M. Aulard's mistake consists in supposing that all these groups were derived ``from a spontaneous movement of fraternity and reason.'' France at that time was covered with thousands of little clubs, receiving a single impulsion from the great Jacobin Club of Paris, and obeying it with perfect docility. This is what reality teaches us, though the illusions of the Jacobins do not permit them to accept the fact.[3]
[3] In the historical manuals which M. Aulard has prepared for the use of classes in collaboration with M. Debidour the role attributed to the people as an entity is even more marked. We see it intervening continually and spontaneously; here are a few examples:—
The ``Day'' of June the 20th: ``The king dismissed the Girondist members. The people of Paris, indignant, rose spontaneously and invaded the Tuileries.''
The ``Day'' of August 10th: ``The Legislative Assembly dared not overthrow it; it was the people of Paris, aided by the Federals of the Departments, who effected this revolution at the price of its blood.''
The conflict of the Girondists and the Mountain: ``This discord in the face of the enemy was dangerous. The people put an end to it on the days of the 31st of May and the 2nd of June, 1793, when it forced the Convention to expel the leaders of the Gironde from its midst and to decree their arrest.''
4. The Popular Entity and its Constituent Elements.
In order to answer to certain theoretical conceptions the people was erected into a mystic entity, endowed with all the powers and all the virtues, incessantly praised by the politicians, and overwhelmed with flattery. We shall see what we are to make of this conception of the part played by the people in the French Revolution.
To the Jacobins of this epoch, as to those of our own days, this popular entity constitutes a superior personality possessing the attributes, peculiar to divinities, of never having to answer for its actions and never making a mistake. Its wishes must be humbly acceded. The people may kill, burn, ravage, commit the most frightful cruelties, glorify its hero to-day and throw him into the gutter to-morrow; it is all one; the politicians will not cease to vaunt its virtues, its high wisdom, and to bow to its every decision.[4]
[4] These pretensions do at least seem to be growing untenable to the more advanced republicans.
``The rage with the socialists'' writes M. Clemenceau, ``is to endow with all the virtues, as though by a superhuman reason, the crowd whose reason cannot be much to boast of.'' The famous statesman might say more correctly that reason not only cannot be prominent in the crowd but is practically nonexistent.