Bertha Meriton Gardiner

“ The very artisan, who thought it fair that the farmer should be forced to sell his produce at maximum prices, strove, whenever opportunity occurred, to obtain higher wages than those which the law allotted to him. As the number of their enemies increased, the Hébertists, aware of increased danger to themselves, grew fiercer and more sanguinary in word and act. ‘To be safe,’ said Hébert, ‘you must kill all.’ If once nobles, royalists, seigneurs, had been the enemies of France, now Girondists, federalists, speculators, breakers of maximum laws were placed in the same class. ”

“ He then proceeded to argue that the Third Estate, in other words the people of France with the exception of the nobles, formed a complete nation by themselves; that by them all useful work was done; and that the nobility was merely an excrescence, preventing the growth and development of national life. The Third Estate is, he said, a nation fettered and oppressed. What would it be without the nobility?—A free and flourishing nation. ”

“ A man who had sufficiently powerful interest at court might rise to the highest dignities in Church or State, whatever his incapacity, or whatever the stains on his past life. Mirabeau had no interest at court, while by Louis and his councillors talent was distrusted, and the one statesman that France possessed occupied the position of an unscrupulous adventurer, seeking by whatever means came first to hand to force his way into the ministry. It was no matter of surprise that so signal a victim of arbitrary government should prove an inveterate enemy to the existing order. ”

“ The first legislative work of the Assembly after the decrees of August 4 (p. 50) , was a Declaration of the rights of man, which, in general language, stated the aims which the greater part of the Assembly had in view. This manifesto of the principles of the revolution declared that men have natural and imprescriptible rights to liberty, property, and security, and also the right of resisting tyranny; that men are born equal in rights; that all citizens are equal in the eye of the law, and are equally admissible to all offices without other distinctions than those of virtue and talent ”

“ The law of treason, he said, was extended to words; the inhabitants of towns were killed in masses. Grief, pity, looks of disapprobation, silence itself, constituted State crimes. It was a crime to be rich; a crime to give shelter to a friend. Is it possible, he asked, that the state of things which constituted despotism and the worst of governments when Tacitus wrote, constitutes to-day liberty and the best of possible worlds? You wish to exterminate your enemies by the guillotine. ”

“ They detested insurrection as a weapon, and were thoroughly alive to the danger in which since July 14 all authorities stood—of falling beneath the sway of mob violence. The restoration of order was, from their point of view, the matter of first moment, and they accordingly desired that the Assembly, in place of discussing constitutional questions, should at once turn its attention to the reform of the taxes and to other remedial laws, and that at the same time ministers should be empowered to use coercive measures for the punishment of rioters and the maintenance of the public tranquillity. ”

“ For if the Mountain had to call in the aid of the Commune in order to obtain victory over the Girondists, what security was there that after their expulsion it would be able to maintain its own independence? And what influence could Danton hope to exercise over a brow-beaten and intimidated body of men, in fear for their lives? Compromise with the Girondists was, however, impracticable, and the Committee of Public Safety, in place of taking active measures against the conspirators, sought merely to moderate their violence. ”

“ Political liberty threatened to degenerate rapidly into anarchy. No moral restraints existed amongst a people for centuries unaccustomed to self-government. There was no political organisation, and no standard of political morality. There were no recognised leaders weighted with a sense of responsibility, nor journals with a character to maintain. Appeals were made to the lowest passions, rumours and libels circulated without question of their truth or justice. The fiercer and more bitter his language, the more sure was the orator or journalist to gain a hearing and exert influence. ”

“ After that event it was inevitable that France should for a time be governed by the minority which, aided by the populace, had swept away the throne of the weak and incapable King. Not only had the people of France no attachment to a republican form of government, and therefore no readiness to move forward actively in support of the Girondists against the Mountain; but also the great majority of the population, through dread of reaction in favour of the privileged classes, had no will or policy of their own. ”

“ In March, at the very time when the retreat of Dumouriez from Belgium offered an opportunity to the allies of attempting a march on Paris, a dangerous insurrection, excited by the forced recruitment, broke out amongst the peasants of La Vendée. The Convention, enraged against its adversaries, and frightened at the unexpected danger, struck at random, regardless of the fact that it was crushing the innocent along with the guilty. Those who instigated resistance to the recruitment of the army were punished by death. ”

“ The soldier has never much sympathy for the machinery of a free government. It is his duty in life to obey orders, not to impose them on his superiors. But the soldier of revolutionary France was the champion of material equality. ”

“ Under such conditions Mirabeau gave small credit to his countrymen for political capacity, and had no faith in the endurance of any constitution which cast upon the nation the entire work of administration and government. But, on the other hand, he did not seek, like Malouet, to found a strong monarchy on aristocratic institutions. No real aristocracy existed, and the passion for equality was irresistible, for the very reason that it was justified by the incapacity of those classes which had hitherto claimed to rise above their fellow countrymen. ”

“ The very nobles, who had so long opposed administrative and economical change, had themselves become vehement advocates of political change. More afraid of the crown than of the classes beneath them, and blind to the complete isolation of their own order, they looked forward to being at once leaders of a political revolution and guardians of their own interests. In fact, the privileged orders had no choice but either to submit at discretion to the King, or to join in the popular cry for the meeting of the States-General. ”

“ The people, said Chaumette, shall be our God; we need no other. We want, said Hébert, no other religion than that of nature; no other temple than that of reason; no other worship than that of liberty, equality, and fraternity. By the orders of the Commune the suppression of the Catholic worship was begun. Constitutional priests were encouraged to marry and to abdicate their functions, and those who refused were imprisoned. The exercise of the Catholic worship, either in the streets or in the churches, was prohibited. ”

“ Now the people have made conquest of their King.’ Arrived at the Hôtel de Ville, Louis fixed a tricolour cockade on his hat and appeared on a balcony in front of the building. The thousands assembled outside applauded him loudly, and shouts of ‘Vive le Roi’ mingled with shouts of ‘Vive la Nation.’ The enthusiasm exhibited in his favour was not unreal. Amongst the multitude present, no stronger desire existed than that of accomplishing the revolution in accordance with the crown. ”

“ Amongst those who had placed faith in the Girondists and their ideals was a young woman of Normandy, Charlotte Corday. Like them, she had dreamed of the establishment of a republic founded on the political virtue and intelligence of the people; and when the mob of Paris rose and drove with insult from the Convention those who in her eyes were the heroic164 defenders of the universal principles of truth and justice, she bitterly resented the wrong that had been done not only to the men themselves, but to that France of which she regarded them as the true representatives. ”

“ With him, as with other former members of the constituent Assembly, it was a point of honour to shield the persons of the King and Queen from harm. Various projects for their removal from Paris were formed, but policy and sentiment alike forbade Marie Antoinette to take advantage of them. There was hazard in their execution, and the aims of their authors were not hers. The one gleam of light on the horizon of this unhappy Queen was the advance of the Allies. ‘Better die,’ she one day bitterly exclaimed, ‘than be saved by Lafayette and the constitutionalists!’
Country declared in danger. ”

“ Republican fervour and hatred of Catholicism rendered them harsh and intolerant towards whatever savoured of reaction. Abhorrence of crime and pride in their own cause made them averse to compromise, and to having dealings with men whose hands they believed to be soiled with the blood of the September massacres. They had neither the traditions of office nor the large capacity which creates a government by its power of taking the lead in a distracted nation. ”

“ Many causes, however, enabled the ultra-democrats to exercise influence quite out of proportion to their numerical strength. It was not merely that the Government was weak, but also that there was no cohesion between classes, and that there was no class capable of leading the nation by obtaining its entire confidence. Suspicion of the nobles was so strong that they were already nearly in the position of a proscribed class. The bourgeoisie had not the habit even of administering local affairs, and was itself regarded with suspicion by the class beneath it. ”

“ But the amount of suffering inflicted and blood shed in any one department, nevertheless, depended in some degree on the character of the deputy in mission, and on the part that had been taken by the department after the expulsion of the Girondists. The Government had the support of a small number of men who, if fanatics, were nevertheless honest in believing that, whatever its excesses, it alone could save France from conquest, and who endeavoured to make use of their authority, not for personal or selfish ends, but for the public good, as they understood the term. Such men might be cruel ”

“ In none of these countries had there been from the first any national enthusiasm for the war, while the large expectations with which governments began hostilities had been blown to the winds. There was no longer any thought of restoring the Bourbon monarchy in France, nor probability of making conquests at her expense; and, in fact, those continental Princes alone cared to continue the struggle who looked forward to effecting, at the cost of third and weaker States, the enlargement of their own dominions. ”

“ Thus, at a time when all other bonds of cohesion had been destroyed or had fallen away, there was rising into existence over France, outside the constitution, a network of authorities, directed from a common centre in Paris. The clubs, in fact, perpetually interfered with the administrative bodies, tendering advice which often assumed the form of dictation or intimidation, and were always able, if they pleased, to get up demonstrations in favour of their own views. They represented that spirit of distrust which was everywhere felt and seemed to pervade the very air men breathed ”

“ Marat, a writer of a third type—called, after the title of his journal, the ‘People’s Friend’—had no faith in any of the distinctive principles of the time. He did not believe in the goodness of human nature, nor in reason as the main lever by which to reconstitute society and government, nor in the political capacity of his countrymen, and was as ready to throw suspicion on the people’s nominees as Brissot on the integrity of men put in office by the King. ”