How could things be otherwise? Every idea, previous to taking root in their brain, must possess a legendary form, as absurd as it is simple, adapted to their experiences, their faculties, their fears and their aspirations. Once planted in this uncultivated and fertile soil it vegetates and becomes transformed, developing into gross excrescences, somber foliage and poisonous fruit. The more monstrous the greater its vigor, clinging to the slightest of probabilities and tenacious against the most certain of demonstrations. Under Louis XV, in an arrest of vagabonds, a few children having been carried off willfully or by mistake, the rumor spreads that the king takes baths in blood to restore his exhausted functions, and, so true does this seem to be, the women, horrified through their maternal instincts, join in the riot; a policeman is seized and knocked down, and, on his demanding a confessor, a woman in the crowd, picking up a stone, cries out that he must not have time to go to heaven, and smashes his head with it, believing that she is performing an act of justice[5310]. Under Louis XVI evidence is presented to the people that there is no scarcity: in 1789, [5311] an officer, listening to the conversation of his soldiers, hears them state "with full belief that the princes and courtiers, with a view to starve Paris out, are throwing flour into the Seine." Turning to a quarter-master he asks him how he can possibly believe such an absurd story. "Lieutenant," he replies, "'tis time—the bags were tied with blue strings (cordons bleus)." To them this is a sufficient reason, and no argument could convince them to the contrary. Thus, among the dregs of society, foul and horrible romances are forged, in connection the famine and the Bastille, in which Louis XVI., the queen Marie Antoinette, the Comte d'Artois, Madame de Lamballe, the Polignacs, the revenue farmers, the seigniors and ladies of high rank are portrayed as vampires and ghouls. I have seen many editions of these in the pamphlets of the day, in the engravings not exhibited, and among popular prints and illustrations, the latter the most effective, since they appeal to the eye. They surpass the stories of Mandrin[5312] and Cartouche, being exactly suitable for men whose literature consists of the popular laments of Mandrin and Cartouche.
II. Political incapacity
Political incapacity.—Interpretation of political rumors
and of government action.
By this we can judge of their political intelligence. Every object appears to them in a false light; they are like children who, at each turn of the road, see in each tree or bush some frightful hobgoblin. Arthur Young, on visiting the springs near Clermont, is arrested,[5313] and the people want to imprison a woman, his guide, some of the bystanders regarding him as an "agent of the Queen, who intended to blow the town up with a mine, and send all that escaped to the galleys." Six days after this, beyond Puy, and notwithstanding his passport, the village guard come and take him out of bed at eleven o'clock at nights, declaring that "I was undoubtedly a conspirator with the Queen, the Count d'Artois and the Count d'Entragues (who has property here), who had employed me as arpenteur to measure their fields in order to double their taxes." We here take the unconscious, apprehensive, popular imagination in the act; a slight indication, a word, prompting the construction of either air castles or fantastic dungeons, and seeing these as plainly as if they were so many substantial realities. They have not the inward resources that render capable of separating and discerning; their conceptions are formed in a lump; both object and fancy appear together and are united in one single perception. At the moment of electing deputies the report is current in Province[5314] that "the best of kings desires perfect equality, that there are to be no more bishops, nor seigniors, nor tithes, nor seigniorial dues, no more tithes or distinctions, no more hunting or fishing rights,. . . that the people are to be wholly relieved of taxation, and that the first two orders alone are to provide the expenses of the government." Whereupon forty or fifty riots take place in one day. "Several communities refuse to make any payments to their treasurer outside of royal requisitions." Others do better: "on pillaging the strong-box of the receiver of the tax on leather at Brignolles, they shout out Vive le Roi!" "The peasant constantly asserts his pillage and destruction to be in conformity with the king's will." A little later, in Auvergne, the peasants who burn castles are to display "much repugnance" in thus maltreating "such kind seigniors," but they allege "imperative orders, having been advised that the king wished it."[5315] At Lyons, when the tapsters of the town and the peasants of the neighborhood trample the customs officials underfoot they believe that the king has suspended all customs dues for three days.[5316] The scope of their imagination is proportionate to their shortsightedness. "Bread, no more rents, no more taxes!" is the sole cry, the cry of want, while exasperated want plunges ahead like a famished bull. Down with the monopolist!—storehouses are forced open, convoys of grain are stopped, markets are pillaged, bakers are hung, and the price of bread is fixed so that none is to be had or is concealed. Down with the octroi!—barriers are demolished, clerks are beaten, money is wanting in the towns for urgent expenses. Burn tax registries, account-books, municipal archives, seigniors' charter-safes, convent parchments, every detestable document creative of debtors and sufferers! The village itself is no longer able to preserve its parish property. The rage against any written document, against public officers, against any man more or less connected with grain, is blind and determined. The furious animal destroys all, although wounding himself, driving and roaring against the obstacle that ought to be outflanked.
III. Destructive impulses
Destructive impulses.—The object of blind rage.—Distrust
of natural leaders.—Suspicion of them changed into hatred.
—Disposition of the people in 1789.
This owing to the absence of leaders and in the absence of organization, a mob is simply a herd. Its mistrust of its natural leaders, of the great, of the wealthy, of persons in office and clothed with authority, is inveterate and incurable. Vainly do these wish it well and do it good; it has no faith in their humanity or disinterestedness. It has been too down-trodden; it entertains prejudices against every measure proceeding from them, even the most liberal and the most beneficial. "At the mere mention of the new assemblies," says a provincial commission in 1787,[5317] "we heard a workman exclaim, 'What, more new extortioners!'" Superiors of every kind are suspected, and from suspicion to hostility the road is not long. In 1788[5318] Mercier declares that "insubordination has been manifest for some years, especially among the trades. . . . Formerly, on entering a printing-office the men took off their hats. Now they content themselves with staring and leering at you; scarcely have you crossed threshold when you yourself more lightly spoken of than if you were one of them." The same attitude is taken by the peasants in the environment of Paris; Madame Vigée-Lebrun,[5319] on going to Romainville to visit Marshal de Ségur, remarks: "Not only do they not remove their hats but they regard us insolently; some of them even threatened us with clubs." In March and April following this, her guests arrive at her concert in consternation. "In the morning, at the promenade of Longchamps, the populace, assembled at the barrier of l'Etoile, insulted the people passing by in carriages in the grossest manner; some of the wretches on the footsteps exclaiming: 'Next year you shall be behind the carriage and we inside.'" At the close of the year 1788, the stream becomes a torrent and the torrent a cataract. An intendant[5320] writes that, in his province, the government must decide, and in the popular sense, to separate from privileged classes, abandon old forms and give the Third-Estate a double vote. The clergy and the nobles are detested, and their supremacy is a yoke. "Last July," he says, "the old States-General would have been received with pleasure and there would have been few obstacles to its formation. During the past five months minds have become enlightened; respective interests have been discussed, and leagues formed. You have been kept in ignorance of the fermentation which is at its height among all classes of the Third-Estate, and a spark will kindle the conflagration. If the king's decision should be favorable to the first two orders a general insurrection will occur throughout the provinces, 600,000 men in arms and the horrors of the Jacquerie." The word is spoken and the reality is coming. An insurrectionary multitude rejecting its natural leaders must elect or submit to others. It is like an army which, entering on a campaign, finding itself without officers; the vacancies are for the boldest, most violent, those most oppressed by the previous rule, and who, leading the advance, shouting "forward" and thus form the leading groups. In 1789, the bands are ready; for, below the suffering people there is yet another people which suffers yet more, whose insurrection is permanent, and which, repressed, persecuted, and obscure, only awaits an opportunity to come out of its hiding-place and openly give their passions free vent.