ensure the reign of equality."
[93] Buchez et Roux, XXVI., 455. (Speech by Robespierre, in the
Jacobin club, May 10, 1793.): "The rich cherish hopes for an anti-
revolution; it is only the wretched, only the people who can save the
country." - Ibid., XXX. (Report by Robespierre to the Convention,
December 25, 1793.): "Virtue is the appanage of the unfortunate and
the people's patrimony." - Archives Nationales, AF.,II., 72. (Letter
of the municipality of Montauban, Vendémiaire 23, year IV.) Many
workmen in the manufactories have been perverted "by excited
demagogues and club orators who have always held out to them equality
of fortunes and presented the Revolution as the prey of the class they
called sans-culottes . . . . The law of the 'maximum,' at first
tolerably well carried out, the humiliation of the rich, the
confiscation of the immense possessions of the rich, seemed to be the
realization of these fine promises."
[94] Archives Nationales, F.7, 4421. Petition of Madeleine Patris. -
Petition of Quétrent Cogniér, weaver, "sans-culotte, and one of the
first members of the Troyes national guard." - (The Style and
orthography of the most barbarous kind.)
[95] bid., AF., II. 135. (Extract from the deliberations of the
Revolutionary Committee of the commune of Strasbourg, list of
prisoners and reasons for arresting them.) At Oberschœffolsheim, two
farmers "because they are two of the richest private persons in the
commune." - "Recueil de Pieces, etc.," I.. 225. (Declaration by
Welcher, revolutionary commissioner). "I, the undersigned, declare
that, on the orders of citizen Clauer, commissioner of the canton, I
have surrendered at Strasbourg seven of the richest in
Obershœffolsheim without knowing why." Four of the seven were
guillotined.
[96] Buchez et Roux, XXVI., 341. (Speech by Chasles in the
Convention, May 2, 1793.)
[97] Moniteur, XVIII., 452. (Speech by Hébert in the Jacobin club,
Brumaire 26.)-Schmidt, "Tableaux de la Révolution Française," 19.
(Reports of Dutard, June II. - Archives Nationales. F7., 31167.
(Report of the Pourvoyeur, Nivôse 6, year II.) "The people complain
(se plain) that there are still some conspirators in the interior,
such as butchers and bakers, but particularly the former, who are
(son) an intolerable aristocracy. They (il) will sell no more meat,
etc. It is frightful to see what they (il) give the people."
[98] "Recueil de Police," etc., I., 69 and 91. At Strasbourg a number
of women of the lower class are imprisoned as "aristocrats and
fanatics," with no other alleged motive. The following are their
occupations: dressmaker, upholsteress, housewife, midwife, baker,
wives of coffee-house keepers, tailors, potters and chimney-sweeps. -
Ibid., II., 216. "Ursule Rath, servant to an émigré arrested for the
purpose of knowing what her master had concealed. . . . Marie
Faber, on suspicion of having served in a priest's house." - Archives
Nationales, AF., II., 135. (List of the occupations of the suspected
women detained in the cells of the National college.) Most of them are
imprisoned for being either mothers, sisters, wives or daughters of
émigrés or exiled priests, and many are the wives of shopkeepers or
mechanics. One, a professional nurse, is an "aristocrat and fanatic."
(Another list describes the men); a cooper as "aristocrat;" a tripe-
seller as "very incivique, never having shown any attachment to the
Revolution;" a mason has never shown "patriotism," a shoemaker is
aristocrat at all times, having accepted a porter's place under the
tyrant;" four foresters "do not entertain patriotic sentiments," etc.
- "Recueil de Pièces, etc.," II., 220. Citoyenne Genet, aged 75, and
her daughter, aged 44, are accused of having sent, May 22, 1792,
thirty-six francs in silver to the former's son, an émigré and were
guillotined. - Cf. Sauzay, vols. III., IV., and V. (appendices),
lists of émigrés and prisoners in Doubs, where titles and professions,
with motives for confining them, will be found. - At Paris, even
(Archives Nationales, F.7, 31167. report of Latour-Lamontagne,
September 20, 1793), aversion to the government descends very low.
"Three women (market-women) all agree on one point-the necessity of a
new order of things. They complain of the authorities without
exception. . . . If the King is not on their lips, it is much to
be feared that he is already in their hearts. A woman in the Faubourg
St. Antoine, said: If our husbands made the Revolution we know how to
make a counter-revolution if that should be necessary."
[99] See above ch. V., § 4. - Archives Nationales, F.7, 4435, No.
10. (Letter of Collot d'Herbois to Couthon, Frimaire 11, year II.)
[100] Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol.331. (Letter of Bertrand,
Nîmes, Frimaire 3.) "We are sorry to see patriots here not very
delicate in the way they cause arrests, in ascertaining who are
criminal, and the precious class of craftsmen is no exception."
[101] Berryat Saint-Prix, "La Justice Révolutionnaire," 1st ed.,
p.229.
[102] "Un Séjour en France," p. 186. "I notice that most of the
arrests now made are farmers." (In consequence of the requisitions for
grain, and on account of the applications of the law of the maximum.)
[103] "Bulletin du Tribunal Révolutionnaire," No.431. (Testimony of
Tontin, secretary of the court.) Twelve hundred of these poor
creatures were set free after Thermidor 9.
[104] Moniteur, session of June 29, 1797. (Report of Luminais.)
??Danican, "Les Brigands Démasqués," p. 194.
[105] Meillan, "Mémoires, p. 166.
[106] Berryat Saint-Prix, "La Justice Révolutionnaire," p. 419. -
Archives Nationales, AF., II., 145. (Orders issued by Representative
Maignet, Floréal 14, 15 and 17, year II.) "The criminal court will try
and execute the principal criminals; the rest of the inhabitants will
abandon their houses in twenty-four hours, and take their furniture
along with them. The town will then be burnt. All rebuilding or
tillage of the soil is forbidden. The inhabitants will be apportioned
among neighboring communes; nobody is allowed to leave the commune
assigned to him under penalty of being treated as an emigré. All must
appear once every ten days at the municipality under penalty of being
declared 'suspect' and imprisoned."
[107] "Recueil de Piecès, etc.," I., 52. (Carret de Beudot and La
Coste, Pluviôse 6, year II.) "Whereas, it being impossible to find
jurors within an extent of one hundred leagues, two-thirds of the
inhabitants having emigrated." - Moniteur, Aug.28 and 29, 1797.
(Report by Harmand de la Meuse.) - Ibid., XIX., 714. (Session of
Ventôse 26, year II., speech by Baudot.) "Forty thousand persons of
all ages and both sexes in the districts alone of Haguenau and
Wissembourg, fled from the French territory on the lines being
retaken. The names are in our hands, their furniture in the depot at
Saverne and their property is made over to the Republic."
[108] Albert Babeau, "Histoire de Troyes," II., 160. "A gardener had
carefully accumulated eight thousand two hundred and twenty-three
livres in gold, the fruit of his savings; threatened with
imprisonment, he was obliged to give them up."
[109] Archives Nationales, AF.,II., 116. (Orders of Representative
Paganel, Toulouse, Brumaire 12, year II.) "The day has arrived when
apathy is an insult to patriotism, and indifference a crime. We no
longer reply to the objections of avarice; we will force the rich to
fulfill the duties of fraternity which they have abjured." - Ibid.
(Extract from the minutes of the meetings of the Central committee of
Montauban, April II, 1793, with the approval of the representative,
Jeanbon-Saint-André.) "The moment has at length come when moderatism,
royalism and pusillanimity, and all other traitorous or useless sects
to the country, should disappear from the soil of Liberty." All
opinions opposed to those of sans-culotterie are blamable and merit
punishment.
[110] Archives Nationales, F.7, 2471. (Minutes of the Revolutionary
Committee of the Tuileries section, meeting of September 17, 1793.)
List of seventy-four persons put under arrest and among them, M. de
Noailles, with the following note opposite his name: "The entire
family to be arrested, including their heir Guy, and Hervet, their old
intendant, rue St. Honoré."
[111] Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol. 322. (Letters of
Ladonay, Chalons, September 17 and 20, 1792.) "At Meaux, the brigands
have cut the throats of fifteen prisoners, seven of whom are priests
whose relations belong to the town or its environs. Hence an immense
number of malcontents." - Sauzay, I., 97. "The country curés are
generally recruited from among the rural bourgeoisie and the most
respected farmers' families."
[112] Sauzay, passim, especially vols. 3, 4, 5, and 6.
[113] Archives Nationales, F.7, 4437. Address of the popular club of
Clavisson (Gard.), Messidor 7, year II. - Rodolphe Reuss, "Séligman
Alexandre, sur les Tribulations d'un Israelite Strasbourgeois Pendant
la Terreur," p. 37. Order issued by General Diéche to Coppin, in
command of the "Seminaire" prison. "Strive with the utmost zeal to
suppress the cackle of aristocrats." Such is the sum of the
instructions to jail keepers.
[114] Archives Nationales, AF., II., 88. (Edict issued by
Representative Milhaud, Narbonne, Ventôse 9, year II.) Article II.
"The patriotic donation will be doubled if, in three days, all boats
are not unloaded and all carts loaded as fast as they arrive." Article
IV. "The municipality is charged, on personal responsibility, to
proportion the allotment on the richest citizens of Narbonne." Article
VII. "If this order is not executed within twenty-four hours, the
municipality will designate to the commandant of the post the rich
egoists who may have refused to furnish their contingent, etc."
Article VIII. "The commandant is specially charged to report (the
arrests of the refractory rich) to the representative of the people
within twenty-four hours, he being responsible on his head for the
punctual execution of the present order." - Ibid., AF., II. 135.
(Orders of Saint-Just and Lebas, Strasbourg, Brumaire 10, year II.)
The following is equally ironical; the rich of Strasbourg are
represented as "soliciting a loan on opulent persons and severe
measures" against refractory egoists.
[115] Archives Nationales, AF., II., 92. Orders of Representative
Taillefer, Villefranche, Aveyron, Brumaire 3, year II., and of his
delegate, Deitheil, Brumaire 11, year II.
[116] This is the case in Lyons, Bordeaux, Marseilles, and at Paris,
as we see in the signatures of the petition of the eight thousand, or
that of the twenty thousand, and for members of the Feuillants clubs,
etc.
[117] Archives Nationales, AF., II., 116. (Minutes of the public
session of Ventôse 20, year II., held at Montargis, in the Temple of
Reason, by Benon, "national agent of the commune and special agent of
the people's representative." Previous and subsequent orders, by
Representative Lefert.) Eighty-six persons signed, subject to public
penance, among them twenty-four wives or widows, which, with the four
names sent to the Paris tribunal and the thirty-two imprisoned, makes
one hundred and twenty-two. It is probable that the one hundred and
six who are wanting to complete the list of two hundred and twenty-
eight had emigrated, or been banished in the interval as unsworn
priests. - Ibid., D.S., I., 10. (Orders by Delacroix, Bouchet and
Legendre, Conches, Frimaire 8 and 9, year II.) The incarceration of
the municipal officers of Conches for an analogous petition and other
marks of Feuillantism.
[118] The real sentiments and purposes of the Jacobins are well shown
at Strasbourg. ("Recueil de Pieces, etc.," I., 77. Public meeting of
the municipal body, and speech by Bierlyn, Prairial 25, year II.) "
How can the insipid arrogance of these (Strasbourg) people be
represented to you, their senseless attachment to the patrician
families in their midst, the absurd feuil1antism of some and the vile
sycophancy of others? How is it, they say, that moneyless interlopers,
scarcely ever heard of before, dare assume to have credit in a town of
sensible inhabitants and honest families, from father to son,
accustomed to governing and renowned for centuries?" - Ibid., 113.
(Speech of the mayor Mouet, Floréal 21, year II.) "Moral purification
(in Strasbourg) has become less difficult through the reduction of
fortunes and the salutary terror excited among those covetous men . .
. Civilization has encountered mighty obstacles in this great number
of well-to-do families who have nourished souvenirs of, and who regret
the privileges enjoyed by, these families under the Emperors; they
have formed a caste apart from the State carefully preserving the
gothic pictures of their ancestors they were united only amongst
themselves. They are excluded from all public functions. Honest
artisans, now taken from all pursuits, impel the revolutionary cart
with a vigorous hand."
[119] Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol. 1411. (Instructions for
the civil commissioners by Hérault, representative of the people,
Colmar, Frimaire 2, year II.) He enumerates the diverse categories of
persons who were to be arrested, which categories are so large and
numerous as to include nine out of ten of the inhabitants.
[120] Dauban, "Paris en 1794," p.264. (Report of Pourveyeur, Ventôse
29.) "They remark (sic) that one is not (sic) a patriot with twenty-
thousand livres (sic) income, and especially a former advocate-
general."
[121] De Martel, "Fouché," p.226, 228. For instance, at Nevers, a man
of sixty-two years of age, is confined "as rich, egoist, fanatic,
doing nothing for the Revolution, a proprietor, and having five
hundred livres revenue."
[122] Buchez et Roux, XXVI., '77. (Speech by Cambon, April 27, 1793.)
[123] "Who are our enemies? The vicious and the rich." - " All the
rich are vicious, in opposition to the Revolution." (Notes made by
Robespierre in June and July, 1793, and speech by him in the Jacobin
club, May 10, 1793.)
[124] Guillon, II., 355. (Instructions furnished by Collot d'Herbois
and Fouché, Brumaire 26, year II.)
[125] De Martel, 171, 181. (Orders of Fouché, Nevers, August 25 and
October 8, 1793.)
[126] Guillon.-Archives des Affaires étrangères, F. 1411. Reports by
observers at Paris, Aug. 12 and 13, 1793. "The rich man is the sworn
enemy of the Revolution."
[127] Archives Nationales, AF., II., 135. (Orders of Saint-Just and
Lebas, Strasbourg, Brumaire 10, year II., with the list of names of
one hundred and ninety-three persons taxed, together with their
respective amounts of taxation.) - Among others, "a widow Franck,
banker, two hundred thousand livres." - Ibid., AF., II., 49.
(Documents relating to the revolutionary tax at Belfort.) "Vieillard,
Moderate and egoist, ten thousand francs; Keller, rich egoist, seven
thousand; as aristocrats, of whom the elder and younger brother are
imprisoned, Barthélémy the younger ten thousand, Barthélémy senior,
three thousand five hundred, Barthelemy junior seven thousand,
citoyenne Barthélémy, mother, seven thousand, etc."
[128] "Recueil de Pièces, etc.," I., 22. (Letter of the Strasbourg
authorities.) De Martel, p. 288. (Letter of the authorities of
Allier.) "Citizens Sainay, Balome, Heulard and Lavaleisse were exposed
on the scaffold in the most rigorous season for six hours (at Moulins)
with this inscription - "bad citizen who has given nothing to the
charity-box."
[129] "Recueil de Pièces, etc.," I., 16.
[130] Ibid., I., 159. (Orders of Brumaire 15, year II.)
[131] Archives Nationales, F.7, 2475. (Minutes of the Revolutionary
committee of the Piques section.) September 9, 1793, at 3 o'clock in
the morning, the committee declares that, for its part, "it has
arrested twenty-one persons of the category below stated." October 8,
it places two sans-culottes as guards in the houses of all those named
below, in the quarter, even those who could not be arrested on account
of absence. "It is time to take steps to make sure of all whose
indifference (sic) and moderatism is ruining the country."
[132] Berryat Saint-Prix, pp.36, 38. carrier declares suspect
"merchants and the rich."
[133] Moniteur, XVIII., 641. (Letter of the representatives
imprisoned at Bordeaux, Frimaire 10, year II.)
[134] Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol.329. (Letter of Brutus,
October 3, 1793.)
[135] Ibid., vol.329. (Letter of Charles Duvivier, Lille, Vendémiaire
15, year II.)
[136] Speech by Barère, Ventôse 17, year II.
[137] Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol. 331. Letter by
Darbault, political agent, Tarbes, Frimaire II, year II. (Project for
doing away with middle men in trade, brokers and bankers.) "The
profession of a banker is abolished. All holders of public funds are
forbidden to sell them under a year and one day after the date of
their purchase. No one must be at the same time wholesale and retail
dealer, etc." Projects of this sort are numerous. As to the
establishment of a purely agricultural and military Republic, see the
papers of Saint-Just, and the correspondence of the Lyons Terrorists.
According to them the new France needs no silk-weavers. The definite
formulas of the system are always found among the Babeuvists. "Let
the arts perish, if it must be so, provided real Equality remains."
(Sylvain Maréchal," Maniféste des Egaux.")
[138] "Revue Historique," November, 1878. (Letter of M. Falk, Paris,
Oct.19, 1795.)
[139] "Etude sur l'histoire de Grenoble Pendant la Terreur," by Paul
Thibault. (List of notorious "suspects" and of ordinary "suspects"
for each district in the Isere, April and May, 1793.) - Cf. the
various lists of Doubs in Sauzay, and of Troyes, in Albert Babeau.
[140] "Recueil de Pièces, etc.," I., 19, and the second letter of
Frederic Burger, Thermidor 25. - Archives Nationales, AF.,
II.,111.(Order of Representatives Merlincourt and Amar, Grenoble,
April 27, 1793.) "The persons charged with the actual government of
and instruction in the public establishments known in this town under
the titles of, 1st, Orphelines; 2nd Presentins; 3rd Capuchins; 4th ,
Le Propagation; 5th , Hospice for female servants. . . . are put
under arrest and are forbidden to take any part whatever in the
functions relating to teaching, education or instruction."
[141] Moniteur, XXI., 645. (Session of the Convention, Fructidor 14,
year II.) - "Bibliotèque nationale," LB41, 1802, (Denounciation of the
six sections of the commune of Dijon), 3: "Woe betide those are seen
in any way, either due to an honest affluence, a good education, an
elegant dress or some talent or other, as being different from their
fellow citizens! They are likely to be persecuted or to be killed."
[142] Perhaps there is a connection with Mao Zedong and the Chinese
Cultural Revolution. (SR.)
[143] Moniteur, XVIII., 51. (Letter by Carrier, Brumaire 17, year
II.) - Berryat Saint-Prix, pp.36 and 38.
[144] Berriat-Saint-Prix, 240 (The imprisoned at Brest.) -
Duchaltelier ("Brest pendant la Terreur," 205). Of the 975 prisoners,
106 were former nobles, 239 female nobles, 174 priests or monks, 206
nuns, 111 seamstresses, female workers etc, 56 were farmers, 46
artisans or workers, 17 merchants, 3 with a liberal profession. One
is imprisoned for having secret opinions" a girl, "for being witty and
laughing at the patriots."
[145] Mallet-Dupan, "Correspondance Politique." Introduction, p.
VIII. (Hamburg, 1796.)
[146] Portalis, "De la Révision des Jugements," 1795. (Saint-Beuve,
"Causeries du Lundi," V., 452.) - Moniteur. XXII, 86 (Report of
Grégoire, 14 Fructidor, year II): "Dumas said that all clever men (les
hommes d'esprit) should be sent to the guillotine. . . Henriot
proposed to burn the National Library. . . . and his proposal is
repeated in Marseille. . . The systematic persecution of talented
persons was organized. . . . " Shouts had been heard in the
sections: "Beware of that man as he as written a book."
[147] "Tableau des Prisons de Toulouse" by Pescayre, prisoner, year
III, p. 317 ( Messidor 22nd, year II). Pinson, secretary of the
reception, indoctrinated as follows the old duke de Lesparre:
"Citoyen, your detention is used by your country as a means of
conversion. Eight of your immediate family have, because they did not
take advantage of his opportunity, carried their heads to the
scaffold. What have you done to avoid the sword of justice? Speak!
What are your feelings? Let us hear your principles. Have you at last
renounced the arrogance of the ancient regime? Do you believe in
equality established by nature and ordained by the Convention? Who are
the sans-culottes you associate with? Is your cell not a meeting place
for the aristocrats? . . . It is I, who in the future will be your
company; I, who will make you familiar with the republican principles,
who will make you love them, and who will take care of your
improvement."
[148] Taillandier, Mémoires écrits par Daunau, à Port-Libre, in Aug.
1794, p.51, 52.
[149] Granier du Cassagnac, "Histoire du Directoire," i., 107. (Trial
of Babeuf, extracts from Buonarotti, programme des "Egaux.") All
literature in favor of Revelation must be prohibited: children are to
be brought up in common; the child will no longer bear his father's
name; no Frenchman shall leave France; towns shall be demolished,
chateaux torn down and books proscribed; all Frenchmen shall wear one
special costume; armies shall be commanded by civil magistrates; the
dead shall be prosecuted and obtain burial only according to the
favorable decision of the court; no written document shall be
published without the consent of the government, etc." - Cf. "Les
Meditations de Saint-Just."
[150] Guillon de Montléon, II., 174.
[151] "Memoires sur les Prisons," I., 211, II., 187. - Beaulieu,
"Essais," V., 320. "The prisons became the rendezvous of good
society."
[152] "The Revolution," vol.3, ch. 6, ante.
[153] Chateaubriand: "Génie du Christianisme," part 4, book II., notes
on the exhumations at St. Denis taken by a monk, an eye-witness.
Destruction, August 6 and 8, 1793, of fifty-one monuments. Exhumation
of bodies, October 12 and 25, 1793. - Camille Boursier, "Essai sur la
Terreur en Anjou," p.223. (Testimony of Bordier-Langlois.) "I saw the
head of our good Duke Réné, deposited in the chapel of St. Bernardin,
in the Cordéliers at Angers, tossed like a ball by some laborers from
one to the other."
[154] R. Chantelauze, "Louis XVII.," (according to unpublished
documents). This book, free of declamation and composed according to
the critical method, sets this question at rest.
[155] Wallon, "Histoire du Tribunal Revolutionnaire," III., 285. -
Campardon, "Hist. du Tribunal Révolutionnaire de Paris," I., 306.
Brochet, one of the jury, was formerly a lackey.
[156] The above simply conveys the sense of the document, which is
here given in the original: "Si tu n'est pas toute seulle et que le
compagnion soit a travailier tu peus ma chaire amie venir voir juger
24 mesieurs tous si-deven président on conselier au parlement de Paris
et de Toulouse. Je t' ainvite a prendre quelque choge aven de venir
parcheque nous naurons pas fini de 3 hurres. Je tembrase ma chère
amie et épouge." (TR).
[157] Wallon, III., 402.
[158] Campardon, II., 350. - Cf. Causeries du Lundi," II., 164.
Saint-Beuve's comment on the examination. "André Chénier, natife de
Constantinoble....son frère vice-consulte en Espagne. "Remark the
questions on his health and correspondence and the cock-and-bull story
about the 'maison a cotté.' " - They ask him where his servant was on
the 10th of August, 1792, and he replies that he could not tell. "A
lui representé qua lepoque de cette journee que touts les bons
citoyent ny gnoroit point leurs existence et quayant enttendue batte
la générale cettait un motife de plus pour reconnoitre tous les bons
citoyent et le motife au quelle il setait employée pour sauvee la
Republique. A repondue quil avoit dite l'exacte véritée. A lui
demandée quel etoit dite l'exacte veritée - a repondue que cetoit
toutes ce qui etoit cy dessue."
CHAPTER II. Food and Provisions.
I. Economical Complexity of Food Chain.
Complexity of the economical operation by which articles of prime
necessity reach the consumer.- Conditions of the operation. -
Available resources. - Cases in which these are not available. -
Case of the holder of these being no longer disposed to make them.
Suppose a man forced to walk with his feet in the air and his head
downward. By using extremely energetic measures he might, for a
while, be made to maintain this unwholesome attitude, and certainly at
the expense of a bruised or broken skull; it is very probable,
moreover, that he would use his feet convulsively and kick terribly.
But it is certain that if this course were persisted in, the man would
experience intolerable pain and finally sink down; the blood would
stop circulating and suffocation would ensue; the trunk and limbs
would suffer as much as the head, and the feet would become numb and
inert. - Such is more or less the history of France under its Jacobin
pedagogues; their rigid theory and persistent brutality impose on the
nation an attitude against nature; consequently she suffers, and each
day suffers more and more; the paralysis increases; the functions get
out of order and cease to act, while the last and principal one,[1]
the most urgent, namely, physical support and the daily nourishment of
the living individual, is so badly accomplished, against so many
obstacles, interruptions, uncertainties and deficiencies, that the
patient, reduced to extreme want, asks if to-morrow will not be worse
than to-day, and whether his semi-starvation will not end in complete
starvation.
Nothing, apparently, is simpler, and yet really more complex, than the
physiological process by which, in the organized body, the proper
restorative food flows regularly to the spot where it is needed, among
the innumerably diverse and distant cells. In like manner, nothing is
simpler at the first glance, and yet more complex, than the economical
process by which, in the social organism, provisions and other
articles of prime necessity, flow of themselves to all points of the
territory where they are needed and within reach of each consumer. It
is owing to this that, in the social body as in the organized body,
the terminal act presupposes many others anterior to and co-ordinate
with it, a series of elaborations, a succession of metamorphoses, one
elimination and transportation after another, mostly invisible and
obscure, but all indispensable, and all of them carried out by
infinitely delicate organs, so delicate that, under the slightest
pressure, they get out of order, so dependent on each other that an
injury to one affects the operations of the rest, and thus suppresses
or perverts the final result to which, nearly or remotely, they all
contribute.
Consider, for a moment, these precious economical organs and their
mode of operation. In any tolerably civilized community that has
lasted for any length of time, they consist, first in rank, of those
who possess wealth arising from the accumulation of old and recent
savings, that is to say, those who possess any sort of security, large
or small, in money, in notes, or in kind, whatever its form, whether
in lands, buildings or factories, in canals, shipping or machinery, in
cattle or tools, as well as in every species of merchandise or
produce. - And see what use they make of these: each person,
reserving what he needs for daily consumption, devotes his available
surplus to some enterprise, the capitalist his ready money, the real-
estate owner his land and tenements, the farmer his cattle, seed and
farming implements, the manufacturer his mills and raw material, the
common-carrier his vessels, vehicles and horses, the trader his
warehouses and stock of goods for the year, and the retailer his shop
and supplies for a fortnight. To which everybody, the agriculturist,
merchant and manufacturer, necessarily adds his cash on hand, the
deposits in his bank for paying the monthly salaries of his clerks,
and at the end of the week, the wages of his workmen. - Otherwise, it
would be impossible to till the soil, to build, to fabricate, to
transport, to sell; however useful the work might be, it could not be
perfected, or even begun, without a preliminary outlay in money or in
kind. In every enterprise, the crop presupposes labor and seed corn.
If I want to dig a hole I am obliged to hire a pick and the arms to
wield it, or, in other terms, to make certain advances. But these
advances are made only on two conditions: first, that he who makes
them is able to make them, that is to say, that he is the possessor of
an available surplus; and next, being the owner of this surplus, that
he desires to make them, with this proviso that he may gain instead of
losing by the operation. - If I am wholly or partially ruined, if my
tenants and farmers do not pay their rent,[2] if my lands or goods do
not bring half their value in the market, if the net proceeds of my
possessions are threatened with confiscation or pillage, not only have
I fewer securities to dispose of, but, again, I become more and more
uneasy about the future; over and above my immediate consumption I
have to provide for a prospective consumption; I add to my reserve
stores especially of coin and provisions; I hold on to the remnant of
my securities for myself and those who belong to me; they are no
longer available and I can no longer make loans or enter upon my
enterprise. And, on the other hand, if the loan or enterprise,
instead of bringing me a profit, brings me loss; if the law is
powerless or fails to do me justice and adds extra to ordinary risks;
if my work once perfected is to become the prey of the government, of
brigands or of whoever pleases to seize it; if I am compelled to
surrender my wares and merchandise at one-half their cost; if I cannot
produce, put in store, transport or sell except by renouncing all
profit and with the certainty of not getting back my advances, I will
no longer make loans or enter upon any under-taking whatever.
Such is the disposition and situation of people able to make advances
in anarchical times, when the State falters and no longer performs its
customary service, when property is no longer adequately protected by
the public force, when jacqueries overspread the country and
insurrections break out in the towns, when chateaux are sacked,
archives burnt, shops broken into, provisions carried off and
transportation is brought to a halt, when rents and leases are no
longer paid, when the courts dare no longer convict, when the
constable no longer dares serve a warrant, when the gendarmerie holds
back, when the police fails to act, when repeated amnesties shield
robbers and incendiaries, when a revolution brings into local and
central power dishonest and impoverished adventurers hostile to every
one that possesses property of any kind. - Such is the disposition
and situation of all who are in possession of the means to initiate
projects in socialistic times
* when the usurping State, instead of protecting private property,
destroys or seizes it;
* when it takes for itself the property of many of the great
corporations;
* when it suppresses legally established credits without indemnity;
* when, by dint of expenditure and the burdens this creates, it
becomes insolvent;
* when, through its paper-money and forced circulation, it annuls
indebtedness in the hands of the creditor, and allows the debtor to go
scot-free;
* when it arbitrarily seizes current capital;
* when it makes forced loans and requisitions;
* when its tax on productions surpasses the cost of production and on
merchandise the profit on its sale;
* when it constrains the manufacturer to manufacture at a loss and the
merchant to sell at a loss;
* when its principles, judged by its acts, indicate a progression from
partial to a universal confiscation. -
Ineluctably every phase of disease engenders the evil which follows:
it is like a poison the effects of which spread or pass onwards. Each
function, affected by the derangement of the adjacent one, becoming
disturbed in its turn. The perils, mutilation and suppression of
property diminish available securities as well as the courage that
risks them, that is to say, the mode of, and disposition to, make
advances. Through a lack of funds, useful enterprises languish, die
out or are not undertaken. Consequently, the production, supply, and
sale of indispensable articles slacken, become interrupted and cease
altogether. There is less soap and sugar and fewer candles at the
grocery, less wood and coal in the wood-yard, fewer oxen and sheep in
the markets, less meat at the butcher's, less grain and flour at the
corn-exchange, and less bread at the bakeries. As articles of prime
necessity are scarce they become dear; as people contend for them
their dearness increases; the rich man ruins himself in the struggle
to get hold of them, while the poor man never gets any, and the bare
necessities become unattainable.
II. Conditions in 1793. A Lesson in Market Economics.
Economical effect of the Jacobin policy from 1789 to 1793. - Attacks
on property. - Direct attacks. - Jacqueries, effective confiscations
and proclamation of the socialist creed. - Indirect attacks. - Bad
administration of the public funds. - Transformation of taxation and
insignificance of the returns. - Increased expenditures. - The War-
budget and subsistence after 1793. - Paper money. - Enormous issues
of it. - Credit of the Assignats run down. - Ruin of Public
creditors and of all private credit. - Rate of interest during the
Revolution. - Stoppage of trade and industry. - Bad management of
new land-owners. - Decrease of productive labor. - Only the small
rural land-owner works advantageously. - Why he refuses Assignats. -
He is no longer obliged to sell his produce at once. - High cost of
food. - It reaches a market with difficulty and in small quantities.
- The towns buy at a high price and sell at a low one. - Food becomes
dearer and famine begins. - Prices during the first six months of
1793.
Such is the hardship in France at the moment when the Jacobin conquest
has been completed, a misery of which the Jacobins are the cause due
to the systematic war they have waged against property during the
preceding four years.
From below, they have provoked, excused, amnestied, or tolerated and
authorized all the popular attacks on property,[3] countless
insurrections, seven successive jacqueries, some of them so extensive
as to cover eight or ten departments at the same time. The last one
let loose on all France a universal and lasting brigandage, the
arbitrary rule of paupers, vagabonds and ruffians; every species of
robbery, from a refusal to pay rents and leases to the sacking of
chateaux and ordinary domiciles, even to the pillage of markets and
granaries. Free scope was given to mobs which, under a political
pretext, tax and ransom the "suspects " of all classes at pleasure,
not alone the noble and the rich but the peaceable farmer and well-to-
do artisan. In short, the country reverted back to a natural state,
the sovereignty of appetites, greed and lust, to mankind's return to a
savage, primitive life in the forests. Only a short time before, in
the month of February, 1793, through Marat's recommendation, and with
the connivance of the Jacobin municipality, the Paris riff-raff had
broken into twelve hundred groceries and divided on the spot, either
gratis or at the price it fixed, sugar, soap, brandy and coffee.
From above, they had undertaken, carried out and multiplied the worst
assaults on property, vast spoliations of every sort; the suppression
of hundreds of millions of incomes and the confiscation of billions of
capital; the abolition without indemnity of tithes and quitrents; the
expropriation of the property of the clergy, of emigrés, that of the
order of Malta, that of the pious, charitable and educational
associations and endowments, even laic; seizures of plate, of the
sacred vessels and precious ornaments of the churches. And, because
they have the power, others still more vast. After August 10, their
newspapers in Paris and their commissioners in the departments,[4]
have preached
"the agrarian law, the holding of all property in common, the
leveling of fortunes, the right of each fraction of the sovereign
people" to help itself by force to all food and stores at the expense
of the owner, to hunt down the rich, proscribe "land-owners, leading
merchants, financiers and all men in possession of whatever is
superfluous."
Rousseau's dogma that "the fruit belongs to everybody and the soil to
no one" is established at an early date as a maxim of State in the
Convention, while in the deliberations of the sovereign assembly
socialism, openly avowed, becomes ascendant, and, afterwards, supreme.
According to Robespierre,[5]
"whatever is essential to preserve life is common property to society
at large. It is only the excess which may be given up to individuals
and surrendered to commercial enterprise."
With still greater solemnity, the pontiff of the sect, in the
Declaration of Rights which, unanimously adopted by the all-powerful
Jacobin club, is to serve as the corner-stone of the new institutions,
pens the following formula heavy with their consequences:[6]
"Society must provide for the support of all its members. The aid
required by indigence is a debt of the rich to the poor. The right of
property is limited, and applies only to that portion which the law
guarantees. Every ownership, any trade, which bears prejudicially on
the existence of our fellow-creatures is necessarily illicit and
immoral."
The meaning of this is more than clear: the Jacobin populace, having
decided that the possession of, and trade in, groceries was
prejudicial to its existence, the grocers' monopoly is, therefore,
immoral and illicit, and consequently, it pillages their shops. Under
the rule of the populace and of the "Mountain," the Convention applies
the theory, seizes capital wherever it can be found, and notifies the
poor, in its name,
"that they will find in the pocket-books of the rich whatever they
need to supply their wants."[7]
Over and above these striking and direct attacks, an indirect and
hidden attack, even more significant, which slowly undermines the
basis of all present and future property. State affairs are
everybody's affairs, and, when the State ruins itself, everybody is
ruined along with it. For, it is the country's greatest debtor and
its greatest creditor, while there is no debtor so free of seizure and
no creditor so absorbing, since, making the laws and possessing the
force, it can, firstly, repudiate indebtedness and send away the fund-
holder with empty hands, and next, increase taxation and empty the
taxpayer's pocket of his last penny. There is no greater menace to
private fortunes than the bad administration of the public fortune.
Now, under the pressure of Jacobin principles and of the Jacobin
faction, the trustees of France have administered the country as if
they purposely meant to ruin their ward; every known means for wasting
a fortune have been brought into play by them. - In the first place,
they have deprived him of three-fourths of his income. To please the
people and enforce the theory, the taxes on articles consumed, on
salt, with the excise subsidies and the octroi duties on liquors,
meat, tobacco, leather and gunpowder, have been abolished, while the
new imposts substituted for the old ones, slowly fixed, badly
apportioned and raised with difficulty have brought in no returns. On
the 1st of February, 1793,[8] the Treasury had received on the real
and personal taxation of 1791, but one hundred and fifty millions
instead of three hundred millions. On the same taxes for 1792,
instead of three hundred millions it had obtained nothing at all. At
this date, and during the four years of the Revolution, the total
arrears of taxation amounted to six hundred and thirty-two millions -
a bad debt that can hardly be recovered, and, in fact, it is already
reduced one-half, since, even if the debtor could and was disposed to
pay, he would pay in assignats, which, at this time, were at a discount
of fifty per cent. - In the second place, the new managers had
quadrupled the public expenditure.[9] What with the equipment and
excursions of the National Guards federations, patriotic festivals
and parades, the writing, printing and publication of innumerable
documents, reimbursements for suppressed offices, the installation
of new administrations, aid to the indigent and to its charity
workshops, purchases of grain, indemnities to millers and bakers,
it was under the necessity of providing for the cost of the
universal demolition and reconstruction. Now, the State had, for the
most part, defrayed all these expenses. At the end of April, 1793, it
had already advanced to the city of Paris alone, one hundred and ten
million francs, while the Commune, insolvent, kept constantly
extorting fresh millions.[10] By the side of this gulf, the Jacobins
had dug another, larger still, that of the war. For the first half of
the year 1793 they threw into this pit first, one hundred and forty
millions, then one hundred and sixty millions, and then one hundred
and ninety million francs; in the second six months of 1793 the war
and provisions swallowed up three hundred million francs per month,
and the more they threw into the two gulfs the deeper they became.[11]
Naturally, when there is no collecting a revenue and expenses go on
increasing, one is obliged to borrow on one's resources, and
piecemeal, as long as these last. Naturally, when ready money is not
to be had on the market, one draws notes and tries to put them in
circulation; one pays tradesmen with written promises in the future,
and thus exhausts one's credit. Such is paper money and the
assignats, the third and most efficient way for wasting a fortune and
which the Jacobins did not fail to make the most of. - Under the
Constituent Assembly, through a remnant of good sense and good faith,
efforts were at first made to guarantee the fulfillment of written
promises the holders of assignats were almost secured by a first
mortgage on the national possessions, which had been given to them
coupled with an engagement not to raise more money on this guarantee,
as well as not to issue any more assignats.[12] But they did not keep
faith. They rendered the security afforded by this mortgage
inoperative and, as all chances of re-payment disappeared, its value
declined. Then, on the 27th of April, 1792, according to the report
of Cambon, there begins an unlimited issue; according to the Jacobin
financiers, nothing more is necessary to provide for the war than to
turn the wheel and grind out promises to pay: in June, 1793, assignats
to the amount of four billion three hundred and twenty millions have
already been manufactured, and everybody sees that the mill must grind
faster. This is why the guarantee, vainly increased, no longer
suffices for the monstrous, disproportionate mortgage; it exceeds all
limits, covers nothing, and sinks through its own weight. At Paris,
the assignat of one hundred francs is worth in specie, in the month of
June, 1791, eighty-five francs, in January, 1792, only sixty-six
francs, in March, 1792, only fifty. three francs; rising in value at
the end of the Legislative Assembly, owing to fresh confiscations, it
falls back to fifty-five francs in January, 1793, to forty-seven
francs in April, to forty francs in June, to thirty-three francs in
July.[13] - Thus are the creditors of the State defrauded of a third,
one-half, and two-thirds of their investment, and not alone the
creditors of the State but every other creditor, since every debtor
has the right to discharge his obligations by paying his debts in
assignats. Enumerate, if possible, all who are defrauded of private
claims, all money-lenders and stockholders who have invested in any
private enterprise, either manufacturing or mercantile, those who have
loaned money on Contracts of longer or shorter date, all sellers of
real estate, with stipulations in their deeds for more or less remote
payment, all landowners who have leased their grounds or buildings for
a term of years, all holders of annuities on private bond or on an
estate, all manufacturers, merchants and farmers who have sold their
wares, goods and produce on time, all clerks on yearly salaries and
even all other employees, underlings, servants and workmen receiving
fixed salaries for a specified term. There is not one of these
persons whose capital, or income payable in assignats, is not at once
crippled in proportion to the decline in value of assignats, so that
not only the State falls into bankruptcy but likewise every creditor
in France, legally bankrupt along with it through its fault.
In such a situation how can any enterprise be commenced or maintained?
Who dares take a risk, especially when disbursements are large and
returns remote? Who dares lend on long credits - ? If loans are still
made they are not for a year but for a month, while the interest
which, before the Revolution was six, five or even four per cent. per
annum, is now two per cent. a month on securities." It soon runs up
higher and, at Paris and Strasbourg we see it rising, as in India and
the Barbary States, to four, five, six and even seven per cent. a
month.[14]
What holder of raw material, or of manufactured goods, would dare make
entries on his books as usual and allow his customer the indispensable
credit of three months? What large manufacturer would presume to make
goods up, what wholesale merchant would care to make shipments, what
man of wealth or with a competence would build, drain and construct
dams and dykes, repair, or even maintain them with the positive
certainty of delays in getting back only one-half his outlays and with
the increasing certainty of getting nothing?
During a few years the large establishments collapsed in droves:
* After the ruin of the nobles and the departure of wealthy
foreigners, every craft dependent on luxurious tastes, those of Paris
and Lyons, which were the standard for Europe, all the manufactories
of rich fabrics and furniture, and other artistic, elegant and
fashionable articles.
* After the insurrection of the blacks in St. Domingo, and other
troubles in the West Indies, the great colonial trade and remarkable
prosperity of Nantes and Bordeaux, including all the industrial
enterprises by which the production, transportation and circulation of
cotton, sugar and coffee were affected;[15]
* After the declaration of war with England, the shipping interest;
* After the declaration of war with all Europe, the commerce of the
continent.[16]
Failure after failure, an universal crash, utter cessation of
extensively organized and productive labor: instead of productive
industries, I see none now but destructive industries, those of the
agricultural and commercial vermin, those of dealers in junk and
speculators who dismantle mansions and abbeys, and who demolish
chateaux and churches so as to sell the materials as cheap as dirt,
who bargain away national possessions, so as to make a profit on the
transaction. Imagine the mischief a temporary owner, steeped in debt,
needy and urged on by the maturity of his engagements, can and must do
to an estate held under a precarious title and of suspicious
acquirement, which he has no idea of keeping, and from which,
meanwhile, he derives every possible benefit:[17] not only does he put
no spokes in the mill-wheel, no stones in the dyke, no tiles on the
roof, but he buys no manure, exhausts the soil, devastates the forest,
alienates the fields, and dismembers the entire farm, damaging the
ground and the stock of tools and injuring the dwelling by selling its
mirrors, lead and iron, and oftentimes the window-shutters and doors.
He turns all into cash, no matter how, at the expense of the domain,
which he leaves in a run-down condition, unfurnished and for a long
time unproductive. In like manner, the communal possessions, ravaged,
pillaged and then pieced out and divided off, are so many organisms
which are sacrificed for the immediate relief of the village poor, but
of course to the detriment of their future productiveness and an
abundant yield.[18]
Alone, amongst these millions of men who have stopped working, or work
the wrong way, the petty cultivator labors to advantage; free of
taxes, of tithes and of feudal imposts, possessing a scrap of ground
which he has obtained for almost nothing or without stretching his
purse strings, he works in good spirits.[19] He is sure that
henceforth his crop will no longer be eaten up by the levies of the
seignior, of the décimateur and of the King, that it will belong to
him, that it will be wholly his, and that the worse the famine in the
towns, the dearer he will sell his produce. Hence, he has ploughed
more vigorously than ever; he has even cleared waste ground; getting
the soil gratis, or nearly so, and having to make but few advances,
having no other use for his advances, consisting of seed, manure, the
work of his cattle and of his own hands, he has planted, reaped and
raised grain with the greatest energy. Perhaps other articles of
consumption will be scarce; it may be that, owing to the ruin of other
branches of industry, it will be hard to get dry-goods, shoes, sugar,
soap, oil, candles, wine and brandy; it may happen that, owing to the
bungling way in which agricultural transformations have been effected,
all produce of the secondary order, meat, vegetables, butter and eggs,
may become scarce. In any event, French foodstuffs par excellence is
on hand, standing in the field or stored in sheaves in the barns; in
1792 and 1793, and even in 1794, there is enough grain in France to
provide every French inhabitant with his daily bread.[20]
But that is not enough. In order that each Frenchman may obtain his
bit of bread every day, it is still essential that grain should reach
the markets in sufficient quantities, and that the bakers should every
day have enough flour to make all the bread that is required;
moreover, the bread offered for sale in the bakeries should not exceed
the price which the majority of consumers can afford to pay. Now, in
fact, through a forced result of the new system, neither of these
conditions is fulfilled. - In the first place, wheat, and hence
bread, is too dear. Even at the old rate, these would still be too
dear for the innumerable empty or half-empty purses, after so many
attacks on property, industry and trade, now that so many hundreds of
workmen and employees are out of work, now that so many land-owners
and bourgeois receive no rents, now that incomes, profits, wages and
salaries have diminished by hundreds of thousands. But wheat, and,
consequently, bread, has not remained at old rates. Formerly a sack
of wheat in Paris was worth 50 francs. In February, 1793, it is worth
sixty-five francs; in May, 1793, one hundred francs and then one
hundred and fifty; and hence bread, in Paris, early in 1793, instead
of being three sous the pound, costs six sous, in many of the southern
departments seven and eight sous, and in other places ten and twelve
sous.[21] The reason is, that, since August 10, 1792, after the King's
fall and the wrenching away of the ancient keystone of the arch which
still kept the loosened stones of the social edifice in place, the
frightened peasant would no longer part with his produce; he
determined not to take assignats, not to let his grain go for anything
but ringing coin. To exchange good wheat for bad, dirty paper rags
seemed to him a trick, and justly so, for, on going to town every
month he found that the dealers gave him less merchandise for these
rags. Being distrustful and a hoarder, he must have good, old
fashioned crowns, with the ancient effigy, so as to lay them away in a
jar or old woollen stocking; give him specie or he will keep his
grain. For he is not, as formerly, obliged to part with it as soon as
it is cut, to pay taxes and rent; the bailiff and sheriff are no
longer there to constrain him; in these times of disorder and
demagoguism, under impotent or partial authorities, neither the public
nor the private creditor has the power to compel payment, while the
spurs which formerly impelled the farmer to seek the nearest market
are blunted or broken. He therefore stays away, and he has excellent
reasons for so doing. Vagabonds and the needy stand by the roadside
and at the entrances of the towns to stop and pillage the loaded
carts; in the markets and on the open square, women cut open bags of
grain with their scissors and empty them, or the municipality, forced
to do it by the crowd, fixes the price at a reduced rate.[22] - The
larger a town, the greater the difficulty in supplying its market; for
its provisions are drawn from a distance; each department, each
canton, each village keeps its own grain for itself by means of legal
requisitions or by brutal force; it is impossible for wholesale
dealers in grain to make bargains; they are styled monopolists, and
the mob, breaking into their storehouses, hangs them out of
preference.[23] As the government, accordingly, has proclaimed their
speculations "crimes," it is going to interdict their trade and
substitute itself for them.[24] - But this substitution only increases
the penury still more; in vain do the towns force collections, tax
their rich men, raise money on loan, and burden themselves beyond
their resources;[25] they only make the matter worse. When the
municipality of Paris expends twelve thousand francs a day for the
sale of flour at a low price in the markets, it keeps away the flour-
dealers, who cannot deliver flour at such low figures; the result is
that there is not flour enough in the market for the six hundred
thousand mouths in Paris; when it expends seventy-five thousand francs
daily to indemnify the bakers, it attracts the outside population,
which rushes into Paris to get bread cheap, and for the seven hundred
thousand mouths of Paris and the suburbs combined, the bakers have not
an adequate supply. Whoever comes late finds the shop empty;
consequently, everybody tries to get there earlier and earlier, at
dawn, before daybreak, and then five or six hours before daybreak. in
February, 1793, long lines of people are already waiting at the
bakers' door, these lines growing longer and longer in April, while in
June they are enormously long.[26] Naturally, for lack of bread,
people fall back on other aliments, which also grow dearer; add to
this the various contrivances and effects of Jacobin politics which
still further increase the dearness of food of all sorts, and also of
every other necessary article: for instance, the extremely bad
condition of the roads, which renders transportation slower and more
costly; the prohibition of the export of coin and hence the obtaining
of food from abroad; the decree which obliges each industrial or
commercial association, at present or to come, to " pay annually into
the national treasury one-quarter of the amount of its dividends;" the
revolt in Vendée, which deprives Paris of six hundred oxen a week; the
feeding of the armies, which takes one-half of the cattle brought to
the Poissy market; shutting off the sea and the continent, which ruins
manufacturers and extensive commercial operations; the insurrections
in Bordeaux, Marseilles and the South, which still further raise the
price of groceries, sugar, soap, oil, candles, wine and brandy.[27] -
Early in 1793, a pound of beef in France is worth on the average,
instead of six sous twenty sous; in May, at Paris, brandy which, six
months before, cost thirty-five sous, costs ninety-four sous; in July,
a pound of veal, instead of five sous, costs twenty-two sous. Sugar,
from twenty sous, advances to four francs ten sous; a candle costs
seven sous. France, pushed on by the Jacobins, approaches the depths
of misery, entering the first circle of its Inferno; other circles
follow down deeper and deeper, narrower still and yet more somber;
under Jacobin impulsion is she to descend to the lowest?
III. Privation.
First and general cause of privations. - The socialist principle of
the Revolutionary government. - Measures against large as well as
small properties. - Expropriation of all remaining corporations,
enormous issues of paper-money. forced rates of its circulation,
forced loans, requisitions of coin and plate, revolutionary taxes,
suppression of special organs of labor on a large scale. - New
measures against small proprietorship. - The Maximum, requisitions
for food and labor. - Situation of the shop-keeper, cultivator and
laborer. - Effect of the measures on labor on a small scale.
Stoppage of sales.
Obviously, if the people is not being fed properly and in places not
at all, it is because one of the central and most important fibers of
the economical machine has been incapacitated. It is evident that
this fiber controls the sentiment by which man holds on to his
property, fears to risk it, refuses to depreciate it, and tries to
increase it.[28] Obviously in the real human being, such as he
actually is made up, this intense sentiment, tenacious, always
stirring and active, is the magazine of inward energy which provides
for three-fourths, almost the whole, of that unremitting effort, that
calculating attention, that determined perseverance which leads the
individual to undergo privation, to contrive and to exert himself, to
turn to profitable account the labor of his hands, brain and capital,
and to produce, save and create for himself and for others various
resources and comforts.
(It is probable that disinterested motives, pure love for one's
neighbor, for humanity, for country, do not form a hundredth part of
the total energy that produces human activity. It must not be
forgotten that the actions of men are alloyed with motives of a lower
order, such as love of fame, the desire of self-admiration and of
self-approval, fear of punishment and hope of reward beyond the grave,
all of these being interested motives, and without which disinterested
motives would be inoperative excepting in two or three souls among ten
thousand.[29])
Thus far, in society as a whole, this sentiment has been only
partially touched, and the injury has mainly been to the well-to-do or
rich classes. At first only one-half of its useful energy has been
destroyed since only those services rendered by the rich and wealthy
classes have been dispensed with. Little else than the labor of the
capitalist, proprietor or contractor has been suppressed, whose far-
reaching, combined, comprehensive labor, the rewards of which consist
of objects of luxury and convenience, ensure for society that abundant
supplies are always on hand, through ready and spontaneous
distribution of indispensable commodities. There remains (for the
Jacobins) to crush out what is left of this laborious and nutritive
fiber; the remnant of useful energy has to be destroyed down to its
extirpation among the people. Here there must be a suppression, as
far as possible, of all manual, rude labor even on a small scale, and
of its rudimentary fruits; the discouragement of the insignificant
shopkeeper, mechanic and ploughman must be effected; the corner-grocer
must be prevented from selling his sugar and candles, and the cobbler
from mending shoes: the miller must think of giving up his mill and
the wagoner of abandoning his cart; the farmer must be convinced that
the best thing he can do is to get rid of his horses, eat his pork
himself,[30] let his oxen famish and leave his crops to rot on the
ground. - The Jacobins are to do all this, for it is the inevitable
result of the theory that they have proclaimed and which they apply.
According to this theory the stern, strong, deep-seated instinct
through which the individual stubbornly holds on to what he has, to
what he makes for himself and for those that belong to him, is just
the unwholesome fiber that must be rooted out or paralyzed at any
cost; its true name is "egoism, incivism," and its operations consist
of outrages on the community, which is the sole legitimate proprietor
of property and products, and, yet more, of all persons and services.
Body and soul, all belongs to the State, nothing to individuals, and,
if need be, the State has the right to take not only lands and
capital, but, again, to claim and tax at whatever rate it pleases all
corn and cattle, all vehicles and the animals that draw them, all
candles and sugar; it has the right to appropriate to itself and tax
at whatever rate it pleases, the labor of shoemaker, tailor, miller,
wagoner, ploughman, reaper and thrasher. The seizure of men and
things is universal, and the new sovereigns do their best at it; for,
in practice, necessity urges them on; insurrection thunders at their
door; their supporters, all crackbrains with empty stomachs, the poor
and the idle, and the Parisian populace, listen to no reason and
blindly insist on things haphazard; they are bound to satisfy their
patrons at once, to issue one on top of the other all the decrees they
call for, even when impracticable and mischievous to starve the
provinces so as to feed the city, to starve the former to-morrow so as
to feed the latter to-day. - Subject to the clamors and menaces of
the street they dispatch things rapidly; they cease to care for the
future, the present being all that concerns them; they take and take
forcibly; they uphold violence by brutality, they support robbery with
murder; they expropriate persons by categories and appropriate objects
by categories, and after the rich they despoil the poor. - During
fourteen months the revolutionary government thus keeps both hands at
work, one hand completing the confiscation of property, large and
medium, and the other proceeding to the entire abolition of property
even on a small scale.
Against large or medium properties it suffices to extend and aggravate
the decrees already passed. - The spoliation of the last of existing
corporations must be effected: the government, confiscates the
property of hospitals, communes, and all scientific or literary
associations.[31]
To this we must add the spoliation of State credits and all other
credits: it issues in fourteen months 5 100 millions of assignats, at
one time and with one decree 1,400 million and another time 2,000
millions. It thus condemns itself to complete future bankruptcy. It
also calls in the 1,500 million of assignats bearing the royal stamp
(à face royale) and thus arbitrarily converts and reduces the public
debt on the Grand Ledger, which is already, in fact, a partial and
declared bankruptcy. Six months imprisonment for whoever refuses to
accept assignats at par, twenty years in irons if the offence is
repeated and the guillotine if there is an incivique intention or act,
which suffices for all other creditors.[32]
The spoliation of individuals, a forced loan of a billion on the rich,
requisitions for coin against assignats at par, seizures of plate and
jewels in private houses, revolutionary taxes so numerous as not only
to exhaust the capital, but likewise the credit, of the person
taxed,[33] and the resumption by the State of the public domain
pledged to private individuals for the past three centuries. How many
years of labor are requisite to bring together again so much available
capital, to reconstruct in France and to refill once again those
private reservoirs which are to contain the accumulated savings
essential for the out-flow required to drive the great wheel of each
general enterprise? Take into account, moreover, the enterprises which
are directly destroyed, root and branch, by revolutionary executions,
enforced against the manufacturers and traders of Lyons, Marseilles
and Bordeaux, proscribed in a mass,[34] guillotined, imprisoned, or
put to flight, their factories stopped, their storehouses put under
sequestration, with their stocks of brandy, soap, silk, muslins,
leather, paper, serges, cloth, canvas, cordage and the rest; the same
at Nantes under Carrier, at Strasbourg under Saint-Just, and
everywhere else.[35] - "Commerce is annihilated," writes a Swiss
merchant,[36] from Paris, and the government, one would say, tries
systematically to render it impossible. On the 27th of June, 1793,
the Convention closes the Bourse; on the 15th of April, 1794, it
suppresses "financial associations" and "prohibits all bankers,
merchants and other persons from organizing any establishment of the
said character under any pretext or title whatsoever." On the 8th of
September, 1793, the Commune places seals "in all the counting-houses
of bankers, stockbrokers, agents and silver-dealers,"[37] and locks up
their owners; as a favor, considering that they are obliged to pay the
drafts drawn on them, they are let out, but provisionally, and on
condition that they remain under arrest at home, "under the guard of
two good citizens," at their own expense. Such is the case in Paris
and in other cities, not alone with prominent merchants, but likewise
with notaries and lawyers, with whom funds are on deposit and who
manage estates; a sans-culotte with his pike stands in their cabinet
whilst they write, and he accompanies them in the street when they
call on their clients. Imagine the state of a notary's office or a
counting-room under a system of this sort! The master of it winds up
his business as soon as he can, no matter how, makes no new
engagements and does as little as possible. Still more inactive than
he, his colleagues, condemned to an indefinite listlessness, under
lock and key in the common prison, no longer attend to their business.
- There is a general, total paralysis of those natural organs which,
in economic life, produce, elaborate, receive, store, preserve,
exchange and transmit in large quantities; and as an after effect,
embarrass, saturate, or weaken all the lesser subordinate organs to
which the superior ones no longer provide outlets, intermediary
agencies or aliment.
It is now the turn of the small enterprises. Whatever their
sufferings may be they are ordered to carry their work out as in
normal times, and they will be forced to do this. The Convention,
pursuing its accustomed rigid logical course with its usual
shortsightedness, lays on them its violent and inept hands; they are
trodden down, trampled upon and mauled for the purpose of curing them.
Farmers are forbidden to sell their produce except in the markets, and
obliged to bring to these a quota of so many sacks per week, military
raids compelling them to furnish their quotas.[38] Shopkeepers are
ordered "to expose for sale, daily and publicly, all goods and
provisions of prime necessity" that they have on hand, while a maximum
price is established, above which no one shall sell "bread, flour and
grain, vegetables and fruits, wine, vinegar, cider, beer and brandy,
fresh meat, salt meat, pork, cattle, dried, salted, smoked or pickled
fish, butter, honey, sugar, sweet-oil, lamp-oil, candles, firewood,
charcoal and other coal, salt, soap, soda, potash, leather, iron,
steel, castings, lead, brass, hemp, linen, woolens, canvas and woven
stuffs, sabots, shoes and tobacco." Whoever keeps on hand more than he
consumes is a monopolist and commits a capital crime; the penalty,
very severe, is imprisonment or the pillory, for whoever sells above
the established price:[39] such are the simple and direct expedients
of the revolutionary government, and such is the character of its
inventive faculty, like that of the savage who hews down a tree to get
at its fruit. - Consequently, after the first application of the
"maximum" the shopkeeper is no longer able to carry on business; his
customers, attracted by the sudden depreciation in price of his wares,
flock to his shop and empty it in a few days;[40] having sold his
goods for half what they cost him,[41] he has got back only one-half
of his advances; therefore, he can only one-half renew his assortment,
less than a half, since he has not paid his bills, and his credit is
declining, the (Jacobin) representatives on mission having taken all
his coin, plate and assignats. Hence, during the following month,
buyers find on his unfurnished counters nothing but rubbish and
refuse.
In like manner, after the proclamation of the maximum,[42] the peasant
refuses to bring his produce to market, while the revolutionary army
is not everywhere on hand to take it from him by force: he leaves his
crop unthrashed as long as he can, and complains of not finding the
men to thrash it. If necessary, he hides it or feeds it out to his
animals. He often barters it away for wood, for a side of bacon or in
payment for a day's work. At night, he carts it off six leagues to a
neighboring district, where the local maximum is fixed at a higher
rate. He knows who, in his own vicinity, still has specie in his
pocket and he underhandedly supplies him with his stores. He
especially conceals his superabundance and, as formerly, pretends to
be poor and suffering. He is on good terms with the village
authorities, with the mayor and national agent who are as interested
as he is in evading the law, and, on a bribe being necessary, he gives
it. At last, he allows himself to be sued, and his property attached;
he goes to prison and tires the authorities out with his obstinacy.
Hence, from week to week, less flour and grain and fewer cattle come
to market, while meat becomes scarcer at the butcher's, and bread at
the baker's. - Having thus paralyzed the lesser organs of supply and
demand the Jacobins now have only to paralyze labor itself, the
skilled hands, the active and vigorous arms. This is simply done by
replacing the independent private workshop by the compulsory national
workshop in this way replacing piece-work by work by the day, and the
attentive, energetic workman who minds his business and expects to
earn money in return by inattentive apathic workmen pressed into a
poorly paid service but paid even when they botch the job or laze
about. - This is what the Jacobins do by forcibly commanding the
services of all sorts of laborers,[43] "all who help handle, transport
and retail produce and articles of prime necessity," "country people
who usually get in the crops," and, more particularly, thrashers,
reapers, carters, rafts men, and also shoemakers, tailors, blacksmiths
and the rest. - At every point of the social organism, the same
principle is applied with the same result. Substitute everywhere an
external, artificial and mechanical constraint for the inward, natural
and animating stimulant, and you get nothing but an universal atrophy.
Deprive people of the fruits of their labor, and yet more, force them
to produce by fear, confiscate their time, their painstaking efforts
and their persons, reduce them to the condition of fellahs, create in
them the sentiments of fellahs, and you will have nothing but the
labor and productions of fellahs, that is to say, a minimum of labor
and production, and hence, insufficient supplies for sustaining a very
dense population, which, multiplied through a superior and more
productive civilization, will not long subsist under a barbarous,
inferior and unproductive régime. When this systematic and complete
expropriation terminates we see the final result of the system, no
longer a dearth, but famine, famine on a large scale, and the
destruction of lives by millions. - Among the Jacobins,[44] some of
the maddest who are clear-sighted, on account of their fury, Guffroy,
Antonelle, Jean Bon Saint-André, Collot d'Herbois, foresee the
consequences and accept them along with the principle. Others, who
avoid seeing it, are only the more determined in the application of
it. However, they all work together with all their might to aggravate
the misery of which the lamentable spectacle is so vainly exposed
under their eyes.
IV. Hunger.
Famine. - In the provinces. - At Paris. - People standing in lines
under the Revolutionary government to obtain food. - Its quality. -
Distress and chagrin.
Collot d'Herbois wrote from Lyons on November 6, 1793: "There is not
two days' supply of provisions here." On the following day: "The
present population of Lyons is one hundred and thirty thousand souls
at least, and there is not sufficient subsistence for three days."
Again the day after: "Our situation in relation to food is
deplorable." Then, the next day: "Famine is beginning."[45] - Near by,
in the Montbrison district, in February, 1794, "there is no food or
provisions left for the people;" all has been taken by requisition and
carried off, even seed for planting, so that the fields lie
fallow.[46] - At Marseilles, "since the maximum, everything is
lacking; even the fishermen no longer go out (on the sea) so that
there is no supply of fish to live on."[47] - At Cahors, in spite of
multiplied requisitions, the Directory of Lot and Representative
Taillefer[48] state that "the inhabitants, for more than eight days,
are reduced wholly to maslin bread composed of one-fifth of wheat and
the rest of barley, barley-malt and millet." - At Nîmes,[49] to make
the grain supply last, which is giving out, the bakers and all private
persons are ordered not to sift the meal, but to leave the bran in it
and knead and bake the "dough such as it is." - At Grenoble,[50] "the
bakers have stopped baking; the country people no longer bring wheat
in; the dealers hide away their goods, or put them in the hands of
neighborly officials, or send them off." - " It goes from bad to
worse," write the agents of Huningue;[51] one might say even, that
they would give this or that article to their cattle rather than sell
it in conformity with the tax." - The inhabitants of towns are
everywhere put on rations, and so small a ration as to scarcely keep
them from dying with hunger. "Since my arrival in Tarbes," writes
another agent,[52] "every person is limited to half a pound of bread a
day, composed one-third of wheat and two-thirds of corn meal." The
next day after the fête in honor of the tyrant's death there was
absolutely none at all. "A half-pound of bread is also allowed at
Evreux,[53] "and even this is obtained with a good deal of trouble,
many being obliged to go into the country and get it from the farmers
with coin." And even "they have got very little bread, flour or wheat,
for they have been obliged to bring what they had to Evreux for the
armies and for Paris."
It is worse at Rouen and at Bordeaux: at Rouen, in Brumaire, the
inhabitants have only one quarter of a pound per head per diem of
bread; at Bordeaux, " for the past three months," says the agent,[54]
" the people sleep at the doors of the bakeries, to pay high for bread
which they often do not get . . . There has been no baking done to-
day, and to-morrow only half a loaf will be given to each person.
This bread is made of oats and beans . . . On days that there is
none, beans, chestnuts and rice are distributed in very small
quantities," four ounces of bread, five of rice or chestnuts. "I, who
tell you this, have already eaten eight or ten meals without bread; I
would gladly do without it if I could get potatoes in place of it, but
these, too, cannot be had." Five months later, fasting still
continues, and it lasts until after the reign of Terror, not alone in
the town, but throughout the department. "In the district of
Cadillac, says Tallien,[55] "absolute dearth prevails; the citizens of
the rural districts contend with each other for the grass in the
fields; I have eaten bread made of dog-grass." Haggard and worn out,
the peasant, with his pallid wife and children, resorts to the marsh
to dig roots, while there is scarcely enough strength in his arms to
hold the plough. - The same spectacle is visible in places which
produce but little grain, or where the granaries have been emptied by
the revolutionary drafts. "In many of the Indre districts," writes
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