The French Revolution - Volume 3

by Hippolyte Taine

Always the same alimentary system, the same long lines of people waiting at, and before, dawn in every quarter of Paris, in the dark, for a long time, and often to no purpose, subject to the brutalities of the strong and the outrages of the licentious! On the 9th of Thermidor, the daily trot of the multitude in quest of food has lasted uninterruptedly for seventeen months, accompanied with outrages of the worst kind because there is less terror and less submissiveness, with more obstinacy because provisions at free sale are dearer, with greater privation because the ration distributed is smaller, and with more sombre despair because each household, having consumed its stores, has nothing of its own to make up for the insufficiencies of public charity.—And to cap it all, the winter of 1794-1795 is so cold[42137] that the Seine freezes and people cross the Loire on foot. Rafts no longer arrive and, to obtain fire-wood, it is necessary "to cut down trees at Boulogne, Vincennes, Verrières, St. Cloud, Meudon and two other forests in the vicinity." Fuel costs "four hundred francs per cord of wood, forty sous for a bushel of charcoal, twenty sous for a small basket. The needy are seen in the streets sawing the wood of their bedsteads to cook with and to keep from freezing." On the resumption of transportation by water amongst the cakes of ice "rafts are sold as fast as the raftsmen can haul the wood out of the water, the people being obliged to pass three nights at the landing to get it, each in turn according to his number." "On Pluviôse 3 at least two thousand persons are at the Louviers landing," each with his card allowing him four sticks at fifteen sous each. Naturally, there is pulling, hauling, tumult and a rush; "the dealers take to flight for fear, and the inspectors come near being murdered;" they get away along with the police commissioner and "the public helps itself." Likewise, the following day, there is "an abominable pillage;" the gendarmes and soldiers placed there to maintain order, "make a rush for the wood and carry it away together with the crowd." Bear in mind that on this day the thermometer is sixteen degrees below zero, that one hundred, two hundred other lines of people likewise stand waiting at the doors of bakers and butchers, enduring the same cold, and that they have already endured it and will yet endure it a month and more. Words are wanting to describe the sufferings of these long lines of motionless beings, during the night, at daybreak, standing there five or six hours, with the blast driving through their rags and their feet freezing.—Ventôse is beginning, and the ration of bread is reduced to a pound and a half;[42138] Ventôse ends, and the ration of bread, kept at a pound and a half for the three hundred and twenty-four laborers, falls to one pound; in fact, a great many get none at all, many only a half and a quarter of a pound. Germinal follows and the Committee of Public Safety, finding that its magazines are giving out, limits all rations to a quarter of a pound. Thereupon, on the 12th of Germinal, an insurrection of workmen and women breaks out; the Convention is invaded and liberated by military force. Paris is declared in a state of siege and the government, again in the saddle, tightens the reins. Thenceforth, the ration of meat served out every four or five days, is a quarter of a pound; bread averages every day, sometimes five, sometimes six and sometimes seven ounces, at long intervals eight ounces, often three, two and one ounce and a half, or even none at all; while this bread, black and "making mischief," becomes more and more worthless and detestable.[42139] People who are well off live on potatoes, but only for them, for, in the middle of Germinal, these cost fifteen francs the bushel and, towards the end, twenty francs; towards the end of Messidor, forty-five francs; in the first month of the Directory, one hundred and eighty francs, and then two hundred and eighty-four francs, whilst other produce goes up at the same rates.—After the abolition of the "maximum" the evil springs not from a lack of provisions, but from their dearness: the shops are well supplied. Whoever comes with a full purse gets what he wants[42140]: The former rich, the property owners and large capitalists, may eat on the condition that they hand their bundles of assignats over, that they withdrawing their last louis from its hiding-place, that they sell their jewelry, clocks, furniture and clothes. And the nouveaux rich, the speculators, the suppliers, the happy and extravagant robbers, spend four hundred, one thousand, three thousand, then five thousand francs for their dinner, and revel in the great eating establishments on fine wines and exquisite cheer: the burden of the scarcity is transferred to other shoulders.—At present, the class which suffers, and which suffers beyond all bounds of patience is, together with employees and people with small incomes,[42141] the crowd of workmen, the City plebeians, the low Parisian populace

* which lives from day to day,

* which is Jacobin at heart,

* which made the Revolution in order to better itself,

* which finds itself worse off,

* which gets up one insurrection more on the 1st of Prairial,

* which forcibly enters the Tuileries yelling "Bread and the Constitution of '93,"

* which installs itself as sovereign in the Convention,

* which murders the Representative Féraud,

* which decrees a return to Terror, but which, put down by the National Guard, disarmed and forced back into lasting obedience, has only to submit to the consequences of its own outrages, the socialism it has itself instituted and the economical system it itself has organized.