Endmatter

Endnotes

¹ Arthur Young, Travels in France. p. 167 (London, 1892).

² Before that the farmer could not sell his corn for three months after the harvest, the lord of the manor alone being entitled to do that. It was one of the feudal privileges, which enabled the lord to sell it at a high price.

³ This has been abolished in Russia also.

⁴ Statute of August 24, 1780. Breaking on the wheel existed still in 1785. The parliaments, in spite of the Voltaireanism of the period, and the general refinement in the conception of life, enthusiastically defended the use of torture, which was abolished definitely only by the National Assembly. It is interesting to find (E. Seligman, La justice en France pendant la Revolution, p. 97) that Brissot, Marat and Robespierre by their writings contributed to the agitation for the reform of the penal code.

⁵ The arguments upon which Louis XVI. took his stand are of the highest interest. I sum them up here according to E. Samichon’s Les réformes sous Louis XVI.: assemblies provinciales et parlements. The King found Turgot’s schemes dangerous, and wrote: “Though coming from a man who has good ideas, his constitution would overthrow the existing State.” And again, further on: “The system of a rent-paying electorate would tend to make malcontents of the non-propertied classes, and if these were allowed to assemble they would form a hotbed of disorder.... The transition from the abolished system to the system M. Turgot now proposes ought to be considered; we see well enough what is, but only in our thoughts do we see what does not yet exist, and we must not make dangerous experiments if we do not see where they will end.” Vide also, in Samichon’s Appendix A, the very interesting list of the chief laws under Louis XVI. between 1774 and 1789.

⁶ C. de Vic and J. de Vaissete, Histoire générale du Languedoc, continued by du Mège 10 vole., 1840–1846.

⁷ Chassin, Génie de la Révolution.

⁸ Du Châtellier, Histoire de la Révolution dans les départements de l’ancienne Bretagne, 6 vole., 1836; vol. ii. pp. 60 70, 161, &c.

⁹ Vic and Vaissete. vol. x. p. 637.

¹⁰ Vic and Vaissete, p. I 36.

¹¹ J. Feuillet de Conches, Lettres de Louis XVI., Marie-Antoinette et Madame Elisabeth (Paris, 1864), vol. i. pp. 214–216; “The Abbé has” written to you this evening, sir, and has notified my wish to you,” wrote the Queen. “I think more than ever that the moment is pressing, and that it is very essential that he (Necker) should accept. The King fully agrees with me, and has just brought me a paper with his own hand containing his ideas, of which I send you a copy.” The next day she wrote again “We must no longer hesitate. If he can get to work to-morrow all the better. It is most urgent. I fear that we may be compelled to nominate a prime minister.”

¹² Du pouvoir exécutif dans les grands états, 2 vols., 1792. The idea of this book is, that if France was passing through a revolutionary crisis in 1792, it was the fault of her National Assembly for having neglected to arm the King with a strong executive power. “Everything would have gone its course more or less perfectly if only care had been taken to establish in our midst a tutelary authority,” says Necker, in the preface to this work; and he enlarges in these two volumes on the boundless rights with which the royal power should be invested. It is true that in his book, Sur la législation et le commerce des grains, published in 1776, he had developed. by way of protesting against a system of free trade in corn, supported by Turgot, some ideas showing sympathy with the poor, in advocating that the State should intervene to fix the price of wheat for their benefit, but that was the limit of his “State-Socialism.” The essential thing, in his opinion, was a strong Government, a throne respected and surrounded with that object by high functionaries and a powerful executive.

¹³ Quinet, La Révolution, ed. 1869, vol. i. p. 15.

¹⁴ With regard to the demands which afterwards excited the fury of the landowners, it is well to note these: The tax on bread and meat to be fixed according to the average prices, demanded by Lyons, Troyes, Paris and Châlons: that “wages should be regulated periodically according to the daily needs,” demanded by Rennes; that work should be guaranteed to all able-bodied poor. demanded by several towns. As to the Royalist-Constitutionalists, who were numerous, it can be seen by the proposals of the “Cahier général,” analysed by Chassin (Les élections et les cahiers de Paris en 1789, vol. iii., 1889, p. I85), that they wished to limit the deliberations of the States General to questions of finance and of retrenchments in the household expenditures of the King and the princes.

¹⁵ In an excellent pamphlet. Les fléaux de l’agriculture, ouvrage pour servir d l’appui des cahiers des doléances des campagnes, by D.... (April 10, 1789), we find this statement of causes preventing the development of agriculture: The enormous taxes, the tithes, joint and individual, “solites’, and “insolites,” and these always increasing; the large quantities of game preserved through abuse of privileges and sport; and the vexation and abuse of the seigneurial law courts. It is here shown that “it was by means of the attachment of manorial law courts to the fief that the landlords had made themselves despots and held the inhabitants of the country districts in the chains of slavery” (p. 95).

¹⁶ It is now known that Taine, who pretended that he had studied the reports of the Governors of the provinces concerning these insurrections, had only glanced through twenty-six referring to 1770, as M. Aulard has shown (Taine historien de la Révolution francaise, Paris, 1907).

¹⁷ La Jura, by Sommier; Le Languedoc, by Vic and Vaissete; Castres, by Combes; La Bretagne, by du Châtellier; La Franche-Comté;, by Clerc; L’Auvergne, by Dulaure; Le Berry, by Regnal; Le Limousin, by Leymarie; L’Alsace, by Strobel; etc.

¹⁸ La Grande Révolution (pamphlet), Paris, 1893 “The Great French Revolution and its Lesson,” anniversary article in The Nineteenth Century, June 1889; articles on the Revolution in La Ré.

¹⁹ Taine, vol. ii. 22, 23.

²⁰ Letters in the National Archives, 1453, cited by Taine, vol. ii. p.24.

²¹ Letter in the Archives.

²² Chassin, p. 162.

²³ Chassin, p. 163.

²⁴ Doniol, La Révolution francaise et la féodalité.

²⁵ Chassin, p.167 et seq.

²⁶ Droz (Histoire du règne de Louis XVI.), a reactionary historian. has remarked aptly that the money found on some of the slain men may well have been the proceeds of plunder.

²⁷ Arthur Young, Travels in France, pp.153,176 (London, I892).

²⁸ Necker’s original project allowed the Assembly a right to push the Revolution as far as the establishment of a charter, in imitation of the English, says Louis Blanc; they took care to exclude from all joint deliberations the form of constitution to be given by the next States-General (Histoire de la Revolution françeis, 4vo, vol i. p.120).

²⁹ Those who make speeches on the anniversaries of the Revolution prefer to keep silent on this delicate subject, and speak of the touching unanimity which they pretend to have existed between the people and their representatives. But Louis Blanc has already pointed out the fears of the middle classes as the 14th of July drew near, and modern research only confirms this point of view. The additional facts which I give here, concerning the days from the 2nd to the 12th of July, show also that the insurrection of the people of Paris followed up to the 12th its own line of conduct, independent of the middle class members of the Third Estate.

³⁰ “The National Assembly deplores the troubles which are now agitating Paris... It will send a deputation to the King to beg him of his grace to employ for the re-establishment of order the infallible means of the clemency and kindness that are so native to his heart with the confidence which his good people will always deserve.”

³¹ Louis Blanc, Histiore de la Révolution, françeis

³² Dumouriez. Memoires, vol.ii. p.35.

³³ Young. Travels in France, p.184 (London, 1892).

³⁴ Chassin, Les gélections et les cahiers de Paris (Paris. 1889), vol. iii. p. 453.

³⁵ Chassin, vol. iii. pp.439–444, 458, 460.

³⁶ Arthur Young, p. 189.

³⁷ “The French Guards, having sided with the populace, fired upon a detachment of the Royal German regiment, posted on the boulevard, under my windows. Two men and two horses were killed,” wrote Simolin, Plenipotentiary of Catherine II. in Paris, to the Chancellor Osterman, on July 13. And he added: “Yesterday and the day before they burned the barrière blanche and that of the Fauhourg Poissonniére” (Conches, Lettres de Louis XVI., &c., p.223).

³⁸ Vide the Letters of Salmour, the Envoy from Saxony, to Stutterheim, on July 19 and August 20 (Archives of Dresden). cited by Flammermont; La journée du 14 Juillet 1789, by Pitra (Publications de la Société de l’Histoire de la RévoIution française, 1892).

³⁹ Of these 50.000 were made, as well as “all kinds of small arms, at the expense of the town,” says Dusaulx (“L’oeuvre de sept jours,” p.203).

⁴⁰ “From all parts there came to the Hôtel de Ville an infinite number of carriages, chariots and carts, stopped at the gates of the town. and loaded with all sorts of supplies, plates and dishes, furniture, food-stuffs, &c. The people. who only clamoured for arms and ammunition, ... came to us in crowds and became more insistent every minute.” It was JuIy 13 (Dusaulx,” L’oeuvre de sept jours, “in Mémoires sur la Bastille, published by H. Monin, Paris, 1889, p. 397).

⁴¹ The citations given by M. Jules Flammermont, in a note in his work on the Fourteenth (La journée du 14 Juillet 1789), are conclusive on this subject — more conclusive than his text, which seems to us up to a certain point to contradict itself on pages clxxxi. and clxxxii. “In the afternoon,” says the Count de Salmour. “the guard of the middle classes, already formed, began to disarm all the vagabonds. It is they and the armed middle-class men who, by their vigilance, saved Paris again this night... The night passed quietly and with much order: thieves and vagabonds were arrested, and for the more serious offences they were hanged on the spot” (Letter of the Count de Salmour, dated July 10, 1789, in the Archives of Dresden). The following passage from a letter of Dr. Rigby, which M. Flammermont gives as a note, p. clxxxiii., says the same thing: “As night came on very few of the persons who had armed themselves the preceding evening were to be seen. Some, however, had refused to give up their arms, and proved in the course of the night how just were the suspicions of the inhabitants concerning them, for they began to plunder; but it was too late to do it then with impunity. They were soon discovered and apprehended, and we were told the following morning that several of these unhappy wretches, who had been taken in the act, had been executed” (Dr. Rigby’s Letters, pp.56–57). On reading these pages we admit there is some truth in the testimony of Morellet, according to which, “on the night between the 13th and 14th some excesses were committed against persons and property.”

⁴² In several of the cahiers the electors had already demanded “that the Bastille be pulled down and destroyed” — Cahiers des Halles; also those of Les Mathurins, Cordeliers, Sépulcre, &c., cited by Chassin (Les elections et les cahiers de Paris, vol. ii. p. 449 et seq.). The electors had cause for their demand, as, after the Réveillon afliair, the order had been given to fortify the Bastille. Therefore, already on the night of June 30 there was some talk of seizing this fortress (Récit de l’élargissement...des gardes françaises, cited by Chassin. p. 452 note).

⁴³ Droz, Histoire de Louis XVI. vol i. p.417.

⁴⁴ I here follow the letter of the Count de Salmour, as well as Mathieu Dumas, both quotd by M. Flammermont.

⁴⁵ Letter of De Hue to his brothers, German text, quoted by Flammermont, p. cxcviii, note.

⁴⁶ This attempt was made, it is now said, not by order of de Launey. but spontaneously by some soldiers, who had gone out to buy provisions and were returning. A highly improbable thing. it seems to me, for three or four soldiers to attempt, isolated as they were, in the midst of that crowd. Besides, what would have been the good of imprisoning the crowd if it was not intended to use the prisoners as hostages against the people?

⁴⁷ Various explanations have been given of this sudden opening of hostilities As the people who had thronged into the Court de l’Orme and the Government Court began to plunder the Commandant’s house and those of the soldiers’ quarters, it was said that this had decided the defenders of the Bastille to open fire. For the military, however, the taking of the Forecourt by assault, which gave the people access to the drawbridges of the fortress and even to the gates, was quite sufficient reason But it is also possible that the order to defend the Bastille to the last was at that moment transmitted to de Launey. We know that one order was intercepted, which does not prove that no other was delivered. It is, in fact, supposed that de Launey had received this order.

⁴⁸ They were charged to induce all persons found near the Bastille to withdraw to their respective districts in order that they might there be at once admitted into the Paris militia: to remind de Launey of the promises he had made to M. Thuriot de la Roziére and to M. Bellon...(Flammermont, loc. cit., p. clviii.). Having entered the Forecourt, which was full of people armed with muskets, axes, &c., the deputation spoke to the soldiers on the walls. These latter demanded that the people should first withdraw from the Government Court, whereupon the deputation tried to induce the people to do so (cf. Boucheron, cited by Flammermont, p. ccxiv. note). Fortunately the people were wise enough not to comply with their wishes. They continued the assault. They understood so well that it was no longer any time for parleying, that they treated the gentlemen of the deputation rather badly, and even talked of killing them as traitors (loc. cite. p. ccxvi. note, and Procés-verbal des électeurs).

⁴⁹ Eighty-three killed on the spot, fifteen dead of their wounds, thirteen disabled and sixty injured.

⁵⁰ Was not this other Maillard? We know that it was he who arrested de Launey.

⁵¹ Mirabeau, in his speech before the Assembly. which resumed its sitting on the 15th at eight o’clock in the morning, spoke as if this fête had taken place the day before. He was alluding, however, to the fête of the 13th.

⁵² Babeau, La ville sous l’ancien régime, p. 153, et seq.

⁵³ Vide Babeau, La ville, pp. 323, 331, &c. Rodolphe Reuss, L’Alasce pendant la Révolution, vol. 1., gives the cahier of the Strasbourg Third Estate, very interesting in this connection.

⁵⁴ Aulard, Histoire politique de la Révolution française, 2nd edition, 1903.

⁵⁵ Lettre des représentants de la bourgeoisie aux députés de Strasbourg á Versailles, July 28, 1789 (R. Reuss, L’Alasce pendant la Révolution française, Paris 1881, “Documents” xxvi).

⁵⁶ Wheat was then 19 livres the sack. The prices rose at the end of August to 28 and 30 livres, so that the bakers were forbidden to bake cakes or fancy bread.

⁵⁷ Reuss, L’Alsace, p. 147.

⁵⁸ Published by Reuss.

⁵⁹ Moreover, the numbers from November 24, 1789 to February 3, 1790, were also retouched in the Year IV.

⁶⁰ La Revolution francaise P. 48.

⁶¹ P. 242 et seq.

⁶² According to Strobel (Vaterlandische Geschichte des Elsass), the rising took place generally in this way: a village rose, and straightway a band was formed composed of the inhabitants of various villages. which went in a body to attack the chAteaux. Sometimes these bands concealed themselves in the woods.

⁶³ Histoire de la Revolution dans le Jura (Paris, 1846), p. 22. The bent of men’s minds in the Jura is revealed in a song given in the Cabier d’Aval.

⁶⁴ Sommier, pp. 24–2 5.

⁶⁵ Edouard Clerc, Essai sur l’histoire de la Franche-Comte, 2nd edition (Besancon, 1870).

⁶⁶ Anacharsis Combes, Histoire de la ville de Castres ct de ses environs pendant la Revolution francaise (Castres, 1875).

⁶⁷ M. Xavier Roux, who published in 1891 under the title Memoire sur la marche des brigandages dams le Dauphine en 1789, the complete depositions of an inquiry made in 1879 on this subject, attributes the whole movement to a few leaders: “To call upon the people to rise against the Ring would have had no results” says this writer I “they attained their end in a roundabout way. A singularly bold plan was adopted and carried out over the whole province, It is summed up in these words: to stir up the people against the lords in the name of the King; the lords once crushed, the throne was to be attacked which, then being defenceless, could be destroyed” (p. iv. of the intro duction). Well, we take from M. Roux himself this admission, that all the inquiries made have never led “to the disclosure of a single leader’s name” (P. v.). The whole people were included in this conspiracy.

⁶⁸ Sometimes in the south they hung up also this inscription: “By order of the King and of the National Assembly, a final quittance of rents” (Mary Lafon, His“toire politique du Midi de la France, 1842 — 1845 vol. iv. P. 377).

⁶⁹ Moniteur, i. 378.

⁷⁰ Travels in France, P. 225.

⁷¹ “To ravage the lands” would probably mean that in certain places the peasants reaped the harvests belonging to the lords while they were yet green. Besides, it was the end of July, the corn was nearly ripe, and the people, who had nothing to eat, cut the corn belonging to the lords.

⁷² “The marks of transport and effusion of generous sentiment which made the picture presented by the Assembly more lively and spirited from hour to hour, scarcely left time for coming to some agreement over the prudential measures thought advisable for carrying into effect those beneficent projects, which had been voted in so many memorials of both provincial and parochial assemblies — wherever the citizens had been able to meet for the last eighteen months — amid touching expressions of opinion and ardent protestations.”

⁷³ “All the feudal rights were to be redeemable by the communes, either by money or exchange,” said the Viscount de Noailles. “Every one will be subject to all the public charges, all the State charges (subsides), without any distinction,” said d’Aiguillon. “I demand the redemption for the ecclesiastical funds,” said Lafare, Bishop of Nancy, “and I demand that the redemption be not turned to the profit of the ecclesiastical lord, but that it may be invested usefully for the poor.” The Bishop of Chartres demanded the abolition of the game laws, and renounced those rights for his own part. Whereupon both nobles and clergy rise at the same time to follow his example. De Richer demanded Dot only the abolition of the manorial courts of justice, but also that justice should be dispensed gratuitously. Several priests asked that they might be allowed to sacrifice their perquisites (casuel). but that a tax in money should take the place of the tithe.

⁷⁴ Histoire de la Révolution dans les departements de Pancienne Bretagne, 8 vols., vol. i. P. 422.

⁷⁵ Buchez and Roux, Histoire parlementaire, vol. ii. p. 254.

⁷⁶ After the defeat of two large bands of peasants, one of which threatened to attack the châteaux of Cormatin, the other the town of ,.Cluny, and after punishments of a frightful severity had been inflicted, the war went on, but in a scattered way, say Buchez and Roux. ever the Permanent Committee of Mâcon illegally constituted 1 into a tribunal, by order of which twenty of these unhappy peasants were executed for the crime of hunger and for having rebelled against the tithe and feudal laws” (P. 244). Everywhere W1 clearly provoked by acts of minor importance, by disputes with lord or the chapter about a meadow or a fountain, and in one châteaux to which the rights of plenary jurisdiction belonged, several vassals were hanged for marauding offences, &c. The pamphlets of the time which Buchez and Roux consulted, say that the parlement (the Court) of Douai ordered twelve leaders of bands to be executed; the Committee of Electors (middle-class men) at Lyons sent out a flying column of volunteer National Guards. One contemporary pamphlet states that this little army in a single engagement killed eighty of the so-called brigands, and took sixty prisoners. The Provost-Marshal of the Dauphiné, at the head of a body of middle-class militia, marched through the country and executed as he went (Buchez and Roux, Vol. ii. P. 245).

⁷⁷ Courrier Parisien, sitting of August 19 1789, p. 1729.

⁷⁸ The common oven, mill, press &c., belonging to the lord, for the use of which the peasants had to pay, besides suffering much loss of food, grain and wine.

⁷⁹ The fact of being attached to the land is what constitutes the essence of serfdom. Wherever serfdom has existed for several centuries, the lords have also obtained from the State rights over the person of the serf, which made serfdom (in Russia, for example, at the beginning of the eighteenth century) a state closely akin to slavery, and in the current language of the day allowed serfdom to be confounded with slavery.

⁸⁰ Sagnac, La législation civile de la Révoltuion française p 59, 60.

⁸¹ Arthur Young writing these vexatious and ruinous dues says “What are these tortures of the peasantry in Bretagne, which they call chevanchés, quintaines, soule, saut, de poisson, baiser de mariées, chansons; transporte d’oeuf sur un charette; silence des grenouilles, corvée à miséricorde; milode; leide; couponage; catilage; barrage; forage; maréchaussé; bauvin; ban d’août; trousse; gelinage; civerage; taillabilité; vintain; sterlage; borgalag; minage; ban de vendages; droit d’accapt...? The very terms ... are unknown in England, and consequently untranslatable” (Travels In France, p. 319; London, 1892).

⁸² “Real” opposed to “personal” means here an obligation attached to things, that its to say, to the possession of the land.

⁸³ P. 52.

⁸⁴ Book II. chap i.

⁸⁵ Buchez and Roux (Histoire parlementaire de la Révolution française vol. ii. P. 243) see in the abdications of August 4 only concessions rendered necessary by the debates on the “Declaration of the Rights of Man.” The majority being in favour of this declaration, their vote would have infallibly carried with it the abolition of privileges. It is also interesting to note how Madame Elisabeth announced the night of August 4 to her friend, Madame de Mombelles: “The nobility,” she writes, “with an enthusiasm worthy of the French heart, have renounced everything, the feudal rights and their hunting rights. Fishing will also be comprised, I believe. The clergy have likewise renounced the tithes and perquisites and the possibility of holding several benefices. This decree has been sent into all the provinces. I hope this will put an end to the burning of the châteaux They have burned seventy.” (Conches, loc. cit. p. 238.)

⁸⁶ “When in the course of human events,” said the Declaration of Independence of the United States, “it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness — that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organising its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness” (Declaration made in Philadelphia, July 4, 1776). This declaration certainly does not correspond to the communist aspirations proclaimed by numerous groups of citizens. But it expresses and indicates exactly their ideas concerning the political form which they wished to obtain, and it inspired the Americas with a proud Spirit of independence.

⁸⁷ James Guillaume has recalled this fact in his work, La déclaration des droits de I’homme et du citoyen, Paris, 1900, p. 9. The Reporter of the Constitutional Committee had indeed mentioned this fact. To be assured of this one has only to compare the texts of the French drafts with those of the American declaration given in J. Guillaume’s book.

⁸⁸ In America the people of certain States demanded the proclamation of the common right of the whole nation to the whole of the land; but this idea, detestable from the middle-class point of view, was excluded from the Declaration of Independence.

⁸⁹ Article 16 of Sieyés proposal (La déclaration des droits de I’homme et du citoyen, by James Guillaume, p. 30).

⁹⁰ “I do not quite understand the Declaration of the Rights of Man: it contains very good maxims, suitable for guiding your labours. But it contains some principles that require explanations, and are even liable to different interpretations, which cannot be fully appreciated until the time when their true meaning will be fixed by the laws to which the Declaration will serve as the basis. Signed: Louis.”

⁹¹ Buchez and Roux, p. 368 et seq. Bailly, Mémoires, ii. 326, 341.

⁹² Each municipality fixed the value, in money, of the day, and it was agreed to take for a basis the day of a journeyman.

⁹³ The municipal law of December 14, 1789, not only excluded the passive citizens from all the elections of municipal officers (paragraphs 5, 6, 8, &c.), but it also forbade the electoral assemblies to meet “by trades, professions or guilds.” They could only meet by quarters, or districts.

⁹⁴ The livre had the value of about one franc.

⁹⁵ Vide chap. xxiv.

⁹⁶ The “districts” were described as “sections” after the municipal law of June 1790 was passed.

⁹⁷ See chap. xii.

⁹⁸ Vol. i, Paris, 1894, p. vii.

⁹⁹ Most of the “sections” held their general assemblies in churches, and their committees and schools were often lodged in buildings which formerly belonged to the clergy or to monastic orders. The Bishopric became a central place for the meetings of delegates from the sections.

¹⁰⁰ Sigismond Lacroix, Actes de la Commune, vol. iii. p. 625. Ernest Mellié, Les Sections de Paris pendant la Révolution, Paris, 1898, p. 9.

¹⁰¹ Lacroix, Actes, vol. ii. p. xiv.

¹⁰² Lacroix, Actes, vol. iii. p. iv.

¹⁰³ Vide chap. xxi.

¹⁰⁴ Lacroix, Actes, vol. iii. pp. xii. and xiii.

¹⁰⁵ Lacroix, Actes, iv. p. xix.

¹⁰⁶ S. Lacroix, in his Introduction to the fourth volume of the Actes de la Commune, gives a full account of this affair. But I cannot resist reproducing here the following lines of the “Address to the National Assembly by the deputies of the sixty sections of Paris, relative to the acquisition to be made, in the name of the Commune, of national domains.” When the members of the Town Council wanted to act in this affair of the purchases, instead of the sections, the sections protested and they expressed the following very just idea concerning the representatives of a people: “How would it be possible for the acquisition consummated by the Commune itself, through the medium of its commissioners, specially appointed ‘ad hoc,’ to be less legal than it it were made by the general representatives... Are you no longer recognising the principle that the functions of the deputy cease in the presence of the deputer?” Proud and true words, unfortunately buried nowadays under governmental fictions.

¹⁰⁷ Lacroix, vol. i. pp. ii. iv. and 729, note,

¹⁰⁸ S. Lacroix, Les Actes de la Commune, 1st edition, vol. vi., 1897, pp. 273 et seq.

¹⁰⁹ L’idée autonomiste dans les districts de Paris en 1789 et en 1790, in the review La Révolution française,” Year XIV., No. 8, February 14, 1895, p. 141 et seq.

¹¹⁰ Section des Mathurins, quoted by Foubert, p. 155.

¹¹¹ Division I., Article 2.

¹¹² Division IV., Article 12.

¹¹³ Danton understood thoroughly the necessity of guarding for the sections all the rights which they had attributed to themselves during the first year of the Revolution, and this is why the General Ruling for the Commune of Paris, which was elaborated by the deputies of the sections at the Bishopric, partly under the influence of Danton, and adopted on April 7, 1790, by forty districts, abolished the General Council of the Commune. It left all decisions to the citizens assembled in their sections, and the sections retained the right of permanence. On the contrary, Condorcet, in his “municipality scheme,” remaining true to the idea of representative government, personified the Commune in its elected General Council, to which he gave all the rights (Lacroix, Actes, 2nd series, vol. i. p. xii.).

¹¹⁴ Article 55.

¹¹⁵ Meillé, P 289.

¹¹⁶ We must say “intended,” because in 1848 nothing was done besides talk and discussion.

¹¹⁷ Izvestia (Bulletin) of the University of Kieff, Year XXXVII, Nos. 3 and 8 (Russian).

¹¹⁸ Dalloz, article Féodalisme.

¹¹⁹ Shares of the produce of the land, taxes on it, court rolls, &c.

¹²⁰ These facts, which are in complete contradiction to the unmeasured praise lavished on the National Assembly by many historians, I first published in an article on the anniversary of the Great Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, June 1889, and afterwards in a series of articles in La Révolte for 1892 and 1893, and republished in pamphlet form under the title La Grande Révolution, Paris, 1893. The elaborate work of M. Ph. Sagnac (La législation civile de la Révolution française, 1789–1804: Essai d’histoire sociale, Paris, 1898) has since confirmed this point of view. After all, it was not a question of a more correct interpretation of facts, it was a question of the facts themselves. And to be convinced of this, one has only to consult any collection of the laws of the French State — such as is contained, for instance, in the well-known Répertoire de jurisprudence, by Dalloz. There we have, either in full or in a faithful summary, all the laws concerning landed property, both private and communal, which are not to be found in the histories of the Revolution. From this source I have drawn, and it was by, studying the texts of these laws that I have come to understand the real meaning of the Great French Revolution and its inner struggles.

¹²¹ See above, chap. xviii.

¹²² “All honorary distinctions, superiority and power resulting from the feudal system are abolished. As for those profitable rights which will continue to exist until they are redeemed, they are completely assimilated to the simple rents and charges on the land” (Law of February 24, Article I of chap. i.).

¹²³ Article 6.

¹²⁴ Ph. Sagnac. La législation civile de la Révolution française (Paris, 1898). pp. 105–106.

¹²⁵ Sagnac, p.120.

¹²⁶ Sagnac, p.120.

¹²⁷ Sagnac, p.121.

¹²⁸ Moniteur, June..

¹²⁹ During this discussion Robespierre uttered a very just saying which the revolutionists of all countries should remember: “As for me, I bear witness,” he cried, “that no revolution has ever cost so little blood and cruelty.” The bloodshed, indeed, came later, through the counter-revolution.

¹³⁰ Law of May 3 to 9, 1790.

¹³¹ Law of June 15 to 19, 1790.

¹³² Decree of 1669.

¹³³ It is interesting to read in M. Aulard’s Histoire politique de la Révolution française (2nd edition, Paris, 1903) the pages 55 to 60, in which he shows how the Assembly laboured to prevent the power falling into the hands of the people. The remarks of this writer, concerning the law of October 14, 1790, prohibiting the assembling of the citizens of the communes to discuss their affairs more than once a year for the elections, are very true.

¹³⁴ Aulard, Histoire politique de la Révolution française, p. 72. A detailed analysis of what had been done by the Assembly against the spirit of democracy will be found in Aulard.

¹³⁵ Among others, a very interesting instance of this may be found in the letters of Madame Jullien (de la Drôme): “I am cured, therefore of my Roman fever, which did not, however, go as far as republicanism for fear of civil war. I am shut up with animals of all sorts in the sacred Ark of the Constitution... One is somewhat of a Huron squaw (North American Indian) when playing the Spartan or Roman woman in Paris.” Elsewhere she asks her son: “Tell me if the Jacobins have become Feuillants” (the Club of the Feuillants was the monarchist club). Journal d’une bourgeoise pendant la Révolution, published by Edouard Lockroy, Paris, 1881, 2nd edition, PP. 31, 32, 35.

¹³⁶ Marat alone had dared to put in his newspaper the following epigraph: “Ut redeat miseris abeat fortuna superbis.” (May fortune desert the rich and come back to the poor.)

¹³⁷ Vide Grands détails par pièces authentiques de l’affaire de Nancy (Paris, 1790) Détail très exast des ravages commis . . à Nancy (Paris, 1790) Relation exacte de ce qui s’est passe à Nancy le 31 août 1790; Le sens commun du banhomme Richard sur l’affaire de Nancy (Philadelphie (?)), l’an second de la liberté framçaise, and other pamphlet, in the rich collection at the British Museum, vol. vii. Pp. 326, 327, 328 962.

¹³⁸ In the letter of the Count d’Estaing to the Queen, of which the rough draft, found afterwards, was published in the Histoire de la Révolution,by the Deuxamisde la liberté, 1792, vol. iii. PP. 101–104. Also Louis Blanc, 1832, vol. iii. pp. 175–176.

¹³⁹ It seems most probable, according to authentic documents collected and analysed by M. G. Lenôtre (Le Drame de Varennes, Juin 1791, Paris, 1905, PP. 151 et seq.), and a pamphlet, Rapport sommaire et exact de l’arrestation du roi à Harennes, près Clermont, by Bayon (Collection of the British Museum, F. 893, 13), that Drouet had at first only suspicions concerning the travellers, that he had hesitated and only dashed through the woods in pursuit after his suspicions had been confirmed by Jean de Lagny. This boy of thirteen, who was the son of the postmaster at Chantrix, J. B. Lagny, arrived at Sainte-Menehould, having ridden full speed, bringing the order for the arrest of the royal carriage, signed by Bayon, one of the volunteers who were sent from Paris in pursuit of the King. Bayon having covered thirty-five leagues in six hours, by changing horses ten times, was probably quite exhausted, and halting for a moment at Chantrix, he hurried off a courier before him. It is also highly probable that Louis XVI, had been already recognised at Chantrix by Gabriel Vallet, who had just married one of J. B. Lagny’s daughters, and who had been in Paris during, the Fête of the Federation. This Vallet drove the royal carriage as far as Châlons, where he certainly did not keep the secret.

¹⁴⁰ Histoire socialiste, La Législative, p. 815 et seq.

¹⁴¹ After the decrees of March 15, the objections raised against these decrees had been numerous. They have been pointed out by Doniol (La Révolution, &c., pp. 104 et seq.), and by Professor N. Karéiev (Les paysans et la question paysanne en France dans le dernier quart du XVIII Siècle (Paris: Giard, 1899), PP. 489 et seq., and Appendix NO.33.

¹⁴² Quoted by Aulard, p. 91

¹⁴³ Mémoires sur la Révolution du 10 août, 1792, with preface by F. A. Aulard (Paris, 1893). Chaumette accused even the Directory of the department of having gathered together sixty thousand counter-revolutionists and lodged them. If there seems to be any exaggeration in the number of sixty thousand, the fact that a great number of counter-revolutionists were assembled in Paris is certain.

¹⁴⁴ Here is a piece of news of which all Paris was talking at the time, as related by Madame Jullien: “The Superior of the Grey Sisters of Rueil lost her portfolio, which was found and opened by the municipality of the place. It is estimated that they have sent 48,000 livres to the émigrés since January 1.” (Journal d’une bourgeoise, P. 203

¹⁴⁵ Document in the Archives des étrangères, quoted by E. Daudet

¹⁴⁶ Histoire des Conspirations royalistes du Midi sous la Révolution (Paris, 1881). Daudet is a moderate, or rather a reactionary, but his history is documentary, and he has consulted the local archives.

¹⁴⁷ Memoires, p. 1 3.

¹⁴⁸ Journal de Perlet of June 27, quoted by Aulard in a note added to the Mémoires of Chaumette.

¹⁴⁹ J. F. Simon was a German tutor, an old collaborator of Basedow in the PhilaDtropium at Dessau.

¹⁵⁰ “If there exist,” he said, “men who are working now to establish the Republic upon the ruins of the Constitution, the arm of the law should punish them, as well as the active partisans of the two Chambers and the counter-revolutionists at Coblentz.”

¹⁵¹ Madame Jullien to her son (Journal d’unc bourgeoise, p. I70). If the letters of Madame Jullien may be incorrect in some small details, they are still most valuable for this period, because they tell exactly what revolutionary Pans was saying and thinking on such and such days.

¹⁵² Lally-Tollendal, in a letter which he addressed to the King of Prussia in 1793, claiming the liberation of Lafayette, enumerated the services that the cunning general had rendered to the Court. After the King had been brought back to Pans from Varennes in June I791, the principal leaders in the Constituent Assembly met to decide whether the King should not be tried and the Republic established. Lafayette said to them: “If you kill the King, I warn you that the next day I and the National Guard will proclaim the Pnnce Royal.” “He belongs to us, we must forget everything,” said Madame Elisabeth (the sister of Louis XVI’) in June I791, to Madame de Tonnerre, when speaking of Lafayette; and in the beginning of July 1792, Lafayette wrote to the King, who replied to him. In this letter, dated July 8, he proposed to organise the King’s escape. He was to come on the 15th, with fifteen squadrons and eight pieces of horse artillery, to receive the King at Compiegne. Lally-Tollendal, a royalist in virtue of a sort of religion that was hereditary in his family, as he said himself, confirmed what follows, on his conscience: “His [Lafayette’s] proclamations to the army, his famous letter to the Legislative body, his unexpected appearance at the bar after the terrible day of June 10; nothing of this was unknown to the, nothing was do without my participation.... The day after his arrival in Paris, I spent part of the night with him we were discussing whether war should be declared against the Jacobins in Paris itself — war, in the full meaning of the word.” Their plan was to unite “all the landowners who were dissatisfied, and all the oppressed who were numerous,” and to proclaim: No Jacobins, and no Coblentz: to lead the people to the Jacobin Club, “to arrest their leaders, seize their papers, and pull down their house.” M. de Lafayette strongly desired this; he had said to the King, “We must destroy the Jacobins physically and morally. His timid friends were opposed to this. He swore to me that he would, at least, on returning to his army, immediately set to work to find means for the King’s deliverance.” This letter of Lally-Tollendal’s is given in full by Buchez and Roux, vol. xvii. p. 227 et seq. And yet in spite of all, “the commissioners sent to Lafayette after August 10 by the leaders of the Assembly had instructions to offer him the first place in the new order of things.” The treachery in the Assembly among the Girondins was thus much deeper than one would have thought.

¹⁵³ Journal d’une bourgeoise, p. 164

¹⁵⁴ “At this moment the horizon is charged with vapours which must produce an explosion,” wrote Madame Jullien on August 8. “The Assembly appears to me too weak to back up the will of the people and the people appear to me too strong to allow itself to be overmastered by them. Out of this conflict, this struggle, something must come: either liberty or slavery for twenty-five millions of men” (p. 213). And further on: “The dethronement of the King demanded by the majority, and rejected by the minority who dominate the Assembly will bring about the frightful conflict which is preparing. The Senate will not have the audacity to pronounce it, and the people will not have the baseness to endure the contempt which is shown to public opinion.” And when the Assembly acquitted Lafayette, Madame Jullien made this prophecy: “But all that is leading us towards a catastrophe which will cause the friends of humanity to shudder or, if will rain blood. I do not exaggerate” (p. 213).

¹⁵⁵ “You appear to be in the dark as to what is happening in Paris,” said the spokesman of one of the deputations of the Commune to the Assembly.

¹⁵⁶ In one letter from Switzerland, the punishing the Jacobins was discussed. “We shall execute justice on them; they shall be a terrible example... War upon the paper money; that is where bankruptcy wil1 begin. The clergy and the parlements will be reinstated.... So much the worse for those who have bought the property of the clergy....” In another letter we read: “There is not a moment to lose. We must make the middle classes feel that the King alone can save them.”

¹⁵⁷ So they then called those who later were termed the Blancs.

¹⁵⁸ The prisoners shut up in La Force prison had already tried to set it on fire, says Michelet, according to the inquiry that was made concerning the September days.

¹⁵⁹ Aulasd, Etudes et lecons sur la Revolution francaise, 2nd series, 1898. p. 49.

¹⁶⁰ Granier de Cassagnac, Histoire des Girondins et des massacres de Septembre (Paris, 1860).

¹⁶¹ Sixteen, says Méhée fils (Felhémési, La vérité toute entière sur les vrais acteurs de la journée du 2 septembre, et sur plusieurs journées et nuits secrètes des anciens comités de gouvernement, Paris, 1794). I maintain the exact orthography of the printed title, “Felhémési” in the anagram of Méhée fils.

¹⁶² They quote, to prove this, that persons were liberated, between August 30 and September 2, thanks to the intervention of Danton and other revolutionary personages, and say: “You see very well bow they saved their friends!” They forget, however, to say that out of the three thousand persons arrested on the 30th, more than two thousand were released. It was sufficient that any patriot of the prisoners’ section should claim his release. For the part played by Danton in the September days, see the careful study of A. Aulard, in his Etudes et leçons sur la Révolution française, 1893–1897, 3rd series.

¹⁶³ Madame de Tourzel, the Dauphin’s governess, and her young daughter Pauline, three of the Queen’s waiting-women, Madame de Lamballe and her waiting-woman, had been transferred from the Temple to La Force, and from this prison they were all saved, except Madame de Lamballe, by the Commissioners of the Commune. At half-past two in the night of September 2 and 3, these Commissioners, Truchot, Tallien end Guiraud, came to render an account of their efforts to the Assembly. At the prison of La Force and that of Sainte-Pélagie, they had taken out all the persons detained for debt. After reporting to the Commune, about midnight, Truchot returned to La Force, to take out all the women, “I was able to take out twenty-four,” he said. “We have placed especially under our protection Mademoiselle de Tourzel and Madame Sainte-Brice... For our own safety we withdrew, for they were threatening us ton. We have conducted those ladies to the section of the ‘Rights of Man,’ to stay there until they are tried” (Buchez and Roux, xvii, p. 353). These words of Truchot are absolutely trustworthy, because as we know, by the narrative of Pauline de Tourzel, with what difficulty the commissioner of the Commune (she did not know who he was, and spoke of him as a stranger) succeeded in getting her through the streets near the prison, full of people watching to see that none of the prisoners were removed. Madame de Lamballe, tea, was about to be saved by Pétion, the mayor, but some forces unknown opposed it. Emissaries of the Duke of Orléans are mentioned, who desired her death, and names even are given. However, one thing only is certain; there were so many influential persons who, since the Diamond Necklace affair, were interested in the silence of this confidante of the Queen’s, that the Impossibility of saving her need not surprise us.

¹⁶⁴ Mon agonie de trente-huit heures, by Jourgniac de Saint-Méard.

¹⁶⁵ Bazire, Dussaulx, François de Neufchâteau, the famous Girondin Isnard, and Laquinio were among the number. Bazire invited Chabot, who was beloved in the faubourgs, to join theta (Louis Blanc, quarto edition, ii, p. 19).

¹⁶⁶ See the minutes of the Commune, quoted by Buchez and Roux, xvii, p. 368. Tallien, in his report to the Assembly, which was given in later during the night, confirms the words of Manuel: “The procurator of the Commune,” said he, went first to the Abbaye and used every means suggested to him by his zeal and humanity. He could not make any impression, and saw several victims killed at his feet. He himself was in danger of his life, and they were obliged to force him away for fear that lie should fall a victim to his zeal.” At midnight, when the people went over to La Force, “our commissioners,” says Tallien, “followed them there, but could not gain anything. Some deputations came after them, and when we left to come here, another deputation was then going thither.”

¹⁶⁷ “Tell me, Mr. Citizen, if those rascals of Prussians and Austrians came to Paris, would they too seek out the guilty? Would they not strike right and left, as the Swiss did on August 10? As for me, I am no orator, I put no one to sleep, and I tell you I am a father of a family; I have a wife and five children whom I want to leave here in the keeping of the section, so that I can go and fight the enemy, but I don’t intend that these scoundrels who are in prison, for whom the other scoundrels are coming to open the doors, shall be able to go and slaughter my wife and children.” I quote from Felhémési (Méhée fils), La vérité toute entière, &c.

¹⁶⁸ Prudhomme, in his journal, gives in these words the reply made by a man of the people, on the first visit to the Abbaye by a deputation from the Legislative Assembly and from the municipality.

¹⁶⁹ The Watch Committee of the Commune, which had taken the place of the preceding administration, and was composed at first of fifteen members of the municipal police, had been reorganised by a decree of the General Council of the Commune on August 30: it was then formed of four members, Panis, Sergent, Duplian and Sourdeuil, who, with the authorisation of the Council, and “seeing the critical state of circumstances and the divers and important works to which it was necessary to devote themselves,” added on September 2 seven other members: Marat, Deforgues, Lenfant, Leclerc, Durfort, Cailly and Guermeur (Buchez and Roux, vol. xvii. pp. 405, 433 vol. xviii. pp. 186, 187). Michelet, who saw the original document, speaks only of six; he does not mention Durfort; Robespierre was sitting on the General Council, Marat took part in it “as journalist “— the Commune having decreed that a gallery should be erected in the Council Chamber for a journalist (Michelet. vol. vii. ch. iv.). Danton tried to reconcile the Commune with the executive of the Assembly; that is to say, with the Ministry of which he was a member.

¹⁷⁰ Michelet, vol. vii. ch. v.

¹⁷¹ Histoire des Girondins et des massacres de Septembre, 2 vols., 1860.

¹⁷² Vide Louis Blanc, Book viii. ch. ii.; L. Combes, Episodes et curiosités révolutionnaires, 1872.

¹⁷³ Maton de la Varenne, Histoire particulière des évènements qui ont eu lieu en France pendant les moi de j uin, de juillet, d’août et de septembre, et qui ont opéré la chute du trûne royal (Paris, 1806). There were a few more isolated massacres on the 5th.

¹⁷⁴ Histoire particulière, pp. 419–460.

¹⁷⁵ Peltier, arch-royalist writer and liar, giving every detail, put the figure at 1005 but he added that there had been some killed at the Bicêtre and in the streets, which permitted him to being the total up to 8000! (Dernier tableau de Parts, ou récit historique de la Révolution du 10 août, 2 vols., London, 1792- 1793). On this Buchez and Roux have justly remarked that “Peltier is the only one to say that people were killed in other pieces besides the prisons,” in contradiction to all his contemporaries.

¹⁷⁶ I know that revolutions are not to be judged by ordinary rules; but I know, also, that the power which makes them must soon take its place under the ægis of the law, if total annihilation is not desired. The anger of the people and the beginning of the insurrection are comparable to the action of a torrent that overthrows the obstacles that no other power could have annihilated, and the ravage and devastation which the flood will carry far onward if it does not soon return to its channel. Yesterday was a day of events over which perhaps we ought to draw a veil; I know that the people, terrible In their vengeance, had in it some kind of justice; they did not take as their victims every one who came in the way of their fury, they directed it upon those whom they believed to have been too long spared by the sword of justice; and who, the peril of circumstances persuaded them, must be immolated without delay. But the safety of Paris demands that all the powers shall return at once to their respective limits.

¹⁷⁷ P. 397. There is no doubt that the Girondist ministers knew very well what was going on in the prisons. We know that Servan, the Minister of War, on the afternoon of the 2nd, went to the Commune, where he had made an appointment for eight o’clock with Santerre, Pétion, Hérbert, Billaud-Varenne and others, to discuss military measures. It is obvious that the massacres must have been mentioned at the Commune, and that Roland was informed about them, but that Servan, as well as the others, thought that they should attend to the most pressing business — the war on the frontiers — and on no account provoke civil war in Paris.

¹⁷⁸ Carra, the editor of the Annales patriotiques, one of the chief organs of the Girondist party, mentioned Brunswick in these terms, in the number dated July 19, 1792: “He is the greatest warrior and the cleverest statesman in Europe, this Duke of Brunswick; he is very learned, very enlightened, very amiable; he wants but one thing, perhaps — a crown — to be, I do not say, the greatest king on earth, but to be the true restorer of the liberty of Europe. If he comes to Paris, I wager that his first step will be to come to the Jacobins and put on the bonnet rouge.”

¹⁷⁹ Mortimer Ternaux, La Terreur, vol. ii. Pp. 178, 216, 393; Buchez and Roux, vol. xvi. P. 247; Ernest Mellie, Les Sections de Paris, p. 144 et seq.

¹⁸⁰ A “corresponding committee” had already been established for communicating with the different sections, and a meeting of the commissioners of several sections had taken place on July 23.

¹⁸¹ Ernest Melli has found the minute-book of the Poissonniáre section. It met on August 9, at eight o’clock in the evening, in permanent committee in the church of Saint-Lazare; there it dismissed all the officers of the Saint-Lazare battalion, not appointed by the National Guards themselves, and appointed “on the spot other officers under whose orders the section intended to march,” It entered into agreement with the other sections as to the order of marching, and at four o’clock in the morning, having appointed its permanent committee to keep watch over the preparations for arming and to give the orders for security that they should judge to be necessary,” the section joined the brethren of the Saint-Antoine faubourg,” and began to march upon the Tuileries. By means of this minute we get a lively impression of the way in which the people of Paris acted on that memorable night.

¹⁸² Aulard, Histoire politique de la Révolution, 2nd edition, p. 272 et seq.

¹⁸³ Aulard gives in his Histoire politique, 2nd edition, pp. 315–317, an excellent résumé of these various changes.

¹⁸⁴ Out Of 713,885 livres received it had expended only 85,529 livres, of which there was a clear account rendered (Louis Blanc, ii, 62). Giraut, on the accusation of the Terror, proved later on that in four months the committee had arrested only 320 persons. If only the Girondins had been as modest after Thermidor!

¹⁸⁵ Vide ch. xxxv.

¹⁸⁶ After long struggles between the revolutionary population of Lyons and the adherents of the priests, and after the murder in a church of the patriot Lescuyer, for having wanted to put up the church’s property for sale, in accordance with law, there was an insurrection of the revolutionary working population, which ended in the murder of sixty royalists, whose corpses were thrown into the depths of the Tour de la Glacière. Barbaroux, a Girondist deputy, justified these massacres.

¹⁸⁷ The tenor of the negotiations of Brissot in England during January 1793, before the King’s execution, is still unknown. Concerning those of Danton, see Georges Avenel’s article, Danton et les positivistes religieux, in his Lundis révolutionnaires, 1875, pp. 248 et seq. and the work of Albert Sorel, L’Europe et la Révolution française (Paris).

¹⁸⁸ The robberies committed by a certain number of officers in the commissariat of the armies of the Republic were scandalous. Some examples will be found in Jaurès’ Histoire socialiste, La Convention. The speculations in which they indulged can also be imagined from the fact that the commissariat officers purchased immense quantities of wheat precisely in those departments where the harvest had been bad, and the prices were very high. Speculations in the rise of wheat formerly made by Septeuil for the profit of Louis XVI., “the good King,” who never neglected this means of filling his privy purse, were now being made by the middle classes.

¹⁸⁹ During the trial, some Girondist deputies, those of Calvados in particular, wrote to their constituents that the “Mountain” wanted the King to be put to death only to set the Duke of Orléans upon the throne.

¹⁹⁰ Fersen, the friend of Marie-Antoinette, has entered in his private diary what these conspirators were preparing for the French patriots. The Minister of Prussia, Baron de Beck — Fersen wrote — disapproved loudly of their not exterminating the Jacobins in the towns through which they passed, and of their having shown too much clemency. As to the Count de Mercy, he said to Fersen that great severity was needful, and that Paris ought to be set on fire at the four corners. On September 11, Fersen wrote to the Baron de Breteuil that, as the territory conquered by the German armies yields only to force, “mercy in such case appears to me extremely pernicious. This is the moment to destroy the Jacobins.” To exterminate the leaders in every place through which the allies should pass, seems to him to be the best means: “We must not hope to win them over by kindness; they must be exterminated, and this is the moment.” And Breteuil replies to him that he has spoken of it to the Duke of Brunswick. But the duke is too mild. The King of Prussia appears to be better: “Varennes, for example, will be chastised one of these days.” Vide Le Comte de Fersen et la Cour de France. Extrait de papiers ... publié par son petit-neveu, le Baron R. M. de Klinckowström (Paris, 1877), vol. ii. pp. 360 et seq.

¹⁹¹ Jaurès has pointed out here an important error in Michelet. It was Daunou who, on January 14, pronounced the speech in favour of the King that Michelet has attributed by mistake to Danton. Returning to Paris on January 15, Danton, on the contrary, made a powerful speech demanding the condemnation of Louis XVI. It would be important to verify the accusation against Brissot, Gensonné, Guadet, and Pétion, formulated by Billaud-Varennes in his speech on January 15, 1793 (Pamphlet of 32 pages, published by order of the Convention. British Museum Collection, vol. F, 1097).

¹⁹² It is necessary to read the Mémoires of Buzot to understand hatred and contempt of the Girondins for the people. We constantly meet phrases of this kind: “Paris is made up of September murderers”; “here one wallows in the filth of this corrupt city”; “one must have the vice of the people of Paris to please them,” &c. Vide Buzot, Mémoires sur la Révolution française, préoédés d’un précis de sa vie, by M. Gaudet (Paris, 1828), pp. 32, 45, 141, &co See also Pétion’s letter to Buzot of February 6, 1792, published in the Révolutions de Paris, vol. xi. P. 263, from which Aulard has given extracts.

¹⁹³ “Three Revolutions,” he wrote, “were necessary to save France: the first to overthrow despotism; the second to destroy royalty; the third to beat down anarchy! And to this last Revolution I have consecrated my pen and all my efforts since August”” (J. P. Brissot, député a la Convention Nationale, A tous les républicains de France, sur la Société des Jacobins de Paris. Pamphlet dated October 24, 1792). Both Brissot’s pamphlets were reprinted in London.

¹⁹⁴ Louvet made no concealment of the true meaning of his “Robespierride.” When he saw that the shot directed by him and his friends had missed fire, and that the Convention had not put Robespierre on his trial, on going home he said to his wife, Lodoiska: “We must be prepared for the scaffold or exile.” He tells this in his Mémoires. P. 74. He felt that the weapon he had aimed at the “Mountain” was turning against himself.

¹⁹⁵ Brissot “ses commettants (May 23, 1793), and A tous les républicans de France (October 24, 1792).

¹⁹⁶ J. P. Brissot ses commettants, p. 7.

¹⁹⁷ Supra, pp. 8.9.

¹⁹⁸ Supra, p. 13.

¹⁹⁹ L’oeuvre sociale de la Rchâvolution franchâaise, edited, with introduction, by Emile Faguet. Paris, undated,?1900.

²⁰⁰ Brissot, supra, P. 29.

²⁰¹ Brissot, Pamphlet dated October 24, 1792.

²⁰² The Jacobin Club.

²⁰³ Louis Blanc has defined Brissot extremely well in saying that he was one of those men who are “republicans in advance of the time to-day, and revolutionaries behind the time to-morrow”; people who have not the strength to follow the century, after having had the audacity to outstrip it. After having written in his youth that “property was theft,” his respect for property became so great that on the morrow of August 4, he blamed the Assembly for the precipitation with which it had published its decrees against feudalism; and that at a moment when citizens were embracing each other in the street in congratulation of these decrees.

²⁰⁴ Pamphlet dated October 24, 1792

²⁰⁵ Ibid. p. 19.

²⁰⁶ Pamphlet dated October 24, 1792, p. 127

²⁰⁷ Mortimer-Ternaux, a rabid reactionary, has pointed out this double organisation in his Histoire de la Terreur, vol. vii. Jaurès (La Convention, Vol. ii. P. 1254) has also a very well written page on this subject; and Aulard refers to it at some length in his Histoire politique de la Révolution, part ii. ch. v.

²⁰⁸ Louis Blanc, 4to, vol. ii. P. 42.

²⁰⁹ When the Girondins talked of assembling the commissioners of the departments at Bourges “they would not have stopped at this transference,” says Thibaudeau in his Mémoires It was their intention to form a second Convention.”

²¹⁰ Aulard, Histoire politique, p. 264. “I do not know that any one should have claimed the honour of it,” Thibaudeau wrote, when speaking of the federalism of the Girondins, in his Mémoires sur la Convention et la Directoire, vol. i. P. 38 (Paris, 1824). As to Marat, he was very explicit on this point in his paper, under the date of May 24, 1793. “They have for a long time been accusing the leaders of this infernal faction with federalism; I confess that I have never held this opinion of them, although I also have sometimes reiterated the charge.”

²¹¹ La Convention, pp. 388, 394, 396, and 1458.

²¹² Numerous quotations could be given to prove this. The two following may serve as examples: “The Girondins wanted the Revolution to stop short of the middle classes,” says Baudot. They wanted “quietly to establish a middle-class aristocracy, which should take the place of the nobility and clergy,” said Bourdon de l’Oise at the Jacobin Club, On May 31. (La Société des Jacobins, Aulard edition, vol. v. p. 220.)

²¹³ Michelet’s genius has led him to see very clearly the importance of this communist movement of the masses, and he had already drawn attention to its essential points. Jaurés (Histoire socialiste, vol. iv. PP. 1003 et seq.) has now given more ample and very interesting information on this movement in Paris and Lyons, where L’Ange was a pre cursor of Fourier.

²¹⁴ Could stock-jobbing influence the fluctuations in the value of paper-money? Several historians have put to themselves this question, only to reply in the negative. The depreciation, they said, was due to the too great quantity of tokens of exchange which were put into circulation. This is true; but those who have followed closely the fluctuations in the price, let us say, of wheat on the international markets, of cotton on the Liverpool Exchange, or of Russian notes on the Berlin Exchange, some thirty years ago, will not hesitate to recognise that our grandfathers were right in holding stockjobbers largely responsible for the depreciation of the paper-money. Even to-day, when financial operations cover an infinitely wider area than they did in 1793, stock-jobbing has always the effect of exaggerating out of all proportion the effects of supply and demand at a given moment. If, with the present facilities of transport and exchanges, stock-jobbing cannot create a permanent rise in the price of a commodity, or in the value of given shares, it always exaggerates nevertheless the natural rise, and swells quite out of proportion the temporary fluctuations in price which are due either to the varying productivity of labour (for instance, in the harvests), or to fluctuations in supply and demand.

²¹⁵ Jaurès, iv. p. 1023.

²¹⁶ A much keener economist than many professional economists, this most sympathetic man pointed to the root of the question, showing how monopolists exaggerated the results of conditions created by the war and the repeated issues of paper-money. “War at sea,” said he, “the disasters in our colonies, the losses on the market value of the paper currency, and above all, the fact that the quantities of notes issued no longer correspond with the needs of the commercial transactions — these are a few of the causes of this considerable rise which We lament. But how great is their influence, how terrible and disastrous is their result, when among us there exist evilly disposed men, monopolists, when the national distress is used as a base for the selfish speculations of a crowd of capitalists who do not know what to do with the immense sums of money they have gained in the recent transactions.”

²¹⁷ Ch. xxxi.

²¹⁸ On April 15, the bourgeoisie of Lyons sent to the Convention a of those sections where they hold the upper hand, to report that their city groaned beneath the tyranny of a Jacobin municipal council, which was laying hands on the property of rich merchants. They also asked the bourgeoisie of Paris to get hold of the sections. At the and of February the Mayor of Pans, Pétion, published his “Letter to the Parisians,” in which he called the bourgeoisie to arms against the people, saying: “Your property Is threatened, and you close your eyes to the danger... You are subjected to all manner of requisitions and yet you suffer patiently.” This was a direct appeal to the cuddle classes against the people.

²¹⁹ The people knew, of course, how the volunteers of 1792 had been received in the army by the staff of officers and the generals — all royalists. “None of them wanted to have them,” says Avenel, who has consulted the archives of the War Office. The volunteers were treated as “disorganisers” and cowards; they were shot on the slightest provocation, and the troops were incited against them (Lundis révolutionnaires, p.8).

²²⁰ Everything remained, however, so far as it can be ascertained, as promises (Avenel, Biens nationaux, in Lundis révolutionnnaires).

²²¹ A few revolutionary sections of Paris offered thereupon to mortgage all their properties to serve as a guarantee for the notes. This offer was refused, but there was a profound idea in it. When a nation makes war, property owners must bear the weight of it, as much and even more than those whose only incomes are their wages.

²²² Albert Sorel, L’Europe et la Révolution française (Paris, 1891), Book I., ch. ii., pp. 373 et seq. Avenel, loc. cit.

²²³ Michelet, Book X. ch. v.

²²⁴ “Each day,” wrote a royalist priest, François Chevalier (quoted by Chassin), “each day was marked by bloody expeditions which cannot but horrify every decent soul, and seem justifiable only in the light of philosophy.” (They were commanded by priests in the name religion.) “Matters had come to a pass, when it was said openly that it was unavoidable and essential for peace, not to leave a single republican alive in France. Such was the popular fury that it was sufficient to have attended at a mass said by one of the constitutional clergy, to be imprisoned and then murdered, or shot, under the pretext that the prisons were too full, as they were on September 2.” At Machecoul, 524 republican citizens had been shot, and there was talk of massacring the women. Charette was urging on his fanatical peasants do this.

²²⁵ Marat was right in saying that the works he had published at the beginning of the Revolution, Offrande à la Patrie, Plan de Constitution, Législation criminelle, and the first hundred numbers of the Ami du Peuple, were full of tenderness, prudence, moderation, love of mankind, liberty, justice (Chèvremont, Marat, vol. ii. p. 215). Jaurès, who has read Marat carefully, has done much towards showing him in a true light, especially in the fourth volume of his Histoire de la Revolution.

²²⁶ Vide Aulard, Jacobins, vol. v. p. 209.

²²⁷ Aulard, Jacobins, vol. v. p. 227.

²²⁸ Papers of the highest value have been destroyed recently at Clairvaux. We have found the traces of them and we have recovered some fragments of the library of “Pélarin,” which had been sold to a grocer and a tobacconist in the village.

²²⁹ I here follow the work of René Stourm Les finances de l’ancien régime et la Révolution, 18 8 5, vol. ii. PP. 369 et seq. The discussions in the Convention were very interesting. Cambon, on introducing the question on May 20, 1793, said: “I should like the Convention to open a civic loan of a milliard livres, which should be made up by the rich and the indifferent. You are rich, you have an opinion, which causes us expense; I want to bind you to the Revolution whether you like or not; I want you to lend your wealth to the Republic.” Marat, Thuriot, and Mathieu supported this proposal; but there was a very strong opposition. It should be noted that it was a department, that of Hérault that had taken the initiative, and set the example of a loan of this kind. Cambon mentioned it in his speech. Jacques Roux, at the Gravilliers, had already advised it on March 9.

²³⁰ Stourm, p. 372, note.

²³¹ Several provincial assemblies had, prior to 1789, tried to compel the village communes to divide their lands, either in equal parts per head, or in proportion to the personal tax (la taille) paid by each householder. Several cahiers of 1789 made a similar demand. Others, on the contrary, complained of the enclosures (bornage) which the King had authorised in certain provinces in 1769 and 1777.

²³² Robespierre had already demanded in the Constituent Assembly abolition of the ordinance of 1669, and the restitution of the communal lands which “the towns, boroughs and villages of Artois possessed since time immemorial,” and to the preservation of which had mainly been due the abundance of cattle and the prosperity of agriculture and the flax industry. These lands had been taken away by States-General of Artois for the enrichment of the administrative officials and to place them in the hands of the nobility. He demanded, therefore, the abolition of the ordinance of 1669. (Motion de Robespierre su nom de la province d’Artois et des Provinces de Flandre, d’Hainaut et de Cambrésis pour la restitution des biens nationaux envahis par les seigneurs. Imprimerie Nationale, 1791. British Museum Pamphlets.)

²³³ The decree was so interpreted indeed by the law-courts (vide Dalloz, X. P. 265, No. 2261, note).

²³⁴ “These lands shall be restored to the communes unless the former lords (ci-devant seigneurs) can prove by title-deeds or by exclusive and undisturbed possession for forty years that they have proprietary rights.”

²³⁵ Rapport de Fabre, p. 36. British Museum Pamphlets on the French Revolution, R.F., vol. 247.

²³⁶ All the communal lands in general,” said the law of June 10–11, 1793, “known throughout the Republic under the various names waste lands, &c. (gastes, garrigues, landes, pacages, pâtis, ajoncs, bruyères, bois communs, hermes, vacants, palus, marais, marécage, montagne), and under any other denomination whatsoever, are the property of, and by their nature belong to, the generality of the inhabitants, or members of the communes, or sections of the communes. The communes shall be authorised to demand their restitution.” Clause 4 of Article 25 of the ordinance concerning the “waters and forests of 1669, as well as all the edicts, declarations, decrees of the council and letters patent, which since that time have authorised the triage, division partial distribution or concession of woods and forests, manorial and seigniorial, to the prejudice of the communal rights and usages...and all the judgements given, and acts done as resulting therefrom, are revoked and remain in this respect as null and void.” “The forty years’ possession, declared by the decree of August 28, 1792, as sufficient to establish the ownership of an individual, shall not in any case be allowed to take the place of the legitimate title, and the legitimate title shall not be that which emanates from feudal authority.”

²³⁷ Vide the speech of P. Lozeau concerning the communal properties, printed by order of the Convention.

²³⁸ Section ii., Article I.

²³⁹ Section iii., Article I.

²⁴⁰ Ibid. Article 2.

²⁴¹ An exception should be made in favour of Pierre Bridet (Observation sur le décret du 28 août 1792. Paris, 1793). He proposed something like what is to-day described as “land nationalisation.” “The communal lands,” said Bridet, “are national property, and consequently it is unfair to allow certain communes to possess a great deal of land while others have only a little.” He proposed therefore that the State should take possession of all the communal lands, and lease them in small lots, if leaseholders were to be found; if not in large lots, thrown open to the enterprise of inhabitants from other districts in the neighbourhood. All this was to be done by the Directories of the departments, which were, as we know, highly reactionary bodies representing the interests of the rich. Of course this scheme was not adopted. Since the lands belonging to each commune would have been leased (as they already were) in the first instance, to the local peasants, rich and poor, by the communes themselves, and would only in exceptional cases be rented by inhabitants from neighbouring districts, the scheme practically amounted to this: In order to permit a few exceptional middle-class men to lease lands situated in other districts and communes than their own, the State was going to step in and take the place of the communes in the administration of their lands. This is what the scheme meant. Of course, its preamble contained lofty language about justice which might appeal to socialistically inclined town-people, ignorant of the land question, and unable to examine that language more closely. But in reality the scheme tended only to create many new injustices, even worse than the old ones, and to establish numerous sinecures — all in the name of State regulation.

²⁴² “Inasmuch as the effect of the law of June 10, 1793, has given rise to numberless actions for claims...” since the examination of these matters under dispute would take a long time, “and since it is, moreover, urgent that the unfortunate results of the too literal interpretation of the law of June 10, 1793, should be checked, serious inconveniences from them having already been felt ... all actions and proceedings resulting from this law are, for the time being to be suspended, and all the present holders of the said lands are, for the time being, to be maintained in their possession”(Dalloz, ix. 195).

²⁴³ Article I of the decree of July 17, 1793.

²⁴⁴ Article 2.

²⁴⁵ Ph. Sagnac, loc. cit. p. 147,

²⁴⁶ Article 4.

²⁴⁷ Ph. Sagnac, La législation civile de la Révolution francaise, p. 177.

²⁴⁸ Ibid. p. 80.

²⁴⁹ G. Avenel, Lundis révolutionnaires pp. 30–40; Prof. Karéiev p. 519.

²⁵⁰ In the Côte-d’Or, the estates of the clergy were bought more by the middle classes than by the peasants. But it was the reverse with the estates of the émigrés, which were bought in the same region mainly by the peasants. In the Laonnais, the peasants have bought more estates of the clergy than the middle classes did, while the estates of the emigrants were equally distributed between these two classes. In the North, considerable areas of land were bought by small associations of peasants (Sagnac, loc. cit. p. 188).

²⁵¹ Buchez and Roux, xxxvii. 12.

²⁵² Meillé p. 302, note.

²⁵³ It is often thought that it would be easy for a revolution to economise in the administration by reducing the number of officials. This was certainly not the case during the Revolution of 1789–1793, which with each year extended the functions of the State, over instruction, judges paid by the State, the administration paid out of the taxes, an immense army, and so forth.

²⁵⁴ Vide the collection in the British Museum, Bibliothèque historique de la Révolution, which contains the pamphlets on the Food Question, vols. 473, 474, 475.

²⁵⁵ Momoro has published a very interesting pamphlet on this subject, in which he explains the communist principles (Opinion de Momoro... sur la fixation de maximum du prix des grains dans l’universalité de la République française).

²⁵⁶ Vide Avenel, Lundis révolutionnaires, ch. iii., concerning the true causes of this unavoidable dearness.

²⁵⁷ As a rule, during the whole Revolution no taxes were paid in. In February 1793, the Treasury had not received anything from the tax on landed and personal property levied in 1792, and of that levied in 1791 only half had been received-about 1 So millions. The remainder was still to come.

²⁵⁸ Vide Louis Blanc, Book XIII., ch. iv., which gives an excellent Histoire du maximum; also Avenel, Lundis révolutionnaires.

²⁵⁹ Some letters from England, addressed by royalists to their agents in France, reveal the methods by which the stock-jobbers worked. Thus we read in one of these letters: “Run up the exchange to 200 livres for one pound sterling. We must discredit the assignats as much as possible, and refuse all those without the royal effigy. Run up the prices of all kinds of commodities. Give orders to your merchants to buy in all objects of prime necessity. If you can, persuade Cott ... ti to buy up the tallow and candles at any price, make the public pay as much as five francs a pound. My lord is well satisfied with the way in which B.t.z. (Batz) has acted. We hope that the assassinats (sic) will be pushed carefully. Disguised priests and women are the best for this work.” (S. Thiers, Histoire de la Révolution française, vol. iii. pp. 144–145, 1834.

²⁶⁰ “The civic hymn of the Bretons marching against Anarchy,” such was the title of the song of the Girondins, which Gaudet gives in the Mémories of Buzot, pp. 68–69. Here is one of the stanzas: From a throne propped by his crimes,/ Robespierre, all drunk with blood,/ Points out his victims with his finger/ To the roaring Anarchist. This Marseillaise of the Girondins demanded the death of Danton, of Pache, and of Marat. Its refrain was: War and death to the tyrants,/ Death to the apostles of carnage! Of course, at the same time they themselves were demanding and preparing the slaughter of the revolutionists.

²⁶¹ The review of which Charlotte Corday spoke before her judges and which was to have gathered thousands of men, was a fiction, with which she expected no doubt to frighten the sans-culottes of Paris.

²⁶² That a plot existed, and that the Girondins were cognisant of it, seems clear enough. Thus, on July 10, a letter was read at the General Council of the Commune of Paris, received at Strasbourg, and forwarded to Paris by the mayor of that city, in which were the following lines: “The ‘Mountain,’ the Commune, the Jacobin Club and the whole rascally crew are a hair’s breadth from the grave... Between now and July 15 we will dance! I hope that no other blood than that of Danton, Robespierre, Marat and Company will be shed” (I quote from Louis Blanc). On July 11 and 12, in the Girondist paper, the Chronique de Paris, there were already allusions to the death of Marat.

²⁶³ “A divine woman, who, touched by his position when he fled from cellar to cellar, took in and hid the Friend of the People. To him she devoted her fortune and sacrificed her peace.” Thus Michelet quotes the words of Albertine, Marat’s sister, about Catherine Evrard.

²⁶⁴ It is a pleasure to note that a study of Marat’s work, neglected till this day, led Jaurès to speak with respect of this quality of the popular tribune.

²⁶⁵ See ch. xxvi.

²⁶⁶ Certain indications of a social character in the Vendean rising are to be found, says Avenel, in the work of Antonin Proust (La justice révolutionnaire à Niort). It was a war of the peasants against the bourgeois — the peasants sending their delegates to the bourgeois creditors “to get the title-deeds and burn them” (Lundis révolutionnaires, P. 284).

²⁶⁷ See Michelet, who studied the Vendean war from local documents on the spot. “The sad question,” he says, “has often been discussed as to who had taken the initiative in these barbarous acts, and which of the two sides went furthest in such crimes. The wholesale drowning of the Vendeans in the Loire by Carrier is spoken of endlessly, but why should the massacres of Charette be passed over in silence? Old Vendean veterans have told their doctor, who retold it to me, that never had they taken a soldier (especially one of the army that came from Mayence) without killing him under torture, provided they had time for that; and when the men from Nantes arrived, in April 1793, at Challans, they saw nailed to a door something which resembled a great bat; this was a republican soldier who for several hours had been nailed there, suffering terrible agonies and unable to die” (Michelet’s History of the Revolution, Book XI. ch. v.).

²⁶⁸ It is important to note that in spite of all that reactionary historians may say about the Terror, we see by the archives in this case that the sans-culottes and a few, young citizens were the only ones who answered this call on their patriotism, and that “not one silk-stocking, whether man or woman,” turned up on the quay of the canal. After which, the commissioner limited himself to imposing on the rich “a patriotic gift” for the benefit of the poor.

²⁶⁹ Letter to Baron de Stedinck, written on April 26, from St. Petersberg.

²⁷⁰ G. Avenel, Lundis réovolutionnaires, p. 245. Avenel even attributes the fall of Danton to the failure of this diplomacy, which had always been opposed by Robespierre and Barère.

²⁷¹ When, on March 7, 1793, the Defence Committee, alarmed at the desperate situation of France in face of the invasion, called the ministers and the Commune of Paris to consult together, Marat, in summing up what was already being done, told them “that in such a crisis, the sovereignty of the people was not indivisible: that each commune was sovereign in its own territory, and that the people had the right to take such steps as were necessary for their welfare” (Mémoires de Thibaudeau; Michelet, Book X. ch. i.).

²⁷² Each Primary Assembly had to nominate seven ministers, and the administration of the department would form with these names a list of thirteen candidates for each Ministry. Then, the Primary Assemblies, convoked for a second time, would elect the ministers from these lists.

²⁷³ An excellent summary of the two Constitutions, the Girondin and the Montagnard, and of all concerning them, will be found in Aulard’s Histoire Politique, 2nd part, ch. iv. I follow this summary for the facts, but the responsibility for the appreciation is mine. Thus I disagree, as may be seen, with M. Aulard in his appreciation of the Girondin project regarding the “cantonal municipalities.” Far from tending to “seriously organise the commune,” this project tended, in my opinion, to destroy it, so as to replace it by a body bureaucratic rather than popular.

²⁷⁴ Histoire Politique, p. 291.

²⁷⁵ It is interesting to notice that in Russia also, the enemies of the commune are at the present day partisans of the canton (Vsessoslovnaya volost), and that they oppose it to the village communes, whose lands they covet.

²⁷⁶ The municipal function was “the last term of the Revolution,” as Mignet has so well said (Histoire de la Révolution française, 19th edition, vol. ii. p. 31). “Opposed in its aims to the Committee of Public Welfare, it desired, in lieu of the ordinary dictatorship, the most extreme local democracy, and in the place of creeds the consecration of the grossest disbelief. Anarchy in politics and atheism in religious affairs, such were the distinctive features of this party and the means by which they counted on establishing its power.” It must, however, be remarked that only a part of the “anarchists” followed Hébert in his anti-religious campaign, while many left him on realising the force of religious spirit in the villages.

²⁷⁷ These letters may be found in the Recueil des Actes du Comité de Salut Public, published by T. Aulard. Paris, 1889 and following years; so in Legros, La Révolution telle qu’elle est: Correspondance du Comité de Salut Public avec ses généraux, 2 vols., Paris, 1837.

²⁷⁸ The letters published in the collection of Aulard, or in that of Legros, are palpitating with interest in every way; but I have sought in vain for traces of activity of the commissioners in this direction. Only Jeanbon Saint-André, Collot d’Herbois, Fouché, and Dubois Crancé sometimes touch on the great questions which so interested the peasants and the proletarians in the towns. It may be that there are other letters of commissioners which I do not know; but what seems to me certain is that the greater part of the Commissioners took but little interest in these matters.

²⁷⁹ Une Mission en Vendée.

²⁸⁰ Aulard, Recueil des Actes du Comité de Salut Public, vol. v. p. 505.

²⁸¹ This letter is signed by the two commissioners, Jeanbon and Lacoste, who had been sent to this department; but it is in the writing of the former.

²⁸² Actes du Comité de Salut Public, published by Aulard, vol. iii. pp. 533–534.

²⁸³ Already Cabet, in his Appendix to Voyage en Icarie, edition of 1842, had pointed out, with quotations in support, this characteristic of the eighteenth-century thinkers; of recent works see Andre Lichtenberger, Le Socialisme et la Révolution française, Paris, 1899.

²⁸⁴ “There has never been and there win never be any but two really distinct classes of citizens, the property-owners and those who have no property — of whom the former have everything and the latter nothing,” so it was said in the cahier des pauvres. “Of what use will a wise constitution be to a nation reduced by hunger to the state of skeletons?” queried the author of the Quatre cris d’un patriote. (Chassin, Le Génie de la Révolution, Paris, 1863, vol. i. pp. 287, 289.)

²⁸⁵ We find in the Notes historiques sur la Convention nationale, le Directoire, l’Empire et l’exil des votants, by M.A. Baudot, edited by Mme. Edgar Quinet (Paris, 1893), a very interesting note where it is said that Ingrand’s, opinion that the system “of common property” (communism), developed by Buonarroti, “was brought forward some time before the events of June 20; and that these events owed their origin to this spirit of association” (pp. 10–11). Pétion is said to have warned a great number of deputies about it. “It seems,” continues Baudot, “that the Girondins put so much acrimony and bitterness into their policy from fear of seeing the doctrine of the communists predominate.” Later on certain members of the Convention took up these ideas, as is known, and joined the conspiracy of Babeuf.

²⁸⁶ The better to fight “the division of lands proposed by anarchists or the Coblentzians” (Robespierre afterwards took up this insinuation of Brissot’s against the communists and made it his own), Brissot declared, in December 1792, that the equality of the rights of citizens would be a fiction if the laws did not abolish and prevent the too great real inequalities among the citizens. But such institutions, favourable to “equality,” added Brissot, “must be introduced without commotion, without violence, without showing disrespect to the first of all social rights, the right of property.”

²⁸⁷ Speaking of property, he represented it in this interesting guise. “Property,” said he, “is the pivot of civil associations. It is well known that, especially in a great empire, the balance of fortunes cannot be quite exact and immovable, and that the impulse of an immense commerce, aided by a vast industry and by riches produced by agriculture necessarily keep it continually oscillating; but the balance should never fall on either side too decidedly.” (Les éléments de républicanisme, Paris, 1793, p. 57. Pamphlets of the British Museum, vol. F. 1097.)

²⁸⁸ Chap. xliii.

²⁸⁹ It is probable that besides the advocating of communism in the sections and Popular Societies, there were also, from August 10, 1792, attempts to constitute secret communist societies, which were extended afterwards, in 1795, by Buonarroti and Babeuf, and which, after the revolution of July 1830, gave birth to the secret societies of the Blanquists.

²⁹⁰ Jaurès, La Convention, p. 1069 (notes of Bernard Lazare).

²⁹¹ He limited himself to asking in this declaration that the right of possession of land be limited; that the enormous inequality of fortunes be abolished “by fair means,” so that the poor could protect themselves from oppression by the rich, and that “the possessions amassed at the cost of the public, by theft, stock-jobbing, monopoly, &c., should become national property, the instant society obtained conclusive and reliable proofs of peculation.” (Pamphlets in the British Museum, F. 499.) In another pamphlet, Væux formés par des français libres, &c., he also asked for severe laws against monopolists (same collection F. 65.)

²⁹² In his Discours sur les moyens de sauver la France et la liberté, delivered at the time of the elections for the Convention (this pamphlet may be found at the Bibliothèque Nationale), Jacques Roux maintained that a prolonged dictatorship means the death of liberty, and he wished (pp. 42 and 43) that it should be made obligatory for the great landowners to be allowed to sell their harvest only in those markets indicated to them in their respective districts; “establish,” he said, “in all the cities and large market towns public stores where the price of goods will be established by public auction (au concours).” Michelet, who had already mentioned this Discours (Book XV. ch. vi.), added that this doctrine of Roux was very popular in the Gravilliers, Arcis, and other sections of the Centre de Paris.

²⁹³ Thermidor et Directoire, 1794–1799 (Histoire socialiste, vol. v. pp. 14 and following).

²⁹⁴ In his Catéchisme, Boissel already expounded the ideas which became current among socialists towards 1848. Thus, to the question “Which are the principal institutions of this mercenary, homicidal, anti-social State?” he answers, “Property, marriage, and religions are what men have invented, established, and consecrated to legitimate their impostures.” In specifying the things over which men have extended their property rights, he said: “It is those things of which they have thought it necessary to become possessed, or to make others believe that they were possessed, such as lands, women, even men, the sea, the rivers, and mountains, the sky, the nether regions, the gods themselves, out of whom they have always made and still make capital.” He was not tender either to the laws, of which he said: “They are the obligations which the strong, the more shrewd, the more cunning have imposed on the weaker, in order to maintain their disastrous institutions, or even to prevent the bad effects of these institutions, so far as it was possible.” His definitions of authority and justice might be accepted by modern anarchists. See Le Catéchisme du genre humain pour l’établissement essentiel et indispensable du véritable ordre moral et de l’éduacation sociale des hommes. (Paris 1789), p. 132. Pamphlets of the British Museum, F. 513 (3).)

²⁹⁵ Thus, for instance, the people, armed with a democratic Constitution would veto all the laws, until the maintenance of all citizens should be assured by law!

²⁹⁶ As this work of Dolivier is not in the British Museum I quote from Jaurès. His other work, Le væu national, ou système politique propre à organiser la nation dans toutes ses parties (Paris, 1790), is only interesting because of the idea of organising the nation from the bottom upwards. — Pamphlets of the British Museum, F. 514 (4).

²⁹⁷ Plaintes et représentations d’un citoyen décrété passif, aux citoyens décrétés actifs, by M. L’Ange (Lyons), 1790, p. 15 (Bibliothèque Nationale of Paris). For the more or less socialistic ideas of the Cercle Social founded by the Abbé Fauchet, and whose organ was La Bouche de fer sec, vide A. Lichtenberger, Le Socialisme et la Révolution française, ch. iii. p. 69.

²⁹⁸ About 120 acres.

²⁹⁹ “Report and project of a decree on subsistences,” presented by M. Fabre, deputy of the department of the Hérault.

³⁰⁰ Chap. iii.

³⁰¹ See chap. xlviii.

³⁰² Most historians have described this measure as a favourable one to the peasants. In reality, it meant depriving the poorest of the sole inheritance which was left them. This is why the measure met with so much opposition when it came to its application.

³⁰³ “It is the rich,” said Jacques Roux, “who have reaped for the last four years the advantages of the Revolutions; it is the merchant aristocracy, more terrible than the noble aristocracy, which oppresses us, and we do not see any limit to their extortions, for the price of goods is growing to an alarming extent. It is time that the death struggle between the selfish and the hard-working classes should come an end... Are the possessions of knaves to be held more sacred than human life? The necessities of life must be at the disposition of administrative bodies, just as the armed forces are at their disposition.” Roux reproached the Convention with not having confiscated the fortunes acquired since the Revolution by the bankers and monopolists, and he said that the Convention having decreed “a forced loan of a thousand million livres to be levied upon the rich, the capitalist and the merchant will the next day raise this sum from the sans-culottes, thanks to the monopolies and the powers of extortion they will retain if the monopolies of commerce and forestalling are not destroyed.” He very clearly saw the danger of such conditions for the Revolution, when he said: “The stock-jobbers get possession of the factories, of the seaports, of every branch of commerce, of all produce of the land, and they cause the friends of justice to die of hunger, thirst and exposure, or else force them into the arms of despotism.” (I quote from the text of Roux’ speech, found by Bernard Lazare, and communicated to Jaurès.)

³⁰⁴ Jaurès, Histoire socialiste, La Convention, pp. 1698 and 1699.

³⁰⁵ One arpent — a measure the size of which varied in different parts of France from one acre to one acre and a quarter.

³⁰⁶ Histoire politique, chap. viii. ii.

³⁰⁷ “This is why,” Aulard wrote, “one looks vainly for the appearance of socialist theories at this moment of severe repression. But the sum total of partial and empiric measures which are taken, of laws which are passed under the pressure of the moment, and of provisory institutions introduced by the revolutionary government, is bringing about a state of things which prepares men’s minds, even though the voice of the socialists is not heard, for a social revolution, and begins a partial accomplishment of it.”

³⁰⁸ Observations sur Maximilien Robespierre, in La Fraternité, journal mensuel exposant la doctrine de la communauté, No. 17, September 1842.

³⁰⁹ The Committee of Public Welfare which at first had been Dantonist, became after May 31 more and more Robespierrist. Saint-Just and Couthon had already become members on May 30; and Jeanbon Saint-André joined on June 12; Robespierre entered it on July 27. Carnot and Prieur (of the Côte-d’Or) were admitted on August 14, and Collot d’Herbois and Billaud-Varenne on September 6, after the rising of the 4th and 5th of that month. Three parties could be distinguished in this committee: the terrorists, Collot d’Herbois and Billaud-Varenne; the workers, Carnot for the war, Prieur for military engineering and armament, and Lindet for the provisioning of the army; and “the men of action,” Robespierre, Saint-just and Couthon. The Committee of Public Safety, which represented the State police, consisted chiefly of functionaries of the old régime. One is even tempted to ask oneself whether many of these men had not retained their former sympathies. The Public Prosecutor of the revolutionary tribunal, Fouquier-Tinville, was entirely subservient to the Committee of Public Safety, whose orders he came to receive every evening.

³¹⁰ A nickname given to extravagantly dressed dandies of the wealthier classes.

³¹¹ It is possible, even probable, that royalists, too (like Lepître), worked in the sections to foment this movement. It was an old ruse of the reactionists. But to say that this movement was the work of reactionaries was as absurd and as jesuitical as to say, for instance, that the movements of 1789 were the work of the Duke of Orléans.

³¹² Procès-verbaux du Comité d’instruction publique de l’Assemblée législative and Procès-verbaux du Comité d’instruction publique de la Convention nationale, published, with notes and prefaces, by James Guillaume (Paris, 1889–1907), 7 vols.

³¹³ The Republican year was divided into twelve months, each of thirty days, the names for which were found by Fabre d’Eglantine: Vendémiaire, Brumaire and Frimaire for the autumn, from September 22 till December 20; Nivôse, Pluviôse and Ventôse for the winter, from Decenber 21 till March 20; Germinal, Floréal and Prairial for the spring, from March 21 till June 18; and Messidor, Thermidor and Fructidor for the summer, from June 19 till September 16. Five extra days, called the sans-culottides, September 17, 18, 19, 20 and 21, completed the year. Each month was divided into three decades, and the days were called primidi, duodi, tridi, &c., the day of rest being the tenth day, the decadi.

³¹⁴ The idea of establishing the new calendar on an astronomical conception was certainly excellent (the idea of placing the five surplus days all at the end of the year was not so good) and the names of the months were very well chosen; but besides all the objections which were bound to be made against this calendar, because it glorified the Revolution, it is very probable also that the idea of replacing the week of seven days (the quarter of a lunar month) by one of ten days, too long for our customs, was and will be an obstacle to its general acceptance.

³¹⁵ In this account I follow closely the excellent monograph of Professor Aulard, Le Culte de la Raison et le Culte de l’Etre suprême, 2nd edition (Paris, 1904). An abridgment of this work is to be found also in his Historie politique, 2nd edition, p. 469 and following.

³¹⁶ He also issued an order by the force of which “any minister of any cult, or priest pensioned by the nation, is bound to marry, or to adopt a child, or to keep an incapable old person, on pain of being divested of his offices and pensions” (Aulard, Culte de la Raison, p. 27).

³¹⁷ It will be remembered that the Constituent Assembly had already made similar decisions.

³¹⁸ Extraits du registre de la Société populaire de Bourges. Séance du quintidi 25 brumaire de l’an deuxième de la République française, une et indivisible (November 15, 1793). Pamphlets of the British Museum, F. 16 (7).

³¹⁹ Book XIV., chap. iii.

³²⁰ See further.

³²¹ Aulard, Hissoire politique, p. 475.

³²² Several letters of commissioners mention this. Most of them, as those of Dartygoëyte, Lefiot, Pflieger and Garnier, are, however, posterior to the decree. (Actes du Comité de Salut Public, published by Aulard, vol. ix., pp. 385, 759, 780.)

³²³ As several commissioners of the Convention had taken very stringent measures against the Catholic religion, the Convention added, however, a paragraph to this decree to say that it did not intend to censure what had been done up to that day by its representatives.

³²⁴ Jacobins, vol. v., p. 623.

³²⁵ See, for instance, in Ernest Mellié’s work, the statutes of the popular society organised by the Poissonnière section.

³²⁶ Jacobins, vol. v., pp. 624, 625.

³²⁷ Jacobins, sitting of December 26, 1793, vol. v., p. 578. Momoro, a member of the Cordeliers’ Club, having hazarded the remark that the members of the Cordeliers’ Club had often questioned their right to prevent the formation of popular societies, since “the right to assemble in popular societies is sacred,” Robespierre answered curtly: “Everything demanded by the public welfare is certainly right.”

³²⁸ Decrees of the 8th Nivôse (December 28, 1793), and of the 23rd Floréal (May 12, 1794).

³²⁹ Chap. xxiv.

³³⁰ See the rights given by the section of the Panthéon to its committee, quoted by Ernest Mellié, loc. cit., p. 185.

³³¹ See the work of Ernest Mellié, p. 189 et seq. for very interesting details on the “Committee of Public Welfare of the Department of Paris” — an organ of the secret police — and other similar information.

³³² Séances du club des Jacobins, edited by Professor Aulard; sitting of December 12, 1793, vol. v., p. 557.

³³³ Michelet understood this very well, when he wrote a few lines, full of sadness (Book XIV., chap. i.), in which he recalled the words of Duport, “Plough deeply,” and said that the Revolution was bound to fail because both the Girondins and the Jacobins were political revotionists who marked only “two different degrees on the same line.” The most advanced of them, Saint-Just, he added, never ventured to attack religion or education or to go to the root of social questions; one can hardly make out what were his views on property. “The Revolution,” said Michelet, “thus failed to take the character of a religious or a social revolution, which would have consolidated it by giving it support, vigour and depth.”

³³⁴ Tridon has given some such extracts in his sketch Les Hébertistes (Œuvres diverses de G. Tridon, Paris, 1891, pp. 86–90).

³³⁵ Vide chap, xxxix.

³³⁶ The affair was a complicated one. The royalists had in their service a very clever man, the Baron de Batz, who by his courage and skill in escaping from pursuit had acquired an almost legendary reputation. This Baron de Batz, after having worked a long time for the escape of Marie-Antoinette, undertook to incite certain members of the Convention to make large fortunes by going into stock-jobbing — money having to be provided for these operations by the Abbé Espagnac. For this purpose Baron de Batz assembled in his house on a certain day Julien (of Toulouse), Delaunay and Bazire (a Dantonist). The banker Benoit, the poet Laharpe, the Comtesse de Beaufort (Julien’s mistress), and Chabot (the unfrocked priest who at one time had been a favourite of the people, but who had since married an Austrian lady, a sister of the banker Frey) were also of the party. Besides, an attempt was made by the same man to win over Fabre, and Delaunay was actually won over in favour of the Indian Company. This company was attacked in the Convention, which ordered the liquidation of the company to be proceeded with at once by special commissioners. The wording of this decree had to be written by Delaunay, who wrote indeed a draft of the decree, and this draft was signed by Fabre, who made a few alterations in it in pencil. But other alterations to the advantage of the company were subsequently made, in ink, by Delaunay, on the same draft, and this draft, which was never submitted to the Convention, was made to pass for the decree itself.

³³⁷ Ernest Nys, Idées modernes: Droit International et Franc-maçonnerie. Bruxelles, 1908.

³³⁸ E. Nys, loc cit. pp. 82, 83.

³³⁹ It is known that the young Julien had written to him quite frankly about the excesses of certain commissioners, and especially of those of Carrier (vide Une mission en Vendée).

³⁴⁰ The law of the 14th Frimaire (December 4), which had established the “Revolutionary Government” had replaced the elected procureurs of the communes by agents nationaux, nominated by the Committee of Public Welfare. Chaumette, having been confirmed in his functions by the committee, became thus a “national agent.” Then, on the day when the Hébertists were arrested, i.e., on the 23rd Ventôse (March 13), the Committee of Public Welfare obtained from the Convention a new law which allowed them to replace provisionally those functionaries, elected by the Communes, of whom they wanted to get rid. In virtue of this law the committee, having removed Pache, the mayor of Paris, nominated Fleuriot-Lescaut in his place.

³⁴¹ With Pache and Chaumette disappeared the two men who in the minds of the people best symbolised the popular revolution. When the delegates who had been sent from the departments came to Paris to signify the acceptance of the Constitution, they were surprised to find Paris quite democratic, says Avenel (Anacharsis Cloots, vol. ii. pp. 168–169). The mayor, “Papa Pache,” came from the country with a loaf of bread in his pocket; Chaumette, the procureur of the Commune, “lives in one room with his wife, who mends old clothes. ‘Come in,’ they reply to whoever knocks at their door — just as it was at Marat’s.” The “Père Duchesne,” the “orator of mankind” — all these men were equally accessible. These were the men who were now taken from the people...

³⁴² The Notes historiques sur la Convention nationale, by Marc Antoine Baudot (Paris, 1893), may be of little value, but Saint-Just’s proposal to appoint Robespierre dictator to save the Republic, which Baudot mentions (p. 13), is by no means improbable. Buonarotti speaks of it as of a well-known fact.

³⁴³ It was Robespierre who prepared the rough draft of the accusation against this group, but he made Saint-Just his mouthpiece. Vide Papiers inédits trouvés chez Robespierre, Saint-Just, Payan, &c., supprimés ou omis par Courtois, précédé du rapport de ce dernier a la Convention nationale, vol. i., p. 21 et seq. Paris, 1828.

³⁴⁴ We see in Aulard’s Le Culte de la Ralson et le Culte de l’Etre suprême how, on the contrary, the movement against Christianity was linked with patriotism.

³⁴⁵ Papiers inédits, vol. ii., p. 14.

³⁴⁶ As James Guillaume has shown, the majority of these Commissions had already been formed successively since October 1793. Procèsverbaux du comité d’instruction publique de la Convention, vol. iv., Introduction, pp. 11, 12.

³⁴⁷ Decrees of the 26th and 27th Germinal.

³⁴⁸ I here follow the account given by Louis Blanc (Book XII., chap. xiii.), whom no one can accuse of being hostile to the Robespierre group.

³⁴⁹ “The enemies of the Revolution,” said this instruction, “are those who by any means whatever and under no matter what pretext have tried to hamper the progress of the Revolution and prevent the establishment of the Republic. The due penalty for this crime is death; the proofs requisite for condemnation are all information, of no matter what kind, which may convince a reasonable man and a friend of liberty. The guide for passing sentences lies in the conscience of the judge, enlightened by love of justice and of his country, their aim being the public welfare and the destruction of these enemies of the fatherland.”

³⁵⁰ “They wish to govern revolutions by lawyers’ subtleties; conspiracies against the Republic were being treated as if they were actions between private individuals. Tyranny slays and liberty pleads! And the Code made by the conspirators is the law by which they are judged! ...” “The only delay in punishing the enemies of the fatherland should be until such time as they are found out: it is not so much a question of punishing as of destroying them.”

³⁵¹ A search made in the prisons led to the seizure of sums of money amounting to 864,000 livres, exclusive of jewels, which brought the total value up to something like 1,200,000 livres possessed by the suspects in prison.

³⁵² The sections, M. Ernest Mellié says, took no initiative, but tamely followed their committees, the members of which were dependent on the Committees of Public Welfare and General Safety. They were left no part in politics... They had even been forbidden to call themselves primary assemblies; on the 20th Floréal, Year II. (May 9, 1794), Payan, the national agent of the Commune, who had taken the place of Chaumette, warned them by letter that, under a revolutionary government, there were no primary assemblies... This was to remind them that their abdication was complete (pp. 151, 152). After recounting the successive purifications to which the sections had submitted to make themselves acceptable to the Jacobins (p. 153), M. Mellié concludes with these words: “Michelet was right, therefore, in saying that by this time the assemblies of the sections were dead and that all power had passed over to the revolutionary committees, which, being themselves nominated by the Government, had no longer any vitality either” (pp. 154, 155). On the 9th Thermidor (and of this M. Mellié has found the proofs in the Archives), in nearly all the sections the revolutionary committees were assembled to await the orders of the Government (p. 169). It is not surprising, therefore, that the sections did not take action against the Thermidoreans.

³⁵³ The Breton royalists.