All that remains of this great demolished State is forty thousand groups of people, each separated and isolated, in towns and small market villages where municipal bodies, elected committees, and improvised National Guards strive to prevent the worst excesses.—But these local chiefs are novices; they are human, and they are timid. Chosen by acclamation they believe in popular rights; in the midst of riots they feel themselves in danger. Hence, they generally obey the crowd.
"Rarely," says one of the provincial commissions reports, "do the municipal authorities issue a summons; they allow the greatest excesses rather than enter upon prosecutions for which, sooner or later, they may be held responsible by their fellow-citizens. . . . Municipal bodies have no longer the power to resist anything."
Especially in the rural districts the mayor or syndic, who is a farmer, makes it his first aim to make no enemies, and would resign his place if it were to bring him any "unpleasantness" with it. His rule in the towns, and especially in large cities, is almost as lax and more precarious, because explosive material is accumulated here to a much larger extent, and the municipal officers, in their arm-chairs at the town-hall, sit over a mine which may explode at any time. To-morrow, perhaps, some resolution passed at a tavern in the suburbs, or some incendiary newspaper just received from Paris, will furnish the spark.—No other defense against the populace is at hand than the sentimental proclamations of the National Assembly, the useless presence of troops who stand by and look on, and the uncertain help of a National Guard which will arrive too late. Occasionally these townspeople, who are now the rulers, utter a cry of distress from under the hands of the sovereigns of the street who grasp them by the throat. At Puy-en-Velay,[1307] a town of twenty thousand inhabitants, the présidial,[1308] the committee of twenty-four commissioners, a body of two hundred dragoons, and eight hundred men of the guard of burgesses, are "paralyzed, and completely stupefied, by the vile populace. A mild treatment only increases its insubordination and insolence." This populace proscribes whomsoever it pleases, and six days ago a gibbet, erected by its hands, has announced to the new magistrates the fate that awaits them.
" What will become of us this winter," they exclaim, "in our impoverished country, where bread is not to be had! We shall be the prey of wild beasts!"
III.—Public feeling.—Famine
These people, in truth, are hungry, and, since the Revolution, their misery has increased. Around Puy-en-Velay the country is laid waste, and the soil broken up by a terrible tempest, a fierce hailstorm, and a deluge of rain. In the south, the crop proved to be moderate and even insufficient.
"To trace a picture of the condition of Languedoc," writes the intendant,[1309] "would be to give an account of calamities of every description. The panic which prevails in all communities, and which is stronger than all laws, stops traffic, and would cause famine even in the midst of plenty. Commodities are enormously expensive, and there is a lack of cash. Communities are ruined by the enormous outlays to which they are exposed: The payment of the deputies to the seneschal's court, the establishment of the burgess guards, guardhouses for this militia, and the purchase of arms, uniforms, and outlays in forming communes and permanent councils. To this must be add the cost of the printing of all kinds, and the publication of trivial deliberations. Further the loss of time due to disturbances occasioned by these circumstances, and the utter stagnation of manufactures and of trade." All these causes combined "have reduced Languedoc to the last extremity."—In the Center, and in the North, where the crops are good, provisions are not less scarce, because wheat is not put in circulation, and is kept concealed.
"For five months," writes the municipal assembly of Louviers,[1310] "not a farmer has made his appearance in the markets of this town. Such a circumstance was never known before, although, from time to time, high prices have prevailed to a considerable extent. On the contrary, the markets were always well supplied in proportion to the high price of grain."
In vain the municipality orders the surrounding forty-seven parishes to provide them with wheat. They pay no attention to the mandate; each for himself and each for his own house; the intendant is no longer present to compel local interests to give way to public interests.