The time of his birth coincided with the rising of a certain sun which has not yet set upon Europe, but the boy’s eyes turned to more immediate things, and saw in a little provincial place the break-up of a wretched, experimental reign.
This point must be insisted upon, that a country town was the best possible place for noting the collapse of misgovernment. The country manors were more wretched, the provincial capitals more loud and able in their expressions of opinion; but few places could show the fatal process of disintegration more clearly than these little provincial centres, the sub-prefectures of to-day. The confusion of power, the excess and the ill-working of privilege, the complexity and weakness of government, were there apparent upon every occasion. The wealth of the nation was diminished most especially by the interference with exchange. This (though ultimately a source of their penury) was less directly evident to the villagers, while the large town with its varied production could (in another form) disguise the evil; but to the small borough the experience was direct and terrible.
Again, the practical equality of educated men was there more apparent and more sinned against than in the wider societies of the large towns. In a place like Arcis-sur-Aube, isolated specimens of classes technically distinct were continually in contact. The less the number of their caste and order (and the less their importance), the more do the noblesse, to this day, put on their pride; and yet the more necessary is it, in the life of a small town, that they should associate with those whose conversation and abilities are precisely their own. In Paris or in Lyons, where large cliques were occupied in general interests, such differences were often neglected; in the forgotten towns of the provinces never.
On the other hand, the blind and dumb anger of the peasantry would hardly reach Arcis. All over France the town misunderstood the countryside, and in the early Revolution actually fought against it. This will appear strange to an English reader, who sees scarcely any contrast between a country market and an overgrown village. In England the distinction hardly exists, but in France the borough is very separate from the peasant society outside, and, though often smaller than some large neighbouring village, it keeps to this day the Roman traditions of a city.
We see, then, that Danton’s birthplace in great part accounts for the peculiar bent of his future politics: practical, of legal effect, inspired by no hatred, though strongly influenced by a personal experience of misgovernment. But his parentage will show us still more clearly how the conditions of his origin affected his career.
He was of the lawyers. His father was procureur in the bailiwick of Arcis. It is difficult to explain the functions of his office at this date and to an English reader, for it belongs to that “Administration” which is so essentially Latin, and which we are but just beginning to experience in England. Let it suffice to describe him as the official whose duty it was to supply that which in England the institution of the grand jury still in theory provides, as it did once in reality. It was his business to “present” the cases and the accused to the local criminal court—local, because in France the circuit of assize is unknown. Added to this were many duties and privileges of registration, of stamping and so forth; and the position required an accurate, and even a minute knowledge of the royal law and provincial usage, the complicated customary system of the old regime.
It is perhaps of still more importance to appreciate the social position of Jacques Danton. Belonging to the lower branches of the legal profession, and placed in a lesser borough of Champagne, the father of Danton held something of the same rank as would a small country solicitor in one of our market-towns, with whatever additions of dignity might follow from a permanent office in the municipality of the place.
As to fortune, we do not accurately know the amount of the family income during Danton’s boyhood, but we know that the office which was afterwards purchased for him was worth some three to four thousand pounds; that the money was found largely upon the credit of his father’s legacy,[11] and that the house in which the family lived was their own—a useful rule existing throughout provincial France. It is a substantial building, among the best of the little town, standing in the market-place, with the principal rooms giving upon the public square. What with the probable capital and the known emoluments of his position, we may regard Jacques Danton as a man disposing of an income of about four to five hundred pounds a year.
His mother was of a somewhat lower rank. She was the daughter of a builder from the Champagne, and her brother was a master-carpenter of the town. Of her two sisters, one had married a postmaster and the other a shopkeeper, both in Troyes; her brother was the priest of Barberey, near Arcis.
The father died when the boy was two and a half years old, leaving four children. We must presume, though we are not certain, that Danton had one brother: and we know he had two sisters, one of whom married in Troyes; the other died a nun at the same place in the middle of this century.[12]