At Marseilles, the Brutus Commission,[4132] "sentencing without public prosecutor or jurymen, sent to the prisons for those it wished to put to death. After having demanded their names, professions and wealth they were sent down to a cart standing at the door of the Palais de Justice; the judges then stepped out on the balcony and pronounced the death-sentence." The same proceedings took place at Cambrai, Arras, Nantes, Le Mans, Bordeaux, Nîmes, Lyons, Strasbourg, and elsewhere.—Evidently, the judicial comedy is simply a parade; they make use of it as one of the respectable means, among others less respectable, to exterminate people whose opinions are not what they should be, or who belong to the proscribed classes;[4133] Samson, at Paris, and his colleagues in the provinces, the execution-platoons of Lyons and Nantes, are simply the collaborators of murderers properly so called, while legal massacres complete other massacres pure and simple.
Of this latter description, the fusillades of Toulon come first, where the number of those who are shot largely surpasses one thousand;[4134] next the great drownings of Nantes, in which 4,800 men, women and children perished,[4135] the other drownings, for which no figures may be given;[4136] then the countless popular murders committed in France between July 14, 1789, and August 10, 1792; the massacre of one 1,300 prisoners in Paris, in September, 1792; the long train of assassinations which, in July, August and September, 1789, extends over the entire territory; finally, the dispatch of the prisoners, either shot or sabered, without trial at Lyons and in the West. Even excepting those who had died fighting or who, taken with arms in their hands, were shot down or sabered on the spot, there were 10,000 persons slaughtered without trial in the province of Anjou alone:[4137] accordingly, the instructions of the Committee of Public Safety, also the written orders of Carrier and Francastel, direct generals to "bleed freely" the insurgent districts,[4138] and spare not a life: it is estimated that, in the eleven western departments, the dead of both sexes and of all ages exceeded 400,000.[4139]—Considering the program and principles of the Jacobin sect this is no great number; they might have killed a good many more. But time was wanting; during their short reign they did what they could with the instrument in their hands. Look at their machine, the gradual construction of its parts, the successive stages of its operation from its starting up to Thermidor 9, and see how limited the period of its operation was. Organized March 30 and April 6, 1793, the Revolutionary Committees and the Revolutionary Tribunal had but seventeen months in which to do their work. They did not drive ahead with all their might until after the fall of the Girondists, and especially after September, 1763 that is to say for a period of eleven months. Its loose wheels were not screwed up and the whole was not in running order under the impulse of the central motor until after December, 1793, that is to say during eight months. Perfected by the law of Prairial 22, it works for the past two months, faster and better than before, with an energy and rapidity that increase from week to week.—At that date, and even before it, the theorists have taken the bearings of their destinies and accepted the conditions of their undertaking. Being sectarians, they have a faith, and as orthodoxy tolerates no heresy, and as the conversion of heretics is never sincere or durable, heresy can be suppressed only by suppressing heretics. "It is only the dead," said Barère, Messidor 16, "who never return." On the 2nd and 3rd of Thermidor,[4140] the Committee of Public Safety sends to Fouquier-Tinville a list of four hundred and seventy-eight accused persons with orders "to bring the parties named to trial at once." Baudot and Jean Bon St. Andre, Carrier, Antonelle and Guifroy, had already estimated the lives to be taken at several millions and, according to Collot d' Herbois, who had a lively imagination, "the political perspiration should go on freely, and not stop until from twelve to fifteen million Frenchmen had been destroyed."[4141]
To make amends, in the fourth and last division of their work, that is to say, in spoliation, they went to the last extreme: they did all that could be done to ruin individuals, families and the State; whatever could be taken, they took.—The Constituent and Legislative Assemblies had, on their side, begun the business by abolishing tithes and all feudal rights without indemnity, and by confiscating all ecclesiastical property; the Jacobin operators continue and complete the job; we have seen by what decrees and with what hostility against collective and individual property, whether they attribute to the State the possession of all corporations whatever, even laic, such as colleges, schools and scientific or literary societies, hospitals and communes, or whether they despoil individuals, indirectly through assignats and the maximum, or directly through the forced loan, revolutionary taxes,[4142] seizures of gold and silver coin, requisitions of common useful utensils,[4143] sequestrations of prisoners' property, confiscations of the possessions of emigrants and exiles and of those deported or condemned to death. No capital invested in real or personal property, no income in money or produce, whatever its source, whether leases, mortgages, private credits, pensions, agricultural, industrial or commercial gains, the fruits of economy or labor, from the farmers', the manufacturers' and the merchant's stores to the robes, coats, shirts and shoes, even to the beds and bed-rooms of private individuals—nothing escapes their rapacious grasp: in the country, they carry off even seed reserved for planting; at Strasbourg and in the Upper Rhine, all kitchen utensils; in Auvergne and elsewhere, even the shepherd's pots. Every object of value, even those not in public use, comes under requisition: for instance,[4144] the Revolutionary Committee of Bayonne seizes a lot of "cotton cloth and muslin," under the pretext of making "breeches for the country's defenders." On useful objects being taken it is not always certain that they will be utilized; between their seizure and putting them to service, robbery and waste intervene. At Strasbourg,[4145] on a requisition being threatened by the representatives, the inhabitants strip themselves and, in a few days, bring to the municipality "6,879 coats, breeches and vests, 4,767 pairs of stockings, 16,921 pairs of shoes, 863 pairs of boots, 1351 cloaks, 20,518 shirts, 4,524 hats, 523 pairs of gaiters, 143 skin vests, 2,673, 900 blankets, besides 29 quintals of lint, 21 quintals of old linen, and a large number of other articles."
But "most of these articles remain piled up in the storehouses, part of them rotten, or eaten by rats, the rest being abandoned to the first-comer.... The end of spoliation was attained."—Utter loss to individuals and no gain, or the minimum of a gain, to the State. Such is the net result of the revolutionary government. After having laid its hand on three-fifths of the landed property of France; after having wrested from communities and individuals from ten to twelve billions of real and personal estate; after having increased, through assignats and territorial warrants, the public debt, which was not five billions in 1789, to more than fifty billions;[4146] no longer able to pay its employees; reduced to supporting its armies as well as itself by forced contributions on conquered territories, it ends in bankruptcy; it repudiates two-thirds of its debt, and its credit is so low that the remaining third which it has consolidated and guaranteed afresh, loses eighty-three per cent. the very next day. In its hands, the State has itself suffered as much as the private individuals.—Of the latter, more than 1 200 000 have suffered physically: several millions, all who owned anything, great or small, have suffered through their property.[4147] But, in this multitude of the oppressed, it is the notables who are chiefly aimed at and who, in their possessions as well as in their persons, have suffered the most.
II. The Value of Notables in Society.
Various kinds and degrees of Notables in 1789.—The great
social staff.—Men of the world.—Their breeding.—Their
intellectual culture.—Their humanity and philanthropy.
—Their moral temper.—Practical men.—Where recruited,—Their
qualifications.—Their active benevolence.—Scarcity of them
and their worth to a community.
On estimating the value of a forest you begin by dividing its vegetation into two classes; on the one hand the full-grown trees, the large or medium-sized oaks, beeches and aspens, and, on the other, the saplings and the undergrowth. In like manner, in estimating society, you divide the individuals composing it into two groups, one consisting of its notables of every kind and degree, and the other, of the common run of men. If the forest is an old one and has not been too badly managed, nearly the whole of its secular growth is found in its clusters of full-grown trees. Nearly all the useful wood is to be found in the mature forest. A few thousand large handsome trees and the three or four hundred thousand saplings, young and old, of the reserve, contain more useful and valuable wood than the twenty or thirty millions shrubs, bushes and heathers put together. It is the same in a community which has existed for a long time under a tolerably strict system of justice and police; almost the entire gain of a secular civilization is found concentrated in its notables, which, taking it all in all, was the state of French society in 1789.[4148]
Let us first consider the most prominent personages.—It is certain, that, among the aristocracy, the wealthiest and most conspicuous families had ceased to render services proportionate to the cost of their maintenance. Most of the seigniors and ladies of the Court, the worldly bishops, abbés, and parliamentarians of the drawing-room, knew but little more than how to solicit with address, make a graceful parade of themselves and spend lavishly. An ill-understood system of culture had diverted them from their natural avocations, and converted them into showy and agreeable specimens of vegetation, often hollow, blighted, sapless and over-pruned, besides being very costly, over-manured and too freely watered; and the skillful gardening which shaped, grouped and arranged them in artificial forms and bouquets, rendered their fruit abortive that flowers might be multiplied.—But the flowers were exquisite, and even in a moralist's eyes, such flowering counts for something. On the side of civility, good-breeding and deportment, the manners and customs of high life had reached a degree of perfection, which never, in France or elsewhere, had been attained before, and which has never since been revived;[4149] and of all the arts through which men have emancipated themselves from primitive coarseness, that which teaches them mutual consideration is, perhaps, the most precious. The observance of this, not alone in the drawing-room, but in the family, in business, in the street, with regard to relatives, inferiors, servants and strangers, gives dignity, as well as a charm, to human intercourse. Delicate regard for what is proper becomes a habit, an instinct, a second nature, which nature, superimposed on the original nature, is the best, inasmuch as the internal code which governs each detail of action and speech, prescribes the standard of behavior and respect for oneself, as well as respect and refined behavior towards others.—To this merit, add mental culture. Never was there an aristocracy so interested in general ideas and refinement of expression; it was even too much so; literary and philosophical preoccupation excluded all others of the positive and practical order; they talked, instead of acting. But, in this limited circle of speculative reason and of pure literary forms, it excelled; writings and how to write furnished the ordinary entertainment of polite society; every idea uttered by a thinker caused excitement in the drawing-room: the talent and style of authors were shaped by its taste;[4150] it was in the drawing-rooms that Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, d'Alembert, the Encyclopedists, great and little, Beaumarchais, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Champfort, and Rivarol, involuntarily sought listeners and found them, not merely admirers and entertainers, but friends, protectors, patrons, benefactors and followers.—Under the instruction of the masters, the disciples had become philanthropists; moreover, the amenities of manners developed in all souls compassion and benevolence: "Nothing was more dreaded by opulent men than to be regarded as insensitive."[4151] They concerned themselves with children, with the poor, with the peasantry, setting their wits to work to afford them relief; their zeal was aroused against oppression, their pity was excited for every misfortune. Even those whose duties compelled them to be rigid tempered their rigidity with explanations or concessions.
"Ten years before the Revolution," says Roederer,[4152] "the criminal courts of France were no longer like before.... Their attitude had changed.. . All the young magistrates, and this I can bear witness to, for I was one myself, pronounced judgments more in accordance with the principles of Beccaria,[4153] than according to law."—