As to the men in authority, military administrators and commandants, it was impossible to be more patient, more mindful of human blood. Their qualities turned also here into defects, for, through excess of humanity, they were unable to maintain order, as is evident when facing the insurrections that took place between 1789 and 1792. Even with the force in their own hands, amidst gross insults and extreme dangers, they dreaded to make use of it; they could not bring themselves to repressing brutes, rascals and maniacs: following the example of Louis XVI., they considered themselves as shepherds of the people, and let themselves be trampled upon rather than fire upon their flock.—In reality, they had noble, and even generous and big hearts: in the bailiwick assemblies, in March, 1789, long before the night of August 4, they voluntarily surrendered every pecuniary privilege; under severe trials, their courage, heightened by polished manners, adds even to their heroism, elegance, tact and gaiety. The most corrupt, a Duke of Orleans, the most frivolous and the most blasé, a Duc de Biron, meet death with stoical coolness and disdain.[4154] Delicate women who complain of a draught in their drawing-rooms, make no complaint of a straw mattress in a damp, gloomy dungeon, where they sleep in their clothes so that they may not wake up stiffened, and they come down into the court of the Conciergerie with their accustomed cheerfulness. Men and women, in prison, dress themselves as formerly, with the same care, that they may meet and talk together with the same grace and spirit, in a corridor with an iron grating within a step of the revolutionary Tribunal, and on the eve of the scaffold.[4155]—This moral temper is evidently of the rarest; if it errs on either side it is on that of being too refined, bad for use, good for ornament.
And yet, in the upper class there were associated with two or three thousand idlers amongst a frivolous aristocracy, as many serious men, who, to their drawing-room experience, added experience in business. Almost all who held office or had been in the service, were of this number, either ambassadors, general officers or former ministers, from Marshal de Brogue down to Machaut and Malesherbes; resident bishops, like Monseigneur de Durfort, at Besançon;[4156] vicars-general and canons who really governed their dioceses on the spot; prelates, like those in Provence, Languedoc and Brittany, who, by right, had seats in the provincial "Etats", agents and representatives of the clergy at Paris; heads of Orders and Congregations; the chief and lieutenant commandants of the seventeen military departments, intendants of each generalité head-clerks of each ministry, magistrates of each parliament, farmers-general, collectors-general, and, more particularly in each province, the dignitaries and local proprietors of the two first orders, and all leading manufacturers, merchants, ship-owners, bankers and prominent bourgeois; in short, that élite of the nobles, clergy, and Third Estate, which, from 1778 to 1789, constituted the twenty-one provincial assemblies, and which certainly formed in France the great social staff.—Not that they were superior politicians: for in those days there were none, scarcely a few hundred competent men, almost all of them being specialists. Nevertheless, it was in these few men that nearly the entire political capacity, information and common sense of France was to be found. Outside of their heads the other twenty-six millions of brains contained but little else than dangerous and barren formulas; as they alone had commanded, negotiated, deliberated and governed, they were the only ones who understood men and things tolerably well, and, consequently, the only ones who were not completely disqualified for their management. In the provincial Assemblies they were seen originating and conducting the most important reforms; they had devoted themselves to these effectively and conscientiously, with as much equity and patriotism as intelligence and thoroughness; most of the heads and sub-heads of the leading public and private branches of the service, guided by philosophy and supported by current opinion for twenty years, had likewise given evidence of active benevolence.[4157]—Nothing is more precious than men of this stamp, for they are the life and soul of their respective branches of service, and are not to be replaced in one lot, at a given moment, by persons of equal merit. In diplomacy, in the finances, in judicature, in administration, in extensive commerce and large manufacturing, a practical, governing capacity is not created in a day; affairs in all these are too vast and too complicated; there are too many diverse interests to take into account, too many near and remote contingencies to foresee; lacking a knowledge of technical details, it is difficult to grasp the whole; one tries to make short work of it, one shatters right and left and ends with the sword, obliged to fall back on systematic brutality to complete the work of audacious bungling. Except in war, where apprenticeship takes less time than elsewhere, ten years of preparatory education plus ten years of practical experience are required for the good government of men and the management of capital assets. Add to this, against the temptations of power which are strong, a stability of character established through professional honor, and, if it so happens, by family traditions.
After having directed financial matters for two years, Cambon[4158] is not yet aware that the functions of the fermiers-généraux of indirect taxes differ from those of the receveurs-géneraux of direct taxes;[4159] accordingly, he includes, or allows to be included, the forty-eight receveurs in the decree which sends the sixty fermiers before the revolutionary Tribunal, that is to say, to the guillotine; and, in fact, all of them would have been sent there had not a man familiar with the business, Gaudin, Commissioner of the Treasury, heard the decree proclaimed in the street and run to explain to the Committee on Finances that "there was nothing in common" between the two groups of outlaws; that the fermiers were holders of leases on probable profits while the receveurs were paid functionaries at a fixed salary, and the crimes of the former, proved or not proved, were not imputable to the latter. Great astonishment on the part of these improvised financiers!"They make an outcry," says Gaudin, "and assert that I am mistaken. I insist, and repeat what I have told the President, Cambon; I affirm on says to one of the members, 'Since that is so, go to the bureau of procès-verbaux and scratch out the term receveurs-généraux from the decree passed this morning.' my honor and offer to furnish them the proof of it; finally, they are satisfied and the President "—Such are the gross blunders committed by interlopers, and even carried out, when not warned and restrained by veterans in the service. Cambon, accordingly, in spite of the Jacobins, retains in his bureaux all whom he can among veteran officials. If Carnot manages the war well, it is owing to his being himself an educated officer and to maintaining in their positions d'Arcon, d'Obenheim, de Grimoard, de Montalembert and Marescot, all eminent men bequeathed to him by the ancient régime.[4160] Reduced, before the 9th of Thermidor, to perfect nullity, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is not again to become useful and active until the professional diplomats, Miot, Colchen, Otto and Reinhart,[4161] resume their ascendancy and influence. It is a professional diplomat, Barthélemy, who, after the 9th of Thermidor, really directs the foreign policy of the Convention, and brings about the peace of Basle.
III. The three classes of Notables.
The Nobility.—Its physical and moral preparation through
feats of arms.—The military spirit.—High character.
—Conduct of officers in 1789-1792.—Service for which these
nobles were adapted.
Three classes, the nobles, the clergy and the bourgeoisie, provided this superior élite, and, compared with the rest of the nation, they themselves formed an élite.—Thirty thousand gentlemen, scattered through the provinces, had been brought up from infancy to the profession of arms; generally poor, they lived on their rural estates without luxuries, comforts or curiosity, in the society of wood-rangers and game-keepers, frugally and with rustic habits, in the open air, in such a way as to ensure robust constitutions. A child, at six years of age, mounted a horse; he followed the hounds, and hardened himself against inclemencies;[4162] afterwards, in the academies, he rendered his limbs supple by exercise and obtained that rugged health which is necessary for living under a tent and following a campaign. From early childhood, he was imbued with a military spirit; his father and uncles at table talked of nothing but their perils in war and feats of arms; his imagination took fire; he got accustomed to looking upon their pursuits as the only ones worthy of a man of rank and feeling, and he plunged ahead with a precocity which we no longer comprehend. I have read many records of the service of gentlemen who were assassinated, guillotined or emigrés; they nearly always began their careers before the age of sixteen, often at fourteen, thirteen and eleven.[4163] M. des Echerolles,[4164] captain in the Poitou regiment, had brought along with him into the army his only son, aged nine, and a dozen little cousins of the same age. Those children fought like old soldiers; one of them had his leg fractured by a ball; young des Echerolles received a saber stroke which cut away his cheek from the ear to the upper lip, and he was wounded seven times; still young, he received the cross of St. Louis. To serve the State, seek conflict and expose one's life, seemed an obligation of their rank, a hereditary debt; out of nine or ten thousand officers who discharged this debt most of them cared only for this and looked for nothing beyond. Without fortune and without influence, they had renounced promotion, fully aware that the higher ranks were reserved for the heirs of great families and the courtiers at Versailles. After serving fifteen or twenty years, they returned home with a captain's commission and the cross of St. Louis, sometimes with a small pension, contented with having done their duty and conscious of their own honor. On the approach of the Revolution, this old spirit, illumined by the new ideas, became an almost civic virtue:[4165] we have seen how they behaved between 1789 and 1792, their moderation, their forbearance, their sacrifice of self-love, their abnegation and their stoical impassability, their dislike to strike, the coolness with which they persisted in receiving without returning blows, and in maintaining, if not public order, at least the last semblance of it. Patriots as much as soldiers, through birth, education and conviction, they formed a natural, special nursery, eminently worthy of preserving, inasmuch as it furnished society with ready-made instruments for defense, internally against rascals and brutes, and externally against the enemy. Less calm in disposition and more given to pleasure than the rural nobles of Prussia, under slacker discipline and in the midst of greater worldliness, but more genial, more courteous and more liberal-minded, the twenty-six thousand noble families of France upheld in their sons the traditions and prejudices, the habits and aptitudes, those energies of body, heart and mind[4166] through which the Prussian "junkers" were able to constitute the Prussian army, organize the German army and make Germany the first power of Europe.
IV. The Clergy.
Where recruited.—Professional inducements.—Independence of
ecclesiastics.—Their substantial merits.—Their theoretical
and practical information.—Their distribution over the
territory.—Utility of their office.—Their conduct in
1790-1800.—Their courage, their capacity for self-sacrifice.