Thomas Carlyle

“ Who can bring a wise thing out of men unwise? Not one. And so Vacancy and general Abolition having come for this France, what can Anarchy do more? Let there be Order, were it under the Soldier’s Sword; let there be Peace, that the bounty of the Heavens be not spilt; that what of Wisdom they do send us bring fruit in its season!—It remains to be seen how the quellers of Sansculottism were themselves quelled, and sacred right of Insurrection was blown away by gunpowder: wherewith this singular eventful History called French Revolution ends. ”

“ Such Patriotism as snarls dangerously, and shows teeth, Patrollotism shall suppress; or far better, Royalty shall soothe down the angry hair of it, by gentle pattings; and, most effectual of all, by fuller diet. Yes, not only shall Paris be fed, but the King’s hand be seen in that work. The household goods of the Poor shall, up to a certain amount, by royal bounty, be disengaged from pawn, and that insatiable Mont de Piété disgorge: rides in the city with their Vive-le-Roi need not fail; and so by substance and show, shall Royalty, if man’s art can popularise it, be popularised. ”

“ Even so, ye silent Patriot multitudes, all ye men of France; this man is rapt away from you. He has fallen suddenly, without bending till he broke; as a tower falls, smitten by sudden lightning. His word ye shall hear no more, his guidance follow no more.—The multitudes depart, heartstruck; spread the sad tidings. How touching is the loyalty of men to their Sovereign Man! All theatres, public amusements close; no joyful meeting can be held in these nights, joy is not for them: the People break in upon private dancing-parties, and sullenly command that they cease. ”

“ These Explosions and Revolts ripen, break forth like dumb dread Forces of Nature; and yet they are Men’s forces; and yet we are part of them: the Dæmonic that is in man’s life has burst out on us, will sweep us too away!—One day here is like another, and yet it is not like but different. How much is growing, silently resistless, at all moments! Thoughts are growing; forms of Speech are growing, and Customs and even Costumes; still more visibly are actions and transactions growing, and that doomed Strife, of France with herself and with the whole world. ”

“ Brawny Danton is in the breach, as of stormed Cities and Nations; amid the Sweep of Tenth-of-August cannon, the rustle of Prussian gallows-ropes, the smiting of September sabres; destruction all round him, and the rushing-down of worlds: Minister of Justice is his name; but Titan of the Forlorn Hope, and Enfant Perdu of the Revolution, is his quality,—and the man acts according to that. ‘We must put our enemies in fear!’ Deep fear, is it not, as of its own accord, falling on our enemies? The Titan of the Forlorn Hope, he is not the man that would swiftest of all prevent its so falling. ”

“ They can be bullied, even into silence; the Paris Parliament, wiser than most, has never whimpered. They will and must sit there; in such vacation as is fit; their Chamber of Vacation distributes in the interim what little justice is going. With the rope round their neck, their destiny may be succinct! On the 13th of November 1790, Mayor Bailly shall walk to the Palais de Justice, few even heeding him; and with municipal seal-stamp and a little hot wax, seal up the Parlementary Paper-rooms,—and the dread Parlement of Paris pass away, into Chaos, gently as does a Dream! ”

“ If the august Constituent Assembly itself, fixing the regards of the Universe, could, at the present distance of time and place, gain comparatively small attention from us, how much less can this poor Legislative! It has its Right Side and its Left; the less Patriotic and the more, for Aristocrats exist not here or now: it spouts and speaks: listens to Reports, reads Bills and Laws; works in its vocation, for a season: but the history of France, one finds, is seldom or never there. Unhappy Legislative, what can History do with it; if not drop a tear over it, almost in silence? ”

“ The only question for a reasonable man is, or was: Can the Convention judge Louis? Or must it be the whole People: in Primary Assembly, and with delay? Always delay, ye Girondins, false hommes d’état! so bellows Patriotism, its patience almost failing.—But indeed, if we consider it, what shall these poor Girondins do? Speak their convictions that Louis is a Prisoner of War; and cannot be put to death without injustice, solecism, peril? Speak such conviction; and lose utterly your footing with the decided Patriot? Nay properly it is not even a conviction, but a conjecture and dim puzzle. ”

“ Ye have roused her, then, ye Emigrants and Despots of the world; France is roused; long have ye been lecturing and tutoring this poor Nation, like cruel uncalled-for pedagogues, shaking over her your ferulas of fire and steel: it is long that ye have pricked and fillipped and affrighted her, there as she sat helpless in her dead cerements of a Constitution, you gathering in on her from all lands, with your armaments and plots, your invadings and truculent bullyings;—and lo now, ye have pricked her to the quick, and she is up, and her blood is up. ”

“ The People stand mute, heart-stricken; to all it seems as if a great calamity were nigh: as if the last man of France, who could have swayed these coming troubles, lay there at hand-grips with the unearthly Power.
The silence of a whole People, the wakeful toil of Cabanis, Friend and Physician, skills not: on Saturday, the second day of April, Mirabeau feels that the last of the Days has risen for him; that, on this day, he has to depart and be no more. His death is Titanic, as his life has been. ”

“ Rouse ye, O women; the laggard men will not act; they say, we ourselves may act!
And so, like snowbreak from the mountains, for every staircase is a melted brook, it storms; tumultuous, wild-shrilling, towards the Hôtel-de-Ville. Tumultuous, with or without drum-music: for the Faubourg Saint-Antoine also has tucked up its gown; and, with besom-staves, fire-irons, and even rusty pistols (void of ammunition) , is flowing on. Sound of it flies, with a velocity of sound, to the outmost Barriers. By seven o’clock, on this raw October morning, fifth of the month, the Townhall will see wonders. ”

“ Foulon who said the people might eat grass!
Rumour, therefore, shall arise; in the Palais Royal, and in broad France. Paleness sits on every face; confused tremor and fremescence; waxing into thunder-peals, of Fury stirred on by Fear.
But see Camille Desmoulins, from the Café de Foy, rushing out, sibylline in face; his hair streaming, in each hand a pistol! He springs to a table: the Police satellites are eyeing him; alive they shall not take him, not they alive him alive. This time he speaks without stammering:—Friends, shall we die like hunted hares? Like sheep hounded into their pinfold ”

“ Sweet is reconcilement to the heart of man. Lafayette has sworn Flandre; he swears the remaining Bodyguards, down in the Marble Court; the people clasp them in their arms:—O, my brothers, why would ye force us to slay you? Behold there is joy over you, as over returning prodigal sons!—The poor Bodyguards, now National and tricolor, exchange bonnets, exchange arms; there shall be peace and fraternity. And still ‘Vive le Roi;’ and also ‘Le Roi à Paris,’ not now from one throat, but from all throats as one, for it is the heart’s wish of all mortals. ”

“ Poor human Will struggles to assert itself; if not in this way, then in that. [688]
But on the morrow morning all Paris is out; such a crowd as no man had seen. The Death-carts, Valazé’s cold corpse stretched among the yet living Twenty-one, roll along. Bareheaded, hands bound; in their shirt-sleeves, coat flung loosely round the neck: so fare the eloquent of France; bemurmured, beshouted. To the shouts of Vive la République, some of them keep answering with counter-shouts of Vive la République. Others, as Brissot, sit sunk in silence. ”

“ Much, in these hours, depends on Bouillé; as it shall now fare with him, the whole Future may be this way or be that. If, for example, he were to loiter dubitating, and not come: if he were to come, and fail: the whole Soldiery of France to blaze into mutiny, National Guards going some this way, some that; and Royalism to draw its rapier, and Sansculottism to snatch its pike; and the Spirit if Jacobinism, as yet young, girt with sun-rays, to grow instantaneously mature, girt with hell-fire,—as mortals, in one night of deadly crisis, have had their heads turned gray! ”

“ It is to this hour uncertain whether the Squadron on the Pont Neuf made the shadow of resistance, or did not make the shadow: enough, the blackbrowed Marseillese, and Saint-Marceau following them, do cross without let; do cross, in sure hope now of Saint-Antoine and the rest; do billow on, towards the Tuileries, where their errand is. The Tuileries, at sound of them, rustles responsive: the red Swiss look to their priming; Courtiers in black draw their blunderbusses, rapiers, poniards, some have even fire-shovels; every man his weapon of war. ”

“ Ten times ten thousand hearts go palpitating; all tongues are mute with wonder and fear; till a shout, like the voice of seas, rolls after him, on his wild way. He soars, he dwindles upwards; has become a mere gleaming circlet,—like some Turgotine snuff-box, what we call “Turgotine Platitude;” like some new daylight Moon! Finally he descends; welcomed by the universe. Duchess Polignac, with a party, is in the Bois de Boulogne, waiting; though it is drizzly winter; the 1st of December 1783. The whole chivalry of France, Duke de Chartres foremost, gallops to receive him. ”

“ Great is the combined voice of men; the utterance of their instincts, which are truer than their thoughts: it is the greatest a man encounters, among the sounds and shadows, which make up this World of Time. He who can resist that, has his footing some where beyond Time. De Launay could not do it. Distracted, he hovers between the two; hopes in the middle of despair; surrenders not his Fortress; declares that he will blow it up, seizes torches to blow it up, and does not blow it. Unhappy old de Launay, it is the death-agony of thy Bastille and thee! ”

“ Wert thou a fabulous Griffin, devouring the works of men; daily dragging virgins to thy cave;—clad also in scales that no spear would pierce: no spear but Death’s? A Griffin not fabulous but real! Frightful, O Louis, seem these moments for thee.—We will pry no further into the horrors of a sinner’s death-bed.
And yet let no meanest man lay flattering unction to his soul. Louis was a Ruler; but art not thou also one? His wide France, look at it from the Fixed Stars (themselves not yet Infinitude) , is no wider than thy narrow brickfield, where thou too didst faithfully, or didst unfaithfully. ”

“ For Anaxagoras Chaumette, the sleek head now stript of its bonnet rouge, what hope is there? Unless Death were “an eternal sleep?” Wretched Anaxagoras, God shall judge thee, not I.
Hébert, therefore, is gone, and the Hébertists; they that robbed Churches, and adored blue Reason in red nightcap. Great Danton, and the Dantonists; they also are gone. Down to the catacombs; they are become silent men! Let no Paris Municipality, no Sect or Party of this hue or that, resist the will of Robespierre and Salut. ”

“ At La Force, at the Châtelet, the Conciergerie, the like Court forms itself, with the like accompaniments: the thing that one man does other men can do. There are some Seven Prisons in Paris, full of Aristocrats with conspiracies;—nay not even Bicêtre and Salpêtrière shall escape, with their Forgers of Assignats: and there are seventy times seven hundred Patriot hearts in a state of frenzy. Scoundrel hearts also there are; as perfect, say, as the Earth holds,—if such are needed. To whom, in this mood, law is as no-law; and killing, by what name soever called, is but work to be done. ”

“ In the last nights of September, when the autumnal equinox is past, and grey September fades into brown October, why are the Champs Elysées illuminated; why is Paris dancing, and flinging fire-works? They are gala-nights, these last of September; Paris may well dance, and the Universe: the Edifice of the Constitution is completed! Completed; nay revised, to see that there was nothing insufficient in it; solemnly proferred to his Majesty; solemnly accepted by him, to the sound of cannon-salvoes, on the fourteenth of the month. ”

“ Thus on the North-East all roams and runs; and on a set day, the date of which is irrecoverable by History, Brunswick “has engaged to dine in Paris,”—the Powers willing. And at Paris, in the centre, it is as we saw; and in La Vendée, South-West, it is as we saw; and Sardinia is in the South-East, and Spain is in the South, and Clairfait with Austria and sieged Thionville is in the North;—and all France leaps distracted, like the winnowed Sahara waltzing in sand-colonnades! More desperate posture no country ever stood in. ”

“ O President Thuriot, thou that wert Elector Thuriot, and from the Bastille battlements sawest Saint-Antoine rising like the Ocean-tide, and hast seen much since, sawest thou ever the like of this? Jingle of bell, which thou jinglest against Robespierre, is hardly audible amid the Bedlam-storm; and men rage for life. ‘President of Assassins,’ shrieks Robespierre, ‘I demand speech of thee for the last time!’ It cannot be had. ‘To you, O virtuous men of the Plain,’ cries he, finding audience one moment, ‘I appeal to you!’ The virtuous men of the Plain sit silent as stones. ”

“ In vain is moaning. The axe glitters; the sacred groves fall crashing,—for indeed Monseigneur was short of money: the Opera Hamadryads fly with shrieks. Shriek not, ye Opera Hamadryads; or not as those that have no comfort. He will surround your Garden with new edifices and piazzas: though narrowed, it shall be replanted; dizened with hydraulic jets, cannon which the sun fires at noon; things bodily, things spiritual, such as man has not imagined;—and in the Palais-Royal shall again, and more than ever, be the Sorcerer’s Sabbath and Satan-at-Home of our Planet.
What will not mortals attempt? ”

“ In deep obscure unrest, all things have so long gone rocking and swaying: will M. de Calonne, with this his alchemy of the Notables, fasten all together again, and get new revenues? Or wrench all asunder; so that it go no longer rocking and swaying, but clashing and colliding?
Be this as it may, in the bleak short days, we behold men of weight and influence threading the great vortex of French Locomotion, each on his several line, from all sides of France towards the Château of Versailles: summoned thither de par le roi. ”