Jacobite uprisings

“ The prevalence of Jacobite principles among [Pg 131] the English gentry is supposed to have infected many officers in the royal army, who might have avowed them at any crisis in the public affairs; many were, at all events, suspected of Jacobite principles; "and the mere suspicion," remarks Lord Mahon, "would have produced nearly the same effects as the reality,—bewilderment, distrust, and vacillation in the chiefs." "Had, then, the Highlanders combined to push forward," observes this able writer, "must not the increasing terror have palsied all power of resistance? ”

“ It seems undeniable that the strength of this Jacobite faction sprung from the want of apparent necessity for the change of government. Extreme oppression produces an impetuous tide of resistance, which bears away the reasonings of the casuists. But the encroachments of James II., being rather felt in prospect than much actual injury, left men in a calmer temper, and disposed to weigh somewhat nicely the nature of the proposed remedy. ”

“ This motion, in the debate on which the Jacobites figured as both a dangerous and a mercenary people, was lost by 222 to 206. Sixteen placemen saved Sir Robert, who had spoken with much plausibility and cunning against the leave asked for. The Bishop of Salisbury in the House of Lords, in the discussion in March on the Pension Bill, could only express a hope that faction would not foster insurrection. The opposition papers maintained that no such thing as faction existed, and that Jacobitism was a name now utterly unknown to the mass of the people. ”

“ They showed the spirit of the Jacobite party, particularly in London. The natural result ensued, namely, a proclamation to the justices to put in force the laws which had been framed against Papists and Nonjurors. The former were ordered to remove to a distance of at least ten miles from the metropolis, or to keep close within their habitations. Those persons who refused to take the oaths of allegiance and abjuration were to be deprived of their arms and horses; and every attempt at rioting was to be put down by armed force. ”

“ In confirmation of this surmise may be quoted an anecdote which is related of a company of the celebrated Black Watch, which had been exempted during the insurrection of 1745 from serving against their countrymen; more than three hundred of the regiment having brothers and relations engaged in the Jacobite army. [137] But it was afterwards employed on a service which might well have been assigned to others;—to execute the decrees of burning, and to lay waste the districts where the forefathers of these brave men had lived. ”

“ Among the modern Jacobite, or legitimist, societies perhaps the most important is the “Order of the White Rose,” which has a branch in Canada and the United States. The order holds that sovereign authority is of divine sanction, and that the execution of Charles I. and the revolution of 1688 were national crimes; it exists to study the history of the Stuarts, to oppose all democratic tendencies, and in general to maintain the theory that kingship is independent of all parliamentary authority and popular approval. ”

“ These considerations shall always make me jealous of the Jacobite party’s getting any opportunity to rebel, and this they have always thought they had, and always will think they have, when they see the nation destitute of troops, for which reason, I shall always be for keeping in the island such a number of regular troops as may be sufficient for awing them into obedience.... The danger of an invasion from abroad, with the Pretender at the head of it, is equally to be apprehended.’ Alluding to Spain with whom we were at war, Mr. ”

“ The Jacobins did not profit by the circumstance, as favorable as unexpected, of the desertion of the King, to demand of the National Assembly, in the name of the Constitution, that the title of Louis XVI be declared forfeit. In this meeting, otherwise so moving, the conduct of the Jacobins was indecisive, equivocal, and blameworthy; for, in a revolution, not to profit by every favorable event is an unpardonable fault. A single error brings defeat. ”

“ The Girondists hoped, though almost in despair, that it was not yet too late to show the people the horrors of anarchy, and to rally around themselves the multitude to sustain a well-established and law-revering republic. The Jacobins determined to send their opponents to the scaffold, and by the aid of the terrors of the mob, now enlisted on their side, resistlessly to carry all their measures. A hint from the Jacobin leaders surrounded the Assembly with the hideous howlings of a haggard concourse of beings just as merciless and demoniac as lost spirits. ”

“ She had yet to learn that at such times violence always overpowers moderation, and that the worse men are, the more certain are they to obtain the upper hand.
The divisions among her enemies were indeed so furious as to justify at one time the expectation that one party would destroy the other. The Jacobins summoned a vast meeting, whose members they fixed beforehand at a hundred thousand citizens, to meet on Sunday, the 17th of July, to petition the Assembly to dethrone the king. ”

“ Anarchy now reigned throughout France. The King and the royal family were imprisoned in the Temple. The Girondists in the National Convention, and M. Roland at the head of the ministry, were struggling to restore the dominion of law, and, if possible, to save the life of the King. The Jacobins, who, unable to resist the popularity of M. Roland, had, for a time, coöperated with the Girondists, now began to separate themselves again more widely from them. They flattered the mob. They encouraged every possible demonstration of lawless violence. ”

“ There was a considerable noisy excitement through the country, the Jacobites ever striving to rouse the people in the great towns to riot and sedition, and, when they found that impossible, spreading exaggerated accounts of the effects of their efforts. ”

“ Again the Jacobins and the Girondists prepared for the renewal of their struggle. It was not a struggle for power merely, but for life. The Girondists, knowing [Pg 177] that the fury of the Revolution would soon sweep over every thing, unless they could bring back the people to a sense of justice—would punish with the scaffold those who had incited the massacre of thousands of uncondemned citizens. The Jacobins would rid themselves of their adversaries by overwhelming them in the same carnage to which they had consigned the Loyalists. ”

“ Despising the reactionists, whose hopes were more or less enlisted on behalf of the foreign armies, he also detested the Jacobins who were dishonoring and compromising the new order of things. He expresses both sentiments in a letter addressed to the National Assembly, and written from the intrenched camp of Maubeuge, June 16, 1792, the Fourth Year of Liberty: "Can you conceal from yourselves," he says in it, "that a faction, and to use plain terms, the Jacobin faction, has caused all these disorders? ”

“ They wished to save the king, and yet feared the accusation of being Royalists if they did not vote for his death. The Jacobins all voted for death. They had accused their opponents, the Girondists, of being secretly in favor of royality, and as such had held them up to the execration of the mob. The Girondists wished to save the king. It was in their power to save him. But it required more courage, both moral and physical, than ordinary men possess, to brave the vengeance of the assassins of September who were hovering around the hall. ”

“ Thus the Jacobins became all-powerful.
A tremor of revolt ran through the cities of the south which chafed under the despotism of the Parisian mob. These cities had their own grievances. The Jacobin clubs menaced the lives and properties of all who were guilty of wealth or of moderate opinions, while the representatives on Revolt of the provinces. mission deposed the municipal authorities and placed their own creatures in power. At the end of April the citizens of Marseilles closed the Jacobin club, put its chiefs on their trial and drove out the representatives on mission. ”

“ It was the plea, but not the motive. If the intended destruction of royalists could be represented as an act of war, as a necessity of national defence, moderate men would be unable to prevent it without incurring reproach as unpatriotic citizens.
When the Jacobins prepared the massacre in the prisons, their purpose was to fill France with terror and to secure their majority in the Convention. That is the controlling idea that governed the events of the next few weeks. After the decree which assigned the Luxemburg palace as a residence to the king, the Commune claimed him ”

“ And, in fact, the Jacobin only does that and right away too; insurrections, usurpations, pillaging, murders, assaults on individuals, on judges and public attorneys, on assemblies, violations of law, attacks on the State, on communities—there is no outrage not committed by him. He has always acted as sovereign instinctively; he was so as a private individual and clubbist; he is not to cease being so, now that he possesses legal authority, and all the more because if he hesitates he knows he is lost; to save himself from the scaffold he has no refuge but in a dictatorship. ”

“ You have doubtless learned from the public papers the late outrage of the Jacobins, in order to force the King to consent to the formation of an army at Paris, and to sign the decree for banishing the nonjuring Clergy. The newspapers will describe to you the procession of the Sans-Culottes, the indecency of their banners, and the disorders which were the result— but it is impossible for either them or me to convey an idea of the general indignation excited by these atrocities. ”

“ In truth it appears to me, that, when we come to balance our account, we shall find in the proposed peace only the pure, simple, and unendowed charms of Jacobin amity. We shall have the satisfaction of knowing, that no blood or treasure has been spared by the allies for support of the regicide system. We shall reflect at leisure on one great truth, that it was ten times more easy totally to destroy the system itself, than, when established, it would be to reduce its power; and that this republic, most formidable abroad, was of all things the weakest at home ”

“ They would raise the mass of the people to the enjoyment of liberty, but to liberty controlled by vigorous law. Opposed to them were the Jacobins—far more radical in their views of reform. They would overthrow both throne and altar, break down all privileged orders, confiscate the property of the nobles, and place prince and beggar on the footing of equality. These were the two great parties into which revolutionary France was divided and the conflict between them was the most fierce and implacable earth has ever witnessed. ”

“ A true Jacobin, then, is one who does not believe in the divine right of kings, or in any other alias for it, which implies that they reign "in contempt of the will of the people;" and he holds all such kings to be tyrants, and their subjects slaves. ”

“ Was a tear shed over the tomb of father, wife, or friend, it was, according to these Jacobins, a robbery of the Republic. Not to rejoice when the Jacobins rejoiced was treason to freedom. All the mob of low officers of justice, some of whom could scarcely read, sported with the lives of men without the slightest shame or remorse. Often an act of accusation was served upon one person which was intended for another. ”

“ The former concentrated his troops at Maubeuge, and spent the month of May drilling and occasionally making sorties.
In Paris the cause of law and order was having a hard time. The Jacobins wanted to upset the constitution, dethrone the King, and establish a republic, and they were steadily growing stronger. The spirit of revolution was spreading through the country, and everywhere the people gave the greatest applause to the most revolutionary orators. The Assembly was treating Louis XVI. with insolence and the King was retaliating by regarding the deputies with unconcealed contempt. ”

“ No strong government existed, nor, in the actual conditions of the country, could exist on the lines laid down by the constitution. France was menaced by civil war within, and by a coalition of hostile powers without; the discipline of the Terror was perhaps necessary if she was to be welded into a united force capable of resisting this double peril; and the revolutionary leaders saw in the Jacobin organization the only instrument by which this discipline could be made effective. This is the apology usually put forward for the Jacobins by republican writers of later times ”

“ The populace already manifested their restlessness by threats and strange rumors. At the Jacobin Club the most violent propositions were mooted. Some wanted to establish a minority, on the ground of the King's mental alienation; some, to send the Queen back to Austria; the more moderate talked of suppressing the army, {178} dismissing the staff-officers of the National Guard, depriving the King of the right of veto, and electing a Constituent Assembly. Revolutionary conventicles multiplied beyond all measure. ”

“ After ten years of violence, of destruction and burning and pillage and massacre and general upheaval, their impotence was revealed so startlingly that they fell into universal reprobation. The dictator then invoked by the whole of France was obliged to re-establish the greater part of that which had been destroyed.
The attempt of the Jacobins to re-fashion society in the name of pure reason constitutes an experiment of the highest interest. Probably mankind will never have occasion to repeat it on so vast a scale. ”

“ They are animated by a mortal hatred for one another, but none of them is strong enough to enslave its rivals.
This Jacobin intolerance is spreading to such an extent that the rulers themselves employ without scruple the most revolutionary tactics with regard to their enemies, violently persecuting any party that offers the least resistance, and even despoiling it of its property. Our rulers to-day behave as the ancient conquerors used; the vanquished have nothing to hope from the victors. ”