III.—The friends of order deprived of the right of free assemblage.
Violent treatment of their clubs in Paris and the
provinces.—Legal prevention of conservative associations.
If the latter (the honest men of the Right), in spite of so many drawbacks, attempt a struggle, they are arrested at the very first step. For, to enter upon an electoral campaign, requires preliminary meetings for conference and to understand each other, while the faculty of forming an association, which the law grants them as a right, is actually withheld from them by their adversaries. As a beginning, the Jacobins hooted at and "stone" the members of the "Right"[2116] holding their meetings in the Salon français of the Rue Royale, and, according to the prevailing rule, the police tribunal, "considering that this assemblage is a cause of disturbance, that it produces gatherings in the street, that only violent means can be employed to protect it," orders its dissolution.[2117]—Towards the month of August, 1790, a second club is organized, and, this time, composed of the wisest and most liberal men. Malouet and Count Clermont-Tonnerre are at the head of it. It takes the name of "Friends of a Monarchical Constitution," and is desirous of restoring public order by maintaining the reforms which have been reached. All formalities on its part have been complied with. There are already about 800 members in Paris. Subscriptions flow into its treasury. The provinces send in numerous adhesions, and, what is worse than all, bread is distributed by them at a reduced price, by which the people, probably, will be conciliated. Here is a center of opinion and influence, analogous to that of the Jacobin club, which the Jacobins cannot tolerate.[2118] M. de Clermont-Tonnerre having leased the summer Vauxhall, a captain in the National Guard notifies the proprietor of it that if he rents it, the patriots of the Palais-Royal will march to it in a body, and close it; fearing that the building will be damaged, he cancels the lease, while the municipality, which fears skirmishes, orders a suspension of the meetings. The club makes a complaint and follows it up, while the letter of the law is so plain that an official authorization of the club is finally granted. Thereupon the Jacobin newspapers and stump—speakers let loose their fury against a future rival that threatens to dispute their empire. On the 23rd of January, 1791, Barnave, in the National Assembly, employing metaphorical language apt to be used as a death-shout, accuses the members of the new club "of giving the people bread that carries poison with it." Four days after this, M. Clermont-Tonnerre's dwelling is assailed by an armed throng. Malouet, on leaving it, is almost dragged from his carriage, and the crowd around him cry out, "There goes the bastard who denounced the people!"—At length, its founders, who, out of consideration for the municipality, have waited two months, hire another hall in the Rue des Petites-Ecuries, and on the 28th of March begin their sessions. "On reaching it," writes one of them, "we found a mob composed of drunkards, screaming boys, ragged women, soldiers exciting them on, and especially those frightful hounds, armed with stout, knotty cudgels, two feet long, which are excellent skull-crackers."[2119] The thing was made up beforehand. At first there were only three or four hundred of them, and, ten minutes after, five or six hundred; in a quarter of an hour, there are perhaps four thousand flocking in from all sides; in short, the usual make-up of an insurrection. "The people of the quarter certified that they did not recognize one of the faces." Jokes, insults, cuffs, clubbings, and saber-cuts,—the members of the club "who agreed to come unarmed" being dispersed, while several are knocked down, dragged by the hair, and a dozen or fifteen more are wounded. To justify the attack, white cockades are shown, which, it is pretended, were found in their pockets. Mayor Bailly arrives only when it is all over, and, as a measure of "public order," the municipal authorities have the club of Constitutional Monarchists closed for good.
Owing to these outrages by the faction, with the connivance of the authorities, other similar clubs are suppressed in the same way. There are a good many of them, and in the principal towns—"Friends of Peace," "Friends of the Country," "Friends of the King, of Peace, and of Religion," "Defenders of Religion, Persons, and Property". Magistrates and officers, the most cultivated and polished people, are generally members; in short, the élite of the place. Formerly, meetings took place for conversation and debate, and, being long-established, the club naturally passes over from literature to politics.—The watch-word against all these provincial clubs is given from the Rue St. Honoré.[2120] "They are centers of conspiracy, and must be looked after" forthwith, and be at once trodden out.—At one time, as at Cahors,[2121] a squad of the National Guard, on its return from an expedition against the neighboring gentry, and to finish its task breaks in on the club, "throws its furniture out of the windows and demolishes the house."—At another time, as at Perpignan, the excited mob surrounds the club, dancing a fandango, and yell out, to the lantern! The club-house is sacked, while eighty of its members, covered with bruises, are shut up in the citadel for their safety.[2122]—At another time, as at Aix, the Jacobin club insults its adversaries on their own premises and provokes a scuffle, whereupon the municipality causes the doors of the assailed club to be walled up and issues warrants of arrest against its members.—Always punishment awaits them for whatever violence they have to submit to. Their mere existence seems an offense. At Grenoble, they scarcely assemble before they are dispersed. The fact is, they are suspected of "incivism;" their intentions may not be right; in any event, they cause a division of the place into two camps, and that is enough. In the department of Gard, their clubs are all broken up, by order of the department, because "they are centers of malevolence." At Bordeaux, the municipality, considering that "alarming reports are current of priests and privileged persons returning to town," prohibits all reunions, except that of the Jacobin club.—Thus, "under a system of liberty of the most exalted kind, in the presence of the famous Declaration of the Rights of Man which legitimates whatever is not unlawful," and which postulates equality as the principle of the French constitution, whoever is not a Jacobin is excluded from common rights. An intolerant club sets itself up as a holy church, and proscribes others which have not received from it "orthodox baptism, civic inspiration, and the aptitude of languages." To her alone belongs the right of assemblage, and the right of making proselytes. Conservative, thoughtful men in all towns throughout the kingdom are forbidden to form electoral committees, to possess a tribune, a fund, subscribers and adherents, to cast the weight of their names and common strength into the scale of public opinion, to gather around their permanent nucleus the scattered multitude of sensible people, who would like to escape from the Revolution without falling back into the ancient régime. Let them whisper amongst themselves in corners, and they may still be tolerated, but woe to them if they would leave their lonely retreat to act in concert, to canvass voters, and support a candidate. Up to the day of voting they must remain in the presence of their combined, active, and obstreperous adversaries, scattered, inert, and mute.
IV. Turmoil of the elections of 1790.—Elections in 1791.—Effect of the King's flight.—Domiciliary visits.—Montagne during the electoral period.
Will they at least be able to vote freely on that day? They are not sure of it, and, judging by occurrences during the past year, it is doubtful.—In April, 1790, at Bois d'Aisy, in Burgundy, M. de Bois d'Aisy, a deputy, who had returned from Paris to deposit his vote,[2123] was publicly menaced. He was informed that nobles and priests must take no part m the elections, while many were heard to say, in his hearing, that in order to prevent this it would be better to hang him. Not far off; at Ste. Colombe, M. de Viteaux was driven out of the electoral assembly, and then put to death after three hours of torture. The same thing occurred at Semur; two gentlemen were knocked down with clubs and stones, another saved himself with difficulty, and a curé died after being stabbed six times.—A warning for priests and for gentlemen: they had better not vote, and the same good advice may be given to dealers in grain, to land-owners, and every other suspected person. For this is the day on which the people recover their sovereignty; the violent believe that they have the right to do exactly what suits them, nothing being more natural than to exclude candidates in advance who are distrusted, or electors who do not vote as they ought to.—At Villeneuve-St.-Georges, near Paris,[2124] a barrister, a man of austere and energetic character, is about to be elected judge by the district electors; the proletariat, however, mistrust a judge likely to condemn marauders, and forty or fifty vagabonds collect together under the windows and cry out: "We don't want him elected." The curé of Crosne, president of the electoral assembly, informs them in vain that the assembled electors represent 90 communes, nearly 100,000 inhabitants, and that "40 persons should not prevail against 100,000. Shouts redouble and the electors renounce their candidate.—At Pau, patriots among the militia[2125] forcibly release one of their imprisoned leaders, circulate a list for proscriptions, attack a poll-teller with their fists and afterwards with sabers, until the proscribed hide themselves away; on the following day "nobody is disposed to attend the electoral assembly."——Things are much worse in 1791. In the month of June, just at the time of the opening of the primary meetings, the king has fled to Varennes, the Revolution seems compromised, civil war and a foreign war loom up on the horizon like two ghosts; the National Guard had everywhere taken up arms, and the Jacobins were making the most of the universal panic for their own advantage. To dispute their votes is no longer the question; it is not well to be visible: among so many turbulent gatherings a popular execution is soon over. The best thing now for royalists, constitutionalists, conservatives and moderates of every kind, for the friends of law and of order, is to stay at home—too happy if they may be allowed to remain there, to which the armed rabble agrees; on the condition of frequently paying them visits.
Consider their situation during the whole of the electoral period, in a calm district, and judge of the rest of France by this corner of it. At Mortagne,[2126] a small town of 6,000 souls, the laudable spirit of 1789 still existed up to the journey to Varennes. Among the forty or fifty noble families were a good many liberals. Here, as elsewhere among the gentry, the clergy and the middle class, the philosophic education of the eighteenth century had revived the old provincial spirit of initiative, and the entire upper class had zealously and gratuitously undertaken the public duties which it alone could perform well. District presidents, mayors, and municipal officers, were all chosen from among ecclesiastics and the nobles; the three principal officers of the National Guard were chevaliers of St. Louis, while other grades were filled by the leading people of the community. Thus had the free elections placed authority in the hands of the socially superior, the new order of things resting on the legitimate hierarchy of conditions, educations, and capacities.—But for six months the club, formed out of "a dozen hot-headed, turbulent fellows, under the presidency and in the hands of a certain Rattier, formerly a cook," worked upon the population and the rural districts. Immediately on the receipt of the news of the King's flight, the Jacobins "give out that nobles and priests had supplied him with money for his departure, to bring about a counter-revolution." One family had given such an amount, and another so much; there was no doubt about it; the precise figures are given, and given for each family according to its known resources.—Forthwith, "the principal clubbists, associated with the dubious part of the National Guard," spread through the streets in squads: the houses of the nobles and of other suspected persons are invaded. All the arms, "guns, pistols, swords, hunting-knives, and sword-canes," are carried off. Every hole and corner is ransacked; they make the inmates open, or they force open, secretaries and clothes-presses in search of ammunition, the search extending "even to the ladies' toilette-tables". By way of precaution "they break sticks of pomatum in two, presuming that musket-balls are concealed in them, and they take away hair-powder under the pretext that it is either colored or masked gunpowder." Then, without disbanding, the troop betakes itself to the environs and into the country, where it operates with the same promptness in the chateaux, so that "in one day all honest citizens, those with the most property and furniture to protect, are left without arms at the mercy of the first robber that comes along." All reputed aristocrats are disarmed. As such are considered those who "disapprove of the enthusiasm of the day, or who do not attend the club, or who harbor any unsworn ecclesiastic," and, first of all, "the officers of the National Guard who are nobles, beginning with the commander and his entire staff."—The latter allow their swords to be taken without resistance, and with a forbearance and patriotic spirit of which their brethren everywhere furnish an example "they are obliging enough to remain at their posts so as not to disorganize the army, hoping that this frenzy will soon come to an end," contenting themselves with making their complaint to the department.—But in vain the department orders their arms to be restored to them. The clubbists refuse to give them up so long as the king refuses to accept the Constitution; meanwhile they do not hesitate to say that "at the very first gun on the frontier, they will cut the throats of all the nobles and unsworn priests."—After the royal oath to the Constitution is taken, the department again insists, but no attention is paid to it. On the contrary, the National Guard, dragging cannons along with them, purposely station themselves before the mansions of the unarmed gentry; the ladies of their families are followed in the streets by urchins who sing ÇA IRA[2127] in their faces, and, in the final refrain, they mention them by name and promise them the lantern; "not one of them could invite a dozen of his friends to supper without incurring the risk of an uproar."—On the strength of this, the old chiefs of the National Guard resign, and the Jacobins turn the opportunity to account. In contempt of the law the whole body of officers is renewed, and, as peaceable folks dare not deposit their votes, the new staff "is composed of maniacs, taken for the most part, from the lowest class." With this purged militia the club expels nuns, drives off unsworn priests, organizes expeditions in the neighborhood, and goes so far as to purify suspected municipalities.[2128]—So many acts of violence committed in town and country, render town and country uninhabitable, and for the élite of the propriety owners, or for well-bred persons, there is no longer any asylum but Paris. After the first disarmament seven or eight families take refuge there, and a dozen or fifteen more join them after a threat of having their throats cut; after the religious persecution, unsworn ecclesiastics, the rest of the nobles, and countless other townspeople, "even with little means," betake themselves there in a mass. There, at least, one is lost in the crowd; one is protected by an incognito against the outrages of the commonalty; one can live there as a private individual. In the provinces even civil rights do not exist; how could any one there exercise political rights? "All honest citizens are kept away from the primary meetings by threats or maltreatment.. . The electoral battlefield is left for those who pay forty-five sous of taxes, more than one-half of them being registered on the poor list."—Thus the elections are decided beforehand! The former cook is the one who authorizes or creates candidatures, and on the election of the department deputies at the county town, the electors elected are, like himself, true Jacobins.[2129]