The story of the French Revolution

THE STORY OF

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

BY

E. BELFORT BAX

AUTHOR OF "THE RELIGION OF SOCIALISM," "THE ETHICS OF SOCIALISM,"
"JEAN PAUL MARAT," ETC.

SECOND EDITION.

LONDON
SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO.

PATERNOSTER SQUARE
1892

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

THE acceptance by the Public of the First Edition of
this Book seems to show that the anticipated want for a
condensed sketch of the history of the French Revolu-
tion— more especially from a point of view from which
it has not hitherto been treated, except, perhaps, in
isolated monographs — was a real one. With a view of
making this Second Edition still more worthy, it has
been revised throughout ; certain portions having been
completely recast, and a few slight errors, which had
crept into the book, corrected.

E. B. B.

PREFACE.

THE following sketch of the course of the French Revolution
was originally published during 1889 in serial form in "Jus-
tice," the weekly organ of the Social Democratic Federation.
It has been revised, corrected, and, in some parts, added to,
for the present re-issue. It need scarcely be said that it in no
way pretends to be a complete history of the great political,
social, and intellectual movement it describes. The present
volume is designed primarily as a guide to those who, not hav-
ing the time to study larger works on the subject, yet wish
during these centennial years to have in a small compass a con-
nected description of the main events of the French Revolution,
more especially from the point of view of modern Socialism.
It is undeniable that there are many Englishmen who would
indignantly repudiate any aspersions on their education for
whom the French Revolution means little more than the de-
struction of one institution called the Bastille, the erection of
another institution called the Guillotine, and the establishment
of the Napoleonic Empire on the ruins of both. They have no
idea of the complex forces, economical, speculative, and political,
which manifested themselves in the succession of crises (scarcely,
indeed, of the existence of the crises themselves) which took
place between the assembling of the States-General in 1789,
and the suppression of the Baboeuf conspiracy in 1796.

For such as these, and for many others to whom the above
remarks will not altogether apply, a condensed statement of
the facts of the French Revolution cannot but be desirable,

PREFACE.

and although there exist summaries galore, the writer ventures
to think that the present little work differs from them in two
respects : firstly, in the point of view from which the Revolution
is viewed, and secondly, in the endeavour to throw the principal
events into as strong relief as possible by the omission of all
detail which is unessential to the understanding of them.
Brevity has also been a distinct aim, and for this, as for the
former reason, much that is in itself interesting has been left
out. The foregoing especially applies to biographical details
respecting the chief actors. These have been uniformly omitted
throughout, as tending to expand the sketch indefinitely, and
to draw off attention from its main purpose. The circumstances
of the time and the events made the personalities what they
were, and there is not one of them who, in so far as public
life is concerned, can be regarded otherwise than as the em-
bodiment of some more or less wide-spread contemporary
tendency. The actors, therefore, merely cross the stage in
connection with the principal events in which they played a
rdle. Yet, though they may have suddenly become especially
prominent, it must be understood that, in almost all cases,
they were already familiar to the population of Paris, and, in
many cases, of the whole of France, as club-orators, parlia-
mentary politicians, or as journalists. It is not too much to
say that in the French Revolution journalism first became a
power in the world's history.

Those who seek further details both of the Revolution itself
and of the life of its leading figures may be referred to the
larger histories. The admirable history of Mr. Morse Stephen
now in progress represents by far the best work that has as yet
been done in English (both as regards exhaustiveness and im-
partiality) in connection with the subject. Mr. Stephen's
excellent articles in the ninth edition of the "Encyclopedia
Britaunica" may also be consulted with profit. The French

PREFACE. •

literature of the subject would, of course, fill libraries. Works
such as Bougeart's "Marat," Avenel's " Anacharsis Clootz," are
monuments of industry in research. In spite of the efforts of
French scholars, however, there is much room left for original
investigation. The British Museum alone contains, I believe,
upwards of 100,000 newspapers, pamphlets, manifestoes, and
other documents, many of them as yet unarranged and un-
catalogued. The amount of material in Paris, and in France
generally, which has not yet been worked is probably incalcul-
able.

Offence has been given in some quarters at the view taken
of Robespierre in the following pages. The writer can only
say that he cannot regard the mere negative qualification that
Robespierre has been in general attacked by the Reaction in
conjunction with other leaders as of itself entitling him to the
esteem of modern Democrats or Socialists in the teeth of the
undeniable facts of the case. The treacherous surrender of the
Dantonists, the judicial murder of the Hebertists, the law of
Prairial, are these things not written in history ^ The fact is,
Robespierre was a petit bourgeois, a Philistine to the backbone,
who desired a Republic of petit bourgeois virtues, with himself
at the head, and was prepared to wade through a sea of blood
for the accomplishment of his end. Napoleon had a truer sense
of the case than other Reactionists, when, as is reported, he
was inclined to hail Robespierre as an unsuccessful predecessor
in the work of "restoring order" and "saving society" — in
the interest, of course, of the middle-classes. With these few
words of preface the volume is left to the consideration of the
reader, in the hope that it may afford him at least some light
on the general bearings of the history of the French Revolu-
tion.

CONTENTS.

I. THE LITERARY PROLOGUE

II. THE ECONOMIC PRELUDE IN THE PROVINCES -

III. THE OPENING IN PARIS

IV. THE BASTILLE

V. THE CONSTITUTION MONGERS

VI. THE NEW CONSTITUTION

VII. A " CONSTITUTION " ON ITS BEAM ENDS
VIII. THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY -

IX. THE TENTH OF AUGUST

X. THE FIRST PARIS COMMUNE AND THE SEPTEMBER

MASSACRES

XI. THE NATIONAL CONVENTION
XII. THE TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF THE KING
XIII. THE DEATH STRUGGLE BETWEEN MOUNTAIN AND

GIRONDE

XIV. CONCERNING MATTERS ECONOMIC -
XV. THE FALL OF THE GIRONDE - -

XVI. THE SANSCULOTTE IN POWER

XVII. THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE COMMUNE

XVIII. THE TERROR

XIX. THE FALL OF THE HEBERTISTS

XX. THE RULE OF ROBESPIERRE

XXI. THERMIDOR

XXIL THE REACTION BEGINS

XXIII. THE REACTION PROGRESSES

XXIV. THE BABCEUF CONSPIRACY AND THE END UF THE

FRENCH REVOLUTION -
XXV. THE NATIONAL PROPERTY
XXVI. CONCLUSION

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114

THE STORY OF THE FRENCH
REVOLUTION.

CHAPTER I.

THE LITERARY PROLOGUE.

THE cardinal idea of the French Revolution was the
political emancipation of the middle-class. The feudal
hierarchy of the Middle Ages consisted in France, as in
other countries, of three main social divisions, or estates,
as they were termed, (1) The superior territorial clergy,
(2) the nobles, and (3) the smaller landholders, the free
tenants, and the citizens of the independent townships.
The mere serf or villein (holding by servile tenure), or
common labourer, was like the slave of antiquity, un-
classified. The possession or (non-servile) tenure of land
was the condition of freedom. This third estate was the
germ of our middle-class. The great problem of the
French Revolution, then, was to obtain the independence ,
and domination of the third estate. It is expressed in
the words of its representative, the Abba Sieyes : " What
are we of the third estate ? Nothing. What wTould we
be ? Everything." But, although the political suprem-
acy of the middle-class was the central idea, and the one
which it realised (thereby effectually refuting a certain
order of politicians that declares violent revolutions to be
necessarily abortive), there were issues raised — and not
merely raised, but carried for the time being — which

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

went far beyond this. But the flood-tide of the Revolu-
tion did not represent the permanent gain of progress.
The waters receded from the ground touched at the
height of the crisis, leaving the enfranchisement of the
bourgeoisie as the one achievement permanently effected.

Foremost among the precursors of this mighty change
was the Genevese thinker, Jean Jacques Rousseau
(1712 — 1778). This remarkable personality may be
termed the Messiah of the Revolutionary Crisis. His
writings were quoted and read as a new gospel by well-
nigh all the prominent leaders of the time. Rousseau's
doctrines were contained in an early essay on civilisation,
in his " Emile, a Treatise on Education," and in the " Con-
trat Social;' his chief work.

In his first essay, Rousseau maintained the superiority
of the savage over the civilised state, and the whole of
his subsequent teaching centred in deprecation of the
hollowness and artificiality of society, and in an inculca-
tion of the imperative need of a return, as far as might
be, to a state of nature in all our relations. This he
especially applies to education in his " Emile," in which
he sketches the training of a hypothetical child.

The " Social Contract," his greatest work, contains a
discussion of the first principles of social and political
order. It is to this work the magic formulas which
served as watchwords during the Revolution, formulas
such as " Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity," " Divine
Right of Insurrection," the term " Citizen," employed as
a style of address, and many other things are traceable.
The title of the work was suggested by Locke's (or rather
Hobbes') supposition of a primitive contract having been
entered into between governor and governed, which was
set up in opposition to that of the " divine right " of
kings. This idea Rousseau accepts in basis, but denies
the unconditional nature of the contract affirmed by the
originators of the theory. No original distinction existed
between rulers and ruled. Any contract of the kind

THE LITERARY PROLOGUE.

that obtained was merely a political convenience strictly
subject to conditions. Governors were merely the dele-
gates or mandatories of the people. The form of gov-
ernment was to Rousseau more or less a minor matter.
Although a democracy had the most advantages, yet it
was quite possible for the mandates of the people to be
adequately carried out by a special body of men (an
aristocracy), or even by one man (a king). But every
form of government was bound to recognise the will of
the people as sovereign in all things.

The classicism of the French Revolution is also largely
represented in Rousseau. The Roman constitution is
invariably the source of his illustrations and the model
to be copied or amended. As regards toleration, Rousseau
would allow the civil power the right of suppressing
views which were deemed contrary to good citizenship.
Like the Romans, he would tolerate all religions equally
that did not menace the State. There is probably no
single book that has produced such stupendous results
within a few years, if at all, as Rousseau's " Social Con-
tract." It is the text-book of the French Revolution.
Every ordinance, every law, every draft of constitution
bears the mark of its influence. Although more logical
in the working-out of the theory than its founders, it is
needless to say that Rousseau's own views are singularly
barren and unhistorical, as every theory must be that
deals only with the political side of things. One may
admire his loathing at the artificiality of the world
around him, at the " organised hypocrisy " called religion
and morality ; but in his clay it was impossible to uncover
its historical roots, and hence, to modern ears, his dia-
tribes lose much of their effect.

The influence of the second of the important precursors
of the French Revolution, Francois-Marie Arouet de Vol-
taire (1694-1778), was much more indirect than that of
Rousseau. Voltaire's influence was almost purely nega-
tive. By his wit he scorched up all the reverence

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

remaining in the minds of men for the forms of the old,
outworn Feudal-Catholic organisation. Though there
was a great amount of adroit self-seeking in Voltaire's
character, it is as impossible to deny that there was also
much that was genuine and truly noble in his indigna-
tion at cruelty and his detestation of Christian hypocrisy,
as that it produced a far-reaching effect on the events
that followed. Voltaire, although personally a French-
man of Frenchmen, breathes the spirit of a conscious
cosmopolitanism and contempt for nationality in his
writings, which for the first time in history became a
popular creed during the Revolution, and was expressed
in the famous appeal of 1793.

But in this, as in other respects, Voltaire was not
alone. He partly created and partly reflected the pre-
valent tone of the French salon culture of the eighteenth
century. This, if we cared to do so, we might trace
back in its main features to the revival of learning — to
the courts of the Medicis. And here it may be well to
remind our readers, in passing, of the truth that indi-
vidual genius merely means the special faculty of ex-
pressing that so-called " spirit of the age " to which that
of preceding ages has led up ; and that Voltaire and Rous-
seau merely achieved the results they did by reason of
their capacity for reproducing in words the shapeless
thoughts of millions. To this, in the case of Voltaire, must
be added a special width of intellectual sympathy which
took in an unusually large mimb'jr of different subjects.

Besides Rousseau and Voltaire, we must not omit to
mention the brilliant group of contemporary workers
and thinkers, headed by Diderot and D'Alembert, who
built up that monument of laborious industry, the great
French Encyclopaedia. Immense difficulties attended
the publication of this important work, notwithstanding
that care was taken to exclude any expressions of overt
contempt or hostility towards current prejudices. Again,
we must not forget the Materialist-Atheists, central

THE LITERARY PROLOGUE.

among whom was Baron d'Holbach, the anonymous
author of the celebrated " System of Nature," a book
which, though crude according to modern notions, did
good work in its day — work which a treatise of more
intrinsic philosophical value probably would not have
achieved. It is noteworthy that most of the other pro-
minent names among the pre-revolutionary writers,
including Rousseau and Voltaire, are those of ardent
deists. The name of Montesquieu (1689-1755), whose
" Esprit des Lois " was a text-book of juridical philosophy
for the Revolution, must also not be omitted from the list
of its literary precursors.

All these men contributed their share in preparing
mental foundation for the great upheaval which followed.
It is strange, however, that not one of them lived to see
the practical issue of his labours. Rousseau, the most'C
directly powerful of them, died eleven years before the
taking of the Bastille, and Voltaire the same year.
Diderot lived till 1784 ; D'Alembert died the previous
year ; Mirabeau, alone of all who had prepared the great
crisis, lived to see its beginning. But even he succumbed
in 1791, a year and a half before the actual fall of the
monarchy. Few of these men saw more than a free-
thinking aristocracy and literary class. Of the move-
ment below they recked little, scarcely perhaps that there
was such a movement. For although from the beginning
of the century, notably throughout the reign of Louis
XV., there was ever and anon the consciousness of a^~
change as imminent, and although twice, in 1734 and in
1771, the old system seemed on the point of breaking
down in revolution, yet still it survived, and for aught
men could tell, was destined to continue to survive many
more such shocks. The throne, therefore, doubtless to
many, seemed as secure, religion as popular, as ever, the
same throne and the same religion which in a few years
were destined to be involved in so mighty an overthrow.

CHAPTER II.

THE ECONOMIC PRELUDE IN THE PROVINCES.

years of bad harvests, aggravated by an effete
industrial, fiscal, and poetical system, culminated with
the summer of 1788. A great drought was succeeded by
a violent hailstorm, which dealt destruction all round.
The harvest was worse than ever before. All kinds of
agricultural crops failed miserably all over France, not
alone wheat and grain generally, but vines, chestnuts,
olives, in short, all the natural products of consumption
and exportation. Even what was gathered in was so
spoiled as to be almost unfit for use. From every pro-
- ^vince of France came the monotonous tale of ruin,
famine, starvation. Even the comparatively well-to-do
peasant farmer could obtain nothing but barley bread of
a bad quality, and water, while the less well-off had to
put up with bread made from dried hay or moistened
chaff, which we are told " caused the death of many
children." The Englishman, Arthur Young, who was
travelling through France this year, wherever he went
heard nothing but the story of the distress of the people
and the dearness of bread. " Such bread as is to be
obtained tastes of mould, and often produces dysentery
and other diseases. The larger towns present the same
condition, as though they had undergone the extremities
of a long siege. In some places the whole store of corn
and barley has the stench of putrefaction, and is full of
maggots." To add to the horrors of the situation, upon
the hot and dry summer followed a winter of unparalled
severity. The new year of 1789 opened with the Seine

THE ECONOMIC PRELUDE IN THE PROVINCES. 7

frozen over from Paris to Havre. No such weather had
been experienced since 1709. As the spring advanced
the misery increased. The industrial crisis became
acute in the towns, thousands of workmen were thrown £-
out of employment owing to the introduction of recently
invented machinery from England, which was beginning
to supersede hand-labour in some trades. The riots and
local disturbances which had for many years past been ^
taking place sporadically in various districts, now became
daily more frequent, so much so that from March on-
wards the whole peasantry of France may be said to have
been in a state of open insurrection, three hundred
separate risings in the provinces being counted for the
four months preceding the taking of the Bastille.

In 1787, the Minister Lomenie de Brienne had created
nineteen new provincial assemblies. Below the arron-
dissement, or district assembly, which had been instituted
some years before, now came the assembly of the parish.
In each of these primary assemblies of the parish, the
arrondisement, and even of the province, the "people,
farmers, &c., sat side by side with the local dignitaries,"
a fact which, as may be imagined, considerably tended to
' obliterate the ancient feudal awe. In November, 1787,
the King announced his intention of convoking the States-
General. On the 5th of July, 1788, the various local
bodies were called upon to draw up cahiers, or state- Jr-
ments of their grievances, for presentment before the
King and States-General, in which a double representa-
tion of the " third estate " was conceded. These cahiers
form a mass of the most interesting material illustrative •-'
of the condition of France just before the Revolution, and
have not even yet been fully investigated. " The King,"
said the proclamation, " desires that from the extremities
of his kingdom, and the least known of its habitations,
each may feel assurance in bringing before him his views
and grievances," and this and other similar expressions
were interpreted by the peasantry in the natural sense

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

that the King was really desirous of rescuing them from
starvation. It accordingly emboldened them to take the
matter into their own hands. In January the cahiers

—7 were drawn up, which meant that the people had now
for the first time formulated their ills. Discussion in the
assemblies had excited them. The States-General was
- 'going to look to their wrongs, it was true, but the States-
General did not meet till May, and meanwhile they were
starving. One thing was clear, they must have bread.

_ • Accordingly, in defiance of local authorities and guardians
of the peace, bands ranging up to three or four hundred
and more formed themselves all over France, seized and
plundered granaries, religious houses, stores of all kinds,
entered public buildings in the name of the people, de-
troying all legal documents (justly regarded as the instru-
ments of their servitude) which they could lay their
hands on, proclaimed the local dues and taxes abolished,
summarily put to death all those who interfered with
them in the name of law and order, and, emboldened by
success, finally took to the burning of the chateaux and
the indiscriminate destruction and appropriation of the
houses and property of the wealthy. That the numbers
of these bands were augmented not only by the work-
men out of employment in Paris, Rouen. &c., but also
by professional thieves, was only to be exp acted. The
local authorities were hopelessly inadequate to cope with
the insurgents, the central authority in Paris seemed
paralysed.

Ordinary readers of the history of the Revolution are
apt to forget, in following the course of events in the
metropolis, that they were only an enlarged picture of
what was going on in hundreds of towns and villages
throughout the provinces. Both before and after the
famous 14th of July, in most of the provinces of France
all constituted authority was at an end. No one durst
disobey the mandates of the popular insurgents. It
would be impossible, and tedious if it were possible, to

THE ECONOMIC PRELUD^

enumerate all the circumstances ol ^ . ^
revolts. The manner was pretty much the ^ame in an,
and the following account of an insurrection at JStras-
burg may serve to illustrate it. Five or six hundred
peasants, artisans, unemployed, tramps, and others, seize
the occasion of a public holiday to attack the Hotel de
Ville, the assembled magistrates escaping precipitately
by back doors. The windows disappear under a volley
of stones, the doors are broken in with crowbars, and the
crowd enters like a torrent. " Immediately," the account \
states, "there was a rain of shutters, window-sashes,
chairs, tables, sofas, books, papers, &c." The public
archives are thrown to the winds, the neighbouring
streets being covered with them. Deeds, charters, &c.,
perish in the flames. In the cellars, tuns containing :
valuable wines are forced, the marauders, after drinking j
their fill, allowing them to run until there is a pond /
formed five feet deep, in which several people are !
drowned. Others, loaded with booty, run off with it
under the eyes of the soldiers, who rather encourage the
proceedings than otherwise. For three whole days the\\
city is given over to the mob. All the houses belonging1,
to persons of local distinction are sacked from cellar to
attic. The revolt spreads instantly throughout the
neighbouring country. (Taine, " Origines," torn i. pp.
81-82.)

A few weeks before the opening of the States-
General a great riot occurred in Paris, in the Faubourg
St. Antoine, the workmen's quarter, attended by much
bloodshed and loss of life. Paris, we are told, had for
months past begun to fill with desperate, hungry, and
ragged strangers drawn thither by poverty from the
uttermost ends of France.

In some districts the leaders pretend to be acting
under the orders of the King. The result is everywhere
at least one thing, — the enforcement of a maximum
in the price of bread, and the abolition of taxes. Atroci-

THE FRENCH ^VOLUTION.

-^ that the King w— r "uere and there- A lawyer is half-
__^ sfcr,^ouea to DS^ke him surrender a charter supposed to be
in his possession ; a lord is tortured to death ; an ecclesi-
astic torn in pieces. Thus have threatened ruin and
starvation, to which the financial extravagances of the';
^ Court have been the occasion of giving articulate ex-|
pression, and the remedy for which is offered, to those"~"x\
who can read, in the " Social Contract " of Rousseau,
become the immediate cause of the French Revolution.//
The same imminent bankruptcy of the kingdom occa-
_^sioned by the extravagance of the Court which led to
the convocation of the States-General, led also indirectly
to the founding of that main-spring of the Revolution,
the Jacobins' Club. The dispute between the Court and ^
the local legal Councils, called "Parliaments," led to the
crippling of their powers by the King, and this again, to
remonstrant deputations from the aggrieved provincial
towns. One set of these remonstrants, hailing from
Rennes, in Brittany, formed themselves into a club called
the Breton Club, for the ventilation of their grievances,
using the old Convent of St. Jacques in the Rue St.
Honore for their meetings. The original scope of the
society soon became enlarged, and the name changed from
that of Breton Club to Jacobins' Club, after their meeting-
place. Such was the origin of the vast club-organisation,
which exercised such a stupendous influence not only in
Paris, but in all France, during the following years.

CHAPTER III.

THE OPENING IN PARIS.

ON the 5th of May,' 1789, the royal town of Versailles
was gay — gay with decorations, with music, vocal and
instrumental, with epaulettes, " etiquettes," fair women,
and fair costumes. It was the opening of the States-
General, called together for the first time since 1614,
a last resource to rescue the realm from dissolution and
impending bankruptcy — and also the definitive opening
of the French Revolution.

At midday might have been seen the feudal procession
entering the Church of St. Louis. After the King and
Royal Family, the clergy occupied the first place, "the
superior clergy," attired in purple robe and lawn sleeves ;
the less " superior," in cassock, cloak, and square bonnet.
Next came the nobles, habited in black, with silver-faced
vest, lace cravat, and plumed hat ; while bringing up the
rear followed the humble tiers-Mat — the representatives
of the middle-class, the merchants, the farmers, and the
small landowners — dressed also in black, but adorned
with merely a short cloak and plain hat. With this
memorable procession, the constitution of the Middle
Ages, moribund for over two centuries, spasmodically
gasped its last breath.

The business of the States-General did not pass off* as
gaily as the opening ceremony. Conflict between the
orders followed immediately, on points of procedure, with/
the result that the third estate constituted itself the
National Assembly of France, refusing to admit the
other orders to its deliberations except on a basis of

12 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

-^equality. The King manifested his displeasure by closing
the door of the hall of the States against them. The As-
sembly answered by the celebrated oath it took outside
in the Tennis Cmirtj2fjjfersfl-^fts. ffith June, bv which it
pledged itself not to separate until it had given France a
Constitution. The Assembly triumphed over the Court

^ two days after its oath, inasmuch as it regained posses-
sion of its hall, openly defied the King in person, abolished
the independence of the clergy and noblesse, formally
confirmed its decrees of the previous day which the King
had quashed, and proceeded with its deliberations. Thus
the curtain rose on the first act of the revolutionary
drama.

Meanwhile the new popular ferment occasioned by the
events at Versailles had taken complete possession of
the capital, and was rapidly spreading into the provinces.
Some weeks later, early in July, Necker, the Minister of

• Finance, beloved by the middle-class, was dismissed from
office. Necker, it should be observed, was one of the less
- bad of the scoundrels, called finance ministers, who have
been malversating the national funds in succession for
years past. By comparison he appeared almost virtuous,
-^ and the populace, whose charity and admiration are
always boundless toward official personages, when not
quite so bad as one would expect, had converted him into
an object of adoration. A procession for the purpose of

.protesting against the minister's dismissal was dispersed
by force of arms and two persons killed. The city was
soon in uproar. The Palais-Royal, the great place of
public assembly and political discussion, was packed with
over ten thousand persons. On the table, which served
for a tribune, stood a young man, of fine features and
gentle mien, who was haranguing the crowd. It was
Camille Desmoulins, the popular journalist. " Citizens,"
said he, " there is not a moment to lose ! The removal of
Necker is the tocsin for a St. Bartholomew of patriots !
This evening, all the Swiss and German battalions are

THE OPENING OF PARIS. 13

coming from the Champ de Mars to slaughter us ! There
remains but one resource ; let us rush to arms ! " So say-
ing, he placed in his hat a sprig of a tree — green being the
emblem of hope. The example was followed till the
chestnut trees of Paris were denuded. At the same time
the tricolour flag was first adopted as the banner of the
popular party.

The crowd proceeded through the streets, bearing in
triumph the busts of Necker and Philippe Egalite, the
King's cousin but not his friend, its numerical strength
increasing with every yard traversed, till its course was
arrested on the Pont-Royal by a detachment of the Royal
German Cavalry. The latter were driven back by
showers of stones, and the concourse swept onwards as
far as the Place Louis XV. Here a formidable street
tight took place, the people being opposed by a squadron
of dragoons. The regulars of the King, after encounter-
ing a vigorous resistance, at Jejagth routed the insurgent
Parisians, but the victory was more^fatal to the cause
they represented than any defeat could have been. The
dispersed multitude carried the indignant cry, " To arms!"
from end to end of Paris. The regiment of French
Guards quartered in Paris mutinied, and put to flight the
mercenary foreign troops intended to overawe them.

The whole night long the tocsin rang out from the
Hotel de Ville, where a committeeTof prominent citizens <—
was sitting to organise a search for arms. The morning
of the 12th July saw Paris in full revolt; the tocsins of "*
all the churches were pealing ; drums were beating along
all the main streets ; excited crowds collecting in every
opening space ; an influx of the " disinherited " class
trooped in at all the gates of Paris; gunsmiths' shops were £ '
ransacked ; on all sides a mad search for weapons was
the order of the day. The Committee at the Hotel de
Ville, in response to the importunate demands for arms,
could only reply that they had none. The civic authori-
ties, next appealed to, temporised and evasively promised

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

assistance. Houses were sacked ; carriages seized. In
the confusion there were naturally not wanting ruffians
who sought to make use of the state of things prevailing
for purposes of mere plunder. Such excesses were per-
emptorily put down with the cry, " Death to the
thieves." The equipages and other property of the
" aristocrats " when seized by the people were always
either destroyed or carried to a central station at
the Place de Greve. In the afternoon " the provost
of the merchants " (a dignitary of the effete medi-
aeval hierarchy corresponding to the modern maire)
announced the speedy arrival of the muskets and am-
munition so eagerly clamoured for on all sides. A citizen
militia was formed under the name of the Parisian Guard,
numbering 48,000 men ; cockades of red, blue, and green
were everywhere distributed ; but the hours passed on
and no muskets arrived. A panic seized the city that
the mercenary troops were about to march on Paris
during the ensuing night. At last chests purporting to
contain ammunition did appear, were eagerly torn open,
and found to contain — old linen and broken pieces of
wood !

The Committee men and the " provost of the
merchants " alike narrowly escaped with their lives.
But the provost, pleading that he had been himself de-
ceived, tried to divert the attention of the people by
sending them on a futile expedition to Chartreux. The
Committee finally hit upon the device of arming the
citizens with pikes, in default of firearms, and accordingly
ordered 50,000 to be forged. As a measure of protection
against thieves and plunderers, the city was illuminated
throughout the night.

CHAPTER IV.

THE BASTILLE.

NEXT morning (the 14th) early, the word was passed
among the populace, " To the Invalides ! " the military
hospital. There at least arms must be forthcoming.
And sure enough the people were rewarded for their
courage in braving the troops assembled in the Champ
de Mars, and forcing their way into the great military
depot.

Twenty-eight thousand muskets, besides cannon, sabres,
and spears were carried off in triumph. Meanwhile the
alarm had been given that the royal regiments, posted
at St. Denis, were on the way to the capital, and, above
all, that the cannon of the Bastille itself was pointed
toward the boulevard St. Antoine.

The attention of Paris was at once directed to the
former point, which really commanded the most populous
districts of the city. The whole morning there was but
one cry, " To the Bastille ! " The Bastille was the great ^
emblem of the King's authority. In the middle ages it
had been the Royal stronghold against the turbulent
feudal barons. But though the French nobility had long
ceased to be " turbulent barons " and had become ob-
sequious courtiers, the Bastille remained, nevertheless, ^
the great visible embodiment of the, at present, long cen-
tralised authority of the King of France. The capture
of the Bastille would therefore be the greatest blow &
the King's prestige could possibly suffer. Add to
this, that although no longer employed for its origi-
nal purpose, the Bastille had become specially ob-
noxious, owing to its use as a place for arbitrary
imprisonment under the infamous lettres de cachets. '
Armed crowds assembled then at this place from
all quarters, till the great fortress seemed confronted

1 6 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

by the whole city in arms. Negotiations took place with
the governor, Delaunay, but the people persistently
shouted, " We want the Bastille ! '' The die was cast by
the destruction of the great bridge, which was battered
down by blows from hatchets, it is said, by two men
only. The concourse poured in ; the second drawbridge
was attacked and vigorously defended by the small
garrison.

Numbers of the assailants fell, killed and wounded.
..-"/The siege continued over four hours, when the French
Guard, who, as we have seen, had already sided with the
Revolution, arrived with cannon. The garrison, seeing
the case hopeless, themselves urged the go\ *nor to
surrender. But old Delaunay preferred blowing tue place
up and burying himself amidst the ruins. His com-
panions alone prevented him from carrying out this design.
The soldiers thereupon surrendered on condition that
their lives should be spared. The leaders of the people
who were in the forefront, and had given their word to
this effect, did their utmost to protect the garrison from
the indignation of the crowd. But among the thousands
that thronged in there were probably few who knew
anything of what had taken place. As a consequence,
Delaunay and some of the Swiss garrison fell victims to
the popular fury.

Meanwhile the Hotel de Ville was in trepidation.
Above all, the " provost of the merchants," Flesselles,
trembled lest he should be made to suffer for his treachery.
These fears were not allayed when shouts of "Victory !"
" Liberty ! " issuing from thousands of throats, assailed the
ears of the inmates, and grew louder minute by minute.
It was the conquerors of the Bastille carrying their heroes
in triumph to the municipal head-quarters.

Presently there entered the great hall, an enthusiastic,
but disorderly, ragged, and bloodstained crowd, pro-
miscuously armed with pikes, muskets, hatchets, and
well-nigh every other conceivable weapon. Above the

THE BASTILLE. 17

heads of the crowd one held the keys of the Bastille,
another the " regulations " of the prison, a third the
collar of the governor.

A general amnesty for all the defenders captured was
agreed to after much opposition. But the " provost of
the merchants " did not get off so easily. On the corpse
of Delaunay a letter had been found, in which Flesselles
had stated that he was amusing the Parisians with
cockades and promises, and that if the fortress could
only hold out till nightfall relief should come. A Court
was to have been improvised in the Palais Royal to judge
him, but on the way thither he was laid dead by a pistol-
shot from one of the crowd.

The excitement of the day's action over, precautions
to avert designs against the capital on the part of the
Court were redoubled. Everywhere barricades were
raised, paving stones torn up, pikes forged. The whole
population was all night long at work in the streets.
How well-grounded were the fears of the Parisians would
have been evident to anyone behind the scenes at Ver-
sailles, where Breteuil, the prime minister, had just
promised the King to restore the royal authority in three
days, this very night having been fixed for the expedition,
and wine and presents distributed among the royal troops
in anticipation.

The Assembly, which was sitting en permanence, was
about to send one more deputation to the King (it had
already sent two) when he appeared in person in its
midst. On being informed during the -night of the events
that had taken place, by the " Grand Master of the
Wardrobe," he exclaimed " It is a revolt." " No, sire,"
replied the Grand Master, " It is a revolution." On the
King's subsequent protestations of affection for his
subjects, and his statement that he had just given orders
foi the withdrawal of the foreign troops from Paris and
Versailles, that he confided his person to the representa-
tives of the nation alone, &c., the Assembly gave way to

B

1 8 THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION.

transports of joy, rose en masse, and escorted him to the
palace.

The news spread rapidly. A revulsion of feeling took
place all round, from terror to elation, from hatred to
gratitude. The general jubilation was increased by the
restoration of Necker, the entry of Louis XVI. into Paris,
and his acceptance of the tricolour cockade. Thus ended
the preparatory period of the Revolution. It is needless
>to say the moral effect of the popular victory throughout
France was immense, every town becoming henceforth a
revolutionary centre in the sense of possessing a definite
revolutionary organisation.

There are one or two useful hints to be learned from
this old and oft-repeated story of the fall of the Bastille.
The first is of the eminent utility of popular " force "
if only applied at the right moment. Beforehand, it
would have seemed preposterous that " an undisciplined
mob " could take a fortress and paralyse the efforts of a
reaction possessed of a trained army. Yet so it was.

Another point to note is the untrustworthiness of men
who belong to the class which makes the revolution, and
who even profess to represent it, when their personal
interest and position are bound up with the maintenance
of the existing order. Flesselles, a man of the third estate,
Nits leading dignitary in the city of Paris, was yet the man
who was the least anxious to see the feudal hierarchy over-
thrown. And why? Because he played a part in it. The
" third estate " had been incorporated into the mediaeval
system. He was its representative as one of the feudal
orders. Its position was subordinate indeed, but, now
.that it was growing in importance, its leading men had
much more to gain by clinging to the skirts of the noblesse,
and aiding them in frustrating that complete revolution
which the rank and file of the class were seeking, than
in assisting the accomplishment of this revolution, which
could only mean the effacement of their own personal
position. History repeats itself. Trade 3 unions have

THE BASTILLE. 19

won for themselves recognition and patronage in the
middle-class world to-day. Their leaders, in a similar
way, do not exhibit any special desire for a change which,
though it would mean the liberation and triumph of the
class they represent, would, at the same time, render
trades unions a thing of the past, no less than the lord
mayors and cabinet ministers who stroke the backs of the
parliamentary elect of trades unions. No, verily, this is
not a nice prospect for the trades union leaders !

CHAPTER V.

THE CONSTITUTION MONGERS.

THE Constitution was now in full train. The Revolution
up to the latter point was officially recognised.

There was no harking back for any one. Fouloii and
Berthier, two " administrators of the first rank," under the
old regime, had been publicly hanged, a la lanterne, and
quartered by the people. The first stratum of revolu-
tionists was to the fore. Mirabeau, Lafayette, and Bailly
are the central figures of the Constituent ,Assembly.
Duport, Barnave, and Lameth its extreme men. The
- Comte de Mirabeau (1749-1791), one of the pre-
revolutionary writers, was the leader of the Moderate
party in the Assembly. His stupendous powers of
oratory made him a useful ally and a dangerous foe.
This the Court was not slow in discovering, and accord-
ingly Mirabeau was soon won over by bribes to do his
best to frustrate every popular measure in the Assembly,
while all the time professing devotion to the cause of
liberty and the people. When this failed, the popular (?)
orator did not disdain to resort to actual plotting.

The Marquis de Lafayette (1757-1834), of American
Independence notoriety, another member of the noblesse,
who had adopted previously to the Revolution the quasi-
advanced views then fashionable with his class, was the
military representative of the Moderate party in his
capacity of commandant of the National Guard, besides i
^the henchman of Mirabeau in the Assembly. Bailly '
(1736-1793), who was elected Mayor of Paris the day after
the taking of the Bastille, also coadjutated in the worky

THE CONSTITUTION-MONGERS. 2i

of moderating the Revolution alike in his official capacity
and in the Assembly. As to the extreme men, they
really represented but the most moderate form of
constitutional monarchy. The situation of parties may
be estimated by the fact that Barnave advocated a
suspensory veto on the part of the King, while Mirabeau
strenuously supported the absolute veto. And be it
remembered at such a time, the right of vetoing obnoxious
measures would have been no mere matter of form. It
appears, then, that even the most advanced Parliament-
arians of the day were not prepared to go beyond the
present Prussian Constitution. Nevertheless, circum-
stances early forced upon this timid and comparatively re-
actionary Assembly some drastic political measures, first
and foremost on the memorable night of the 4th of
August, the abolition of all seignorial rights and privi-
leges. At a later stage after the assembly had removed
to Paris, a little judicious coercion from the tribunes, or
people's galleries, which were tenanted by advanced
revolutionists, there is no doubt exercised a salutary
influence on several occasions. The members knew well
enough that their lives were in the hands of the Paris
populace, and those of their wives and children, besides
their property, at the mercy of the populace of the rural
districts.

The Assembly's first important performance after the
fall of the Bastille was the declaration of the Rights of
Man, in imitation of the Americans after the successful
termination of the War of Independence. The declara-
tion of the Rights of Man contains a series of articles,
laying down the principles of political equality. Most
of them are unexceptionable and even trite, but it is
significant that number 17 affirms, categorically,, the
absolute sacredness of private property. The question
which arose immediately subsequent to this, on the
constitution of the Chamber and its relations to the
King, need not detain us. It is sufficient to state that

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

while the Assembly was amusing itself discussing
" suspensory veto," or " absolute veto," the Court, viz.,
Queen and Company at Versailles, were meditating the
transference of the King to Metz, where the mercenary
German troops were stationed, and whence communi-
cation with the French noblesse who had emigrated,
and the reactionary foreign powers, was easy, the idea
being to declare Paris and the Assembly rebels, and
inarch upon the city with the view of restoring the
absolute monarchy. These machinations at Versailles ^
are interesting as having given the direction to the first
great demonstration of the proletariat of Paris during
the Revolution. I say the direction, as the proximate
cause was the advice, the now rising popular journalist,
Marat, had given some days before in his Ami du Peuple,
when discussing the scarcity of bread.

The revolt broke out in this way. A woman beating
a drum patrolled the streets, crying, " Bread ! bread ! "
She was soon surrounded by large numbers of women,
who repaired to the Hotel de Ville demanding bread and
arms, at the same time raising the cry, " To Versailles ! "
which was taken up by the populace generally, with the
suddenness characteristic of Parisian outbreaks. The
National Guard and the French Guard eventually joined
in, with such persistence and unanimity, that Lafayette,
after some hours of expostulation, was compelled to
place himself at their head, the troops having begun to
march without him.

The unexpected appaarance of a concourse headed by
women and backed by a large armed force, naturally
threw the Queen and Court into a state of " amazement
and admiration" (in the Shaksperean sense). The
household troops at once surrounded the palace. The
women, however, expressed peaceable intentions, and
through their spokeswoman laid their grievances before
the King and the Assembly, describing the direness of
the famine prevailing. Meanwhile, in the courtyard of

THE CONSTITUTION-MONGERS. 23

the palace, which was filled with a motley crowd, a quarrel
arose, an officer of the King's troops having struck a Na-
tional Guard. This was the signal for an immediate con-
flict between the two armed bodies. The people and the
Nationals were furious, and the collision must have re-
sulted in more bloodshed than it did, had it not been for
the darkness of the night, and the prudent order given
the Royal soldiers to cease from firing and to retreat.

The disturbance was eventually quelled, the crowds
melting away gradually as the night advanced. The
royal family retired to rest at two o'clock ; Lafayette,
who had remained up all night, in vain endeavoured to
snatch repose for an hour at five a.m. Before six, some
members of the previous evening's crowd who had
remained at Versailles, insulted one of the body-guard,
who drew upon them, wounding one of their number.
The sleepless " hero of two worlds " (so-called from his
American adventures) was soon upon the scene ; he found
considerable remnants of yesterday's gathering furiously
forcing their way into the palace. The assailants were
temporarily dispersed, but soon reassembled clamouring
for the King. The King eventually appeared upon the
balcony, promising, in reply to the popular demands,
that he would go to Paris with his family.

The Queen, the head and front of all the recent
offending, next stepped on the balcony in the company
of the arch-courtier Lafayette, who with a profound
obeisance kissed the hand of the woman who had been
plotting the massacre of that very people for whom this
,/hypocritical charlatan had been all along professing zeal
and devotion. But the humiliation of the Parisians was
not yet ended. Lafayette retiring, re-appeared with one
of the obnoxious body-guard, and placing the tricolour
cockade upon his breast embraced him. At each of these
points the assembled crowd duly cheered. The royal
family then set out for Paris, and the Tuileries became
henceforth their permanent residence.

CHAPTER VI.

THE NEW CONSTITUTION.

AFTER the events we have just described, which
occurred on the 5th and 6th of October, 1789, the
course of the Revolution was, for some considerable time,
peaceful and parliamentary. The Assembly, till then at
Versailles, soon followed the Court to Paris. Its migra-
tion seemed the signal for a vigorous application of the
vpickaxe to the old feudal system by this hitherto
" moderate " body. The chief bulwark attacked was
the property and independent organisation of the Church.
Prior to this, however, the Assembly had reconstituted
the Map of France, by abolishing the old division into
provinces, substituting for it the present one into depart-
ments. The provinces had in the middle ages formed
de facto independent states. The division into de-
partments placed the whole realm under one central
administration, and included the entire reorganisation of
the judicial system. There were eighty-three depart-
ments formed, which were divided into districts, and
these into cantons. The department had its administra-
tive council and executive directory, as had also the
district ; the canton was merely an electoral sub-division
The commune, or township, wras confided to a general
council and a municipality, which were subordinated to
the departmental council. All elections were indirect,
and the whole scheme in this respect seemed carefully
arranged to exclude, as far as possible, the working classes
and peasantry from any effective voice in legislation.
The nationalisation of the Church lands and property

THE NEW CONSTITUTION. 25

generally was precipitated by the old trouble, the
exhausted state of the treasury. Necker had devised
every conceivable plan for_raising the wind and failed,
when the last-named project was suggested as a means
of at least temporarily satisfying the exigencies of the
situation. It would be tiresome, in a sketch like the
present, to describe in detail the stages by which the
Assembly arrived at the final result. The issue of its
deliberations, to wit, the decree expropriating the Church,
was carried on the 2nd of December, and thenceforth^—
the churchmen as a body became the determined enemies
of the new regime. At first the clergy seemed more
inclined than the noblesse to compromise matters, in the^
hope of retaining their wealth, but now that the die was
^ cast they were implacable. The difficulties attending
the sale of the ecclesiastical property, however, were
too great to admit of its realisation in time for the
pressing needs of the exchequer, hence the issue of
assiynats, or notes having a forced currency, based on
the value of the expropriated lands. This, which meant
the adoption of a system of paper money on a vast scale,
staved off the imminent financial ruin.

All these measures were very interesting, and showed
a laudable activity on the part of the body politic ; but
they did not affect the crowds to be seen daily at the
bakers' shops, ever and anon breaking out into tumult.
JThe working-classes of Paris had gone to Versailles de- -
/manding simply bread, and Lafayette had given them —
* the royal family ! Any further grumbling was obviously^"
to be suppressed with drastic measures. Accordingly
martial law was proclaimed, and the municipality em-/^
powered to forcibly disperse any assembly of people hav-
ing once summoned them to retire. Lafayette was there
to put this regulation into effect at the first opportunity.
But it did not come yet.

The clubs were now beginning to play a leading part in
influencing public opinion. The principal were those of

26 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

the Jacobins and the Cordeliers. A third club was insti-
tuted subsequently by Lafayette, called the Feuillants, and
representing " constitutional " principles. The Jacobins'
club, destined hereafter to become the great unofficial
expression of the Revolution, counted but few prominent
adherents in the Assembly, though Barnave and the
Lameths were among its members, and it was occasionally
patronised by several of the Constitution-makers, in-
cluding Mirabeau himself. One cadaverous figure, also
a deputy, was always at the Jacobins', his dress and
speeches alike carefully prepared — by name Maximilian
Robespierre, by profession advocate, a native of Arras.

The club of the Cordeliers was composed of an
advanced section of the Jacobins, Among its constant
attendants might have been seen the stalwart yeoman
Danton, and the short, thick-set, sharp-featured journalist
Marat. But neither the clubs nor their rising orators at
this time exercised more than an indirect influence on
the course of events, though they energetically debated
every question as it arose.

Meanwhile, in spite of occasional disturbances, and
panics as to the King plotting his flight, affairs moved
along with comparative smoothness towards the com-
pletion of the constitution, the consummation of the
middle-class political order.

Preparations for celebrating the anniversary of the fall
of the Bastille with due solemnity went on apace. A
national confederation was to be held in the Champ de
Mars on this occasion in honour of the constitution. The
" advanced " members of the noblesse, not to be behind in
" patriotism," proposed in view of the national fete the
abolition of titles, armorial bearings, and the feudal
insignia generally. The proposition was enthusiastically
carried by the Assembly. Its result was naturally to
rouse the keenest indignation among the nobles outside
and to give further edge to the organised movement of
aristocratic emigration.

THE NEW CONSTITUTION.

On the 14th of July, 1790, the population of
Paris, notwithstanding bad weather, were to be seen
streaming from all sides in holiday attire, amide a blaze
of tricolour — banners, hangings, cockades — to the Champ
de Mars, where a gigantic altar had been erected in the
centre of a vast artificial amphitheatre. The Royal
Family, the Assembly and the municipality were grouped
around this altar, before which the then popular Eishop
of Autun, Talleyrand (subsequently the famous diploma-
tist and wit) performed mass in high pontifical robes,
assisted by four hundred clergy in white surplices.
Lafayette first ascended the altar and in the name of the
National Guards of the whole realm took the civic oath
of fidelity to " the nation, the law, and the King." This ^
was followed by salvos of artillery and prolonged shouts L
of "Vive la nation ! " " Vive le roi ! " The president of
the Assembly, . and all the deputies, the department
councils, &c., next took the same oath. But the grand
item of the day's programme was reached when
Louis XVI himself rose to swear, as King of France, to
maintain the constitution decreed by the Assembly. This
part of the performance terminated, as usual on great
occasions, with the appearance of the Queen holding the
.Dauphin up aloft to the homage and admiration of the
assembled multitude, who responded in one long and
continuous acclamation. Chants of thanksgiving and
exultant jubilation generally closed the day's pro-
ceedings.

Such was the inauguration of the first French Con-<:
stitution ! But despite the new and glorious liberty-
crowds of hungry Parisians continued to be daily turned
away from the bakers' shops.

CHAPTER VII.

A "CONSTITUTION" ox ITS BEAM ENDS.

ALL state functionaries, military, civil and ecclesiastical,
were now compelled to take the oath of allegiance to the
new order of things. This led to a revolt on the part of
the majority of the nobles and ecclesiastics, whose indig-
nation was already roused to boiling point by the loss
respectively of their privileges and revenues. Numbers
of aristocratic officers left the army and the country to
join their brethren across the frontier. Others, such as
Bouille, gave in with the view of gaining over the army
for the counter-Revolution. The regular army at this
time was almost entirely officered by aristocrats, a fact
which gave rise to numerous revolts. A mutiny of
three regiments, at Nancy, was only quelled after much
bloodshed by Bouille.

Most of the clergy refused either to take the oath of
allegiance or to leave their benefices except by force,
being backed up in this by the enormous majority of
the bishops with the Pope at their head. The new con-
stitution, in subordinating the ecclesiastical to the civil
power, was declared to involve an encroachment on
ecclesiastical privilege, the Pope refusing to consecrate
bishops in place of those deposed for non-compliance,
and proclaiming the creation of all ecclesiastics nonri-

proclaiming
;d according i

nated according to civil forms to be null and void. The
ejection of non-conforming priests continued, notwith-
standing, their successors being instituted by the bishops
of Autun and Lida, who had unreservedly accepted the
constitution. The opposite party retaliated by excom-
municating all who acknowledged the " intruders," as
they termed them. Thus began civil war between the
Revolution and the Church. The clergy themselves pre-
pared the soil of the popular mind for the reception and

A " CONSTITUTION" ON ITS BEAM ENDS. 29

germination of the teachings of the pre-revolutionary
writers, which, until now, had been chiefly confined to
the leisured and cultivated classes, by forcing it to the
logical dilemma of friendship with the "Revolution" and
enmity with Christianity, or friendship with Christianity
and enmity with the " Revolution."

As regards the " emigrant " aristocrats, their object
was to foment the hatred of the foreign Powers against
the Revolution and to cement a coalition to effect its
forcible overthrow by the invasion of the country. For
well-nigh three years these intrigues with the " foreign-
er " were going on with the connivance of the Court,
until the fall of the monarchy precipitated " war to the
knife " with the powers in the shape of the campaign
known as the " Revolutionary War." To understand the
position of affairs it is necessary to remember that since
the collapse of feudalism as a living political order, with
its quarrels between the titular King and his more or
less nominally vassal barons, power had been concen-
trated more and more in royal hands, while nationalities
had become definitely fixed. The result was that the
mainly internal politics of the feudal period had from
the sixteenth century onwards been giving place to
external politics, in which the sovereigns of Europe,
having ceased to fear the rivalry of nobles within their
jurisdiction, discovered causes of quarrel with their
brother sovereigns without — usually in the hope of gain-
ig territory. The French Revolution marks the open-
ing, for the Continent, at least, of the modern period of
jhe struggle of sovereigns, not with their nobles or with
iach other, but with peoples, that is, with the middle-
/class backed by the proletariat. This struggle began in
England more than a hundred years earlier than on the
Continent, but practically subsided again with the
Revolution of 1689.

The three principal European Powers were at this
time England, France, and Austria. Prussia was a still

30 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

rising monarchy, and the great Muscovite empire loomed
in the background. The petty German princelets might
be reckoned upon to side with one or other of the greater
powers according to circumstances.

The death of Mirabeau, in April, 1791, having removed
all hope of making a successful stroke on behalf of
Royal ism in the Assembly, the Court turned its attention
to military plotting with increased energy. On the
-"other hand, the King felt some misgivings at being re-
established exclusively by the aid of foreign bayonets,
more especially as his cousin, the Comte d'Artois, was
the leader in the movement, and if it were successful
might possibly obtain more than his due share of in-
s fluence in the resuscitated realm. These considerations
r-^ led the Court to turn a favourable ear to General Bouille,
whose plan was to conquer the Revolution by means of
the troops already at hand in the service of the King.
The army was to be moved to the frontier, the royal
^ family were then to escape into its midst, after which
war was to be declared against the Assembly, and the
troops to march on the capital. This arrangement was
effected up to the point of the King's flight on the 21st
of June, 1791, almost without a hitch. Bouille, with his
army, was ready and waiting for the royal party, when
^ poor Louis was accidentally recognised at Varennes, and
brought back a prisoner to Paris. The indignation of
the populace knew no bounds. The royal cortege re-
entered Paris in the midst of sullen and angry crowds.
For the first time serious talk of a Republic was heard.
Barnave and the Lameths became the leaders of the Con-
stitutional party in the Assembly, now that Mirabeau
was dead. But it was with difficulty that the Constitu-
tionalists could reinstate the King after his voluntary and
treacherous abdication. They were only successful in their
efforts after having thrown as a sop to Cerberus the condi-
tion that if he retracted his oath to the Constitution, if he
should place himself at the head of an army, or permit

A " CONSTITUTION" ON ITS BEAM ENDS.

33

others to do so, he should lose his inviolability and be
considered and treated as an ordinary citizen.

But opinion outside of the Assembly was far from
satisfied. The leaders of the Jacobin Club (which was
now the centre of a federation of similar clubs through-
out the country), among whom were confounded in
cause, Brissot, Pe'tion, Robespierre, Danton, Marat, &c.,
men of the advanced middle- class and men of the people,
combined to rouse the nation against this decree, insist-
ing on the abdication of Louis, and denying the compet-
ency of the Assembly. They drew up a petition in which ^—
they appealed from the Assembly to the sovereignty of
the people. This petition was taken to the Champ de ^tr
Mars and laid upon the " altar of the country." Thou-
sands came to sign it ; the assemblage being dispersed
by Lafayette, returned subsequently in greater numbers
than before. Next time the commandant of the National •<-_•: -.-
Guard came accompanied by Bailly the mayor. The
red flag, the then symbol of martial law, was unfurl ed,* —
the summons to disperse proclaimed, after which
Lafayette gave the order to fire. A murderous charge :-""""
followed, in which hundreds were killed and wounded.
But notwithstanding that the Republicans were cowed
,for the time being, the Court sycophant, and his accom-
plices in the work of the Constitution, were well-nigh
played out, though the old farce had first to be gone
through. The King once more accepted the Constitution,
and the terms of his re-instatement in possession of his
functions in addition, made a touching and heart-stirring
speech to the Assembly, was received with effusive
demonstrations of affection, &c. The Constituent As-
sembly, which had been made up of the abortive States-
General, then formally proclaimed itself dissolved, its
members magnanimously renouncing the right of re-
election.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY.

> THE new Legislative Assembly, as it was called, to dis-
tinguish it from the first or Constituent Assembly,
commenced its sittings on the 1st of October, 1791. With-
out, the coalition of Europe against the Revolution was
complete. England was united with Prussia and Aus-
tria, while the petty German States eagerly joined in
this conspiracy to suppress the French nation. The
i'amous treaty of Pilnitz was the expression of the de-
termination and temper of the powers great and small.

Within, the fabric of the constitutional monarchy was
standing, indeed ; but, as Carlyle expresses it, like an in-
serted pyramid, which may topple over any moment.
Friction began at once between the King and Assembly
on questions of reciprocal etiquette, but the speech from
the throne was well received.

The dominant party in this Assembly was that of the
irondists, or party of compromise, of which more anon,
the buffer, so to speak, between the Constitutionalists
proper, now in the minority, and the popular and
avowedly Republican party, whose leaders in the clubs,
Robespierre, Danton, Marat, &c., were gaining in influ-
ence every day.

Almost the first act of the New Assembly was the
issue of a decree ordering the emigrants to return on
penalty of death and confiscation of goods. This order
the King peremptorily vetoed. The same fate befell
another order of the Assembly, by which refractory
priests should lose their pay and be placed under
surveillance. His action in these matters, in view of the

THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY. 33

imminent invasion of the foreign powers and the peasant
revolt in the Vendee in favour of Royalism (which was
led by the clergy), were fatal to him, and to the Consti-
tutionalists who supported him.

The Constitutional Ministry fell, and a Girondin
Ministry was appointed in its place, with Roland, one of
the principal Girondin leaders and the husband of the
celebrated Madame Roland, as Minister of the Interior,
and Dumouriez as Minister of Foreign Affairs.

The first act of the new Ministry was to take the bull
by the horns, and to declare war with Austria, a measure
popular on various sides, for different reasons, and ap-
proved of by the Court in the hope of the defeat of the
French forces and the invasion of the country. This
declaration of war was made on the 20th of April, 1792.^
Three columns proceeded to the frontier, but the pro-
jected action on the offensive was a fiasco — a panic
seizing the troops on the approach of the enemy.

Thenceforward, the French assumed the defensive.
Such was the beginning of the Revolutionary War. The
news of the disaster led to bitter recriminations, on the
part of the popular party, against the Girondins. The
Girondins in their turn threw the blame on the Consti-
tutionalists, and their commanders, Lafayette, Dillon, &c.,
while the generals themselves threw it on Dumouriez. The
Jacobins openly accused the Moderate parties of treachery
and connivance with the Government. Suspicion ands£/
distrust were universal. It was now that~Marat issued
his memorable placards calling for the heads of traitors.^-
Meanwhile, to appease the people, the Ministry instituted
a permanent camp of 20,000 men in the neighbourhood
of Paris, in spite of the vehement opposition of the Con-
stitutionalists, and agreed to the introduction into the
new National Guard of promiscuously selected com-
panies armed with pikes — the weapons which had played
such a prominent part at an earlier stage of the Revolu-
tion. The Assembly, which declared itself sitting in

34 THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION.

permanence, added to these resolutions one ordering the
abolition of the King's bodyguard. This last decree
Louis at once refused to ratify, and on being remonstrated
with by Roland, dismissed all the Girondin ministers,
and appointed obscure members of the Constitutionalist
party in their stead. At the same time he sent a secret
messenger to negotiate with the foreign coalition — for
his " deliverance."

-^> The Girondins finding themselves thus left out in the
v cold, joined the Jacobins, who were now the advanced
guard of the Revolution, and whose organisation was
rapidly becoming a rival to the Assembly, and by this
means were able to pose as martyrs in the cause of
liberty. The only hope of the party actually in power,
— i.e., the now discredited Constitutionalists — lay in Lafa-
yette's army. Lafayette, seeing the situation, played out
his last card, and published a manifesto openly defying
and threatening the Jacobins. The Jacobins' reply to this
^was the insurrection of the 20th June, 1792, when a con-
course numbering some 8,000 people left the Faubourg St.
Antoine for the hall of the Assembly. The orator who
represented the crowd spoke in menacing terms, saying
that the people were ready to employ all their powers in
resistance to oppression. He proceeded to state that grave
complaint was found with the conduct of the war, into
which the people demanded an immediate investigation,
but the heaviest grievance of all was the dismissal of the
patriot Ministers. The Assembly replied that the
memorial of the people should be taken into considera-
tion, and meanwhile, as usual in such cases, exhorted
them to "respect the law." By this time the multitude
numbered some 30,000 men, women, and children, in-
cluding many National Guards, with a liberal sprinkling
of pikes, flags, and revolutionary emblems among them.
This motley concourse poured into the sacred precincts
of the Assembly, singing u^a Ira," and shouting, " Long
live the people ! " " Long live the sansculottes ! " On

THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY. 35

leaving the Assembly the cry was, "To the Palace of the
Tuiieries," where the crowd swept through the open
gates into the apartments and corridors, and were pro-
ce/ding to demolish the doors with blows when Louis
himself appeared, accompanied by only a few attendants.
The multitude still pressing in, he took his station in the
recess of a window. There he remained seated on a
chair, placed on a table, and protected from the pressure
^ of the crowd by a cordon of National Guards. To the
cries of the people for his sanction to the decrees, he re-
plied— as the Royalist historians assure us with intense
dignity — "This is neither the manner for it to be
demanded of me, nor the moment to obtain it." The
result of his refusal might have been awkward for him
had he not had the presence of mind to take advantage
of an incident which occurred just at the moment.
A red Phrygian cap, the symbol of the People and of
Libert3r, was presented by one of the crowd on the point
of a pike. This he took and placed on his head, after
which he drank off a tankard of wine also offered to him,
an act which was greeted with tumultuous applause. At
last Petion, the mayor, arrived with several prominent «
Girondist deputies, and quietly dispersed the gathering.

Thus the silly Parisian populace were once again ^->
icajoled out of their demands by a senseless piece of
\[buffoonery. But it was the last time. The Constitu-
tionalists were enraged at the outrage offered to the per-
son of the King and to the Law. Lafayette left the
army, and suddenly appeared at the bar of the Assembly
demanding the impeachment of the instigators of the
movement of the 20th July, and the suppression of the
popular clubs. But the Jacobins had by this time got
the upper hand, and could defy the champion of middle-
class law-and -order. Lafayette narrowly escaped arrest for^--
deserting his arm}^, and had ignominiously to slink back. ^
The whole force of the populace was with the Girondins
and the Jacobins. Things were fast hurrying to a crisis.

CHAPTER IX.

THE TENTH OF AUGUST.

SHORTLY after the event last described the Assembly felt
itself compelled, in face of the open connivance of the
Court with the enemy, to solemnly declare the country
in danger. All citizens capable of bearing arms were
called upon to enroll themselves in the National Guard,
which was placed on a footing of active service.

On the 14th of July, the Bastille anniversary, the
Mayor Pe'tion was the hero of the day — "Pe'tion or
death ! " being the popular watchword. All battalions of
^2., the National Guard showing signs of attachment to Con-
stitutionalism instantly became objects of popular resent-
ment. The hatred of the Constitutionalists was daily
growing. At length the popular party obtained the
disbandment of the companies of Grenadiers and
Chasseurs, the main support of the official middle-class
in the National Guard, together with the closing of the
Feuillants' Club, the rendezvous of the Constitutionalist
party.

Events further helped on the popular cause. On the
25th of July, the Duke of Brunswick published his
manifesto in the name of the Emperor and the King of
Prussia, in which he declared that the allied sovereigns
had taken up arms to put an end to anarchy in France ;
threatening all the towns which dared to resist with
total destruction, the members of the Assembly itself
with the rigours of martial law, &c. The active coalition
which was at this time confined to Prussia, Austria, the
German princedoms, and the principality of Turin, had

THE TENTH OF AUGUST. 37

formed the plan of marching concentrically upon Paris
from three different points, the Moselle, the Rhine and
the Netherlands.

It was on the day of the movement of the Rhenish
division from Coblentz, under the command of the Duke
of Brunswick, that this famous manifesto was issued.
The following day, July 26th, a contingent of six hun-
dred Marseillais, sent for by the Girondist Barbaroux,
who was a native of Marseilles, entered Paris ostensibly on
their way to the camp at Soissons, a contingent rendered
immortal by the hymn they sang as they marched along;
the well-known strains :

' ' Aliens, enfants de la Patrie,
Le jour de gloire est

having been heard for the first time in the streets of
Paris on that occasion. The advent of the Marseillais,
though it did not, as was anticipated, result in an
immediate outbreak, did, nevertheless, stir Paris to its
foundations. The sections, or wards, into which the city
was divided, became daily more importunate in demand-
ing the dethronement of the King. A petition to this
effect was drawn up by the municipality and the sections
and presented to the Assembly by Petion on the 3rd of
August. The impeachment of Lafayette was next de-
manded on the 8th, but after a warm discussion was
rejected by a considerable majority. This acquittal of ^
Lafayette, now regarded by the people as the personifica-
tion of treachery and reaction, destroyed the last vestige
of popular confidence in the Assembly. The following
day one of the sections sent to notify to the legislature
that if the decree of dethronement were not voted before
nightfall the tocsin (or alarm bell) should be sounded, the
generate (or rallying drum) beaten, and open insurrection
proclaimed, a determination which was transmitted to
the forty-eight sections of the city, and approved with

38 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

only one dissentient. It was not voted, and the same even-
ing the Jacobins proceeded in a body to the Faubourg St.
. Antoine, and there organised the attack on the Tuileries
which it was decided should take place the next day.

Measures pregnant with import for the future course of
tihe Revolution were determined at this meeting; among
others the dismissal of the Girondist mayor, Petion, who
nad already begun to inspire deep distrust, the annulment
/of the Departmental Assemblies, and replacement of the
Void municipal council by a Revolutionary Commune.

At midnight the tocsin pealed, the generale beat, the
sections assembled, and the newty-nominated Commune
took possession of the Hotel de Ville. On the other side
the " loyal " battalions of the National Guard were
marched to the palace, which was now filled with hired
Swiss Guards and Chevaliers de GOUT, and the Assembly
hastily called together. On hearing that Petion was
detained at the Tuileries the moribund legislature at once
ordered his release and restored him to his functions.
But he no sooner entered the Hotel de Ville than he was
placed under a guard of three hundred men by order of
the new Commune. Poor Petion ! between two fires !
The Commune then sent for the commander of the
National Guard, Mandat, who was at the Tuileries with
the royal battalions aforesaid. Mandat, not knowing of
the creation of the new Commune, incautiously obeyed
the summons, but turned pale on discovering new faces
where he had expected to find the old municipal coun-
cillors. He was accused of having authorised the troops
to defend the palace against the sovereign people, was
ordered to the prison of the Abbaye, but was assassinated
on the steps of the Hotel de Ville as he was being con-
veyed thither. Santerre was then nominated commander-
in-chief in his stead.

Meanwhile not a few " Nationals " at the palace, in
spite of their loyalty to the " Constitution," winced at
finding themselves in the same galley with aristocrat

THE TENTH OF AUGUST. 39

adventurers — avowed enemies of the Revolution in any
form or shape — and with mercenary foreign soldiers.
Their leader gone, a division broke out, as Louis found
when he came to review them, for while the cry, " Vive
le roi ! " was responded to by some, " Vive la nation ! "
was reponded to by more. But what was most ominous
was the arrival of two fresh battalions armed with pikes
as well as guns, who after jeeringly greeting the king
with shouts of " Vive la nation ! " " Down with the
veto ! " " Down with the traitor ! " took up a position at
the Pont Royal and pointed their cannon straight at the
palace. It was evident the loyalty of these battalions was
more than a doubtful quantity. It was now early morn-
ing, and the insurgents were advancing in columns of
various strength from different points. The Procurator-
Syndic, Roederer, met them as they were converging upon
the palace, and suggested their sending a deputation to the
king. This was peremptorily refused. He then addressed
himself to the National Guard, reading out the articles
which enjoined them to suppress revolt. But the response
was so feeble that the procurator fled in all haste back to
the Tuileries to urge the royal family to leave its quarters
and place itself in the midst of the Assembly out of harm's
reach. Marie Antoinette rejected the advice in right melo-
dramatic style, talked very " tali " about being " nailed
to the walls of the palace," and presented a pistol to
Louis with the words, " Now, sire, is the moment to show
y our courage." The procurator evidently thought mock
xyheroics ill-timed, and sternly remonstrated. Louis him-
self seemed to share this opinion, or at least was not pre-
pared to " show " his " courage " just then, and moved to
go to the Assembly. Marie Antoinette followed with the
royal youth, and thus what bid fair to be a dramatic
" situation " came to an ignominious ending.

Meanwhile the insurgents surrounded the palace, the^f
defence of which was Jeft to the Swiss Guard, who,
though they fought with a valour worthy of a better

4C THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

ciuse, were ultimately overwhelmed by numbers and
exterminated. The palace taken, shouts of victory
resounded from far and near. The Assembly trembled,
expecting every minute the hall to be forced. In vain
it issued a proclamation conjuring the people to re-
spect magistrates, law and justice. At length the new
Commune presented itself, claiming the recognition of
its powers, the dethronement of the king, and the con-
vocation of a National Convention by universal suffrage.
Deputation after deputation followed with the same
prayer, or rather with the same peremptory order. The
Assembly, overawed, on the motion of the Girondist
Vergniaud, passed a resolution in pursuance of the de-
mands, that is, suspending the King, dismissing the
Constitutionalist Ministers, and ordering the convocation
^f a National Convention.
-— The person of Louis, after remaining three days in
charge of the Assembly, was handed over to the Com-
mune, by whose order he was conveyed as a State prisoner
to the Temple. Thus ended the 10th of August, 1792.
Jhe critical struggle is henceforth not, as heretofore,
Between the middle-class and the nobles or the King, but
between the middle-class and the proletariat.

CHAPTER X.

THE FIRST PARIS COMMUNE AND THE SEPTEMBER
MASSACRES.

WITH the 10th of August and the overthrow of the
Monarchy, the first part of the French Revolution may
be considered as complete. The middle-class insurrection
proper had done its work. The importance of that work
from certain points of view can hardly be over-rated.
In a word, it had abolished, not, indeed, feudalism
in its true sense — for that had long since ceased to
exist — but the corrupt remains of feudalism and the
monarchical despotism it left behind it. The beginning
of '89 found France cut up into provinces, each in
many respects an independent State, possessing separate
customs, separate laws, and in some cases a separate
jurisdiction. The end of '89 even, and still more '92,
found it, for good or evil, a united nationality. The
power of the clergy and noblesse was completely broken, d
Judicial torture and breaking on the wheel were ab- r
solutely done away with. Madame Roland has described
the dying cries of the victims of "justice," who, after /-•
having been mangled by the latter hideous engine, were
left exposed on the market-place, " so long as it shall
please God to prolong their lives." All this, then, was
abolished, and in addition the " goods " of the clergy and -
of the " emigrant " nobility were declared confiscated.
The interesting point as yet unsolved was, who should get
this precious heritage, the " nationalised " lands, houses,
and moveable possessions of the recalcitrant first and second
estates ? To avoid interrupting the narrative we shall

42 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

devote a chapter to the elucidation of this point later
on.

We come now to what we may term the great tidal
wave of the Revolution. For the time being it swept all
before it, but it receded as quickly as it came. The
period of the ascendancy of the proletariat lasted from

~Hhe 10th of August, 1792, to the 27th of July, 1794, thus
in all nearly two years. The political revolution
suddenly became transformed into a revolution one of
whose objects at least was greater social and economical,
••-as distinguished from political, equality, and as suddenly
ceased to be so. The course of the progress and retro-
gression of this movement we shall trace in the follow-
ing chapters.

^The new revolutionary municipality, or Commune of
Paris, was now for the time being the most powerful
executive body in all France. It dictated the action
even of the Assembly. The establishment of an extra-
ordinary tribunal had been proposed. The Assembly
hesitated to agree to it, whereupon it received a
message from the Commune that if such a tribunal were
not forthwith constituted, an insurrection should be
organised the following night which should overwhelm
the elect of France. The Assembly yielded under the

x pressure, and a Court was formed which condemned
a few persons, but was soon after abolished by the
Commune as inadequate. At the head of the latter
body were Marat, Panis, Collot-d'Herbois, Billaud-
Varennes, Tallien, &c., but the most prominent man of all
was for the moment Dan ton, who was untiring in
organising the " sections " (as the different wards of the
city were called), and who, from having been the chief
agent in the events of the 10th, had acquired almost the
position of dictator.

Meanwhile the invading army of the Prussians had

^crossed the frontier, while the French frontier troops at
Sedan, deserted by Lafayette, were disorganised, and

THE FIRS1 COMMUNE. 43

without a commander. On the 24th of August, the«*r-
citadel of Longwy capitulated, and by the 30th the
enemy were bombarding the town of Verdun. In a few^r--
days the road to Paris would lie open before them.
Consternation prevailed in the capital at the news. In a
conference between the Ministry and the recently
formed Committee of General Defence, Danton boldly
urged, as against a policy of waiting or of open attack,
that one of terrorism should be adopted, to first intimidate
the reactionary population of the city, and through
them that of the whole country. " The 10th of August/',
said he, " has divided France into two parties. The
latter, which it is useless to dissemble constitutes the
minority in the State, is the only one on which you can
depend when it comes to the combat." The timid and
irresolute Ministry hesitated ; Danton betook himself
to the Commune. His project was accepted. The
minority had indeed to fight the majority. Domiciliary ,
visits were made during the night, and so large a number^
of suspected persons arrested, that the prisons were
filled to overflowing. A vast number of citizens were en-
rolled on the Champ de Mars, and dispatched to the
frontier on the 1st of September. About two o'clock the *•
next day, Sunday, the great bell or tocsin was sounded,
the call-drum or generate was beaten along the thorough-
fares, the famous September massacres were at hand/
Danton, in presenting himself before the Assembly to
detail the measures that had been taken (without its
consent) for the safety of the country, gave utterance to
his celebrated mot : — "Hfawt de Vaudace, de I'audace, et
toujours de I'audace " (we must have boldness, boldness,
and always boldness).

The previous night all the gates of the city had ,
been closed by order of the municipality, so that none *
could leave or enter; to the clanging of the tocsin and
the roll of the generate, was now added the firing
of alarm cannon. Herewith began the summary

44 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION,

executions, as they would have been called had they
been done in the interests of "established order" by
men in uniform, or massacres, as they have been termed
since they were effected in the interests of revolution by
men in bonnet rouge and Carmagnole costume. The

--> matter originated with the destruction of thirty priests

who were being conducted to the Abbaye. The prisons,

about seven in number, were then visited in succession

^ by a band of some three hundred men. Entrance was

demanded by an improvised court, which, once inside,

with the prison-registers open before them, began to adju-

- dicate. The prisoners were severally called by name,

their cases decided in a few minutes, after which they

were successively removed nominally to another prison,

_ -or to be released. No sooner, however, had they reached
trie outer gate than they were met by a forest of pikes
and sabres. Those that were deemed innocent of
treasonable practices, and were " enlarged " with the cry
of " Vive la nation!" (Long live the nation!), were re-
ceived with embracings and acclamation, but woe betide
those who were conducted to the entrance in silence,
them the pikes and sabres at once fell, in some
cases veritably hewing them in pieces. The Princesse
de Lamballe, the friend and maid-of-honour to Marie
Antoinette, had just gone to bed when the crowd arrived
at the Abbaye where she was imprisoned. On being
informed she was about to be removed, she wanted to
arrange her dress, she said ; at which the bystanders
hinted that from the distance she would have to go, it
was scarcely worth while to waste much time on the
toilette. Arrived at the gate, her head was struck off,
and her body stripped and disembowelled. A Sansculotte
subsequently boasted of having cooked and eaten one of
the breasts of the princess. Carlyle goes into an ecstatic
frenzy over Mdlle. de Lamballe. " She was beautiful, she
was good," he exclaims (vol. iii., chap. 4), in a style sugges-
tive of an Irish wake. " Oh ! worthy of worship, thou ~

THE FIRST COMMUNE. 45

descended, god-descended," &c. He pathetically talks
about her " fair hind-head," meaning to imply, I suppose,
that she had a long, thin neck. But inasmuch as there
is no physiological reason for supposing that a long, thin
neck involves greater suffering to the possessor in the
process of decapitation than a short, thick one, the point
of the remark is not obvious. Be this as it may, the .
princess's head, with others, was paraded on a pike x~
through the streets and under the windows of the
" Temple," where the queen was confined. These summary
executions or massacres (according as we choose to call
them) outside the prisons, continued at intervals from
the Sunday afternoon to the Thursday evening. Prob-
ably about 1,200 persons in all perished. All con-
temporary writers agree in depicting the graphic horror
of the scene as the blood-stained crowd swept along the
streets from prison to prison.

There is no doubt that the principal actors in
events were either under the orders, or were at least in
communication with the Commune, but the precise nature
of the connection has not been, and possibly now never
will be, known. That those concerned were no mere
wanton or mercenary ruffians, but fanatics, possessed by
a frenzy of despair, is amply proved by several incidents
which are admitted even by Royalist writers. Their
enthusiasm at the discovery of a " patriot " in one whom
they believed to have been a " plotter," as in the case of
M. de Sombreuil, and their refusal of money from such,
their evident desire to avoid by any accident the death
of an innocent person, show the executioners to have
been, at least, genuinely disinterested. There has never
in all history been more excuse for the shedding of
blood than there was in Paris, at the beginning of
Se0ftmhftr»JL!792. Foreign troops were marching on the
capital to destroy the Revolution, and all favourable to
\/ it. The city itself was honeycombed with Royalist
plotters, who almost openly expressed their joy at the

46 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

prospect of an approaching restoration, and the exter-
mination of the popular leaders. The so-called massacres
were strictly a measure of self-defence, and as such were
justified by the result, which was, in a word, to strike
terror into the reaction, and to stimulate the Revolution
throughout France ; and yet there are bourgeois who
pretend to view this strictly defensive act of a populace
driven to desperation, with shuddering horror, while
regarding as " necessary," or at most midly disapproving
the wanton and cold-blooded massacres of the Versailles
soldiers after the Commune of 1871. Such, verily, is
class blindness ! As in all great crisis in history, so in
the French Revolution, an active minority had to fight
and terrorise the stolid mass of reaction and indifference
which, alas ! is always in the majority.

CHAPTER XL

THE NATIONAL CONVENTION.

WHILE these events were going on in Paris, Dumouriez,
the successor of Lafayette as commander-in-chief of the
French army, was in the east organising the resistance
to the invasion. Verdun was taken by the Prussians
almost without resistance. But the new commander,
who, whatever else he may have been, was a man of
military genius, saw at a glance the strategical situation,
anjl, in opposition to the council of war, decided to lose
no time in occupying the passes of the mountainous
district of the Argonne. He circumvented the enemy by
forced marches, and they soon found the road to Paris
barred by precipitous rocks and well-guarded passes.
The Prussians, notwithstanding, forced one of the more
feebly defended of the positions, and were on the point
of surrounding the French army when Dumouriez, by a
dexterous retreat, succeeded in evading them, till the
arrival of his reinforcements. Meanwhile, the weather
helped the defenders. Heavy rains converted the bad roads
into rivers of mud knee deep, and it was not until the
20th of the month that the main body of the invaders
reached the heights of Yalmy, where General Kellerman
was in command, and which they attempted to storm.
The result decided the fate of the invasion. The
Prussians and Austrians were completely defeated to the
cry of " Vive la nation ! " and retired in disorder. Up to
this time the fortunes of war had been unremittingly
adverse to the French. But the turning point had come.
Henceforward the revolutionary army, which from this
moment assumed the offensive, went forth for some

48 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

time conquering and to conquer. The present sketch
not being a history of the revolutionary war, but of the
Revolution itself, I shall in future only allude to the
military situation in so far as it affects the course of
internal affairs.

The moribund Legislative Assembly lingered on during
the election of the Convention — the first political body
chosen by direct, universal and equal suffrage — which did
not open its deliberations till the 21st of the month. After
the usual preliminaries it formally abolished Royalty, and
proclaimed the Republic. Its next measure was to declare
the new era to date from the current year as the, first
year of the French Republic. These measures .were
carried by acclamation. But the Convention almost
immediately became the prey of internal dissention.
This most remarkable of legislative bodies embraced
every shade of opinion and almost all the men of &ny
prominence in public life. Robespierre, Danton, Marat,
Desmoulins, David, Roland, Barbaroux, Sieyes, Barre're,
&c., were all now to the fore, with many others, such as
Tallien, Collot d'Herbois, Billaud Varennes, Barras,
&c., hitherto less known to fame, but shortly to coml
into unmistakable prominence. One feature of the
Convention is especially remarkable. It embodied the
first conscious recognition of the principle of Inter-
nationalism. The German atheist, internationalist and
humanitarian, Anacharsis Clootz, and the English free-
thinker and republican Thomas Paine, were among its
members. Priestly, of Birmingham, the great chemist,
had also been elected, but declined to sit. In order at
once to accentuate the international conception of the
Revolution and to create a diversion in the rear of the
invading armies, the Convention issued a manifesto on
Nov. 19 inviting all peoples to rise against their
oppressors and assuring them of the sympathy and, when
possible, of the active support of the French Republic.

The two great parties in the Convention were the

THE NATIONAL CONVENTION. 49

Girdondists and the Mountainists. The Girondists were
the party of orderly progress, sweetness, and light, the
men who dreaded all violent, i.e., energetic measures.
Such men, however well-intentioned they may be, and
even apart from their ultimate objects, must always in
the long run become the tools of reaction from their
timidity and hesitancy. The Girondists desired a
doctrinaire Republic, led by the professional middle-
classes, the lawyers and litterateurs. Their main strength
lay in the provinces, the name being derived from the
department of the Gironde, whence some of their chief
men came. Among the leaders of the Girondist party
may be mentioned Condorcet, Roland, Louvet, Rebecqe,
Petion, Barbaroux, Vergniaud, and Brissot. Some of
them had been, in spite of their generally mild attitude,
active in preparing the 10th of August. It was, as we
have seen, Barbaroux who sent to his native town for
the Marseillais, and directed this remarkable body of men
on the day of the insurrection.

The other leading party in the Convention were the
Mountainists, as they were termed, because they sat
the benches at the top of the left, comprising the leaders
of Paris and largely identical in policy with the
Commune, many of whose members sat in both the
municipal and the legislative bodies. Robespierre,
Danton, Marat, all the Parisian members, that is, ther""
most advanced revolutionary leaders, belonged to the
" Mountain," which had its strength in the 48 " sections,"
and in the faubourgs, or outlying suburbs,- in which the
populace of Paris found voice. The Mountainists advoca- -
ted uncompromising revolutionary principles (besides
aiming to some extent at economic equality), a vigorous
policy and a strong centralisation in opposition to the
Girondists, who favoured strictly middle-class Republican-
ism, a timid and vacillating policy, and federalisation, or
local autonomy. The struggle between the Mountain and
Gironde was in part a struggle for supremacy between

50 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

Paris and the departments. Besides the Mountainists
and Girondists proper — i.e., those who represented any
definite principles at all, who both together constituted a
minority in the Convention, notwithstanding that they
dictated its character and policy — there was the actual
majority which was called the Plain, its members being
sometimes designated, in ridicule, " frogs of the marsh."
Like most majorities, the Plain was an inchoate mass of
Boating indifferentism and muddle-headedness, with more
or less reactionary instincts, which naturally inclined it
to the side of the Girondists as the " moderate " party,
but whose first concern being self-preservation, was open
to outside pressure from the armed " sections " of Paris
and the faubourgs, as we shall presently see. These
" men of the plain," or " frogs of the marsh," included
many persons of ability, who subsequently came to the
front under the Directorate, after all danger of popular
insurrection was at an end.

War was declared within the Convention, before many
days were over, by the Gironde, on the ostensible pretext
of the September massacres, which they accused the
partisans of the Mountain of having instigated. The
individuals attacked were Robespierre and Marat. It
was the turn of Robespierre first. He was accused of
aspiring to the dictatorship, and the whole force of
Girondist eloquence was brought to bear upon the lean
and cadaverous ex-advocate of Arras, though without
result. No definite charges could be formulated against
him. It is significant, nevertheless, that before Robes-
pierre had attained any supreme prominence he should
have excited feelings of such keen personal animosity.
As a matter of fact, Danton had had far more directly to
do with the so-called massacres than Robespierre. It
was Marat's turn next. Marat, whose single-mindedness
and absolute self-sacrifice are almost unique in history,
had the misfortune to be physically an unattractive
personality. He suffered from an unpleasant skin

THE NATIONAL CONVENTION. 51

malady, which, as it happens, was not syphillis, as many
writers have hinted, but seems to have been of the nature
of the sheep-disease known as the scabies. It was very
possibly contracted, and without doubt considerably aggra-
vated, through semi-starvation and the cellar-life he was
compelled to lead during the early part of the Revolu-
tion. Marat, then, was denounced in the Convention by
the Girondins, and when he arose to defend himself
he was for a moment basely deserted even by his col-
leagues of the Mountain. " I have a great many enemies
in this Assembly," he said, as he rose to reply to his
accusers. " All ! All ! " shouted the Convention as one
man. However, Marat proceeded amidst uproar and
howls to exculpate himself, till in the end the simple
earnestness of his eloquence prevailed, and he sat down
amid a storm of applause. But the Girondists, though
discomfited for the time, did not lose sight of their
design to destroy Marat. In the midst of these
recriminations and internal squabbles, the Mountain
succeeded in getting the unity of the Republic decreed, a
heavy blow to the Federalist Girondins.

CHAPTER XII

THE TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF THE KING.

A TRUCE to personal squabbles having been for a moment
agreed upon, the Convention was proceeding to discuss
the new Constitution when, on the motion of the Mountain,
the question of the disposal of the King was declared
urgent. The popular resentment against the dethroned
monarch had been growing for some time past. Con-
tinual addresses from the departments, as well as from
the Paris sections, were being received praying for his
condemnation. The usual legal questions being raised
as to the power of any tribunal to try the sovereign, it
was agreed by the Committee appointed to consider the
matter, that though Louis had been inviolable as King of
France, he was no longer so as the private individual
Louis Capet. The Mountain vehemently attacked this
view. St. Just, Robespierre, and others declared that
these legal quibbles were an insult to the people's
sovereignty, that the King had already been judged by
virtue of the insurrection, and that nothing remained but
his condemnation and execution. Just at this time an
iron chest was found behind a panel of the Tuileries,
containing damning proofs of Court intrigues with Mira-
beau, and with the " emigrant " aristocrats, also indicating
that the war with Austria had been urged on with a
view to betraying the country and the Revolution. This
naturally gave force to the demand for the immediate
condemnation of Louis as a " traitor to the French and
guilty towards humanity." The agitation was vigorously
sustained in the Jacobins' club and in the sections, and

TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF THE KING. 53

the " moderate" party in the Assembly found itself com-
pelled to give heed to the popular outcry, at least up to
a certain point. The Convention by a considerable
majority decided against the extreme right, who urged
the inviolability of the King, and also against those
Mountainists who pressed for a condemnation without
trial. It was determined to bring the ex-King to the
bar of the Convention. The Act declaratory of the
Royal crimes was then prepared.

Meanwhile Louis was being strictly guarded in the
"Temple," where he had now been confined nearly four
months. He had recently been separated from his family,
the Commune fearing the concerting of plots of escape.
Only one servant was allotted to the whole family.
Louis amused himself at this time with reading Hume's
History of England, especially the parts relating to
Charles I. On the vote of the Convention being declared,
Santerre, the commandant of the National Guard, was
commissioned to conduct Louis to the bar of the National
Assembly. This took place on the llth of December.
The coach passed through drizzling rain, scowling crowds,
and through streets filled with troops. Arrived at the
hall of the Convention, the Mayor of Paris, Chabot, and
the Procureur, Chaumette, who had sat with the King
in the vehicle, delivered him over to Santerre, who had
been in attendance outside. The latter, laying hold of
Louis by the arm, led him to the bar of the Convention.
Barrere, the President, after a moment's delay, greeted
him with the words, " Louis, the French nation accuses
you ; you are now about to hear the act of accusation.
Louis, you may sit down." There were fifty-seven counts
of the indictment relating to acts of despotism, con-
spiracies, secret intrigues, the flight to Varennes, and
what not. On the conclusion of the speech for the pro-
secution, which lasted three hours, Louis was removed
back to his prison. He had demanded legal counsel,
so the Convention decided after some discussion to

54 THE FRENCH RE VOLUTION.

allow his old friend Malesherbes, with two others,
Tronchet and Desdze, to undertake the office. It was the
latter who delivered the speech on the day of the defence,
/which consisted partly in the old arguments anent royal
inviolability and partly in a statement of Louis's services
to the people. " The people," said De'se'ze, " desired that
a disastrous impost should be abolished, and Louis
abolished it ; the people asked for the abolition of servi-
tudes, and Louis abolished them : they demanded reforms,
and he consented to them," &c. &c. The speech con-
cluded with an eloquent peroration calling upon history
to judge the decision of the Convention. The cowardly
Girondins, although it was well-known they had
previously been in favour of the King's life, did not have
the courage at this moment to make a definite stand one
way or the other. They contented themselves with pro-
posing to declare Louis guilty, but to leave the question
of punishment to the primary assemblies of the people.
This proposition, which would probably have meant civil
war, was vehemently opposed by the Mountain and re-
jected, and the Convention, after having unanimously
voted Louis guilty, resolved on considering the question
of punishment. The popular ferment outside the Con-
vention was immense, and sentence of death was loudly
demanded. After forty hours, the final vote was taken,
and Louis condemned to "death without respite," i.e.
within twenty-four hours, by a majority of 26 in an
assembly of 721. In vain did the defenders urge the
smallness of the majority ; the Mountain, which now for
the first time dominated the Convention, showed itself
inexorable.

On Monday, the 21st of January, 1793, the execution
took place. Louis, who had taken leave of his family
the previous day, was awakened at five o'clock. Shortly
after, Santerre arrived to announce that it was the hour
to depart. At the same time the murmur of crowds and
the rumbling of cannon were heard outside. The carriage

TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF THE KING. 55

took upwards of an hour to pass through the streets,
which were lined with military. At length the Place de
la Revolution was reached, and Louis ascended the
scaffold. He was beginning to protest his innocence,
when on the signal of Santerre his voice was drowned by
the beating of drums, the executioner seized him, and
in a moment all was over.

The death of Louis was probably necessary for the
safety of the Republic at the time, but one cannot help
having some pity for one whose worst offences wero
a certain feebleness and good nature which made him
the ready tool of a cruel, unscrupulous, and designing
woman. It should be noted, as regards the decree in the
Convention, that, unlike the Girondins, plucky Tom
Paine, up to the last, manfully voted in the sense in
which he had always spoken, viz., for the life of the
King, and this at the imminent risk of his own. Not-
withstanding this act, a grateful Respectability (which
afterwards tried to exalt the feeble Louis into a hero
and a martyr) has ever since heaped every vile calumny
on poor Paine's memory.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE DEATH STRUGGLE BETWEEN MOUNTAIN AND GIRONDE.

ON the evening of the final vote in the Convention on
the matter of the King, Lepelletier de St. Fargeaux, a
deputy and ex-noble, who had voted with the majority,
was assassinated by an ex-royal guard in a cafe. On
the Thursday following he received a public funeral, his
remains being interred in the Pantheon of great men.
The Convention, Municipality, and all the revolutionary
societies followed in a body. This was the last united
action of the various parties.

The feud between Mountain and Gironde broke out
with renewed fury after the temporary cessation. The
quarrel was intensified out of doors by the old but ever-
increasing lack of the necessaries of life, especially of
bread. The queues at the bakers' shops assumed more
formidable dimensions, developing into mobs and devas-
tating provision shops. Marat had suggested in his
journal that a few of the forestallers who were helping
to keep up the price of bread should be hanged at the
doors of bakers' shops. The crowds, dressed in car-
magnole, or merely ragged, maddened by hunger,
danced the more wildly to the well-known strains,
"Vive le son du canon." Day and night groups of these
revolutionary revellers might be met along the thorough-
fares.

Meanwhile " the sound of the cannon " was going on
with vigour and to the honour and glory of France.
Dumouriez had invaded and conquered the Netherlands,
and the Jacobins and other revolutionary bodies had

MOUNTAIN AND GIRONDE. 57

sent missionaries to the newly-annexed provinces. But
the powers, great and small, finding themselves and the
aristocratic-monarchic order they represented being
beaten all along the line, drew closer together and made
new levies. England, Spain, Italy, Austria, Prussia,
the small German States, hurled new and gigantic
armaments into the breach. The Convention answered
in its turn by a fresh levy of 300,000 men. But Danton
and the Mountain demanded at the same moment that
while external enemies were being fought internal
enemies should not be neglected. They proposed that a
tribunal composed of nine members should judge without
jury and without appeal. The tribunal was instituted
but the jury added. Dumouriez now sustained some re-
verses in his invasion of Holland. He was ordered back
into Belgium, but this did not satisfy the Mountain and
the Jacobins, who had for long looked askance at
Dumouriez as a Girondist partisan, and became now
more convinced than ever that he was working in the
interest of the faction, and that the defeat was due to
treachery. The Girondin ministers and generals were
the objects of the bitterest resentment. So high did the
feeling run that a conspiracy was set on foot to assassi-
nate the leading men of the party in the Convention on
the night of the 10th of March. The conspirators, it is
alleged, actually set out, but the plan miscarried, owing
to its betrayal beforehand to the persons threatened.
Vergniaud, the great Girondin orator, denounced the
plot next day in the Assembly, and the advanced parties
were for a moment checked. But the news of the spread
of the aristocratic revolt in the district of the Loire
known as La Vendee, quickly enabled them to regain
their ascendancy.

The Vendee was a district in which there were
no large towns, and consequently hardly any middle-
class or proletariat. It was a district inhabited
almost exclusively by peasants, priests, and nobles, and

58 THE FRENCH RE VOL £7770. V.

consequently altogether out of touch with the objects of
the Revolution. The peasantry still venerated their old
masters, and hated the new middle-class. The immediate
cause of the fresh outbreak, however, was the new levy.
In Paris the feeling against " Moderates " and half-hearted
friends of the Republic waxed greater than ever. The
new Revolutionary Tribunal redoubled its activity.
Following upon the bad news from the Vende'e came
that of further and still more serious reverses in Belgium
on the part of Dumouriez, and, what was worse, indis-
putable evidence of intrigues with the Austrians to re-
establish the monarchy in the person of the Due de
Chartres, the young son of Phillipe d'Orleans Egalite' (the
King's cousin and a member of the Mountain party).
This Due de Chartres, at that time a lieutenant of
Dumouriez, became subsequently " Louis Philippe, King
of the French." Dumouriez almost immediately after
openly proclaimed his intention of marching upon Paris
to subdue the Revolution. But he did not succeed any
better than Lafayette, his predecessor in the same course.
His troops, although attached to him personally, hesi-
tated at treachery to the Republic. The same with the
officers. The Convention was energetic ; it sent four
commissioners, among them the Minister of War, to
summon the traitor-general to the bar of the Convention.
He not only refused to come, but handed over the com-
missioners as hostages to the Austrians. After a further
fruitless attempt to seduce the army he sought refuge
with the Due de Chartres and a few other officers in the
Austrian camp, and from this time history knows him no
more. Dumouriez's defection drove the last nail into the
^/coffin of the Girondist power. There is a well-known
proverb that those whom the gods would destroy they
first make mad. This was certainly exemplified in the
present case. For the Girondins had already, before
their General Dumouriez's escape had become known,
alienated the leading Moimtainist who had been in

MOUNTAIN AND GIRONDE. 59

favour of reconciliation between the parties — Danton, to
wit — by unsubstantiated insinuations. And now, when
Dumouriez's desertion had been for days past a topic of
discussion and declamation amongst the Paris sections,
they succeeded amid scenes of violent disorder in the
Convention in getting a decree of indictment launched
against Marat on the ground of the paragraph about
the forestallers. The People's Friend was accordingly
brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal, the Giron-
dists vainly attempting to pack the jury. After a trial
lasting two days, he was acquitted amid the acclamations
of the audience, and carried in triumph by the populace
into the hall of the Convention. Girondism was hence-
forth plainly a lost cause so far as peaceful and legal
action was concerned. Its only hope lay in an insurrec-
tion of the departments. This also, as we shall see, was
destined to failure. Meanwhile Custine, Dampiere, and
other generals were sent to reorganise the armies of
Dumouriez, but for the next few weeks the main atten-
tion of all patriots was directed to one object — the
destruction of the Girondist faction.

CHAPTER XIV.

CONCERNING MATTERS ECONOMIC.

AMID all this contention the Mountain, aided by econo-
mic pressure, succeeded in forcing through some important
administrative, and two great economic measures. In
addition to the " Revolutionary Tribunal," two powerful
Committees were established which, in the end, practically
assumed all the executive functions of a dictatorial
ministr}^ These were the "Committee of General Se-
curity," consisting of twenty-one members, and the
" Committee of Public Safety," consisting of nine mem-
bers, the ministers themselves being subject to these Com-
mittees. The economic measures referred to were, first, the
Law of maximum, by means of which, at a stroke, the
st irvation and misery previously existing were allayed.
The law of maximum enacted a fixed price for bread-
stuffs, above which it was penal to sell them. To avert
the possibility of the dealers refusing to sell at all, it was
made compulsory upon them to do so. They were, more-
over, obliged to furnish accurate accounts of their stock,
which could, if desirable, be peremptorily " checked " by
the authorities. The law was subsequently extended to
all the necessaries of life. The other economic measure
forced through the Convention by the Jacobins and the
Mountain was a progressive income-tax on an ascending
scale. In addition to these there was a forced loan of a
milliard for war purposes levied on the wealthy classes.
The Girondists and the Plain, of course, shrieked and
kicked at these glaring infringements of the " laws " of
political economy and the rights of property : but the

CONCERNING MATTERS ECONOMIC. 61

middle-class factions, though nominally dominant, were
not really so, and were hence unable to resist the force of
the popular demand for decisive steps in the direction of
greater economic equality.

The law of maximum and the progressive income-tax
are the only two measures of a directly Socialistic tend-
ency which have ever been practically applied, and they
were applied with complete success. And yet it is strange
that at least the first of these measures, when proposed
now-a-days, is viewed by many Socialists with indiffer-
ence, not to say suspicion. It only shows how, in econo-
mics, as in other things, the rags of old superstitions un-
consciously survive in us. Those who have triumphed
over the old-fashioned bourgeois fallacies of the wicked-
ness and inutility of interfering with the sacred laws of
political economy by direct legislative interference with
the freedom of production, still wince at the notion of
direct legislative interference with freedom (so-called) of
exchange. An eight-hour law is an excellent thing, but
a maximum, by which the eight-hour workman is pro-
tected from the extortions of monopoly and the power of
industrial and commercial capital to raise prices, guard-
ing itself against the effects of competition by " rings "
and "corners" — this is a very doubtful thing indeed!
In the present day, of course, a law of maximum would
be of very little use unless supplemented by a law of
minimum — i.e., a law fixing a minimum wage — and, we
may add, parenthetically, the eight hours working day
would, in all probability, also prove itself a questionable
boon if unaccompanied by both these provisos. But in
France at the end of the last century it was not so. The
petite Industrie prevailed everywhere except in the large
towns, where the workshop system had obtained a foot-
ing, though even there without having by any means
entirely supplanted the smaller production. The law of
maximum alone was therefore sufficient to meet all
requirements. Scarcity and want there was still, but it

62 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

was a scarcity and want due, for the most part, to other
than remediable social conditions. Bad harvests, the de-
vastations of foreign invasion and civil war, had reduced
France to the lowest ebb. The law of maximum saved
it. With the two francs a day which was voted at a
subsequent period as the allowance of every attendant
at the primary assemblies of the sections or wardships,
of which there were 44,000 in all France, the problem of
the unemployed was solved for the nonce. The number
of the unemployed in all trades ministering to the lux-
uries of the rich may be imagined, and a measure of this
kind was absolutely essential.

The net result of the interference by the Convention
with the " Laws of Political Economy " is well expressed
by Carlyle, where he declares that " there is no
period to be met with in which the general 25,000,000 of
France suffered less than in this period, which they name
reign of terror." Time was as yet not ripe for the great
constructive movement of modern Socialism, and hence
the merely remedial treatment here explained was all
that could even be attempted. The great fact to be
noted is that, for the first time in history, the cry for
material and social equality as opposed to mere political
and legal equality, became definitely articulate. That
cry has often enough since been smothered, but has al-
ways made itself heard again at short intervals. The
party of the Mountain and the Jacobins, the Baboeuf
conspiracy, the Chartist movement, the days of June,
1848, the Commune of 1871, are all so many stages in
the awakening of the Proletariat to the full consciousness
of itself which it attains in modern Socialism.

CHAPTER XV.

THE FALL OF THE GIUONDE.

APART from the laws referred to in the last chapter,
which were with difficulty forced through the Legislature
by the Mountain, the six weeks which elapsed between
the acquittal of Marat and the 2nd of June, the day of
the extinction of the Girondist power, were fruitful in
^/nothing but a progressive mutual exacerbation of the
two parties. Petitions and deputations began to pour in
praying for the expulsion and even condemnation of
some twenty-two of the leading Girondists. On the
10th of May the Convention shifted its quarters from the
old Riding School to the Tuileries. The avenues to the
new Convention hall were continually blocked by sans-
culottes (the breech less), the name given to the party of
the people since the emeute of the 21st of June, 1792,
when among other emblems a pair of black breeches had
been paraded in token of the want of these commodities
by the working-classes of France. At last the Girondins
made up their minds for a dashing stroke. Guadet
suddenly moved the immediate suppression of the
Commune, its place to be filled ad interim by the
presidents of the sections, the transference of the
legislation to Bourges with the smallest possible delay, and
the despatch of the decree into the provinces by ^expresses.
The Mountain was taken unawares, and it is .possible, if
the Girondists had had the courage to proceed to action
immediately, they might have been successful. But this
they did not dare do in face of the urgency of the

64 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

situation on the frontier, well knowing that civil war
would be the outcome. Indeed, it is doubtful whether
they could have in any case obtained a majority in the
Assembly under the circumstances. Barre're proposed,
as a compromise, the establishment of a commission of
twelve members to enquire into the conduct of the
municipality, to search out the plots of the Jacobins,
and to arrest suspected persons. The proposition was
accepted, and the commission established. Under the
pretence of having discovered a new conspiracy it
immediately proceeded to imprison several prominent
persons, among them being the secretary of the Com-
mune, Hubert, editor of the Pere Duchesne newspaper.
This at once excited immense popular indignation.
Deputation followed deputation demanding Hebert's
release. The Commune, the Mountainist mayor, Pache,
at its head, placed itself in permanent connection with
the committees of the sections, which, together with the
clubs of the Jacobins and Cordeliers, declared themselves
in permanent session.

On the 27th of May, the rising of Paris against the
Convention began. The Commune presented itself before
the Convention in a body, demanding the release of Hebert,
its chief secretary, and the suppression of the Girondist
Commission. Deputies from the sections followed, all
calling for its suppression, and some for the arrest of^ts
members. The Girondist president, Isnard, met these
demands with the threat that the departments should be
raised and Paris annihilated, so that " the wayfarer would
•have to enquire on which side of the Seine Paris had
stood," a reply which became the signal for a general
revolt of the Mountain.

The hall was now the scene of violent confusion, in
which swords and pistols were drawn, and during which
the crowd poured in, the upshot being that Isnard was
compelled to leave the chair and make way for the
Mountainist and friend of Danton, Herault de Sechelles.

THE FALL OF THE GIRONDE. 65

Herault at once replied, conceding the demands of the
petitioners.

The Mountain had won the day ; Hebert's arrest was
annulled, and the commission suppressed amid the
acclamation of the populace. The next day the Girondists,
with suicidal folly, succeeded by a scratch majority in
re-establishing the Commission on the ground that the
proceedings of the previous day had been irregular. A
veritable yell of indignation from clubs, sections, and
municipality greeted this resolution. Kobespierre,
Dan ton, Marat, Chaumette, and Pache constituted them-
selves into an informal committee to organise anew the
movement. On the 30th, the clubs and sections publicly
declared themselves in a state of insurrection, their
delegates, to the number of ninty-six, entering the Hotel
de Ville, and as a matter of form annulling the muni-
cipality (as a legally constituted body), but immediately
reinstating its members in their functions under in-
surrectionary auspices. Mayor Pache was sent to report
the matter to the Convention, while Henriot, the new
commandant of the National Guard, called upon the
sections to be ready for action at any moment, the
sansculottes to be allowed two francs a-day so long as
they remained under orders. Early the following morn-
ing, the 31st, the tocsin was rung and the generate beat,
and the armed sections were assembled and marched
upon the Tuileries.

The signal for the insurrection was an alarm cannon
which was fired just as Mayor Pache was making his
report, and, it must be admitted, trying to hoodwink the
legislature with the pretence that he was not privy to
the proceedings. The consternation in the assembly at
the ominous sound was general. Danton rushed to the
tribune to demand anew the suppression of the Com-
mission. All the leading Mountainists did the same.
The majority still hesitated. Deputations now began to
arrive thick and fast, till all the gangways were blocked

66 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

up by excited crowds. The suppression of the Com-
mission and the arrest of its members, and of the other
leading Girondists, was loudly demanded on all sides.
Various propositions were being discussed when the
report spread that the Tuileries was surrounded by
armed forces and the Convention no longer free. Even
some members of the Mountain winced at this " outrage "
on the " national sovereignty." At length it was decided
that the Assembly should march out in a body and con-
front the insurgents. This was done, Herault de
Se'chelles leading the way. They were met by Henriot
on horseback at the head of the armed bands, brandishing
a sabre. " The people want not phrases," he said, " but
the arrest of twenty-two traitors."

Two cannons were immediately pointed straight at the
Convention, which prudently retired. All the other exits
from the Tuileries Gardens were found to bristle equally
with pikes and sabres, so there was nothing for it but to
go back again into the hall. The popular demands were
no longer opposed. Marat, who had been the life and
soul of the whole movement throughout, now dictated
the names of the proscribed and the form of the resolu-
tion, from the tribune. All the leading Girondins,
including the twelve forming the Commission, were
placed under arrest. Upon the result being known out-
side, the insurgents quickly dispersed. Thus perished
Girondism. Ever since the 10th of August, the nominal
power in the State had been in the hands of the Girondist
party; although, as we have seen, the real power was very
far from being so. Henceforth they were a proscribed
faction, whose members at last thought themselves lucky
if they could find a corner of France in which to conceal
themselves.

CHAPTER XVI

THE SANSCULOTTE IN POWER.

THE Girondists, driven successively from the Munici-
pality, the Jacobins' Club, the Ministry, and finally from
the Convention, now played out their last card, the
attempt to raise the Provinces, which were largely with
them. Never was the position of France more desperate
than at this moment. " La Vendee " in open and hither-
to successful insurrection on one side, the coalition of
Europe again pouring in its levies on three sides, and a
Girondist insurrection brewing at several points in the
interior. The Girondists, after their defeat in Paris,
tried to rally at Caen, in Normandy, which town became
the head-quarters of the conspiracy as long as it lasted.
Negotiations were entered into with General Wimpfen
and a Royalist, one Comte Puisaye. Somehow, in spite
of the sympathy of the departments, especially the large
middle-class towns, the project failed completely as a
general movement, partly owing to mismanagement,
want of concert and Royalist intrigues, which alienated
many otherwise sympathetic, partly to the presence of
the foreign invader, and partly to the vigorous action
of the leaders of the Revolution in Paris. The provinces
hesitated, the insurgents dispersed, a few towns in the
south only remaining to the Girondins. * The insurrection
did not miscarry for want of tall talk, it is certain, for
the Girondins as usual were eloquent in threats couched
in well-rounded periods.

While this was going on a young woman of " good "

68 THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION.

family in Caen, who had been largely in the society of
Girondins, and had heard much talk of Marat as the
leader of the recent movement, without stating her in-
tention to anybody, travelled up to Paris by diligence,
and obtaining an interview with the popular leader
under the pretext of furnishing information of the con-
spiracy at Caen, murdered him. Poor Marat, who was
almost dying at the time, was in a bath, his helpless
condition rendering him an easy prey to the knife of
his dastardly assassin. A few sous only were found in
his possession.

Thus perished the first great vindicator of the rights
of the modern Proletariat, a truly single-minded champion
of the oppressed. Of average intellect merely, it is
Marat's unique and titanic force of character which must
make him immortal in history.

Charlotte Corday was tried and condemned before the
revolutionary tribunal, maintaining a theatrical demean-
our to the last. She was guillotined on the 17th of July,
three days after the assassination. A poor fool, a
native of Mainz, Adam Lutz by name, went crazy over
her.

The death of the " people's friend " caused a veritable
panic in the ranks of the revolutionary party. No
" patriot " was without some token of him. He was
invoked in every revolutionary function, and his bust
was crowned in all public assemblies. The Convention
unanimously granted him the honours of the Pantheon.
The fugitive Girondins now found their position harder
than ever. They had to fly from Caen before the
emissaries of the Mountain. Jacobin commissioners
were scouring the country up and down, the revolu-
tionary power in Paris having developed an almost
superhuman activity. The only places where the insur-
rection still flickered on was in Lyons, Marseilles, and
Bordeaux, cities which had compromised themselves too
far, to hope for forgiveness from the Convention, and

THE SANSCULOTTE IN POWER. 69

which (notably Lyons) were destined before long to feel
the heavy hand of Sansculottic vengeance.

Yet notwithstanding the virtual collapse of the Giron-
dist rebellion the state of affairs had hardly improved.
The armies, now again everywhere on the defensive, were
disorganised and dispirited. Things still seemed utterly
hopeless. If France was to be saved it could only be by
a dead lift. The revolutionary power in Paris now con-
sisted of the Convention (or rather the Mountain, which
dominated the whole assembly), the two committees (of
General Security and of Public Safety), the Commune,
or Municipality, and, lastly, the clubs of the Jacobins
and Cordeliers, especially the former, whose deliberations
were hardly second in importance to those of the Con-
vention. The primary assemblies of the forty-eight
sections, in which every citizen was free to express his
opinion, but which were almost entirely appropriated by
the Sansculottes, together with the " revolutionary com-
mittees " attached to them, were also a considerable
factor in public affairs.

This agglomeration of popular forces constituted the
power which had to raise France and the Revolution out
of the abyss into which they had sunk. The consolida-
tion of the new government was the first thing to be
attempted. The long-talked-oE Constitution was next
put in hand, B^muJJLde__Secheiles being entrusted with
the task of drawing it up! This celebrated Constitution
of '93, for long regarded as the sheet-anchor of Sans-
culottism, is probably the most thoroughgoing scheme
of pure democracy ever devised. It not only formally
recognised the people as the sole primary source of power,
but it delegated the exercise of that power directly to
them. Every measure was to be submitted to the
primary assemblies of the " sections," of which there
were forty-four thousand in'all France. The magistrates
were to be re-elected at the shortest possible intervals by
simple majority. The central legislature was to be re-
newed annually, consisting of delegates from the primary

70 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

assemblies, who were to be furnished with imperative
mandates.

This Constitution passed the Convention, and was
accepted by a large majority of the " sections " through-
out France. The representatives of the said forty-four
thousand wardships, when they came to the Convention,
demanded, in face of the existing emergency, " the arrest
of all suspected persons and a general rising of the
people." Danton, in a vigorous speech, moved that the
commissioners of the primary assemblies should be in-
structed to report the state of arms, provisions, and
ammunition, and to raise a levy of four hundred thousand
men, and that the Convention should take the oath of
death or victory. This was carried unanimously. A
few days after, Barrere, in the name of the Committees,
proposed still more decisive measures. All the male
population, from eighteen to forty, were placed under
arms, and new requisitions were made. Soon there were
forty armies, comprising in all 1,200,000 men. The
Committee of Public Safety, with Carnot (grandfather
of the present President of the French Republic) as chief
of the War Department, were untiring in their energies
in organising the defence. Forty sous a day was enacted
as the allowance of every Sectionist. The famous Law
of Suspects was passed, and wholesale arrests were made
of persons thought to be of Girondist or Royalist sym-
pathies. The middle-classes fared now as badly as the •
aristocracy had previously. The reign of terror had
begun, necessitated by the same exigencies as the Sep-
tember massacres — imminent foreign invasion combined
with domestic treachery. As before, the moment decisive
action was taken, matters began to mend on all sides,
for though Toulon was in the hand? of the English, Mar-
seilles and Bordeaux were taken from the Girondin
insurgents^ and Lyons beseiged. The Constitution,
although carried, was suspended in face of the emergency,
and, as a matter of fact, was never put into force.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE DICTATOKSHIP OF THE COMMUNE.

THE Revolutionary power in Paris, as we have said, was
nominally divided between the Commune, at the head of
which were Hubert and Chaumette, the two committees,
which included Robespierre, Danton, Carnot, &c., the
Convention, and the popular clubs, whose influence,
though unofficial and indirect, was in no respect less
than that of the representative assembly itself. During
the period from August 10th, 1792, to the opening of the
Convention (21st Sept.), the chief centre of power lay
with the Commune led by Danton; from the 21st of
September to the 2nd of June, the Convention, as a body,
was more or less dominant ; in the period from the 2nd
of June, 1793, to the end of the year, power resided
mainly in the Commune, led by the Hebertists ; thence-
forward to the 27th of July, 1794 (the fall of Robe-
spierre), it was the committees, especially the Committee
of Public Safety, which practically dictated to France.
The Jacobins' Club meanwhile reflected for the most
part the attitude of the dominant Parisian opinion, and
of the governing body. It underwent several epurations,
or purifications, in the course of the revolutionary period,
on which occasions a batch of members, whose views
were out of accord with the prevalent feeling of the
hour, would be expelled.

Almost simultaneously with the collapse of the Giron-
dist rising and the entry of the Convention troops into
the cities of the south, the tide began to turn in La
Vendee ; the attempt of the insurgents to take Nantes
failed, and though the insurrection lingered on for some
time longer it never again became formidable. The
revolutionary armies, indeed, were nearly everywhere

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

victorious under the new generals, Moreau, Hoche,
Pichegru, Jourdan, Kellerrnann, &c. The Prussians and
Austrians, under the command of the Prince of Coburg,
were dislodged from their vantage-ground in the east ;
the Spaniards driven back in the south, and the English
and Hanoverians defeated in the north. Thus a second
time was France, by a stupendous dead-lift effort, saved
from imminent ruin by the raw levies of the Revolution.

The victories of Dumouriez in '92 were repeated on a
grander scale in the great campaign, which the genius of
Carnot " organised" in '93 and '94. The Revolution now
was answering the coalition in the spirit of Danton's
defiant menace "the combined kings threatens us, we
hurl at their feet as guage of battle the head of a king."
France was converted into one vast camp. But for
many months yet the French were not destined to feel
themselves "out of the wood." The dread of possible
reverses followed by invasion and political extinction
was ever before their eyes. And hence it was not till
the end of July, '94, that the reaction against the
" Terror " had gathered strength enough to overthrow
the system itself. So long as danger threatened from
without, public opinion tolerated the guillotine, and at the
period at which we have arrived, the great activity of
that famous instrument began. The " law of the suspect,"
which enabled the committes of the sections to arrest
all suspected persons and incarcerate them prior to their
being brought before the revolutionary tribunal, speedily
filled the prisons to overflowing. After conviction and
death the property of the executed was confiscated to
the State.

The Commune was the virtual head of the re-
volutionary committees of the sections in the pro-
vinces as well as in Paris. It had a special force
of 7,000 men, commanded by Ronsin, the dramatist,
and called the " Revolutionary Army," under its
orders, besides flying columns in its pay scouring

THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE COMMUNE. 73

different parts of the country. The Commune may be
taken as the representative in the Revolution of the pro-
letarian interest, pure and simple. Though the circum-
stances of the time caused it to be, unhappily, an instrument
of the Terror,its activity was by no means confined to this.
The Commune made it pretty soon evident than in its
eyes the existence of a commercial middle-class was
quite as incompatible with the welfare of the people as
that of an aristocracy.

Economical equality was the avowed end of the
Revolution for the Commune. Hebert and Chaumette,
nevertheless, busied themselves with various projects of
a palliative character, such as hospital and prison reform.
They attempted to introduce primary and secular educa-
tion into every village in France. The law of maximum
(and compulsory sale) was at their suggestion enlarged
in scope, being applied to almost all articles of common
consumption. Forestalling was forbidden under the
heaviest penalties. A maximum was even applied to
wages at this time, a proceeding calculated in a society
not yet out of the small production to make considerable
havoc with what some people call the " rent of ability,"
though it was enacted solely with a view to government
employment for the national defence. The Bourse was
closed. Financial and commercial syndicates were dis-
solved. The paper money, or assignats, were made
compulsory tender at their nominal value.

On the oth of October the new Republican calendar,
the joint work of the astronomer Romme, who furnished
the calculations, and the clever feuilletonist, Fabre d'Eg-
lantine, who supplied the poetical nomenclature, came
into operation. The new era was to date from the
declaration of the Republic, the 21st of September, 1792,
so that the months do not coincide with those of the
ordinary calendar. The three autumn months were
Vencle'miaire, or the vintage month, Bruwwdre, or the
foggy month, and Frimaire, or the frosty month ; the

74 THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION.

three winter months, Nivose, or the snowy month,
Pluviose, or the rainy month, and Ventose, or the windy
month ; the three spring months, Germinal, or the
budding month, Forkal, or the flowery month, and Prai-
rial, or the meadowy month ; and the three summer
months, Messidor, or the reaping month, Thermidor, or
the heating month, and Fructidor, or the fruiting month.
The week of seven days was abolished and decades or
periods of ten days instituted instead.

But the work for which the Commune is most famous
is the establishment of the new Cultus — the Worship of
Reason. The Hebertists, as the party of the Commune
were now called, and among whom was Anacharsis Clootz,
were firmly convinced that deliverance from the dogmas of
supernatural religion was the necessary complement of
deliverance from the thraldom of privilege and wealth.
In accordance with 18th century habits of thought,
especially in France with its classicism, the idea naturally
suggested itself of initiating a worship of Reason as
personified, on the ruins of God, Christ, and the Virgin.
For some time past, stimulated by the missionaries of
the Commune, numbers of priests had been sending in their
demissions, declaring they would no longer preach a lie,
and that Liberty and the public welfare were their only
gods. The church plate in every part of France was melted
down for patriotic uses, vestments, bibles, and brevia-
ries made bonfires, to the accompaniment of the " Car-
magnole." Early in November Gobel, the Archbishop of
Paris, together with his chapter, entered the Convention
hall to publicly renounce the Christian faith. Christian
rites and worship were now proscribed, and a Festival
of Reason was decreed by the Commune at the instance
of Chaumette. A few days later, and a procession of
citizens and citizenesses, in priestly vestments, and other
fantastic costumes, followed by mules and barrows laden
with church furniture, defiled into the Convention, and
after chanting strophes to Reason, proceeded to dance

THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE COMMUNE. 75

the " Carmagnole," many of the legislators taking part.
Later on the same day, Procureur Chaumette, at the
head of the Commune and the presidents of sections,
<s arrived bearing in their midst, on a palaquin, Mdlle.
Candeille, the danseuse, in bonnet rouge and blue mantle,
garlanded with oak as the Goddess of Reason. The
bulk of the Convention then rose, and after giving the
goddess the formal kiss, proceeded in a body to Notre
Dame, where the new worship was inaugurated amid
music, tricolour, and virgins dressed in white. A similar
ceremony with other goddesses took place at St. Eustache,
and other of the principal churches of Paris. Commis-
sioners soon established the new worship throughout the
length and breadth of French territory, from Antwerp
, in the north to Marseilles in the south. In place of the
Mass the old cathedrals re-echoed to strophes in honour
of Reason and in praise of " Liberty, Equality, and Fra-
ternity." Over the churchyards appeared the device,
" Death is an eternal sleep." Old things hai rassed
away, and all things had become new. It should be
said that the " Goddess of Reason " was never intended to
be more than a symbol, and not as has been sometimes
represented, herself an object of worship. Viewed in its
true light, the idea, if somewhat pedantic was not
unpleasing.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE TERROR.

BY means of its courageous contempt for the so-called
laws of political economy, its wholesale requisitions and
the compulsion exercised on all traders and farmers, with
the aid of its " revolutionary army," to sell at the maxi-
mum price, the fearful misery occasioned by the circum-
stances of the time was kept under to a considerable
extent by the Commune. The revolutionary committees
established in every section of France, the ambulatory
deputies who watched the provinces and were present
with the military forces, and last, but not least, the army
of the Commune under General Ronsin, nevertheless had
hard work to prevent the law of maximum from being
violated. The Commune now granted a free allowance
of bread for each family. Arrests in Paris and the pro-
vinces went on apace. By the end of October 3,000

— persons were in the prisons of Paris alone, the revolu-
tionary committees formed in every section having, as
already stated, power to arrest all persons suspected of
reactionary tendencies.

"*!S On the 14th of October the queen, Marie Antoinette,
was brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal and con-
victed, after two days' hearing, on overwhelming evidence,
of the basest treachery towards France, and of the most
sanguinary intentions with regard to Paris. It was, in-
deed, high time that this atrocious woman met her de-
serts. When the country was at the lowest depths of

^ misery some years before the outbreak of the Revolution,
all this abandoned wretch could think of was squandering

THE TERROR. 77

fabulous sums of the nation's wealth, in conjunction with
her friend, the Court head prostitute and procuress, the
Princess de Lamballe (killed in the September massacres),
on jewels, balls, and sinecures for her paramours. If
anyone ventured to call attention to some flagrant abuse
in her presence, he was invariably silenced with the
reply, " Yes, but we must amuse ourselves " ( " Oui, mais

/ il taut s'amuser)." It was only after her amusements had
been curtailed by the utter collapse of the finances, a
consummation to which she had contributed so largely by
her criminal extravagances, that she began to interest
herself in public affairs. Her aim was then to get back
the means for her debaucheries, and when the Revolution
broke out and affairs looked less and less productive of
diamond necklaces, &c., her hatred against the new
regime which had deprived her of those things naturally
knew no bounds, and henceforth her one hope was a
foreign invasion, which would quench the Revolution in
the blood of France, and place the French people once
more in her power. As for poor, feeble, foolish Louis,
he was completely in the toils of this noxious reptile.1
Many who looked on at the tumbril conveying her to
execution must have been inclined to think that the
guillotine was too good for the foul Autrichienne.

She was not without a certain histrionic ability, and
when before the tribunal played out her " queenly figure "
in a manner which showed that she might have gained

/ an honest living in transpontine melodrama. Much in-
dignation has been expended on the charge of misconduct
towards her son, the little dauphin, which Hebert brought
against her. It is sufficient here to state that there are
extant documents which show that the charge was not

1 The real character of Maria Antoinette, apart from the lies of
Royalist historians, may be seen from her correspondence with
Maria-Theresa, and of the latter with the Comte Mercy D'Argenteau.
A good digest of it is given in M. Georges Avenel's essay, "La
Vrai Marie Antoinette."

78 THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION.

made without very good grounds, although in the nature
of things it could not be certainly proved. The fact is,
it is a mistake to apply the ordinary canons of maternity
to a creature like Marie Antoinette. She was altogether

y an obscene abortion of the corrupt court-life of the 18th
century, the like of which, let us hope, may never be seen
again.

Apropos of the dauphin, it is necessary to caution our
readers against the lies of the reaction anent his treat-
ment, and especially the foul calumnies against the
young shoemaker, Simon, in whose care he was placed.
All the contemporary evidence goes to show that the
poor child received every consideration and kindness, but
that having inherited a scrofulous or syphillitic con-
stitution from both parents, which was further weakened
in ways unnecessary to go into, it was impossible to rear
him, that in spite of every care he died in the Temple

^ the following year.

rthi the 24th of October the 22 Girondists were brought
to trial. They were convicted after five days' proceed-
ings, and guillotined on the sixth. Valaze, one of
their number, stabbed himself to death with a dagger on
hearing the sentence, but his body was nevertheless sent
to be guillotined with the rest. They embraced each other
on arriving at the "Place de la Revolution," and died
singing the " Marseillaise." Proofs of their complicity in
the insurrection of the departments were complete.

v They had played for high stakes and lost. Seventy-

^"three other Girondist deputies had been for some time
under lock and key, having been compromised in some
papers found at the house of a deputy whom Charlotte
Corday had visited on her first arrival in Paris. With

~~~the execution of the twenty-two, however, Girondism, as
a distinct party, finally disappears from history. The
Girondins, it may here be mentioned, were largely under
the influence of Voltaire, just as the Mountain as a party
was chiefly under the influence of Rousseau.

THE TERROR. 79

Meanwhile Lyons, the last stronghold of Royalism and
Girondism, had fallen, and Toulon had been recovered
from the English, to whom it had been surrendered.
Both towns were visited with a fearful vengeance.
Collot d'Herbois, who was a member both of the Com-
mune and of the Committee of Public Safety, acting in
conjunction with Couthon, the disciple of Robespierre,
ordered wholesale massacres of the inhabitants of
the former city in his capacity of Commissioner.
Billaud-Varennes, a colleague of Collot's, was also a lead-
ing agent of the terror. Lebon worked the guillotine at ^
Arras. Freron the Dantonist made his holocausts at x
Marseilles and Toulouse, and Tallien at Bordeaux.
At Nantes, Carrier, another Commissioner, inaugurated ^
his horrible Noyades, or drownings, in which those v-
suspected of Royalism or Moderatism were placed in
boats with false bottoms and drowned in the Loire. In
some of these cases a man and woman were tied together'1""
naked. This was called "Republican marriage." The
Revolutionary Commissioners or Pro-Consuls in some
cases travelled from town to town carrying a guillotine
with them. All these things were very infamous, it will
be said, and so they were. But they were not any
worse, if so bad, as the acts of more than one i espectable
government in '48, of the Czar in Poland in 'C3, or of /
the Versaillists in Paris in 71, events which the middle- "
classes have complacently swallowed without indigna-
tion!

CHAPTER XIX.

THE FALL OF THE H^BERTISTS.

AFTER the 10th of August and the events that arose out
of it of which he was the heart and soul, Danton had
proved something of a failure. His peace negociations
with England had led to nothing, his attempts at recon-
ciliation between Mountain and Gironde had likewise
proved abortive ; he had played no important part since
the 2nd of June in the Convention itself, and finally
retired with his young wife for some weeks in disgust
to his native town of Arcis sur Aube, whence he returned
some time after to join his friend Camille Desmoulins in
attacking the system of the terror. It should be explained
that the Cordeliers' Club, of which Danton had formerly
been the head, had been reconstituted some time since, and
was now entirely composed of Hdbertists. Camille, at the
beginning of December, started a new journal called "The
Old Cordelier," which attacked the Terrorists, and
especially the Commune, with bitter sarcasm. At first
Robespierre approved of the sentiments there expressed,
and even looked over and corrected the proofs of the
first numbers. It pleased him that the Hebertists were
sharply attacked. For the pedantic Rousseauite prig ,/
Robespierre was mortally offended with the atheism of
the party of the Commune, and had recently been de-
livering violent harangues against the worship of Reason,
at the Jacobins' Club. Robespierre, who was ambitious
being the Washington of France, and had set his mind
upon getting himself recognised by the powers, wished
to pose before them as the moderate man opposed to
excesses of every description, and thereby to win them
over. There was also an old -standing jealousy on
the part of the Committee of Public Safety with
the Commune on account of the influence the latter
wielded with the aid of its "revolutionary army."

THE PALL OF THE HEBERT1STS. 81

Nevertheless, Robespierre's two colleagues on the com-
mittee, Billaud Varennes and Collot D'Herbois, were
enraged at the idea of even mitigating the " Terror," and
the notion found but little support generally. Robe-
spierre, whose influence was now immense, became sud-
• denly alarmed lest he should be tarred with moderation,
and hence a coolness sprang up between him and his
friend Camille arid the other Dantonists.

Meanwhile the guillotine was working steadily every
day, and some noteworthy heads were falling or had lately
fallen. Among them we may notice Philippe D'Orleans
Egalite, the ex-member of the Mountain and the king's
cousin, arrested at the time Dumouriez's intrigues with
his son became known, and decreed accused along with
the Girondins, but not convicted till later. In November,
Madame Koland was also put on her trial. She was
condemned, and went to the Place de'la Revolution by
the side of a poor printer, whom she endeavoured to
console. Arrived there, she asked for paper and ink to
write down "the strange thoughts that were arising
within her." Madame Roland was a remarkable woman,
but even apart from her politics, one is repelled by her
perpetual pedantry and posing, and still more by her
,/ venomous hatred and malignant calumnies against her
opponents. She was an intrigueuse of the first rank,
and practically led the tactics of the Girondist party.

Bailly, the first mayor of Paris under the new regime,
him of the red flag of the Champ de Mars, in July, 1791,
was one of the executed. Barnard, the Constitutionalist
leader in the Constituent Assembly, also suffered. The
corpse of the Girondist, Pe'tion, who succeeded Bailly in
the mayoralty of Paris, was found about this time in a
wood near St. Emilion, partly devoured by wolves. The
heads of ex-ministers and generals were falling by the score.

But to return to the contest of parties in the govern-
ment. Put in a few words, the matter stood as follows :
on one side were the Hebertists, representing the Com-
mune and the Terror; on the opposite were the Dan-

82 THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION.

tonists, representing to a large extent the Convention
party, and hostile now to both the Commune and the
Terror, wishing to see the Constitution established and
the Convention all powerful. Between the two were
the committees, that of " public safety " being the domi-
nant one. The committee-men were mostly hostile to the
power of the Commune, which stood in their way, but
were determined to maintain the system of the Terror,
and not to let the Convention override their authority.

Robespierre, after some hesitation, ranged himself on
the side of his committee alike against the Dantonists,
with whom he had, up till now, been friendly, and the
Hebertists, to whom he had been always more or less
hostile. The struggle lasted between three and four
months, and many were the stormy meetings of Jacobins,
Cordeliers, and "sections," anent this death-drama between
the Sansculottes, the Dantonists, and the committee-men.y
Since the reconstitution of the Committee of Public
Safety in July, when Billaud and Collot came into
it, the Dantonists had had no influence on either of the
committees. The attack on the Hebertists was begun
by the suppression of the revolutionary armies in the
provinces, and a decree forbidding the sending of agents
into the provinces by the Commune, and this was followed
up inside and outside the Convention by concerted attacks
on every action of the Commune from the Dantonists, the
Mountain, and from the Committees. The Jacobins'
Club continued to be the battle-ground between Robe-
spierre and the Hebertists. There Robespierre thundered
nightly against atheistic intolerance, said that Atheism
was aristocratic, on the ground that certain aristocrats
had been Atheists, omitting to recognise the fact that
they wished to retain Atheism and Freethought as an
exclusive privilege of their class. He maundered about ^
the necessity of a Supreme Being as the avenger of in-
jured innocence, and much more of a similar kind.

At last the compact between Robespierre and his fellow-
committee-men, Billaud and Collot, was struck. They were

THE FALL OF THE HEBERTISTS. 83

to surrender their old friends the Hebertists, while he was
to surrender the Dantonists. A projected insurrection
inaugurated by the " section " called " Marat," in favour
of the Hebertists, miscarried, owing to the failure to
take action at the right moment. Accordingly Hebert,
Ronsin, Vincent, Clootz, Momoro, and others, already
expelled from the Jacobins' Club, were arrested, and after
a mock trial, in which they were accused of taking
money from the English Government to discredit the
Republic by their excesses, were, on 24th March, 1794,
sent to the guillotine. Poor Chaumette's turn came a
few days later.

A week afterwards Danton, who had come back to
Paris at the earnest solicitation of his friends, and had
sought ineffectually to compromise matters with Robe-
spierre, was sent before the revolutionary tribunal. This
was Robespierre's great coup. Danton's personality, com-
bined with his oratory, was nearly securing his acquittal,
when Robespierre got a special law hurried through the
Convention, which closed his mouth, and he, too, went
his way in company with his friends Camille Desmoulins,
Phillipeaux, Herault, De Sechelles, and others, to the
Place de la Revolution. Thus was the Revolution, indeed,
.like Saturn, devouring its own children.

When we first came across Robespierre, he was, although
a prig, and a repulsive prig at that, apparently actuated
by as much honesty of purpose as any other leader. His
services to the Revolution at all the great crises were
real. But the germ of ambition and personal self-seeking,
which was always observable, grew with the progress of
events, until, at the period we have now reached, he had
developed into a monster, actuated by one aim — to be-
come dictator, and prepared to make any sacrifice what-
ever for the accomplishment of that aim. The murder
of friends like Danton and Desmoulins, with whom he
had lived and worked on terms of close intimacy since
the beginning of the Revolution, yields to nothing in
history for its treachery and infamy.

CHAPTER XX.

THE RULE OF ROBESPIERRE.

THE old Commune was now overthrown, and all inde-
pendence stifled in the Convention. No initiative
remained but that of the Committee of Public Safety,
and in the Committee itself little, at least in internal
affairs, but that of Maximilian Robespierre and his
partisans. The chief among the latter were Couthon
and Lebas in Paris, and St. Just and Lebon as Commis-
sioners in the provinces. The municipality, now that
most of the old members were guillotined or expelled,
was filled up with subordinate creatures of Robespierre.
A Belgian architect, named Fleuriot-Lescot, replaced the
devoted and noble-minded Pauhe as mayor of Paris. The
same thing went on all round. The Cordelier's Club was
suppressed. Robespierre had succeeded in reducing the
Jacobins' Club to a mere claque of his own. The
Convention was not much better. A look from the
"Incorruptible" (as Robespierre was called) sufficed to
frown down all opposition.

The increase of the Terror now became frightful all
over France, but especially in Paris. Robespierre himself
directed the police department. On the 22nd of Prairial
(the 10th of June), an atrocious law was passed at the
instigation of the dictator, whereby persons sent before
the revolutionary tribunal, now divided into four
sections, were refused the right of defence. This meant,
of course, that whereas before about a third of those
accused were acquitted, henceforth all prisoners were
condemned, when nothing else could be alleged against
them, on the general and vague charge of " conspiracies

THE RULE OF ROBESPIERRE. 85

in the prisons." Men and women were now tried by the
public prosecutor, Fouquier Tinville, and the judges of the
Tribunal, in batches of tifty or sixty at once. It would be a
mistake to suppose that it was chiefly the well-to-do that
suffered. On the contrary, out of 2,750 victims of
Robespierre's, only C50 belonged to the upper or middle-
classes. The tumbrils that wended their way daily to
the Place de la Revolution and afterwards to the
Faubourg St. Antoine, were largely filled with working-
men. During the last three weeks of the tyrant's
rule, 1,125 persons were executed in Paris alone.
Thus did this criminal monster drown the Revolution
itself in the blood of his victims. Marat had already
foreseen the results of Robespierre's self-idolatry, when
during a speech of the latter in the Convention, he
whispered to his neighbour, Dubois-Crance, — " With such
doctrines as that, he will do more harm than all the tyrants
put together."

The notion of becoming the high-priest of a new
religion had been working in Robespierre's mind ever
since the fall of the Hebertists. After many speeches in
the Jacobins' Club, on the 18th of May, Maximilian at
last mounted the Convention tribune to demand that it
be decreed that " the French people recognises the exist-
ence of a Supreme Being and the immortality of the
soul/' and that a festival should be held in honour of the
said Being. In his speech he dwelt on the distinction
between a pure Deism and the superstitious cults of
priests, said that it mattered not whether the existence
of God were demonstrable or even probable, that " in the
eyes of the legislator all is truth which is useful in the
world and in practice," that a god was an indispensable
article of state- furniture, and much more to the same
effect. Deputations from the new Robespierrised Com-
mune, from the Jacobins, and from the sections next filed
in with the petition that the Convention should vouchsafe
to grant them a God and Immortality. The resolution

86 THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION.

was carried amid thunders of applause in the same Con-
vention which six months previously had applauded the
atheistic worship of Reason.

A few days afterwards, one undoubted, and another
more questionable, attempt at assassination was made.
The first on Collot D'Herbois, on the steps of his house ;
and the second on Robespierre himself by a young woman
named Ce'cilie Renault. Robespierre was out when she
called, but she was arrested, and knives were found in her
possession. She was guillotined, together with all her
iamily. Fifty-four persons, dressed in red smocks, were
involved in this execution, which took place in the
Faubourg St. Antoine, the great workmen's quarter.

At last the eventful day, the 20th of Prairial (8th of
June), fixed for the glorification of the Supreme Being,
arrived. The Convention, the Jacobins, and Sections in
gala attire, might have been seen wending their way, in
splendid summer weather, through the Tuileries' Gardens,
the procession headed by Robespierre, radiant in sky-
blue coat and black breeches, bearing in his hand an
enormous bunch of corn, fruits, and flowers, a classical
touch suggested by the pagan functions of antiquity.
Arrived at an improvised altar, on the top of which were
allegorical figures intended to represent Atheism, Anarchy,
&c., Robespierre proceeded to set fire to the latter with a
torch. They blazed away, and presently by a triumph
of mechanical art the Supreme Being himself emerged
from their ashes, rather the worse for smoke, it is said.
The "Incorruptible" made three harangues, but the
hopes of those who expected an announcement of a
cessation of the Terror were damped when he proclaimed :
" To-day let us enjoy ourselves, to-morrow begin afresh
to fight the enemies of the Revolution." All knew what
this meant, and two days later the monstrous law before
spoken of was passed, and the Terror entered upon its
last and acutest stage.

This disappointment of the public hopes was the be-

THE RULE OF ROBESPIERRE. 87

ginning of the fall of Robespierre's popularity outside the
governing bodies. Suppressed hatred and jealousy of
him had long been the growing feeling in the Convention,
while on the Committee of Public Safety he had become

v at loggerheads with all except his own henchmen. The
law of Prairial was the last occasion that the Committee
appeared united before the Convention. Fouquier Tinville,
the public prosecutor, went to the Committee himself to
complain of the new law as being the reductio ad
absurdum of the Terror, and was told that it had been
yielded under protest to Robespierre's importunity. So
strained were the relations, that Robespierre henceforth
rarely attended the sittings of the Committee, and ap-
peared comparatively seldom in the Convention itself,
leaving everything to Couthon, St. Jjoat, and Lebas. On
the other hand, he was assiduous in his attendance at the
Jacobins'. He never went out of doors, indeed, now, with-
out an escort of Jacobins armed with bludgeons. An in-
cident occurred about this time which was dexterously used
by his enemies to throw ridicule upon the high -priest and
would-be dictator. A crazy woman named Catherine
The'ot, calling herself the Mother of God, proclaimed the
advent of a Messiah, and in conjunction with an ex-priest
set up a kind of free-masonic society. BarreVe, the
dexterous trimmer, drew up a clever report on the sub-
ject, in which he hinted at Robespierre's desiring to profit
by the proceedings of the fanatics without naming him.
Billaud, Collot, and the members o the "Committee of
General Safety," who had been attached to the old Com-
mune, and were partisans of the Worship of Reason, had
taken offence at the cultus of the Supreme Being. " You
and your Supreme Being," Billaud was heard to say in a
stage-aside on the occasion, " are beginning to bore me."

/It was now, therefore, a case of "aut Caesar aut nullus,"
with Robespierre,

CHAPTER XXI.

THERMIDOR.

IT had become a matter of life and death to Robespierre
to overthrow the hostile members of the committees and
get himself recognised as dictator. St. Just tried it on
on behalf of his friend several times with the " Public
Safety," but without effect. St. Just, by the way, was

Erobably the most sincere and enthusiastic of all the
blowers of Robespierre. Not yet twenty-five years of
age, he had made a great mark on the Revolution. His
large, poetic eyes, his tall and dignified figure, his long
dark hair, had obtained for him the nickname of the
" apocalyptic." It was necessary to take action without
delay. The whole of the Committee of General Security
and the majority of the Committee of Public Safety were
against Robespierre. The Convention therefore had to
be tried, and failing the Convention an insurrection pro-
claimed, headed by the Jacobins and the Commune. The
latter bodies were prepared some time beforehand to resort
to force if necessary to the ends of their champion, and a
conspiracy was actually formed, the leaders of which were
St. Just, Couthon, who, together with Robespierre, consti-
tuted the so-called triumvirate, the Mayor Fleuriot, the
"national agent" Payan, Durnas, the president, and
Coffinhal, the vice-president of the Revolutionary Tri-
bunal. _St^ Just had been recalled in great haste by
Robespierre from his mission with the army of the North,
and when apprised of the state of affairs he advised an
immediate coup d'etat. This, however, was impracticable.
The Convention had to be sounded first, otherwise the

THERMIDOR. 89

pretext for rising was wanting. Accordingly, early on
the 26th of July (8th of Thermidor) Robespierre repaired
to the Assembly and opened the sitting with a long and
dexterous speech, denouncing the Committees and de-
fending himself in the name of the national sovereignty.
He wound up by recommending a general " purification "
all round of the Committees and of the Convention.

Robespierre sat down amid absolute silence. Not a
sound or word of applause greeted his challenge. Pre-
sently, a member, Lecointre, rose and moved the printing
and circulation of the harangue. This was at once
vigorously resisted, but was eventually carried.

The members of the two Committees, hitherto silent,
now took up the challenge. They attacked Robespierre
in turn. The upshot was that the decree for the print-
ing and circulation of the discourse was virtually re-
scinded, being referred to the Committees for examina-
tion. Robespierre, surprised at the unwonted resistance,
left the sitting discouraged, but without despairing of the
situation.

In the evening he repaired to the Jacobins', when he
re-read the discourse of the morning, and here it was,
of course, greeted with tumultous applause. The Com-
mittees, on their side, kept together all night. Nothing
was omitted during these momentous hours by either
party to ensure victory on the morrow. The Committees
and the Mountain negociated successfully with the Plain
to bring about common action in the Assembly. Before
noon the following clay, July 27th (9th Thermidor),
members were to be seen encouraging each other in the
corridors. The sitting was opened by St. Just. He had
scarcely begun his speech, attacking the Committees,
when he was interrupted and denounced by the ex-
commissioner Tallien, who demanded that " the veil should
be withdrawn from the conspiracy." Tallien was sup-
ported on all sides. Billaud Varennes then spoke of
" packed " meetings of Jacobins, of threats against the

90 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

representatives, &c. At this point of Billaud's speech the
whole Convention rose and swore to defend the national
sovereignty amid the applause of the public in the gal-
leries. All eyes were now turned towards Robespierre,
who finally made a dash at the tribune. Before he could
speak, however, the cry of " Down with the tyrant ! "
resounded throughout the hall.

Tallien, in an uncompromising speech, then demanded
the arrest of Henriot, the commander of the reconstituted
armed force of Paris, Billaud, the arrest of other par-
tisans of Robespierre, measures which were at once
acceded to.

Robespierre repeatedly attempted to defend himself,
but his voice was always drowned with shouts of " Down
with the tyrant ! " and by the ringing of the President's
bell. He turned to the " Plain," he turned to the public
in the galleries, there was no response from either. Finally
he sank down on a seat, exhausted, and foaming at the
mouth.

" The blood of Danton chokes the wretch," cried a
member of the Mountain.

Robespierre's arrest was demanded on all sides. His
brother, Augustin Robespierre, Couthon, Lebas, and §L
Just* all claimed to_share__his_fate, and were finally all
given into the hands of the gendarmerie. The moment
this became known at the Hotel de Ville, where the
Mayor, Payan, and Henriot were assembled with
the Commune, orders were given for the barriers to be
closed, the sections assembled, the tocsin sounded, the
generate beaten, and the insurrection proclaimed. The
ca noneers were ordered to repair to the Place de Greve
by the Hotel de Ville, and the Revolutionary Committees
were sent for to take the oath of insurrection. The
arrested deputies had meanwhile been released by their
partisans, on their way to the prisons, and brought in
triumph to the Hotel de Ville.

The Jacobins, who declared themselves in permanent

THERMIDOR. 91

session, formed a subordinate centre of insurrection.
Henriot, who then rushed through the streets, pistol in
hand, calling on the people to rise, was seized by two
deputies, and was being brought to the Committees, when
he was liberated by Coffinhal, at the head of two hundred
cannoneers, of which Henriot himself at once took the
command, placing them in position round the Convention.
The Assembly, which had adjourned for a couple of
hours, had now reassembled. It was seven o'clock.
" Citizens/' said the President, " now is the time for us
to die at our post." Affairs did certainly look hopeless for
the Convention. Orders were almost immediately given
by Henriot to fire, when, strange to say, the cannoneers,
iwho, up to this time, had been with the insurgents,
/hesitated, wavered, and finally refused to comply. In
the hands of those two hundred cannoneers lay the fate
of France. Henriot hurried off to the Hotel de Ville. It
was now the turn of the Convention to take the aggres-
sive. The response of the sections to the call of the Com-
mune was not altogether satisfactory. The fact is, the
movement of the last two days had been sudden even for
Paris, and had developed out of a quarrel inside the
government, with which the general public were im-
perfectly acquainted. Besides this, Robespierre's unpopu-
larity had now become general. Though the sections
assembled at nine o'clock, they confined themselves to
sending messages to the Commune, asking for further
information.

While the assembled sections were discussing the
matter in the various wards of the city, delegates from
the Convention arrived apprising them of the real posi-
tion of affairs. They now no longer hesitated, but arm-
ing themselves, immediately proceeded, not to the Place
de Greve, but to the Tuileries, where they were naturally
received with great enthusiasm. A small body, with a
few pieces of artillery, having been left as a guard to the
Convention, the remainder then marched off to attack the

92 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

head centre of the insurrection — the Hotel do Ville. The
crowds which had assembled outside at the sound of the
tocsin had gradually dispersed, finding the sections did
not arrive, and the space was now much thinned.
Emissaries from the Convention proclaimed the outlawry
of the insurgents, upon which all that remained went
home.

The armed sections now arrived from the Tuileries,
occupied all the outlets, and set up a prolonged shout of
" Long live the Convention ! " The insurgents saw at
once that all was lost. Robespierre shot himself, but
only succeeded in breaking his jaw. His brother threw
himself from the third story. Lebas killed himself with a
pistol. Couthon mangled himself with a knife. Coffin-
hal pitched Henriot from the window into the common
sewer and managed to escape. St. Just alone awaited his
fate with dignity and calmness.

It was now about one o'clock in the morning. The
conspirators were conducted first to the Committee of
General Security. Robespierre lay on a litter suffering
horribly, exposed to the jeers and taunts of the by-
standers, who upbraided him with all his crimes. They
were afterwards taken to the prison of the Conciergerie,
and brought up thence the next day before the Revolu-
tionary Tribunal, with others of their associates. They
were, of course, condemned, and were executed the same
evening at six o'clock. Immense crowds, hooting and
jeering, thronged the streets to see the tumbrils as they
passed. Uncomplimentary references to the Supreme
Being and to the prospective immortality of Robespierre's
soul were not wanting. A halt was made before the house
where Robespierre had lodged. All eyes were turned on
him in his " Supreme Being" blue coat, and the jeers and
invectives grew louder. The sullen hatred which had been
growing for weeks past suddenly found vent. At the
time of his fall he probably had scarcely two or three
hundred real followers in all Paris.

Instead of mitigating or abolishing the Terror at the
moment, when, the danger of invasion being past, it had

THERMIDOR. 93

Instead of mitigating or abolishing the Terror at the
moment, when, the danger of invasion being past, it had
no longer any solid backing in public opinion, he had
^/chosen to exascerbate it, only too obviously for his own
ambitious purposes. Thus he speedily degenerated from
the most popular to the most hated man in all France.
The battle of Fleurus on the 26th of June had secured
for France the re-conquest of Belgium, and destroyed the
last remaining chance of foreign invasion ; and hence, all
but the blind followers of the system were determined to
be rid of the Terror, the national extremity which gave
rise to it having passed away.

Robespierre was the last to ascend the scaffold. As
Samson the executioner wrenched off the bloody linen
which bound up his jaw, a horrible yell escaped him. This
was the only sign of life since his arrest. The moment
his head fell, a roar of applause, which lasted some min-
utes, resounded far and wide on the evening air. Such
was the celebrated Revolution of " Thermidor."

CHAPTER XXII.

THE REACTION BEGINS.

IT is plain to us now that the fall of Robespierre meant
the end of the Terror, although the partisans of the
system on the Committees could not see it. The Billaud
Varennes, Collot D'Herbois, arid Ban-eYes thought still to
carry on the proscriptions with the other methods of
revolutionary government. They lost influence every
day. The Terror was at once abolished, except for the
" tail " of Robespierre, the members of the Commune,
some of the leading Robespierrists, Jacobins, &c., who
were guillotined to the number of some hundred and
fifty in a few days. In the relief which " Sansculottes "
like the rest felt at being rid of the perpetual Damocles'
sword of Tinville, and of the endless rant about " virtue,"
"austerity," "incorruptibility," with which Robespierre
and his crew had sickened everyone, they little thought
that the end of the Revolution itself, in so far as it
interested the working classes of France, was at hand.
In truth, the reaction had begun four months before,
with the destruction of the party of the old Commune —
the Hebertists. When a Revolution proceeds to extermin-
ate its most enthusiastic adherents its fate is obviously
sealed. Robespierre had denounced the Hebertists as
Atheists and Communists. To the inventor of the "Supre-
me Being " and the " Declaration of Rights," which was
foisted upon the Jacobins in opposition to Chaumette
and Hebert, and according to which " the right of pro-
perty is the right of every citizen to enjoy and dispose

THE REACTION BEGINS. 95

as he pleases of his goods," which provided also that "no
commerce should be prohibited/' and no property ever
confiscated even for public purposes "without indemnity"
— to such a one the Hdbertists were offensive without
doubt.

What Robespierre desired was, in short, a Republic of
starched, middle-class prigs, of which he himself was
to be the type. The Hebertists, especially men like
Chaumette and Anacharsis Clootz, whatever their faults
may have been, at least desired a change better worth
fighting for than this. Their instincts were Socialistic
though their ideas may have been vague, as they could
scarcely fail to have been a century ago, when the
" great industry " had hardly begun. As to the Terror,
Robespierre substituted for the irregular methods of the
Commune a systematic plan of butchery, which enabled
him to rid himself conveniently of personal enemies.
Still, even Robespierre, in spite of their contradicting the
free trade principles he had laid down, did not dare to
suggest abolishing the maximum and. other measures
passed under the influence of the Commune for ensuring
a possible livelihood to the working classes. This it was
reserved for the Thermidorians to do.

The Committee-men had accepted the aid of the Con-
vention in overthrowing Robespierre and his party.
They soon found that the Convention was as determined
to rid itself of the dictatorship of the Committees as the
Committees themselves had been that of Robespierre.
The very next day the Committees began to be attacked.
The abolition of the Revolutionary Tribunal was pro-
posed. Barrere, who spoke in its support, was taunted
with having been a Constitutional Royalist before the
10th of August. The Convention, nevertheless, confined
itself this time to issuing a decree of accusation against
Fonquier Tinville and abolishing the law of Prairial.

The Committees themselves were next reorganised and
their power curtailed. The Paris Commune never again

96 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

rose after its second defeat under Robespierre. The old
suspects were gradually released from prison. But the
reaction did not stop at abolishing the Terror. It began
at once undoing all the " Sansculottic " work of the
Revolution. First, the daily meetings of the sections
were reduced to one in ten days. Next, the allowance of
twenty sous a day for indigent members was done away
with. Next, the maximum was abolished. The com-
missioners Lebon and Carrier (the author of the noyades
at Nantes) were now tried. Most of the old members of
the Committees shortly after this either resigned or were
ousted, and their places were filled with Thermidorians.

Freron, the ex-Mountainist and now Reactionist, started
a paper in which he proposed that the youth of the upper
and middle classes should arm themselves with loaded
sticks to resist the Sansculottes. The suggestion was
eagerly adopted, and a new and fantastic dress was
assumed as a counterblast to the Carmagnole costume of
the popular party. An open-breasted front, long hair,
done up behind in tresses, called cadenettes, and low
shoes, formed the costume a la victime of the Jeunesse
dore'e (gilded youth), as they were called. Every day
street fights took place between them and the Jacobins.
The latter, though they had undergone one of their
customary purifications after the fall of Robespierre, and
had duly sent a deputation congratulating the Convention
on the death of " the tyrant," found themselves daily
getting into worse odour with the dominant party.

The Convention before long broke up the vast federa-
tion of clubs of which the Paris Jacobins was the head
by arbitrarily forbidding any further correspondence
between the centre and the provincial branches. The
Assembly, at the same time, declined to receive any
further deputations. Nevertheless the club was still the
rallying point of every revolutionary influence in Paris.
An attempt was made to liberate Carrier, which, although
unsuccessful, gave rise to a formidable disturbance, and

THE RE A C TION BE GINS. 97

led to the suspension of the Jacobin sittings by the Con-
vention. The members assembled the next day notwith-
standing, in defiance of the decree, but the meeting-place
was attacked by the " gilded youth," and the Jacobins
driven out. The Convention thereupon suppressed the
club altogether (November 12).

The Thermidorian party at first wanted a revolutionary
reputation to counterbalance that of Robespierre, and
chose Marat, who, owing to the jealousy of the former,
had not as yet received the honours of the Pantheon,
which the Convention had granted after his death. But
it was not long before the reputation of Marat, like
everything else belonging to the Proletarian side of the
Revolution, fell under the ban of the reactionary party,
his busts were everywhere destroyed, and his name be-
came the bye word it has been ever since, or at least until
quite recently.

The decree of expulsion against the nobles and priests
was now rescinded. The seventy-three members who
had protested against the expulsion of the Girondins
were released from prison and reinstated in their places
in the Convention. The monument in front of the
" Invalides," celebrating the victory of the Mountain over
the Gironde, was destroyed. Soon after this the few
remaining Girondist leaders who had come out of hiding
were received back into the Convention, thus further
strengthening the great " moderate party " which had
formed out of the wreckage of various parties. In
January, 1795, the churches were again opened for
Christian worship, though here some caution was
observed, a good many restrictions on religious propa-
gandism being still maintained. The armies were now
supplied solely by contract and not partially by requisi-
tions on private property as heretofore. The confis-
cated goods of suspects and of those executed during the
Terror were restored in the first instance to themselves,
in the second to their nearest relations.

o

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE REACTION PROGRESSES.

THE reaction was daily growing in intensity. The fury
of the new " White Terror" in Paris had reached other
leaders than Carrier and Lebon, both of whom had been
guillotined. These other leaders were our old friends
Billaud Varennes, Collot D'Herbois and Barrere, together
with another committee-man, Vaclier. A demonstration
in their favour, organised by the workmen's faubourgs of
St. Antoine and St. Marceau, availed nothing. On 21st
March (1st Germinal) they were brought before the
Convention, and the proceedings lasted nine days.

Though gallantly defended by the wreck of the
"Mountain, they were like to be condemned, when once
more the loyal workmen's quarters made an attempt to
rescue them, and stormed the Convention to the cry of
" Bread, the Constitution of '93, and the Liberty of the
Patriots ! " This, too, proved abortive. Yet possibly fear
of popular resentment prevented the Convention from
passing a capital sentence this time. It confined itself to
condemning the accused to transportation to Cayenne,
where Collot took the yellow fever, drank off a whole
bottle of brandy, and died ; and Billaud amused himself
with breeding negroes and tame parrots.

The turn of Fouquier Tinville and the jurymen of the
Revolutionary Tribunal came next. They were con-
demned and executed early in May. " Where are now
thy batches ? " mockingly exclaimed some of the crowd,
us Fouquier mounted the scaffold. " Wretched canaille,'1
Jeplied he, " is your bread any the cheaper for not having

THE REACTION PROGRESSES. 99

them ? " In truth, the economic situation was fearful.
The abolition of the maximum and the forced currency
produced a terrific crisis. The value of 5,000 francs in
paper (assignats) sank to 20 francs in silver or gold. Fore-
stalling, swindling, and extortion of every kind had a
high time of it. Never before had starvation claimed so
many victims as now. Death by the guillotine was suc-
ceeded by death from hunger. The crowds at the bakers'
doors were worse than even before the Revolution.
Bitterly did St. Antoine and St. Marceau look back on
the time when, under the Commune and the Committees,
they had a sufficiency and power.

The last of the popular insurrections (unless we in-
clude the abortive Baboeuf conspiracy as one) took place
on the 20th May (1st Prairial) of this year, 1795 (111),
and was a well-organised and determined movement, but
lacked leaders and staying power, and consequently fell
through. The chief demands were still " Bread, the
Constitution of '93, the release of all imprisoned patriots!"
The faubourgs this time marched fully armed upon
the Convention, which was taken by surprise, the daily
recurring disturbances having hidden from it the fact
that an organised insurrection was brewing. The doors
were forced, and the sansculottes rushed in. At first re-
pulsed, they returned in greater numbers. They fired at
the president, Boissy D'Anglas. A deputy, Feraud, who
rushed forward to protect him, was cut down by sabres,
and his head fixed on a pike. All the deputies now fled,
except those forming the rump of the old Mountain, to
the number of about sixty. Romme (him of the calen-
dar) now took the chair, and all the demands of the in-
surgents were put and carried in rapid succession.

But the wealthy " sections" had been apprised of what
had happened and had meantime quietly surrounded the
Tuileries. Finally, a drilled body of Jeunesse Dor e
suddenly burst in, and drove out the insurgents in con-
fusion at the point of the bayonet. The deputies re-

ioo THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

entered. All the decrees just passed were annulled. The
members of the " Mountain" were arrested as accomplices
of the insurgents, and secretly conveyed away from Paris.
But the sansculottes did not consider themselves beaten.
Next day they again assembled in the outer faubourgs
and proceeded to march on the Convention, this time
taking their cannon with them. The inner or wealthy
middle-class sections were also drawn up in arms on the
Place du Carrousel in defence of the Assembly. The
cannon of the faubourgs was already pointed on the
Tuileries when the Convention sent commissioners to
treat with the insurgents. Their demands were pretended
to be favourably received, ' but nothing was definitely
promised. This sufficed, however, to put the sanscul-
ottes off their guard. Not having an energetic Commune
and a determined commander at their back, as on the 31st
of May, 1793, they retired satisfied with some vague con-
ciliatory phrases, a course proving fatal to the insurrec-
tion which, at the opening of the day, had stood a fair
chance of success, and fatal also, as the event showed, to
the cause of the democracy.

. A few days later the assassin of Feraud, who had been
tried and condemned to death, was on his way to execu-
tion when the populace delivered him and carried him
in triumph into the faubourgs. The Convention then
ordered the latter to be disarmed. The interior sections
surrounded the working-class quarters the next day for
the purpose of carrying out this decree. After some
resistance it was effected. The faubourgs surrendered
unconditionally with their arms and cannon.

The Paris working classes were now reduced, there-
fore, to the condition of an unarmed mob, and for them
organised insurrection was a thing of the past. Royalism
became again fashionable. It was openly advocated in
newspapers and in public assemblies, and even inside the
Convention itself, though here it remained in a minority.
Meanwhile, the " White Terror " was raging in the pro-

THE RE A CTION PRO CRESSES. 101

vinces far worse than in Paris. The South, especially,
became the scene of wholesale massacres of all supposed
to be friendly to revolutionary principles. Bands of
returned " emigrants " and wealthy young men, called
" Companies of Jesus >; and " Companies of the Sun,"
went about killing every Revolutionist, or suspected
Revolutionist, they could find. The Jacobins had been
arrested wholesale during the last few weeks. The
prisons were broken into, and every " sansculotte "
massacred. At Lyons 300 Jacobins were enclosed in a
shed, which was then set fire to, a cordon being formed
round it till they were consumed to a man. At Tarascon
hundreds of victims were hurled from the top of a rock
into the Rhone. This sort of thing went on for weeks
without any attempt to stop it on the part of the
authorities. The canting middle-class humbugs who
have dilated on the " horrors of the French Revolution "
and of the " mob " with so much unction, have prudently
passed over the still worse horrors of the Reaction and
the " respectable classes." It is noteworthy that many
of the most ardent of the Thermidorian reactionaries
were precisely men who, a few months previously, had
been the most ardent revolutionists, and, in many cases,
like Freron, Fouche, and Tallien, the most truculent
agents of the " Terror."

In Paris, encouraged by impunity, the Royalists at last
attempted an insurrection against the Convention, finding
that they were not likely to obtain a majority in that
body. The immediate occasion of it was the conditions
under which the Assembly was to be dissolved. The
new Constitution which had been voted was very much
on the model of that of 1791. A property qualification
and indirect voting were, of course, re-introduced, with two
Chambers, a Council of 500, and a Senate of 250 mem-
bers, capped by an Executive Committee or Directory of
five, having power to appoint six Ministers. The electoral
divisions of France were re-organised in an anti-demo-

102 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

eratic sense. Now, with this constitution, the Royalists
hoped to have obtained a majority in the next Parlia-
ment, and were grievously disappointed when the Con-
vention enacted that two-thirds of the new body should
be chosen from its own members. Hence the tears of
the Royalists, and hence the insurrection of the wealthy
and well-armed Royalist section against the Convention
on the oth October, 1795 (13th of Vendemiaire, III.), the
task of quelling which was entrusted by Barras, the
generalissimo of the Convention, to a young artillery
officer, Napoleon Bonaparte by name, a task the said
young artillery officer duly accomplished by the aid of
well-planted cannon on the evening of the same day.

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE BABCEUF CONSPIRACY AND END OF THE FRENCH
REVOLUTION.

THE insurrection of Vendemiaire gave a slight check to
the reaction which had, up to this time, gone on unim-
peded. The majority of the Convention, much as they
dreaded a return of real revolutionary government, were
too much involved politically and economically in the
Revolution to be able to tolerate a complete relapse to
the old regime. What they desired was a plutocratic
Republic, in which money should take the place of privi-
lege, and a wealthy middle-class succeed to the power of
the old noblesse and the crown. And the new Constitu-
tion, with its " council of five hundred," its " senate of
ancients," its " directorate," its property qualification, and
its indirect suffrage, seemed admirably calculated to
ensure this end. On the 26th of October the National
Convention proclaimed itself dissolved, after an existence
of three years and a month, and the elections were held,
and the Directory established shortly after.

One result of the events of the 5th October (13th
Vendemiaire) was not unnaturally a greater toleration of
the popular party, many of whom had taken up arms on
the last-mentioned date against the common enemy, the
Royalists. The democrats established a club for pur-
poses of political discussion at the Pantheon, which was,
for some time, unmolested by the new Government, viz.,
the Directory. The leader of the club was Gracchus
Baboeuf, who obtained the title of " Tribune of the
People." He had occupied an obscure Government post
during the Terror, but had not hitherto played any im-
portant part in the Revolution.

I04 THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION.

The society at the Pantheon grew daily in numbers,
and with it grew the influence of Baboeuf . The members
at length ventured to repair to their meeting-place in
arms, and whispers of a projected insurrection soon made
themselves heard. The Directory thereupon became
alarmed, and on the 26th of February, 1796 (8th Ventose,
IV.), peremptorily closed the Pantheon and forbade any
further meetings of the club. The followers of Baboeuf,
among whom were the remnant of the old Commune and
Committees, and of course all the old Jacobins, then re-
sorted to direct conspiracy and managed to win over the
" legion of police," but here again they were outwitted
by the Directory, which immediately disarmed and dis-
banded this body. The Baboeuvists (as they were called)
now assembled secretly in a place they named the
"Temple of Reason," and concerted measures for an
organised insurrection and attack on the governing
bodies. They succeeded in rallying in a short time most
of the revolutionary elements of France.

It was agreed to form a new Convention, of which the
nucleus was to be such remnant of the old Mountain as
death, proscription, and desertion had left. Armed bands
were suddenly to march from several points concentrically
upon the Directory and councils. The Baboeuvists
believed themselves sure of the military stationed at the
Camp of Grenelle, and an officer named Grisel was in
their confidence. Everything was arranged up to the
night of the projected movement. Two placards were
about to be posted up, one bearing the words, " Con-
stitution of 1793, Liberty, Equality, and general happi-
ness/' the other the motto, " Those who usurp supreme
power ought to be put to death by freemen," and the
signal was agreed upon for action, when the chiefs were
suddenly surprised and arrested in their council chamber
(May 10th). They had been betrayed by Grisel.
Baboeuf, while in prison, wrote to the directors sug-
gesting a compromise. He was, nevertheless, with

THE BABCEUF CONSPIRACY. 105

the other leaders sent before the new high court of
Vendome.

On the 7th of September following, while they were
still awaiting their trial, their followers, to the number
of some hundreds, made an armed attack on the Luxem-
bourg, the palace of the directors, but were repulsed by
the guards placed there for its defence. They then pro-
ceeded to the camp of Crenelle, in the hope of raising
the military, in which they were again unsuccessful,
being met by a determined resistance. A sharp skirmish
followed, ending in the complete rout of the insurgents,
who left a large number of dead on the field. This was
the last attempt of the democracy to recover its posi-
tion.

Almost all the leaders and organisers of the Babceuf
movement were executed by the sentence of military
commissions, and numbers of other persons were im-
prisoned and exiled. : Babceuf himself, and Darthe', the
late secretary of Lebon, after acquitting themselves
during their trial in a manly manner, fully avowing their
principles, stabbed themselves to death with daggers on
hearing their sentence. The objects of Babceuf and his
followers were definitely and frankly communistic,
which cannot be said of any other of the revolutionary
parties. Babceuf himself (who, by the side of Marat,
Chaumette, Clootz and Pache, may be regarded as one of
the noblest and most disinterested of all the leaders of
the time) if, in his theoretical scheme, he was the first of
the utopian Socialists, also forestalled in his notion of
the necessity of taking possession of the political power,
one of the foremost principles of the modern Socialist
movement.

With the final extinction of the party of Babceuf in
September, 1796, after which the French democracy
never again rallied, the French Revolution, as a distinct
event in history, may be considered to come to an end.
From the meeting of the States-General in May, 1789, to

106 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

the date just mentioned, was only a little more than seven
years, but what an experience France and Europe had
passed through. Since Camille Desmoulins delivered his
famous harangue in the Palais Royal Gardens on that
July day in '89, when revolutionary ardour seemed so
single in its purpose — how many parties had been con-
sumed, how'many enthusiasms had been burnt out !

With the forlorn attempt of the Baboeuvists on
Grenelle, revolutionary fervour gasped its last breath.
The Bourgeois had conquered ; the day of the Proletarian
was not }7et, in spite of his temporary accession to power
during the great revolutionary years.

The events succeeding the collapse of the Babceuf
movement may be signalised in a few sentences. The
populace of Paris and the other large cities gradually
settled down into a private life of toil and hardship, and
an indifference to public affairs. The wealthy classes
plunged into every form of speculation and extravagance.
The new middle-class Republic became apparently every
day more consolidated. It nourished at home under the
director Barras and his colleagues, of whom Carnot was
one, and abroad under its new general, Bonaparte.
Conquest again followed conquest. New republics, on
the model of the French, sprung up like mushrooms in
Holland, Liguria, Lombardy, Sardinia, Switzerland, &c.
The fresh elections in May, 1797, nevertheless yielded a
royalist majority in the Councils, the upshot of which
was that Barras and the majority of the directors by the
following September, when things had come to a crisis, had
to call in the aid of the army under General Augereau to
overawe the legislature. This succeeded, and a large
number of members, including some " rats " of the old
Dantonist party, were exiled on the ground of Royalist
intrigues to overthrow the Republic. Carnot and
Barthelemy were driven from the Directory. The latter
now became practically a dictatorship, with Barras as
head dictator.

THE BABCEUF CONSPIRACY. 107

Most of the powers, tired of prosecuting an adverse
war, were glad to make terms of peace. England was
soon the only belligerent remaining. But the Directory,
without money, and having only the armies to fall back
upon, could not afford to bring about a complete cessation
of hostilities. Bonaparte, after having subdued the
Continent, about this time returned to Paris, the most
popular man in France. Barras, feeling his presence
dangerous at home, invited him at once to undertake the
task of subduing the British power. He readily acceded,
and the brilliant Egyptian campaign entered upon with
a view to India, was the result. The elections of 17(J8,
which were, unlike those of the previous year, too
radical to please the Director}7, were annulled, but those
of the following year, 1799, yielded the same result.

Meanwhile a new coalition had been formed, one of
the principal factors of which was Russia. The un-
popular Directory could no longer hold out against public
opinion. Negotiations between the various parties were
entered into without issue, and the government at home
was in great confusion when Bonaparte suddenly ap-
peared on the scene, having left his Oriental army in the
hands of General Kleber. A conspiracy was at once
formed, led by the old Constitutionalist, Sieyes, to place
dictatorial authority in the hands of the successful
general. The Senate, seduced by the report of a pretended
Jacobin insurrection in the departments, which was to
shortly reach Paris, consented to decree the removal
of both houses of legislature to the palace of St. Cloud,
near Paris, and to placing Bonaparte at the head of the
military forces of the capital.

This was on the 9th November, 1799 (18th Brumaire,
VII.). The following day the legislature removed to St.
Cloud. The " Council of Ancients " met in the " Gallery
of Mars," one of the apartments of the Palace, and
the council of five hundred in the " Orangery." The
" Council of Five Hundred " unanimously swore to the

io8 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

existing Constitution, refusing to ratify the powers given
by the other body. Bonaparte was driven away with
cries of " Down with the tyrant ! " &c. His brother, Lucien
Bonaparte, who was president, finding nothing was to be
done, came out and harangued the troops, stating that
the Assembly was being intimidated by a minority of the
members with drawn daggers. Bonaparte, thus fortified,
then gave orders for the " Orangery " to be cleared by the
military, which was immediately effected. Thus was the
Consulate founded. From this to the consecration as
Kmperor in 1804 was but a step.

CHAPTER XXV

THE NATIONAL PROPERTY.

THE course of the Revolution cannot be properly esti-
mated without taking into consideration the results of
the confiscation of the property of the nobility and
clergy. In the Directoral Constitution of 1795 (III.) we
read, Article 374 : " The French nation proclaims, as
guarantee of public faith, that after an adjudication
legally consummated, of the national goods, whatever
may be its origin, the legitimate acquirer thereof cannot
be dispossessed." The same clause, but slightly modified,
is introduced into the Consular Constitution of 1800
(VIII.), and the Imperial Constitution of 1804 (XII.).
There is more than meets the eye in these articles.
They are the issue and sanction of a series of transactions
which established a wealthy plutocracy on the ruins of
the old feudal aristocracy of France.

The first property to be sold was that of the Church.
This, which in a sense may be considered as having been
held in trust for the poor, was primarily disposed of, not
to benefit them, but to reduce the public debt and pre-
serve the State from financial ruin. The sales began in
1789, and the period of greatest activity was from
August, 1790, to January, 1791. French companies,
English companies, Dutch companies, disputed for the
spoil, only a comparatively few lots falling to the share
of the peasantry, since no restriction was laid on the
amount sold to any one purchaser. The sales were the
more easily effected, inasmuch as only a small percentage
of the purchase-money had to be paid down. When the
time came for the second instalment, the money for

1 10 THE FRENCH RE VOL UT10N.

payment was, naturally, considering the vast extent of
the purchases, in most cases not available. This led
many of the speculators to favour the Revolution, and all
of them to urge on the foreign war, both of which would
serve as an excuse for postponement. War was accord-
ingly proclaimed in April, 1792, and the following
August the throne was overturned. After the latter
event it was decided that the lands and property of the
emigrant aristocrats which now came into the market
should not be sold hap-hazard and en masse like the
ecclesiastical property, but should be duly apportioned
into small lots, which the small cultivator might hire or
purchase on easy terms.

This concession on the part of the middle classes was,
however, simply the result of fear of imminent foreign
invasion. No sooner had the armies of Dumouriez
driven the enemy back than the new Assembly, the
Convention, announced that the partition of the public
lands must be indefinitely postponed on account of the
difficulty of the operation. During the winter '92-3
the moveable effects of the " emigrants " came into the
possession of speculators and jobbers by means of sham
sales. So flagrant was the abuse, that the Convention
had to step in, but without much effect. After the fall
of the Girondists the partition of the lands among the
peasantry was again definitely ordered. The second
grand campaign now intervened, and France was for* the,
moment converted into one vast camp. Exceptional
measures were the order of things all round, and com-
paratively few small transfers were effected. This did
not prevent the confiscation both of the lands and
moveables of the nobles and suspects going on at a
greater pace than ever. But it was various agents of the
Government in the departments who made vast fortunes
out of them by their clever manoeuvring. Two-thirds of
the houses in Paris were now "national property." The
Convention decreed that " goods " to the value of one

THE NA TIONAL PR OPER TY. in

milliard should be reserved for the citizen soldiers
returned from the wars. This milliard, we need scarcely
say, remained a promise to the end of the chapter.

The Committee of Public Safety, early in '94, ordered
the sale of the confiscated lands to be proceeded with,
but while recommending that the principle of partition
should be adopted, did not insist upon it, the net result
of the new sales being that large tracts of public land
were sold in the lump as before, but this time they
went into the possession of a new class of thieves ; to
wit, the victuallers of the armies, who had already made
large fortunes out of their contracts. After Thermidor,
this, of course, went forward on a larger scale than ever.

Robespierre, through his agent, St. Just, now got a
decree passed that indigent patriots should be indemni-
fied out of the goods of the " enemies of the Revolution,"
but this decree was merely procured to maintain his
popularity with the people, as was proved by the fact that
he never so much as attempted to put it into execution.

The 9th of Thermidor arrived without the working-
classes of the towns having touched any of the " goods "
of the emigrants, the clergy, or the suspects, while the
peasantry had to be satisfied with here and there a few
crumbs in the shape of the partition of communal lands.
Barrere had said that they had coined money on the
Place de la Revolution, but the working-classes can cer-
tainly not be accused of having shared in this ill-gotten
gain. Thus, even while the masses were nominally in
power, the middle-classes succeeded in " nobling " the
Revolution.

After the insurrection of Thermidor, the traffic in the
" national property " proceeded more unblushingly than
ever. As soon as the maximum was abolished, however,
the plutocracy found even it more to their interest for
the moment to hocus the currency than to purchase land,
at however reduced a money value. By procuring a
practically unlimited issue of paper they succeeded in

1 1 2 THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION.

reducing the value of the assignats to next to nothing.
The forestalling of the necessaries of life, especially grain,
which was the immediate cause of the various insurrec-
tions after Thermidor up to that of Baboeuf, was also a
stupendous source of profit. The re-opening of the
Bourse, the repudiation of the hypothec of the assignats
on the confiscated lands, the latter a piece of thieving of
the most impudent character, followed in the natural
course of things. Lotteries were instituted, the prizes of
which were the " national property." One deputy even
had the impudence to propose to take back the lands
already distributed amongst the peasantry. But this
was thought to be too risky. Meanwhile, the victories
of the armies under Bonaparte opened fresh fields and
pastures new for every form of swindling by means of
provisioning " contracts." A cessation of the war would,
indeed, have been a grievous thing for the rising pluto-
cracy of France. Under the Directory the exploiters
flung themselves anew upon the as yet undisturbed
territories. Everything was now in their own hands.
No stone was left unturned to diminish for the nonce the
market value of this property. The price which was
paid in depreciated -paper taken at the nominal value
was in most cases simply farcical.

But all means of robbery were not yet exhausted.
The army contractors refused to be paid any longer in
assignats, but insisted on large sums being placed to
their credit in the books of the national debt, thus saddling
themselves in perpetuity on the French people. Deputies,
Government-agents, generals, contractors, engaged in a
mad scramble which could make the most out of the
situation. The masses of France had but two purposes
in their eyes — to labour at home at starvation wages, in-
sufficient to support life for any but the strongest, and
to serve as food for powder abroad. The vast territorial
estates of the feudal aristocracy, and the house property
of the towns, thus passed into the hands of another and

THE NATIONAL PROPERTY. 113

a meaner set of lords, The new middle-class of France
was consolidated economically and politically. Verily
the French Revolution was a ruccess — for them ! And
now having reached the summit of their ambition, it
only remained to kick over the ladder which had helped
them up. The hearth, the throne, and the altar must be
re-established on a new basis ; we must have done with
revolution and all its wicked ways ! said they. Revolution
must be henceforth a thing accursed! But a Republic, no
matter how safeguarded against intrusion of the " common
people," seemed to many an insufficient guarantee under
the existing circumstances for the newly created " order."
A military dictator, who knew how to smother insurrec-
tions in the birth, he was the man for the situation, and
his name was — Napoleon Bonaparte.

CHAPTER XXVI.

CONCLUSION.

THE French Revolution closes in a final and definite
manner an epoch in the world's history. The middle
ages, proper, it is true, came to an end with the 16th
century. But they left a kind of afterglow behind them
in the shape of the centralised and quasi- absolute prince-
doms and monarchies which prevailed during the 17th
and 18th centuries; in the continuance in rural districts
and the smaller towns of the old methods of industry
but slightly, if at all, modified ; in the perpetuation un-
abated, for over a century at least, of mediaeval and
renaissance superstitions and habits of thought ; in short,
in the survival of most of the external forms of the old-
world civilisation, decayed like the foliage of a St, Martin's
summer. The conversion of the feudal hierarchies into
centralised monarchies but imperfectly freed the middle
classes ; the combined or workshop system of production
had not in any marked or violent manner revolutionised
industry ; the learning of the renaissance had, to a large
extent, merely given a quasi-scientific and systematic
shape to old habits of thought.

The political, moral and social changes leading up to
modern times were of course going on all the while, and
were observable to the truly observant, but were not at
that time of a " run and read " character.

The French Revolution definitely closes this epoch.
It does even more. It constitutes the dividing line be-
tween the world of to-day and all past ages whatever.
The Revolution was scarcely over when the electric

CONCLUSION.

telegraph appeared on the scene. At the same time the
idea of the steam engine was working in the heads of
the ingenious, and the closing years of the century saw
the first of the new industrial machines established in
the factories of the North of England. New stage-coach
roads, canals, and other " improvements " sprang up in
all directions. A couple of decades or so more and the
great industry was to start the metamorphosis of human
production and distribution ; yet another, and the rail-
way was to begin the transformation of the face of
nature and the externals of human life in other directions.
In short, from the French Revolution we advance
straight by leaps and bounds to the modern world.

The city of Paris well typifies the progress. One
hundred years ago, in 1789, it was (unlike London, which
in its mediaeval form was destroyed by the fire of 1666),
to all intents and purposes a mediaeval city, substantially
the Paris of Victor Hugo's "Notre Dame," a city of
feudal fortresses, high-walled enclosures, crooked, narrow,
unpaved streets. The Committee of Public Safety in 1793
began alterations, partly with a view of giving employ-
ment to distressed workmen. The changes went on gradu-
ally, till, in 1S59, Haussmann, under Napoleon III., totally
destroyed what remained of old Paris, and laid out the
city in the form we see it to-day — a city which would be
as foreign to Danton, Robespierre, or Marat as San
Francisco itself. The Paris of centuries perished in little
more than fifty years. What is true of Paris is true of
Europe — of the whole of existing civilisation. The
Europe of 1789 was in the main the Europe of the later
middle ages — of the renaissance — but in the last stage
of decay. It had been practically dead for over two
centuries, and like Edgar Poe's hypnotised dead man, it
fell to pieces with a sudden convulsive awaking after pro-
claiming itself dead. No " restoration " could really bring
it together again. The new world of our time had, mean-
while, grown up, with its science, its inventions, its

1 1 6 THE FRENCH RE VOL UTION.

intense self-consciousness, and placed insurmountable
barriers between us and our naive and simple-minded
ancestors. The old Merry England, for example, the Eng-
land of the fairy ring and the Maypole, had passed away
for ever. In politics the reign of the bourgeoisie with
its oppression resting on cunning and hypocrisy had
shut out the possibility of an enduring reaction to the
coarser and more direct methods of feudal domination.

There are several minor points worthy of notice afforded
by the course of the French Kevolution. One feature of
the period, already alluded to, its perpetual reference to
classical models, and its somewhat mechanical attempt to
make history repeat itself — to reproduce the Republics of
ancient Greece and Rome in eighteenth-century France —
can never be left out of sight. Every man's head was
full of "Plutarch's Lives." All men, however little else they
knew, seem to have had at least a superficial schoolboy
smattering of Roman history. Almost every speech and
every newspaper article of the time bristles with refer-
ences to Coriolanus, Cato, Cicero, Brutus, or Caesar. In
fact, Roman history was to the French Revolution very
much what the Jewish annals, contained in the Bible,
were to the English rebellion under Charles I. "We," or
rather modern science and historical criticism, "have
changed all that." We no longer look to the past as a
model for the society of the present or the future. The
doctrine of evolution has taught us that human society,
like everything else, is a growth, and that though corre-
sponding and analogous phases certainly do recur in
history, we can yet never argue back from one period to
another, as though there had been no intervening devel-
opment, or as though the economical, intellectual, and
political conditions were substantially the same, or might
be made the same.

Another point the Revolution teaches us is the effec-
tive power of minorities. The Terror itself (whatever
view we may take as to its justifiability), it cannot be

CONCLUSION. 117

denied, was kept up for nearly two years by a compara-
tively small but energetic minority in all the towns of
France. Outside this minority (the Jacobins) there was
a floating mass of inert sympathy with the objects of
Sansculottism, and a belief in the necessity of .drastic
measures in view of the situation. Beyond this, again,
was the vast mass of inert stupidity and indifference
which was effectually cowed. The active enemies of the
Revolution were, of course, reduced to silence.

It is significant, again, to notice that most of the great
crises were connected with affairs on the frontiers. The
10th of August and the September massacres were the re-
sponse to Brunswick's manifesto, and the march of the
enemy on the capital respectively. The 31st of May was
directly brought about by the invasion of the new coali-
tion and the disorganisation of Dumouriez's armies, con-
sequent on his defection. Finally, the 9th of Thermidor,
and the abolition of the " Terror," followed on the disap-
pearance of the last trace of danger from the foreigner
consequent on the battle of Fleurus.

The extraordinary enthusiasm which we find, the reck-
less readiness of all alike to inflict and to suffer death,
might lead us to suppose the men of the time to have been
a race of born heroes, or monsters, or both. The average
of them were neither the one nor the other. They were
the products of social forces beyond their control. The
feeling of the all-importance of the public interest carried
all before it. Prior to the Revolution, they were
probably neither more courageous nor more trucu-
lent than ourselves. The same courage and the
same truculency might manifest itself in any man
of character under like circumstances. Even Robespierre
was, as Carlyle suggests, probably neither better nor
worse than other attorneys to start with. But in his
case ambition ultimately assumed the mastery over his
whole personality. This was partly owing to the fact
that he was undeniably a man without a vice (in the

1 1 8 THE FRENCH RE VOL UTJOJV.

ordinary sense of the word). Now only very exceptional
men can afford to be without the ordinary vices of man-
kind, and Robespierre was certainly not one of these
men. With his ascetic Kousseauite notions of republican
austerity, he had suppressed his natural appetites, the
consequence being that all the morbid elements in his
character, having no other outlet, ran into the channel of
self-idolatry and morbid ambition. The first condition
of a well-regulated man is to know how to properly
distribute the quantum of vice with which a bountiful
nature has endowed him. A false morality teaches him
to suppress it. But this he can seldom do, and if he
succeeds, it is at the expense of all or much that is dis-
tinctive in his character. In tearing off the coating of
vice, he tears off his skin with it. The usual case, how-
ever, is that the vice is not got rid of at all, but only
forced into some out-of-the-way channel. And whenever
vice is concentrated, it is bad. When all the vice of a
character is focussed on any single one of the natural
appetites, a man becames a sot, a satyr, a glutton, a
confirmed gambler, &c. Now Robespierre sat upon all
the usual valves. He and his ascetic band poured scorn
on the Hebertists and the Dantonists alike for the " loose-
ness " of their lives. But having closed up all the
ordinary exits, his vice came out none the less, but con-
centrated in the form of a truculent, remorseless ambition,
unparalleled in history.

The rank and file of the actors in the Revolution it is
difficult, for the reasons before stated, to characterise by.
any of the ordinary ethical standards. The best of them
did things we cannot always approve while sitting com-
fortably in our chairs, the worst of them showed much
genuine and disinterested devotion to the cause of the
people. Were we called upon to name the five men
whose aims were probably the purest, we would mention
Marat, Chaumette, Clootz, Pache and Baboeuf. Danton,
apart from the disputed question of his bribery, was a

CONCLUSION. 119

mere politician, who only interested himself in social
questions, when at all, in so far as they immediately
affected the political situation.

The issue of the French Revolution was, as we have
seen, the modern world of great capital and free trade,
as opposed to the old world of land and privilege and all
that that change implies. In the storm and stress of out-
ward events, we are apt to forget the work done during
the Terror era by the committees of the Convention —
administrative, educational, and legal work, which helped
to build up the modern governmental system. The
" Code Napoleon " itself was based on the labour of
Merlin de Douai and his committee. In France, the
political and juridical side of the great change was most
prominent ; in Germany, the philosophical and literary ;
in England, the industrial and commercial. While
French politicians were engaged in establishing the
Republic, German thinkers were engaged in founding
19th century thought, and English inventors in establish-
ing the new modes of production and locomotion. But
while the mediaeval organisation of society held together
for centuries, the modern is already showing signs of
approaching disintegration. Why is this ? We answer,
because the latter contained, from the first, in its very
nature, the seeds of dissolution. The capitalistic system
of necessity feeds upon itself. Competition, which is the
breath of its life, necessarily also destroys that life. It
may be that the " opening up " of Africa, and other as
yet unexploited territories, will give the system a
further lease of existence, lasting some decades, but the
end cannot in any case be a long by-and-by.

THE END.

Printed ly Cowan & Co., Limited, Perth.

INDEX.

d'Alembert, «

Ami du Peuple .
d'Anglas, Boissy, .
Aristocrats, Emigrant,

Confiscation of goods

Page
4,5

26, 28, 29, 52

41

72
82
72

7
30

7

91
31
36
32
32, 48

5:0

Army, Revolutionary,
,, Suppression of, .

,, Victories of,.
Arrondisements, The, .

d'Artois, Comte,
Assemblies, Provincial,
Assembly, The,

Constituent, Dissolved,
Declares Country in Danger
Friction between, andKing,
Legislative,
Moderate Party in,
Moves to Paris, . . 24

National, . . 40

Assignats (paper money), 25, 73, 99, 111, 112
August 10th, . . . 36 40

Austria, Prussia, and Turin, Coalition, 36-37
Austdans and Prussians, Defeat of, . 47
Austria, War Declared with, . 33

Authority, Paralysis of, . . 8-9

Autun, Bishop of, . . . 27, 28

Buboeuf, Gracchus, . 103, 104, 118

„ Conspiracy of, 62, 103, 108
,, Suicide of, . 105

Baboeuvists, The, Arrest of, . 104

,, Execution of, . . 105

Bailly, Mayor, . . 20-21, 31

,, Guillotined, . . 81

Barbaroux, . . 37, 48, 49

Barnard Guillotined, •. . 81

Barnave, . . .20, 21, 26

,, Leader of Constitutional Party, 30
Barras, . . .48, 102, 106

Barrere, . . . .48,87

„ Trial and Transportation of, . 98
Barriere, . . .63

Bastille, The, . . . 15-19

Anniversary of Fall of, . 26-27
Berthier, Hanging of, . . 20

Bonaparte, Napoleon, . 102, 106, 107, 113

„ Proclaimed Consul, . 108

Bouille, General, . , . 28,30

Breteuil, . . . .17

Brienne, de, Lomerie, . . 7

Brissot, . . . .31,49

Brunswick, Duke of, Manifesto of, . 36, 37
Cachets, Lettres de, . . . 15

Cahiers. The, . . .7-8

Calendar, The New, . . 73-74

Carmagnole, The, . . .75

Carnot, . . .70, 72. 106

Carrier, Trial of, . . . 96-97

Chabot, Mayor, . . .63

Chartres, Due de, Plot to Establish, . 58
Chasseurs, Disbanding of, . . 36

Chaumette, . . 53, 65, 118

Guillotined, . . 83

Church, Expropriation of, . . 25

,, and Revolution, War between, 28-29
Churches, Reooened for Worshio. . 97

Page

Citizens, Enrolment of, . . 43

Clergy, Opposition of, . . 25

,, Confiscation of Goods, . 41

Clootz, Anarchis, . . 48, 74, 95, 118

Clubs, The, . . .69

,, Breaking up of,

„ Influence of, . . 25

,, Insurrection of, . . 65

Commission, The, Arrest of, . 66

„ Suppression of, . 65-66

"Committee of General Security," . 60,69
„ „ Public Safety, 60, 69, 84

„ ,, and Commune, Jealousy, 80

Committees, Reorganisation of, . 95
Commune, The, . - .38, 69

„ Dictatorship of, . . 71-75

„ First Paris, . . 41-46

,, Overthrow of, . . 84

"Companies of Jesus," . . 101

„ " the Sun," . . 101

Cultus, The New, . . . 74-75

Custine, General, . . .69

Crops, Failure of, . . . 6, 99

Couthon, . . .87, 88, 90, 92

Corday, Charlotte, . . .68

Cordeliers, The, . . 25, 26, 64, 80

„ The Old, . . 80

Condorcet, . . .49

Confiscation of Goods of Clergy, . 41
„ Emigrant Nobility, . 41
Constituent Assembly Dissolved, . 31
Constitution, The New, 24-27, (W-70, 101, 103
„ Mongers, The . . 20-23

Constitutional Ministry, Fall of, . 33
Constitutionalists, Hatred of, . 36

Consul, Bonaparte, Napoleon, pro-
claimed, . . .108
Contract Social by Rousseau, . 2, 3, 10
Convention, the, Attack upon, . 99
,, Attempt Against, by Roy-
alists, . 101-102
„ Election of, . . 48
Insurrection Against, . 91-92
,, Internal Dissentions in, . 48
„ National, . . 47
„ Convocation of, 40
Rising Against, . . 64
Victory of, . . 92
Dampriere, General, . . 59
Danton, 26, 31-32, 42-43, 48-49, 65, 118-119
„ Attacks System of Terror, . 80
„ Guillotined,. . . 83
,, Menace of , . . . 72
Dauphin, The, . . .78
Delaunay, . . . 16-17
Deseze Defence of Louis XVI. by, . 54
Desmoulins, 12, 48, 80 ; Guillotined, . 83
Dethronement of Louis XVI. de-
manded, . . .37, 39
Diderot, . . . .4-5
Directory, The, . . 101-108, 112
Dumouriez, . . . 33,47
,, Conquest of Netherlands, 56
„ Reverses in Holland, . 57-58
Treachery of. . . 58

INDEX.

121

Duport, . . .

Education, Attempt to Introduce,
Egalite, Philippe d'Orleans,
Egyptian Campaign,
ri

Emigrants, Aristocratic, Policy of,

Emigration of Aristocrats, .

Emile, by Rousseau, .

Encyclopaedia, French, .

Famine, . . .

Faubourgs, The Disarming of,

Feuillants, The, . .

Flesselles, . .

Fleuriot-Lescot, Mayor, .

Foulon, Hanging of, .

French Encydnpnedia, .

Guard, . .

Revolution, Central Idea of,
„ Classification of,

End of,
Issue of, .
Opening of,
Tidal Wave of,

.20
. 73
. 13, 81
. 107
. 29
. 26, 28
. 2

. 4

. 6, 99
. 100
25-26, 36
16, 17, 18
. 84, 88
. 20

Girbnde, The

Fall of,

4
22

10
3

105

119

11

42

63-C6

„ The, and Mountain, 4950,56-59

Girondists, The, . . '61, 49, 60

,, and Jacobins, Coalition of, 34

,, Cowardice of, . . 54

,, Destruction of, . . 69

Distrust of, . . 33

„ Guillotining of, . . 78

„ in Provinces, . . 67-68

Ministers Dismissed by

King, . . 34

,, Ministry, Appointment of, 33

„ Plot Against, . . 57

„ Prisoners, Release of, . 97

,, Proscribed in Paris, . 66
Go')el, Archbishop, Renounces Chris-

tian Faith, . . .74

Goods of Clergy Confiscated, . 41

„ Nobility ,, .41

Grenadiers Disbanded, . . 36

Guard, French, . . .22

„ National, . . 22, 36, 38

,, Parisian, . . .14

Guillotine, Reign of the, . . 72

Hubert, Imprisonment of, . .64

„ Liberation of, . . 65

Hebertists, Fall of the, . . 80-83

Henriot, .

,, Arrest of,
d'Herbois Collot,

II 1! *«

d' Hoi bach, Baron, .
Hospital and Prison Reform,
Income-Tax,
Incorruptible, The,

90, 91, 92
. 42, 48

Attempt to Assassinate, 86
Trial and Transportation, 98
4
73

. 60-61
. 84, 86

Insurrection, Failure of, . . 100

„ Last Popular, . . 99

Internationalism, Principle of, first,

Recognised, . . .48

Isnard, . . . .64

Jacobins, The, . . 25-26, 31, 52, 64

and Girondists, Coalition of, 34
Decline in Popularity of, . 96
Insurrection of, . . 34

Robespierre at, . . 82

Search for Plots of, . 64

Sittings, Suspension of, . 97

Kelh

erman, General,

King and Assembly, Friction between, 32
,, Reinstatement of,

,, Suspension of, . . 40

,, Trial and Execution of, . 52-55

Lafayette, . 20, 23, 27, 31, 34

„ Acquittal of, . . 37

„ Defiance of,

,, Impeachment of, Demanded 37

Lamballe, de, Princesse, . . 44-45

Lameth, . . . . 20, 26

,, Leader of Constitutional Party, 30

Law, Martial, Proclamation of, . 25

,, of Maximum, . . • 60-61

,, Abolished, . 96,99

Law of the Suspect, The, . . 72

Lecointre, . . 89

Lebas, . . 87,90,92

Lebon, Trial of,

Lepelletier, de, St. Fargeaur, assassina-
tion of,

Lettres de Cachets,
Lida, Bishop of,
Longroy, Capitulation of,
Lotteries, ....
Louis XVI., Accusation of, .

Condemnation of,
Confinement of,
Demand for Abdication,
Dethronement of,
Entry into Paris of,
Execution of, .
Flight of,
Taken Prisoner,
Luxembourg, Attack on the,
Lyons, I ast Stronghold of Royalism, .
,, Massacres in,
,, Outrages at, .
Malesherbes,

Man, Rights of, Declaration of,
Mandat, Assassination of,

Marat,

56
15

28
43

112
53

54
53
31

37, 39
18
54
30
40

105
79
79

101
54
21
38
22, 26, 31-32, 42, 48, 65, 97, 118

Assassination of,
Attack upon,

upoi

Calls for Hea'ds of Traitors, .
Incites to Hanging, .
Indictment and Acquittal of, .
Marie Antoinette, .
Marseillais, Entry of, into Paris,
Martial Law, Proclamation of,
Massacres, September,
Materialist- Atheists,
Maximum, Law of, 60-61 ; Abolished,
,, ,, Enlarged,

Ministry, Constitutional, Fall of,
Minorities, Power of,
Mirabeau, . 5, 20-21, 26, 30, 52

Money, Paper, or Assignats, 25, 73, 99, 111-112
Mountainists, The, . . 49

Mountain, The, and Gironde, 49-50, 56-59
„ Arrest of Remains of, . 100
,, Inexorable, . . 54>

Nantes, Noyades at, . . 79

National Assembly, 12, 17-18, 21, 31-32, 40
Constitution of, . 11

68

50-f.l
33
56
59

76-78
37
35

41-46
4

96,99
73
33
116

,, Convention,
„ Guard, .
Nationality, Contempt for, .
" Nature, System of,"
Necker, .

,, Dismissal of, .

„ Restoration of,

47
22, 3J
4

4-5
25
12
18

t22

INDEX.

Nobles, Decree of Expulsion Rescinded 97 > Roederer, . . . .39

,, Goods Confiscated, . .41 Roland, David, . . 33, 48 49

Noyades at Nantes, . . 79 „ Madame, Guillotined, . 81

Oaths, Taking of, . . . 28 ' Rousseau, Jean J., . . . 2, 4, 5

" Old Cordeliers," The, . 80 „ Influence with Mountainists, 78

d'Orleans, Philippe Egalite, . 13, 81 Safety, Public, Committee of, . 60, 69

Pache, Mayor, . 64-65, 67, 118 j St. Fargeaur, Lepelletier de, assassination 56

Paine, Thomas, . . 48, 55

St. Just, . . 52, 8L SSiJsOjJKl* -92-

Palais-Royal, The, . . 12

Sansculottes, The, *-; — . 31. 03

Panif, . 42

,, Massacre of, . . 101

Pantheon, the, Debating Society at, . 103-104

Santerre, ... 38, 53-54

Paper Money, or Assignats, 25, 73, 99, 111-112

Sechelles, de, Herault, . 64, 65, 67

Paris, Changes in, . . . 115
Division of Power in, . , 71

,, New Constitution Drawn up, 69
Security, Committee of General, . 60, 69

Girondists Proscribed in, . 66
Louis XVI., Entrance of, into, . 18

September Massacres, . . 41-4o
Sieges, AbW, . . .1,48

Marseillais, Entrance of, into, . 37

Social Divisions, Main, . . 1

Revolt in, . . 14
Parisian Guard, The, . . 14

Socialist, First Utopian, . . 105
Sombreuil, M. de, . . . 45

Party Divisions, . . 82

States-General, The, , . 7, 8, fl

Pe'tion, Mayor, 31, 35, 36, 38, 49

,, „ Opening of, . . 11

„ Death of, . . 81

Strasbourg, Insurrection at, . 9

Pilnitz, Treaty of, . . 32

Supreme Being, Existence of, Public

Plain, The, . . 50,60

Recognition of, . . 85, 86

Pope, Interference of, . . 28

" Suspect, Law of the," . . 72

Priests, Decree of Expulsion Rescinded 97

" System of Nature," . . 4-5

,, Demissions of, . . 74

Talleyrand, . . . 27,25

,, Execution of, . . 44

Tallien, .... 42, 48

Prison and Hospital Reform, . 73

Tarascon, Outrages at, . . mi

Proletariat, Ascendancy of, . . 42

" Terror, The," . . . 76-TA

„ Awakening of, . . 62

Abolished, . . 94

Property, Destruction of, .8

Increase of, . .81

„ National,. . .109-113
Restoration of, . . 97

Reaction Against, . . 72
Reign of, Beginning of, . 70

Prussia, Austria, and Turin, Coalition, 36-37

White, The, . 98, 100-101

Prussians and Austrians, Defeat of, . 47

Thermidor, . . . 88-93

Public Safety. Committee of, . 60, 69

Third Estate, The (tiers Mat), 1, 11. 18

Reason, Worship of, . . 74

,, Independence of, . 1

Renault, Ce'cilie, . . .86

Tiers Mat, . . 1, 11, 18

Republic Proclaimed, . . 48
,, Unity of, Decreed, . 61

,, Independence of, . . 1
Tinville, Fouquier, . 85, 87, 95

Talk of, . . .30

„ Execution cf, . . 98

Revolution, French, Cause of, . 10

Toleration, Religious, . . 3

,, ,, and Church, War

Torture, Abolition of. . . 41

between, . 28-29

Traitors, Marat calls for Heads of, . 33

, Central Idea of. . 10

Tribunal, Extraordinary, Established, 42

Classification of, 3

„ Revolutionary, Instituted, . 57

End of, . 105

Trouchet, . . . .54

, Issue of, . 119

Tuileries, the, Attack on, organised, 38, 39, 40

Opening of, . 11

,, Crowds Surround, . 34-35

Tidal Wave of, . 42

„ Departure of King to, . 23

" Revolutionary Army," . . 72

Turin, Austria and Prussia, Coalition, 36-37

„ ,, Suppression of , 82

Vadier, Trial and Transportation of, 98

War, . . 33,48

Varennes, Billaud, . . 42, 48, 39-90

Rights of Man, Declaration of, . 21

,, Trial and Transportation of. 93

Riots, . . . .7,9,13.

Vendee, La, Rising in, . 57, 67, 71

Robespierre, Augustin, . . 90
Death of, . 92

Vendome, New High Court of, . 105
Verdun, Bombardment of, . . 43

Maximilian, 26, 31, 48, 52, 65, 82,

„ Fall of, . . .47

117-118

Vergniaud, . . . 40,49

Attack upon, . 50,88-90

Versailles, Disturbance at, . . 22-23

Attempted Assassination, 86

Machinations at, . 21-22

Death of, . 93

Victories of Army, . . .72

Decline of Popularity of 87

Voltaire, de, F. M. A., . . 3, 4, 5

Infamy of, . 83

,, Influence with Girondists, . 78

Influence of, . 84

Wa between Revolution and Church, 28-29

Opposed to Worship of

,, 1 eclared with Austria, . . 33

Keason, , 80

„ Revolutlonarv, . . 33, 48

Rule of, . 84-87

" White Terror," The, . 98,100-101

Shoots himself, 92

" Worship of Reason," The, . 74

Wishes to be Dictator, 88

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