CHAPTER VII.
THE FOURTEENTH OF JULY.
IN the remarkable book entitled Paris during the Revolution, M. Adolphe Schmidt writes: “All the purely revolutionary events, the events of the Fourteenth of July, of October 5 and 6, 1789, were the work of an obscure minority of reckless and violent revolutionists. If they succeeded, it was only because the great majority of the citizens avoided the scene of operations or were mere passive spectators there, attracted by curiosity, and giving in appearance an enhanced importance to the movement.” Further on he says: “After the fall of the Gironde,[52] Dutard expressed himself in these terms: ‘If, out of 50,000 Moderates, you succeed in collecting a compact body of no more than 3000, I shall be much astonished; and if out of these 3000 there are to be found only 500 who are agreed, and courageous enough to express their opinion, I shall be still more astonished. And these, in truth, must expect to be Septembrised.’[53] ‘Twelve maniacs, with their blood well up, at the head of the Sansculotte section,’ writes Dutard in another report, ‘would put to flight the other forty-seven sections of Paris.’ Mercier, after the fall of the Gironde, thus expresses himself in regard to the reign of Terror: ‘Sixty brigands deluged France with blood: 500,000 men within our walls were witnesses of their atrocities, and were not brave enough to oppose them.’”
To enable the reader to understand the extraordinary and improbable event which is the subject of this chapter, it would be necessary to begin by explaining the circumstances and describing the material and moral state of things in which it happened; and that, unhappily, would occupy much space. Let us take the two principal facts, see what they led to, and then come to the events of the Fourteenth of July.
For its task of governing France, the royal power had in its hands no administrative instrument, or, at any rate, administrative instruments of a very rudimentary character. It ruled through tradition and sentiment. The royal power had been created by the affection and devotion of the nation, and in this devotion and affection lay its whole strength.
What, actually and practically, were the means of government in the hands of the king? “Get rid of lettres de cachet,” observed Malesherbes, “and you deprive the king of all his authority, for the lettre de cachet is the only means he possesses of enforcing his will in the kingdom.” Now, for several years past, the royal power had practically renounced lettres de cachet. On the other hand, during the course of the eighteenth century, the sentiments of affection and devotion of which we have spoken had become enfeebled, or at least had changed their character. So it was that on the eve of the Revolution the royal power, which stood in France for the entire administration, had, if the expression may be allowed, melted into thin air.
Below the royal power, the lords in the country, the upper ten in the towns, constituted the second degree in the government. The same remarks apply here also. And unhappily it is certain that, over the greater part of France, the territorial lords had forgotten the duties which their privileges and their station imposed. The old attachment of the labouring classes to them had almost everywhere disappeared, and in many particulars had given place to feelings of hostility.
Thus on the eve of ’89 the whole fabric of the state had no longer any real existence: at the first shock it was bound to crumble into dust. And as, behind the fragile outer wall, there was no solid structure—no administrative machine, with its numerous, diverse, and nicely-balanced parts, like that which in our time acts as a buffer against the shocks of political crises,—the first blow aimed at the royal power was bound to plunge the whole country into a state of disorganization and disorder from which the tyranny of the Terror, brutal, blood-stained, overwhelming as it was, alone could rescue it.
Such is the first of the two facts we desire to make clear. We come now to the second. Ever since the year 1780, France had been almost continually in a state of famine. The rapidity and the abundance of the international exchanges which in our days supply us constantly from the remotest corners of the world with the necessaries of life, prevent our knowing anything of those terrible crises which in former days swept over the nations. “The dearth,” writes Taine, “permanent, prolonged, having already lasted ten years, and aggravated by the very outbreaks which it provoked, went on adding fuel to all the passions of men till they reached a blaze of madness.” “The nearer we come to the Fourteenth of July,” says an eye witness, “the greater the famine becomes.” “In consequence of the bad harvest,” writes Schmidt, “the price of bread had been steadily rising from the opening of the year 1789. This state of things was utilized by the agitators who aimed at driving the people into excesses: these excesses in turn paralyzed trade. Business ceased, and numbers of workers found themselves without bread.”
A few words should properly be said in regard to brigandage under the ancien régime. The progress of manners and especially the development of executive government have caused it utterly to disappear. The reader’s imagination will supply all we have not space to say. He will recollect the lengths of daring to which a man like Cartouche[54] could go, and recall what the forest of Bondy[55] was at the gates of Paris.
So grew up towards the end of the ancien régime what Taine has so happily called a spontaneous anarchy. In the four months preceding the capture of the Bastille, one can count more than three hundred riots in France. At Nantes, on January 9, 1789, the town hall was invaded, and the bakers’ shops pillaged. All this took place to the cries of “Vive le roi!” At Bray-sur-Seine, on May 1, peasants armed with knives and clubs forced the farmers to lower the price of corn. At Rouen, on May 28, the corn in the market place was plundered. In Picardy, a discharged carabineer put himself at the head of an armed band which attacked the villages and carried off the corn. On all sides houses were looted from roof to cellar. At Aupt, M. de Montferrat, defending himself, was “cut into little pieces.” At La Seyne, the mob brought a coffin in front of the house of one of the principal burgesses; he was told to prepare for death, and they would do him the honour to bury him. He escaped, and his house was sacked. We cull these facts haphazard from among hundreds of others.