The French Revolution 1789-1795

by Bertha Meriton Gardiner

While this civil war was continuing in the west, scenes similar to those occurring in Paris occurred simultaneously throughout the country. The will of the Commune was law in most of the departments of France. Some of the deputies in mission joined the Hébertist faction, and their colleagues followed in their train, not daring to venture collision with them. Men, in fact, adopted the language then in vogue, and acted cruelly, instigated by fear lest if they showed clemency they would offer a handle which their enemies would use to compass the ruin of themselves and their families. The deputies in mission, so long as they found protection in Paris, exercised uncontrolled powers over the properties and lives of their fellow-citizens. They imposed fines and taxes, set aside laws, created criminal offences, and erected criminal courts. Many decrees of the Convention merely extended to the whole country measures already in force in different departments. As instruments the deputies had at their service the municipalities, which were reconstituted over and over again; the clubs, from which they drove all who were not prepared slavishly to applaud their actions; and, finally, the revolutionary committees, to which they delegated the same arbitrary powers that they themselves exercised. These committees, of which there was one established in every district and every populous commune, were, as a rule, formed of the most fanatic, the most cowardly, and the most worthless men whom the neighbourhood produced. Many thousand persons were at their bidding flung into prison on the merest pretext or without any motive at all being given. One would be imprisoned because he was related to an emigrant, another because he was a fanatic, a third because he was an egotist, a fourth because he had done nothing for the revolution, a fifth because he had 100l. or 50l. a year. Persons of both sexes, of every age and rank, were involved in the same proscription. Taxes were assessed at random. Those who could not or would not pay the sum demanded were imprisoned and their revenues confiscated. Persons in possession of metal money were made to exchange it for assignats. In every third department at least executions continually took place. There were no less than 178 extraordinary or revolutionary courts of one and another kind. Many observed no forms whatever, and passed several hundred judgments in a single sitting. So small was the control exercised by the central Government, that the Committee of Public Safety was in ignorance of the existence of some of these courts or of the number of persons punished by their decrees. The Catholic religion was proscribed. Before the worship of Reason was established at Paris, Hébertist deputies were confiscating the plate of churches, prohibiting the exercise of Catholic rites, and making bonfires of religious books and relics. Constitutional priests were imprisoned and guillotined by the score. Between one and two thousand married and abjured their faith. The observance of Sunday was prohibited. On the first days of the new weeks of ten days, feasts in honour of Reason, of Equality, of Liberty, and the like, were held in the churches, from which none remained absent without risk of being classed in the category of suspected persons.

In every department property was confiscated, many persons imprisoned, and lives taken. But the amount of suffering inflicted and blood shed in any one department, nevertheless, depended in some degree on the character of the deputy in mission, and on the part that had been taken by the department after the expulsion of the Girondists. The Government had the support of a small number of men who, if fanatics, were nevertheless honest in believing that, whatever its excesses, it alone could save France from conquest, and who endeavoured to make use of their authority, not for personal or selfish ends, but for the public good, as they understood the term. Such men might be cruel; but if so, it was with a motive, not through cowardice, or the mere pleasure taken by the tyrant in making his power felt. St. Just, in Alsace, took from the citizens of Strasburg their coats, their beds, their boots, or whatever else he wanted to supply the wants of the soldiers. The municipal officers were commanded to provide 10,000 pairs of boots in the course of twenty-four hours. ‘Take,’ the youthful dictator wrote to them, ‘the boots off the feet of the aristocrats.’ In Auvergne, Couthon, while he exercised a grinding tyranny, aspired to win the attachment of the population. He obtained State grants for the embellishment of Clermont, his native town, established a manufactory of arms to give employment to destitute workmen, founded a college in the interests of education, and let out of prison a number of peasant farmers. But men of the description of St. Just and Couthon were rare. Far more often deputies in mission sought to enrich themselves, and closed their eyes to the greed and rapacity of their agents. At Bordeaux, under the presidency of the cowardly Tallien, the rich man who could offer a sufficiently large bribe to his judges escaped with his life: the poor man went to the scaffold. In the departments where the Hébertists ruled most licence and most shedding of blood were invariably to be met with. Following the example set in Paris, they established revolutionary armies, which were charged with collecting taxes and bringing in corn, and which made havoc of the country through which they passed. Men of weak and violent character, suddenly risen to power, developed into tyrants capable of the most atrocious crimes, and with hearts apparently destitute of all feelings of justice and humanity. The prisons at Nantes were crowded with persons dying from disease and starvation, the wrecks of the Vendean army. In place of sending these victims of civil war back to their own country, the deputy Carrier caused them to be placed on rafts, which were afterwards sunk in the Loire, a process of execution twelve times adopted. On the great industrial town of Lyons savage vengeance was taken. Persons of every condition of life—manufacturers, shopkeepers, and artisans—condemned by military commissioners, were shot in batches of two or three hundred at a time. Whole streets and squares were blown up by gunpowder; an immense amount of property was plundered and destroyed. According to the reckoning of the two deputies on whom the immediate responsibility rested, Collot and Fouché, in five months the population was reduced from 130,000 to 80,000 souls. The punishment inflicted on Toulon, when at last it surrendered in December, was hardly less atrocious.

Terrorists few in number.

The men who approved these acts and took part in them formed but an exceedingly small minority in the departments—in some districts so small that they might be counted on the fingers. In parts of Brittany fugitive Vendeans, in the neighbourhood of Bordeaux fugitive Girondists, remained in safe hiding, because there was no one who cared to betray them. In the Basses Pyrénées, up till the autumn of 1793, revolutionary laws had remained unenforced, and a noble, elected in 1790, was still mayor of Pau. The judges of the ordinary courts, though at peril of their lives, refused to condemn their neighbours to death. The mass of municipal and administrative officers only took part in revolutionary measures under compulsion. A small knot of men, cowards, ruffians, fanatics, and fortune-hunters, gathered round the deputy in mission, directed the action of the clubs, sat in the revolutionary committees, and were judges in the revolutionary courts. Peasants and artisans gave as little active support to the Terror as the nobles or the bourgeoisie. The peasants, having freed themselves from feudal duties, became conservative. The requisitions for the armies and the corn maximum were incessant causes of irritation to them. The maximum of wages irritated artisans. Both classes were alienated by the suppression of the Catholic worship. The Hébertists vainly strove to acquire support by holding up the rich to reprobation, and by undertaking to give provision to the poor, and to provide labour for them. They succeeded in ruining the rich, but failed to benefit the poor. The main object, with a view to which their whole conduct was regulated, was to lay hands on all the wealth which tyranny and brutality could bring within their grasp; and of the spoils the larger part stayed, if not in their own hands, in the hands of their agents—the smaller was spent in the public service, and a bare pittance was left for providing bread and alms for the destitute. Thus, in 133 districts, where 1,400,000l. were admittedly raised in revolutionary taxes, a year afterwards only 430,000l. were accounted for. Material want was far greater than in the capital. In Lyons, Bordeaux, and many other places the inhabitants were put on rations, and a few ounces of bad bread were daily doled out per head.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE FALL OF THE HÉBERTISTS AND DANTONISTS.

The Army.

While the internal condition of France was such as has been described, her enemies were being successfully held in check on the frontiers. After the great conscription decreed by the Convention in August had been effected, there were in all some million of men in arms. The nation might hate and despise its fanatic, tyrannical, and cruel Government, but it none the less remained proud of the changes which the revolution had effected, and was ready to endure the heavy yoke laid on it for the sake of defending France against interference from abroad. The nation was in reality far more truly represented by the army than by the Government. The soldiers, like the mass of those who stayed at home, were intensely enthusiastic in defence of their country, but took no part in the strife of internal factions. The Government was fully alive to the fact that it had not, except in a passive sense, the support of the large forces which necessity had compelled it to bring together, and the leaders in Paris lived always with the fear before them that some general would follow the example of Dumouriez, and turn against his employers. The Hébertists sought to weed out of the army all officers who by birth belonged to the old nobility. Such were cashiered by hundreds, and their places given to men from the ranks. Even these new officers, however, became objects of suspicion if they displayed military capacity, and won the affection of their men; and the generals were on the merest pretext condemned of treachery or treason by the revolutionary court, and were sent to the scaffold. Deputies in mission acted as spies on the conduct of all superior officers, reported their words and actions to the Committee of Public Safety, attended at military councils, and were held by the soldiers in more awe than the commander-in-chief. All the more important movements of the armies were directed from Paris, where the plans of campaigns were laid down by Carnot, one of the members of the Committee of Public Safety. Carnot had been educated as a military engineer, and his considerable abilities were made available by his indefatigable energy and his intense enthusiasm for his work. In the face of the many obstacles which the disorganisation of the Government presented, he devoted himself entirely to the task of organising the armies, and of insuring that the war which extended over so wide a field should be conducted with intelligence and method. The success which the French attained was undoubtedly in great part owing to his unremitting exertions. Hitherto the army had been divided into two bodies, distinguished from one another by pay, uniform, and system of advancement—namely, troops of the line which had formed the army of the monarchy, and new battalions raised since the beginning of the war. ♦The French Army.♦ In February 1793, the Convention had determined to abolish these distinctions, and to fuse in common regiments the troops of the line and the new recruits, and the operation was actually carried into effect during the following winter. Thus, in place of the old royal army there had come into existence a wholly new army, the creation of the revolution. The troops lacked training and discipline, but were ready to fight continually against superior numbers, had confidence in their officers, and were not easily shaken by reverses. Many officers were unable to read and write, but against this defect was to be set the advantage that military talent rapidly found its way to the front. Two-thirds of the regimental officers were elected by those whom they were to command, one-third was advanced by time of service. The appointment of the generals the Government reserved to itself.

THE RHINE

E. Weller.