Together with the requisition and maximum laws were passed others, which had for their direct object the suppression of speculation on the fluctuation in prices and in the value of the paper money. Capitalists, bankers, merchants engaged in foreign commerce, and speculators of every description, were denounced as aristocrats and enemies of their country, and in order the more effectually to suppress their transactions, the idea was entertained of breaking off commercial and financial relations between France and foreign countries. It was rendered a capital offence to refuse to accept assignats in payment of goods, or to offer or accept a higher price in them than in metal money. Financial and commercial companies were dissolved. The investment of capital in foreign countries was prohibited, the Exchange closed, the export of nearly all articles of French growth and manufacture forbidden, and the mere possession of articles grown or manufactured in Great Britain declared a crime. All the laws here described were enforced by fines, confiscations, the prison, and the guillotine. They succeeded in their immediate end. Wherever buying and selling went on in public the paper money was taken at par, and the Government was able to go on incessantly increasing the number of notes in circulation without meeting a corresponding rise in prices. But this result was only obtained at the cost of the destruction of private enterprise, the ruin of hundreds of traders and manufacturers, a lavish waste of the capital of the country, and the infliction of an enormous amount of suffering. Little foreign trade remained except what the Government itself carried on, and the only manufactures which flourished were those of arms and war material. Trade and agriculture became the most dangerous occupations in which it was possible to engage.
From a variety of motives all who could pressed into the service of the State. It was the one means of avoiding the proscription, the surest means of avoiding imprisonment, the surest means of acquiring wealth. The Government offices were flooded with incapable clerks. Municipal officers and administrators, charged with the care and sale of national property, had abundant opportunities of benefiting themselves and their relatives at the expense of the State. The multitude of agents who were employed in making requisitions for the army could, with small danger of exposure, enrich themselves by extortion and by breach of the maximum laws.
Formation of a revolutionary army.
The maximum laws prevented prices from rising in the open market, but they could not assure abundance. It was possible to search a tradesman’s cellars, and to force him to offer his existing stock of goods for sale at a definite price; but it was impossible to make him continue to carry on his trade at a loss to himself. It was easier for the farmer than for the tradesman to break the law; but this did not benefit the inhabitants of towns. The farmer would often choose to risk his head by concealing his corn or by sending it out of the country, sooner than send it to Paris or any other large town, where the maximum law was most rigidly enforced, and its breach attended with greatest danger to himself. Since the spring the Commune had been compelled to take upon itself the entire task of providing for the city’s consumption of bread. Its agents went into the surrounding departments and purchased all the corn and meal they could obtain, often giving a higher price than that prescribed by the law; but it was nevertheless only with extreme difficulty that the necessary provision was made. In order to maintain popularity with the working classes, the Commune was, however, compelled to provide that the daily supply of bread did not fail. It was compelled also to give satisfaction to that idle and ruffianly portion of the population by aid of which it was enabled to impose its will upon the Convention and the Committee of Public Safety. At the demand of the Commune the Convention passed a law declaring that Paris, like the armies, should be supplied by requisitions, and ordering the formation of a special paid force, or so-called ‘revolutionary army,’ of 7,000 men, which was to go into the departments and compel farmers to part with their corn at the maximum price. By these means the Commune obtained command of a new force, and found means of living for the destitute thieves and beggars with whom the city swarmed. This army was simply a horde of villains, let loose upon the neighbouring departments, who went from village to village, plundering, imprisoning, and torturing the inhabitants. Meanwhile, scarcity increased at Paris to such an extent that to put an end to the crowding at the bakers’ doors, the Commune ordered that tickets should be issued by the sections, specifying the number of loaves that each family in the city was to be suffered to have for its daily consumption.
Law of ‘suspected persons.’
The maximum laws increased the already large number of those placed by the Mountain, the Jacobins, and the Commune outside the pale of citizenship. The farmer, forced to part with his corn at the maximum price, would henceforth be suspected of ill-will towards the republic, as much as the speculator, the merchant, and the contractor for the armies, who, while freedom of contract had prevailed, had made large profits at the cost either of individuals or of the State. It was, in fact, impossible that the economical system established by the laws described should be accepted except through fear alone. The self-interest of too many thousands operated in the contrary direction. The very artisan, who thought it fair that the farmer should be forced to sell his produce at maximum prices, strove, whenever opportunity occurred, to obtain higher wages than those which the law allotted to him. As the number of their enemies increased, the Hébertists, aware of increased danger to themselves, grew fiercer and more sanguinary in word and act. ‘To be safe,’ said Hébert, ‘you must kill all.’ If once nobles, royalists, seigneurs, had been the enemies of France, now Girondists, federalists, speculators, breakers of maximum laws were placed in the same class. Urged on by the Commune, the Convention passed a vaguely-worded law empowering the revolutionary committees throughout France to imprison all nobles, relations of emigrants, federalists, and other persons ‘suspected’ of ill-will towards the Republic (September 17). To carry out literally Hébert’s advice, and kill all such, was impracticable. But it was possible to diffuse terror on every side, by casting into prison every man and woman who, by their conduct or even by their looks, expressed disapproval of the existing order, and by taking the lives of all those who bore names in any way representative of the past. At the beginning of September the number of prisoners in Paris was about 1,500; by the end of October it had risen to 3,000. Deputies could neither be imprisoned nor be sent before the revolutionary court without the authorisation of the Convention. Their security was, however, slight. Ever since the expulsion of the leading Girondists, the imprisonment, now of one, now of another of their followers had been decreed, so that the right side was gradually being destroyed. The final blow was given when, on the demand of the Committee of General Security, the Convention sent before the revolutionary court twenty-one deputies of the right, and also the man who had once been known as the Duke of Orleans, but who now sat in the ranks of the Mountain and styled himself Philip Egalité. At the same time the Convention ordered the arrest of more than forty other deputies who had signed protests against the proceedings of June 2 (October 3). The judges and jurymen of the revolutionary court, like all authorities elected at Paris, were the tools or accomplices of the Commune and of the Committees of Government. The public prosecutor, Fouquier Tinville, acted under the instructions of the Committee of Public Safety. Hitherto the Court had observed the forms of its institution. Witnesses were called on both sides, and the defence was fully heard. Between March and October the Court had sentenced to death sixty-nine persons and acquitted ninety-two. But from this time forms were less and less regarded, while the number of condemnations rose to more than sixty a month. The guillotine stood permanently on the Place de la Révolution.
Execution of the Queen.
The life of the captive Queen had long been sought for by the Hébertists. Since the fall of the throne she had been shut off from all communication with the outer world. She had seen her husband leave her to die on the scaffold, and her young son had since been torn from her arms, on the pretext that if he were left with her she would bring him up to be a tyrant. Her gaolers, whatever their feelings might be, dared not show her the smallest sign of sympathy. She was informed of the fate that awaited her by her removal from the Temple to the Conciergerie, a prison situated on the island in the Seine, close to the Palais de Justice, where the Revolutionary Court, as well as other Courts of Justice, sat. When brought before the Court she replied with firmness to the accusations made against her, and by her composed and dignified bearing won murmurs of applause from the hostile crowd, which had gathered to witness how the once haughty Queen would endure degradation and ignominy. Like other condemned persons, Marie Antoinette was taken from the Conciergerie to the Place de la Révolution, seated in a common cart with her arms tied behind her. History can have little to say in praise of a Queen whose conduct, during her years of prosperity, had done much to cause that general disorganisation of society and government, in the midst of which she perished amongst so many other victims, of whom many had striven for higher objects, and of whom many were more innocent than herself. But by her brave endurance of adversity, and the noble and resigned manner in which she met death, she, like others, atoned for past errors, and won for her memory respect and sympathy (October 16).
Execution of the Girondists.
Twenty-one deputies of the right soon followed the Queen to the scaffold. Amongst them were nine of those deputies whose arrest had been ordered on June 2, including Vergniaud, Brissot, and Gensonné. Their trial was cut short through fear lest if they were allowed to plead their cause they would gain the sympathy of the eager and excited audience with which the Court was thronged. On their way from the Conciergerie to the Place de la Révolution they sang together the already famous song, the Marseillaise, beginning,—