The French Revolution 1789-1795

by Bertha Meriton Gardiner

Desmoulins.

In Camille Desmoulins the levelling principles of the revolution found their ablest advocate. He belonged to the lower section of the middle class; and, while speaking in the name of the people, gave expression to the intense jealousy with which men in his position of life regarded claims of property or of birth to political or social distinction. Young, naive, and enthusiastic, Desmoulins was incapable of throwing dust in his own eyes or in the eyes of others, and from the first avowed that even the form of monarchical government was incompatible with the principles that his party held. Since, however, the Assembly ordained that France was to have a king, he expressed his readiness to take off his hat when Louis passed by, but he refused to recognise Marie Antoinette as Queen, and only made mention of her as the King’s wife. Desmoulins was no precisian like Brissot, and did not concern himself with the moral disposition of his fellow-countrymen. When attacking men whom he designated as ‘reactionaries’ and ‘aristocrats,’ without heed of consequences, he made use of every arm which served his end—irony, calumny, and gross exaggeration. The prevailing state of anarchy he made light of. Rousseau had said that the people were by nature merciful and forgiving, and his disciples palliated acts of ferocity on the score of ignorance and misery. Was it to be expected, Desmoulins asked, that after centuries of debasement liberty could be obtained without a little blood-letting?

Marat.

Marat, a writer of a third type—called, after the title of his journal, the ‘People’s Friend’—had no faith in any of the distinctive principles of the time. He did not believe in the goodness of human nature, nor in reason as the main lever by which to reconstitute society and government, nor in the political capacity of his countrymen, and was as ready to throw suspicion on the people’s nominees as Brissot on the integrity of men put in office by the King. He did not regard either commercial or individual liberty as necessarily calculated to increase the happiness and prosperity of the masses. The goal to which he pointed was a shadowy one of a democratic state, where mediocrity ruled, and government provided that the working-classes lacked neither labour nor bread. His means were the re-establishment of absolute power and the use of force. Since officials were corrupt, the upper classes seeking power merely for selfish ends, the people ignorant and easily deceived, Marat proposed to invest a dictator with authority to establish genuine equality by crushing under foot the possessors of wealth and talent. As, however, there appeared no probability of the adoption of this plan, he filled the pages of his journal with incentives to murder and insurrection, advising the people to secure their happiness by rising and killing their enemies in a body. Some thousands of heads laid low, the true era of freedom and prosperity would open.

Sources of influence of ultra-democrats.

Besides Brissot, Desmoulins, and Marat, there were a number of other writers who in words declared their loyalty to the constitution, while they excited discontent against it, called in question the patriotism and good faith of all who did not agree with themselves, and rendered harder the task of maintaining order. They had different aims and different views of life, but on certain points they were all agreed, and for the time the points of agreement alone came into prominence. With one voice they cast bitter reproaches on the Assembly for dividing Frenchmen into active and passive citizens, denying the suffrage to the latter, and excluding them from the national guard. So, again, they denounced the royal veto on decrees, on the ground that it subjected the will of the sovereign people to the will of the king. They condemned the Riot Act, and attacked the Assembly whenever sanction was given to the employment of military force against rioters. When the mutiny at Nancy was suppressed in blood, a loud cry of indignation was raised against Lafayette and other deputies who on that occasion abandoned the popular side. The ultra-democrats formed undoubtedly but a minority of the population. The majority of Frenchmen were content with the constitution, and had no desire to make more radical changes than those already accomplished. Many causes, however, enabled the ultra-democrats to exercise influence quite out of proportion to their numerical strength. It was not merely that the Government was weak, but also that there was no cohesion between classes, and that there was no class capable of leading the nation by obtaining its entire confidence. Suspicion of the nobles was so strong that they were already nearly in the position of a proscribed class. The bourgeoisie had not the habit even of administering local affairs, and was itself regarded with suspicion by the class beneath it. The people, both ignorant and discontented, regarded those men who were for the time in office as responsible for their misery. If corn and bread were dear, the municipal officer who would not lower their price was denounced as an aristocrat, and his life was threatened. Men of the middle class, engaged in professional and other pursuits, withdrew in large numbers from political life. The ultra-democrats, active, united, and unscrupulous, were therefore able, although a minority, to put themselves forward as representatives of France, and gradually to engross the direction of affairs in their own hands.

Influence exercised by Jacobin clubs.

In the National Assembly which represented France as it was in 1789, the party did not, as has been seen, number more than from twenty to thirty, but its weakness in the Assembly was fully atoned for by its strength in the Jacobins. This society had developed into a political organ which was none the less powerful because its authority was not recognised by the laws. During 1790 and 1791 Jacobin clubs were established in most provincial towns, and even in mere villages. They were generally affiliated to the head or mother society at Paris, with which they maintained a regular correspondence. Thus, at a time when all other bonds of cohesion had been destroyed or had fallen away, there was rising into existence over France, outside the constitution, a network of authorities, directed from a common centre in Paris. The clubs, in fact, perpetually interfered with the administrative bodies, tendering advice which often assumed the form of dictation or intimidation, and were always able, if they pleased, to get up demonstrations in favour of their own views. They represented that spirit of distrust which was everywhere felt and seemed to pervade the very air men breathed; and if more moderate politicians disapproved the violent language often used in them, and their assumptions of administrative authority, they did not desire their suppression, for the reason that their fear of danger from this source was less than their fear of the triumph of reactionists and the undoing of the work of the revolution.

In September 1790, the ministry had been dissolved in consequence of attacks made on it by the Jacobins of Paris. Necker, painfully alive to his loss of popularity, left the country unregretted (September), and his colleagues, alarmed at the charges brought against them, shortly afterwards resigned. Louis after this put men in office known to be opposed to the restoration of the old order, but they possessed as little influence on the Assembly as their predecessors. The right refused them support, because they did not belong to the party of reaction; and the left, because their attachment to the existing constitution was called in question.

Commune of Paris.