I.—Government by gangs in times of anarchy.
Case where anarchy is recent and suddenly brought on.—The
band that succeeds the fallen government and its
administrative tools.
The worst feature of anarchy is not so much the absence of the overthrown government as the rise of new governments of an inferior grade. In every state which breaks up, new groups will form to conquer and become sovereign: it was so in Gaul on the fall of the Roman empire, also under the latest of Charlemagne's successors; the same state of things exists now (1875) in Rumania and in Mexico. Adventurers, gangsters, corrupted or downgraded men, social outcasts, men overwhelmed with debts and lost to honor, vagabonds, deserters, dissolute troopers, born enemies of work, of subordination, and of the law, unite to break the worm-eaten barriers which still surround the sheep-like masses; and as they are unscrupulous, they slaughter on all occasions. On this foundation their authority rests; each in turn reigns in its own area, and their government, in keeping with its brutal masters, consists in robbery and murder; nothing else can be looked for from barbarians and brigands.
But never are they so dangerous as when, in a great State recently fallen, a sudden revolution places the central power in their hands; for they then regard themselves as the legitimate inheritors of the shattered government, and, under this title, they undertake to manage the commonwealth. Now in times of anarchy the ruling power does not proceed from above, but from below; and the chiefs, therefore, who would remain such, are obliged to follow the blind impulsion of their flock.[3101] Hence the important and dominant personage, the one whose ideas prevail, the veritable successor of Richelieu and of Louis XIV. is here the subordinate Jacobin, the pillar of the club, the maker of motions, the street rioter, Panis Sergent, Hébert, Varlet, Henriot, Maillard, Fournier, Lazowski, or, still lower in the scale, the Marseilles "rough," the Faubourg gunner, the drinking market-porter who elaborates his political conceptions in the interval between his hiccups.[3102]—For information he has the rumors circulating in the streets which tell of a traitor to each house, and for confirmed knowledge the club slogans inciting him to rule over the vast machine. A machinery so vast and complicated, a whole assembly of entangled services ramifying in innumerable offices, with so much apparatus of special import, so delicate as to require constant adaptation to changing circumstances, diplomacy, finances, justice, army administration—all this surpasses his limited comprehension; a bottle cannot be made to contain the bulk of a hogshead.[3103] In his narrow brain, perverted and turned topsy-turvy by the disproportionate notions put into it, only one idea suited to his gross instincts and aptitudes finds a place there, and that is the desire to kill his enemies; and these are also the State's enemies, however open or concealed, present or future, probable or even possible. He carries this savagery and bewilderment into politics, and hence the evil arising from his government. Simply a brigand, he would have murdered only to rob, and his murders would have been restricted. As representing the State, he undertakes wholesale massacres, of which he has the means ready at hand.—For he has not yet had time enough to take apart the old administrative implements; at all events the minor wheels, gendarmes, jailers, employees, book-keepers, and accountants, are always in their places and under control. There can be no resistance on the part of those arrested; accustomed to the protection of the laws and to peaceable ways and times, they have never relied on defending themselves nor ever could imagine that any one could be so summarily slain. As to the mass, rendered incapable of any effort of its own by ancient centralization, it remains inert and passive and lets things go their own way.—Hence, during many long, successive days, without being hurried or impeded, with official papers quite correct and accounts in perfect order, a massacre can be carried out with the same impunity and as methodically as cleaning the streets or clubbing stray dogs.[3104]
II.—The development of the ideas of killings in the mass of the party.
The morning after August 10.—The tribunal of August 17.
—The funereal fête of August 27.—The prison plot.
Let us trace the progress of the homicidal idea in the mass of the party. It lies at the very bottom of the revolutionary creed. Collot d'Herbois, two months after this, aptly says in the Jacobin tribune: "The second of September is the great article in the credo of our freedom."[3105] It is peculiar to the Jacobin to consider himself as a legitimate sovereign, and to treat his adversaries not as belligerents, but as criminals. They are guilty of lèse-nation; they are outlaws, fit to be killed at all times and places, and deserve extinction, even when no longer able or in a condition do any harm.—Consequently, on the 10th of August the Swiss Guards, who do not fire a gun and who surrender, the wounded lying on the ground, their surgeons, the palace domestics, are killed; and worse still, persons like M. de Clermont-Tonnerre who pass quietly along the street. All this is now called in official phraseology the justice of the people.—On the 11th the Swiss Guards, collected in the Feuillants building, come near being massacred; the mob on the outside of it demand their heads;[3106] "it conceives the project of visiting all the prisons in Paris to take out the prisoners and administer prompt justice on them."—On the 12th in the markets "diverse groups of the low class call Pétion a scoundrel," because "he saved the Swiss in the Palais Bourbon"; accordingly, "he and the Swiss must be hung to-day."-In these minds turned topsy-turvy the actual, palpable truth gives way to its opposite; "the attack was not begun by them; the order to sound the tocsin came from the palace; it is the palace which was besieging the nation, and not the nation which was besieging the palace."[3107] The vanquished "are the assassins of the people," caught in the act; and on the 14th of August the Federates demand a court-martial "to avenge the death of their comrades."[3108] And even a court-martial will not answer. "It is not sufficient to mete out punishment for crimes committed on the 10th of August, but the vengeance of the people must be extended to all conspirators;" to that "Lafayette, who probably was not in Paris, but who may have been there;" to all the ministers, generals, judges, and other officials guilty of maintaining legal order wherever it had been maintained, and of not having recognized the Jacobin government before it came into being. Let them be brought before, not the ordinary courts, which are not to be trusted because they belong to the defunct régime, but before a specially organized tribunal, a sort of "chambre ardente,"[3109] elected by the sections, that is to say, by a Jacobin minority. These improvised judges must give judgment on conviction, without appeal; there must be no preliminary examinations, no interval of time between arrest and execution, no dilatory and protective formalities. And above all, the Assembly must be expeditious in passing the decree; "otherwise," it is informed by a delegate from the Commune,[3110] "the tocsin will be rung at midnight and the general alarm sounded; for the people are tired of waiting to be avenged. Look out lest they do themselves justice!—A moment later, new threats and with an advanced deadline. "If the juries are not ready to act in two or three hours great misfortunes will overtake Paris."
Even if the new tribunal, set up on the spot, is quick, guillotining three innocent persons in five days; it does not move fast enough. On the 23rd of August one of the sections declares to the Commune in furious language that the people themselves, "wearied and indignant" with so many delays, mean to force open the prisons and massacre the inmates.[3111]—Not only do the sections harass the judges, but they force the accused into their presence: a deputation from the Commune and the Federates summons the Assembly "to transfer the criminals at Orleans to Paris to undergo the penalty of their heinous crimes". "Otherwise," says the speaker, "we will not answer for the vengeance of the people."[3112] And in a still more imperative manner:
"You have heard and you know that insurrection is a sacred duty," a sacred duty towards and against all: towards the Assembly if it refuses, and towards the tribunal if it acquits. They dash at their prey contrary to all legislative and judicial formalities, like a kite across the web of a spider, while nothing detach them from their fixed ideas. On the acquittal of M. Luce de Montmorin[3113] the gross audience, mistaking him for his cousin the former minister of Louis XVI., break out in murmurs. The president tries to enforce silence, which increases the uproar, and M. de Montmorin is in danger. On this the president, discovering a side issue, announces that one of the jurors is related to the accused, and that in such a case a new jury must be impaneled and a new trial take place; that the matter will be inquired into, and meanwhile the prisoner will be returned to the Conciergerie prison. Thereupon he takes M. de Montmorin by the arm and leads him out of the court-room, amidst the yells of the audience and not without risks to himself; in the outside court a soldier of the National Guard strikes at him with a saber, and the following day the court is obliged to authorize eight delegates from the audience to go and see with their own eyes that M. de Montmorin is really in prison.
At the moment of his acquittal a tragic remark is heard:
"You discharge him to-day and in two weeks he will cut our throats!"
Fear is evidently an adjunct of hatred. The Jacobin rabble is vaguely conscious of their inferior numbers, of their usurpation, of their danger, which increases in proportion as Brunswick draws near. They feel that they live above a mine, and if the mine should explode!—Since they think that their adversaries are scoundrels they feel they are capable of a dirty trick, of a plot, of a massacre. As they themselves have never behaved in any other way, they cannot conceive anything else. Through an inevitable inversion of thought, they impute to others the murderous intentions obscurely wrought out in the dark recesses of their own disturbed brains.—On the 27th of August, after the funeral procession gotten up by Sergent expressly to excite popular resentment, their suspicions, at once specific and guided, begin to take the form of certainty. Ten "commemorative" banners,[3114] each borne by a volunteer on horseback, have paraded before all eyes the long list of massacres "by the court and its agents":
1. the massacre at Nancy,
2. the massacre at Nîmes,
3. the massacre at Montauban,
4. the massacre at Avignon,
5. the massacre at La Chapelle,
6. the massacre at Carpentras,
7. the massacre of the Champ de Mars, etc.
Faced with such displays, doubts and misgivings are out of the question. To the women in the galleries, to the frequenters of the clubs, and to pikemen in the suburbs it is from now beyond any doubt proved that the aristocrats are habitual killers.
And on the other side there is another sign equally alarming "This lugubrious ceremony, which ought to inspire by turns both reflection and indignation,... did not generally produce that effect." The National Guard in uniform, who came "apparently to make up for not appearing on the day of action," did not behave themselves with civic propriety, but, on the contrary, put on "an air of inattention and even of noisy gaiety"; they come out of curiosity, like so many Parisian onlookers, and are much more numerous than the sans-culottes with their pikes.[3115] The latter could count themselves and plainly see that they are just a minority, and a very small one, and that their rage finds no echo. The organizers and their stooges are the only ones to call for speedy sentencing and for death-penalties. A foreigner, a good observer, who questions the shop-keepers of whom he makes purchases, the tradesmen he knows, and the company he finds in the coffee-houses, writes that he never had "seen any symptom of a sanguinary disposition except in the galleries of the National Assembly and at the Jacobin Club," but then the galleries are full of paid "applauders,' especially "females, who are more noisy and to be had cheaper than males." At the Jacobin Club are "the leaders, who dread a turnaround or who have resentments to gratify[3116]": thus the only enragés are the leaders and the populace of the suburbs.—Lost in the crowd of this vast city, in the face of a National Guard still armed and three times their own number, confronting an indifferent or discontented bourgeoisie, the patriots are alarmed. In this state of anxiety a feverish imagination, exasperated by the waiting, involuntarily gives birth to imaginings passionately accepted as truths. All that is now required is an incident in order to put the final touch to complete the legend, the germ of which has unwittingly grown in their minds.
On the 1st of September a poor wagoner, Jean Julien,[3117] condemned to twelve years in irons, has been exposed in the pillory. After two hours he becomes furious, probably on account of the jeers of the bystanders. With the coarseness of people of his kind he has vented his impotent rage by abuse, he has unbuttoned and exposed himself to the public, and has naturally chosen expressions which would appear most offensive to the people looking at him:
"Hurrah for the King! Hurrah for the Queen! Hurra for Lafayette! To hell with the nation!"
It is also natural that he missed being torn to pieces. He was at once led away to the Conciergerie prison, and sentenced on the spot to be guillotined as soon as possible, for being a promoter of sedition in connection with the conspiracy of August the 10th.—The conspiracy, accordingly, is still in existence. It is so declared by the tribunal, which makes no declaration without evidence. Jean Julien has certainly confessed; now what has he revealed?—On the following day, like a crop of poisonous mushrooms, the growth of a single night, the story obtains general credence. "Jean Julien has declared that all the prisons in Paris thought as he did, that there would soon be fine times, that the prisoners were armed, and that as soon as the volunteers cleared out they would be let loose on all Paris."[3118] The streets are full of anxious faces. "One says that Verdun had been betrayed like Longwy. Others shook their heads and said it was the traitors within Paris and not the declared enemies on the frontier that were to be feared."[3119] On the following day the story grows: "There are royalist officers and soldiers hidden away in Paris and in the outskirts. They are going to open the prisons, arm the prisoners, set the King and his family free, put the patriots in Paris to death, also the wives and children of those in the army... Isn't it natural for men to look after the safety of their wives and children, and to use the only efficient means to arrest the assassin's dagger."[3120]—The working-class inferno has been stirred up, now it's up to the contractors of public revolt to fan and direct the flames.