University of Virginia Library

BOOK I
THE ORIGINS OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

1. CHAPTER I
THE OPINIONS OF HISTORIANS CONCERNING THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

1. The Historians of the Revolution.

THE most contradictory opinions have been expressed respecting the French Revolution, and although only a century separates us from the period in question it seems impossible as yet to judge it calmly. For de Maistre it was “a satanic piece of work,” and “never was the action of the spirit of darkness so evidently manifested.” For the modern Jacobins it has regenerated the human race.

Foreigners who live in France still regard it as a subject to be avoided in conversation.

“Everywhere,” writes Barrett Wendell, “this memory and these traditions are still endowed with such vitality that few persons are capable of considering them dispassionately. They still excite both enthusiasm and resentment; they are still regarded with a loyal and ardent spirit of partisanship. The better you come to understand France the more clearly you see that even to-day no study of the

Revolution strikes any Frenchman as having been impartial.”

This observation is perfectly correct. To be interpretable with equity, the events of the past must no longer be productive of results and must not touch the religious or political beliefs whose inevitable intolerance I have denoted.

We must not therefore be surprised that historians express very different ideas respecting the Revolution. For a long time to come some will still see in it one of the most sinister events of history, while to others it will remain one of the most glorious. All writers on the subject have believed that they have related its course with impartiality, but in general they have merely supported contradictory theories of peculiar simplicity. The documents being innumerable and contradictory, their conscious or unconscious choice has readily enabled them to justify their respective theories.

The older historians of the Revolution—Thiers, Quinet, and, despite his talent, Michelet himself, are somewhat eclipsed to-day. Their doctrines were by no means complicated; a historic fatalism prevails generally in their work. Thiers regarded the Revolution as the result of several centuries of absolute monarchy, and the Terror as the necessary consequence of foreign invasion. Quinet described the excesses of 1793 as the result of a long-continued despotism, but declared that the tyranny of the Convention was unnecessary, and hampered the work of the Revolution. Michelet saw in this last merely the work of the people, whom he blindly admired, and commenced the glorification continued by other historians.

The former reputation of all these historians has

been to a great extent effaced by that of Taine. Although equally impassioned, he threw a brilliant light upon the revolutionary period, and it will doubtless be long before his work is superseded.

Work so important is bound to show faults. Taine is admirable in the representation of facts and persons, but he attempts to judge by the standard of rational logic events which were not dictated by reason, and which, therefore, he cannot interpret. His psychology, excellent when it is merely descriptive, is very weak as soon as it becomes explanatory. To affirm that Robespierre was a pedantic “swotter” is not to reveal the causes of his absolute power over the Convention, at a time when he had spent several months in decimating it with perfect impunity. It has very justly been said of Taine that he saw well and understood little.

Despite these restrictions his work is highly remarkable and has not been equalled. We may judge of his immense influence by the exasperation which he causes among the faithful defenders of Jacobin orthodoxy, of which M. Aulard, professor at the Sorbonne, is to-day the high priest. The latter has devoted two years to writing a pamphlet against Taine, every line of which is steeped in passion. All this time spent in rectifying a few material errors which are not really significant has only resulted in the perpetration of the very same errors.

Reviewing his work, M. A. Cochin shows that M. Aulard has at least on every other occasion been deceived by his quotations, whereas Taine erred far more rarely. The same historian shows also that we must not trust M. Aulard's sources.

“These sources—proceedings, pamphlets, journals,

and the speeches and writings of patriots—are precisely the authentic publications of patriotism, edited by patriots, and edited, as a rule, for the benefit of the public. He ought to have seen in all this simply the special pleading of the defendant: he had, before his eyes, a ready-made history of the Revolution, which presents, side by side with each of the acts of the `People,' from the massacres of September to the law of Prairial, a ready-made explanation according to the republican system of defence.”

Perhaps the fairest criticism that one can make of the work of Taine is that it was left incomplete. He studied more especially the rôle of the populace and its leaders during the revolutionary period. This inspired him with pages vibrating with an indignation which we can still admire, but several important aspects of the Revolution escaped him.

Whatever one may think of the Revolution, an irreducible difference will always exist between historians of the school of Taine and those of the school of M. Aulard. The latter regards the sovereign people as admirable, while the former shows us that when abandoned to its instincts and liberated from all social restraint it relapses into primitive savagery. The conception of M. Aulard, entirely contrary to the lessons of the psychology of crowds, is none the less a religious dogma in the eyes of modern Jacobins. They write of the Revolution according to the methods of believers, and take for learned works the arguments of virtual theologians.

2. The Theory of Fatalism in respect of the Revolution.

Advocates and detractors of the Revolution often

admit the fatality of revolutionary events. This theory is well synthetised in the following passage from the History of the Revolution, by Emile Olivier:—

“No man could oppose it. The blame belongs neither to those who perished nor to those who survived; there was no individual force capable of changing the elements and of foreseeing the events which were born of the nature of things and circumstances.”

Taine himself inclines to this idea:—

“At the moment when the States General were opened the course of ideas and events was not only determined but even visible. Each generation unwittingly bears within itself its future and its past; from the latter its destinies might have been foretold long before the issue.”

Other modern authors, who profess no more indulgence for the violence of the revolutionaries than did Taine, are equally convinced of this fatality. M. Sorel, after recalling the saying of Bossuet concerning the revolutions of antiquity: “Everything is surprising if we only consider particular causes, and yet everything goes forward in regular sequence,” expresses an intention which he very imperfectly realises: “to show in the Revolution, which seems to some the subversion and to others the regeneration of the old European world, the natural and necessary result of the history of Europe, and to show, moreover, that this revolution had no result—not even the most unexpected—that did not ensue from this history, and was not explained by the precedents of the ancien régime.”

Guizot also had formerly attempted to prove that our Revolution, which he quite wrongly compared to that of England, was perfectly natural and effected no innovations:—

“Far from having broken with the natural course of events in Europe, neither the English revolution nor our own did, intended, or said anything that had not been said, intended, and done a hundred years before its outbreak.

“ . . . Whether we regard the general doctrines of the two revolutions or the application made of them—whether we deal with the government of the State or with the civil legislation, with property or with persons, with liberty or with power, we shall find nothing of which the invention can be attributed to them, nothing that will not be encountered elsewhere, or that was not at least originated in times which we qualify as normal.”

All these assertions merely recall the banal law that a phenomenon is simply the consequence of previous phenomena. Such very general propositions do not teach us much.

We must not try to explain too many events by the principle of fatality adopted by so many historians. I have elsewhere discussed the significance of such fatalities, and have shown that the whole effort of civilisation consists in trying to escape therefrom. Certainly history is full of necessities, but it is also full of contingent facts which were, and might not have been. Napoleon himself, on St. Helena, enumerated six circumstances which might have checked his prodigious career. He related, notably, that on taking a bath at Auxonne, in 1786, he only escaped death by the fortuitous presence of a sandbank. If Bonaparte had died, then we may admit that another general would have arisen, and might have become dictator. But what would have become of the Imperial epic and its consequences

without the man of genius who led our victorious armies into all the capitals of Europe?

It is permissible to consider the Revolution as being partly a necessity, but it was above all—which is what the fatalistic writers already cited do not show us—a permanent struggle between theorists who were imbued with a new ideal, and the economic, social, and political laws which ruled mankind, and which they did not understand. Not understanding them, they sought in vain to direct the course of events, were exasperated at their failure, and finally committed every species of violence. They decreed that the paper money known as assignats should be accepted as the equivalent of gold, and all their threats could not prevent the fictitious value of such money falling almost to nothing. They decreed the law of the maximum, and it merely increased the evils it was intended to remedy. Robespierre declared before the Convention “that all the sans-culottes will be paid at the expense of the public treasury, which will be fed by the rich,” and in spite of requisitions and the guillotine the treasury remained empty.

Having broken all human restraints, the men of the Revolution finally discovered that a society cannot live without them; but when they sought to create them anew they saw that even the strongest society, though supported by the fear of the guillotine, could not replace the discipline which the past had slowly built up in the minds of men. As for understanding the evolution of society, or judging men's hearts and minds, or foreseeing the consequences of the laws they enacted, they scarcely attempted to do so.

The events of the Revolution did not ensue from

irreducible necessities. They were far more the consequence of Jacobin principles than of circumstances, and might have been quite other than they were. Would the Revolution have followed the same path if Louis XVI. had been better advised, or if the Constituent Assembly had been less cowardly in times of popular insurrection? The theory of revolutionary fatality is only useful to justify violence by presenting it as inevitable.

Whether we are dealing with science or with history we must beware of the ignorance which takes shelter under the shibboleth of fatalism Nature was formerly full of a host of fatalities which science is slowly contriving to avoid. The function of the superior man is, as I have shown elsewhere, to avert such fatalities.

3. The Hesitations of recent Historians of the Revolution.

The historians whose ideas we have examined in the preceding chapter were extremely positive in their special pleading. Confined within the limits of belief, they did not attempt to penetrate the domain of knowledge. A monarchical writer was violently hostile to the Revolution, and a liberal writer was its violent apologist.

At the present time we can see the commencement of a movement which will surely lead to the study of the Revolution as one of those scientific phenomena into which the opinions and beliefs of a writer enter so little that the reader does not even suspect them.

This period has not yet come into being; we are still in the period of doubt. The liberal writers who used to be so positive are now so no longer. One

may judge of this new state of mind by the following extracts from recent authors:—

M. Hanotaux, having vaunted the utility of the Revolution, asks whether its results were not bought too dearly, and adds:—

“History hesitates, and will, for a long time yet, hesitate to answer.”

M. Madelin is equally dubious in the book he has recently published:—

“I have never felt sufficient authority to form, even in my inmost conscience, a categorical judgment on so complex a phenomenon as the French Revolution. To-day I find it even more difficult to form a brief judgement. Causes, facts, and consequences seem to me to be still extremely debatable subjects.”

One may obtain a still better idea of the transformation of the old ideas concerning the Revolution by perusing the latest writings of its official defenders. While they professed formerly to justify every act of violence by representing it as a simple act of defence, they now confine themselves to pleading extenuating circumstances. I find a striking proof of this new frame of mind in the history of France for the use of schools, published by MM. Aulard and Debidour. Concerning the Terror we read the following lines:—

“Blood flowed in waves; there were acts of injustice and crimes which were useless from the point of view of national defence, and odious. But men had lost their heads in the tempest, and, harassed by a thousand dangers, the patriots struck out in their rage.”

We shall see in another part of this work that the first of the two authors whom I have cited is, in spite

of his uncompromising Jacobinism, by no means indulgent toward the men formerly qualified as the “Giants of the Convention.”

The judgments of foreigners upon our Revolution are usually distinctly severe, and we cannot be surprised when we remember how Europe suffered during the twenty years of upheaval in France.

The Germans in particular have been most severe. Their opinion is summed up in the following lines by M. Faguet:—

“Let us say it courageously and patriotically, for patriotism consists above all in telling the truth to one's own country: Germany sees in France, with regard to the past, a people who, with the great words `liberty' and `fraternity' in its mouth, oppressed, trampled, murdered, pillaged, and fleeced her for fifteen years; and with regard to the present, a people who, with the same words on its banners, is organising a despotic, oppressive, mischievous, and ruinous democracy, which none would seek to imitate. This is what Germany may well see in France; and this, according to her books and journals, is, we may assure ourselves, what she does see.”

For the rest, whatever the worth of the verdicts pronounced upon the French Revolution, we may be certain that the writers of the future will consider it as an event as passionately interesting as it is instructive.

A Government bloodthirsty enough to guillotine old men of eighty years, young girls, and little children: which covered France with ruins, and yet succeeded in repulsing Europe in arms; an archduchess of Austria, Queen of France, dying on the scaffold,

and a few years later another archduchess, her relative, replacing her on the same throne and marrying a sub-lieutenant, turned Emperor—here are tragedies unique in human history. The psychologists, above all, will derive lessons from a history hitherto so little studied by them. No doubt they will finally discover that psychology can make no progress until it renounces chimerical theories and laboratory experiments in order to study the events and the men who surround us.7

4. Impartiality in History.

Impartiality has always been considered as the most essential quality of the historian. All historians since Tacitus have assured us that they are impartial.

In reality the writer sees events as the painter sees a landscape—that is, through his own temperament; through his character and the mind of the race.

A number of artists, placed before the same landscape, would necessarily interpret it in as many different fashions. Some would lay stress upon details neglected by others. Each reproduction would thus be a personal work—that is to say, would be interpreted by a certain form of sensibility.

It is the same with the writer. We can no more speak of the impartiality of the historian than we can speak of the impartiality of the painter.

Certainly the historian may confine himself to the reproduction of documents, and this is the present tendency. But these documents, for periods as near us as the Revolution, are so abundant that a man's whole life would not suffice to go through them. Therefore the historian must make a choice.

Consciously sometimes, but more often unconsciously, the author will select the material which best corresponds with his political, moral, and social opinions.

It is therefore impossible, unless he contents himself with simple chronologies summing up each event with a few words and a date, to produce a truly impartial volume of history. No author could be impartial; and it is not to be regretted. The claim to impartiality, so common to-day, results in those flat, gloomy, and prodigiously wearisome works which render the comprehension of a period completely impossible.

Should the historian, under a pretext of impartiality, abstain from judging men—that is, from speaking in tones of admiration or reprobation?

This question, I admit, allows of two very different solutions, each of which is perfectly correct, according to the point of view assumed—that of the moralist or that of the psychologist.

The moralist must think exclusively of the interest of society, and must judge men only according to that interest. By the very fact that it exists and wishes to continue to exist a society is obliged to admit a certain number of rules, to have an indestructible standard of good and evil, and consequently to create very definite distinctions between vice and virtue. It thus finally creates average types, to which the man of the period approaches more or less closely, and from which he cannot depart very widely without peril to society.

It is by such similar types and the rules derived from social necessities that the moralist must judge the men of the past. Praising those which were useful and blaming the rest, he thus helps to form the moral types which are indispensable to the progress of civilisation and which may serve others as models. Poets such as Corneille, for example, create heroes superior to the majority of men, and possibly inimitable; but they thereby help greatly to stimulate our efforts. The example of heroes must always be set before a people in order to ennoble its mind.

Such is the moralist's point of view. That of the psychologist would be quite different. While a society has no right to be tolerant, because its first duty is to live, the psychologist may remain indifferent. Considering things as a scientist, he no longer asks their utilitarian value, but seeks merely to explain them.

His situation is that of the observer before any phenomenon. It is obviously difficult to read in cold blood that Carrier ordered his victims to be buried up to the neck so that they might then be blinded and subjected to horrible torments. Yet if we wish to comprehend such acts we must be no more indignant than the naturalist before the spider slowly devouring a fly. As soon as the reason is moved it is no longer reason, and can explain nothing.

The functions of the historian and the psychologist are not, as we see, identical, but of both we may demand the endeavour, by a wise interpretation of the facts, to discover, under the visible evidences, the invisible forces which determine them.

2. CHAPTER II
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF THE ANCIEN RÉGIME

1. The Absolute Monarchy and the Bases of the Ancien Régime.

MANY historians assure us that the Revolution was directed against the autocracy of the monarchy. In reality the kings of France had ceased to be absolute monarchs long before its outbreak.

Only very late in history—not until the reign of Louis XIV.—did they finally obtain incontestable power. All the preceding sovereigns, even the most powerful, such as Francis I., for example, had to sustain a constant struggle either against the seigneurs, or the clergy, or the parliaments, and they did not always win. Francis himself had not sufficient power to protect his most intimate friends against the Sorbonne and the Parliament. His friend and councillor Berquin, having offended the Sorbonne, was arrested upon the order of the latter body. The king ordered his release, which was refused. He was obliged to send archers to remove him from the Conciergerie, and could find no other means of protecting him than that of keeping him beside him in the Louvre. The Sorbonne by no means considered itself beaten. Profiting by the king's absence, it arrested

Berquin again and had him tried by Parliament. Condemned at ten in the morning, he was burned alive at noon.

Built up very gradually, the power of the kings of France was not absolute until the time of Louis XIV. It then rapidly declined, and it would be truly difficult to speak of the absolutism of Louis XVI.

This pretended master was the slave of his court, his ministers, the clergy, and the nobles. He did what they forced him to do and rarely what he wished. Perhaps no Frenchman was so little free as the king.

The great power of the monarchy resided originally in the Divine origin which was attributed to it, and in the traditions which had accumulated during the ages. These formed the real social framework of the country.

The true cause of the disappearance of the ancien régime was simply the weakening of the traditions which served as its foundations. When after repeated criticism it could find no more defenders, the ancien régime crumbled like a building whose foundations have been destroyed.

2. The Inconveniences of the Ancien Régime

A long-established system of government will always finally seem acceptable to the people governed. Habit masks its inconveniences, which appear only when men begin to think. Then they ask how they could ever have supported them. The truly unhappy man is the man who believes himself miserable.

It was precisely this belief which was gaining ground at the time of the Revolution, under the influence of the writers whose work we shall presently study.

Then the imperfections of the ancien régime stared all men in the face. They were numerous; it is enough to mention a few.

Despite the apparent authority of the central power, the kingdom, formed by the successive conquest of independent provinces, was divided into territories each of which had its own laws and customs, and each of which paid different imposts. Internal customs-houses separated them. The unity of France was thus somewhat artificial. It represented an aggregate of various countries which the repeated efforts of the kings, including Louis XIV., had not succeeded in wholly unifying. The most useful effect of the Revolution was this very unification.

To such material divisions were added social divisions constituted by different classes—nobles, clergy, and the Third Estate, whose rigid barriers could only with the utmost difficulty be crossed.

Regarding the division of the classes as one of its sources of power, the ancien régime had rigorously maintained that division. This became the principal cause of the hatreds which the system inspired. Much of the violence of the triumphant bourgeoisie represented vengeance for a long past of disdain and oppression. The wounds of self-love are the most difficult of all to forget. The Third Estate had suffered many such wounds. At a meeting of the States General in 1614, at which its representatives were obliged to remain bareheaded on their knees, one member of the Third Estate having dared to say that the three orders were like three brothers, the spokesman of the nobles replied “that there was no fraternity between it and the Third; that the nobles did not

wish the children of cobblers and tanners to call them their brothers.”

Despite the march of enlightenment the nobles and the clergy obstinately preserved their privileges and their demands, no longer justifiable now that these classes had ceased to render services.

Kept from the exercise of public functions by the royal power, which distrusted them, and progressively replaced by a bourgeoisie which was more and more learned and capable, the social rôle of nobility and clergy was only an empty show. This point has been luminously expounded by Taine:—

“Since the nobility, having lost its special capacity, and the Third Estate, having acquired general capacity, were now on a level in respect of education and aptitudes, the inequality which divided them had become hurtful and useless. Instituted by custom, it was no longer ratified by the consciousness, and the Third Estate was with reason angered by privileges which nothing justified, neither the capacity of the nobles nor the incapacity of the bourgeoisie.”

By reason of the rigidity of castes established by a long past we cannot see what could have persuaded the nobles and the clergy to renounce their privileges. Certainly they did finally abandon them one memorable evening, when events forced them to do so; but then it was too late, and the Revolution, unchained, was pursuing its course.

It is certain that modern progress would successively have established all that the Revolution effected—the equality of citizens before the law, the suppression of the privileges of birth, &c. Despite the conservative spirit of the Latins, these things would have

been won, as they were by the majority of the peoples. We might in this manner have been saved twenty years of warfare and devastation; but we must have had a different mental constitution, and, above all, different statesmen.

The profound hostility of the bourgeoisie against the classes maintained above it by tradition was one of the great factors of the Revolution, and perfectly explains why, after its triumph, the first class despoiled the vanquished of their wealth. They behaved as conquerors—like William the Conqueror, who, after the conquest of England, distributed the soil among his soldiers.

But although the bourgeoisie detested the nobility they had no hatred for royalty, and did not regard it as revocable. The maladdress of the king and his appeals to foreign powers only very gradually made him unpopular.

The first Assembly never dreamed of founding a republic. Extremely royalist, in fact, it thought simply to substitute a constitutional for an absolute monarchy. Only the consciousness of its increasing power exasperated it against the resistance of the king; but it dared not overthrow him.

3. Life under the Ancien Régime.

It is difficult to form a very clear idea of life under the ancien régime, and, above all, of the real situation of the peasants.

The writers who defend the Revolution as theologians defend religious dogmas draw such gloomy pictures of the existence of the peasants under the ancien régime that we ask ourselves how it was that

all these unhappy creatures had not died of hunger long before. A good example of this style of writing may be found in a book by M. A. Rambaud, formerly professor at the Sorbonne, published under the title History of the French Revolution. One notices especially an engraving bearing the legend, Poverty of Peasants under Louis XIV. In the foreground a man is fighting some dogs for some bones, which for that matter are already quite fleshless. Beside him a wretched fellow is twisting himself and compressing his stomach. Farther back a woman lying on the ground is eating grass. At the back of the landscape figures of which one cannot say whether they are corpses or persons starving are also stretched on the soil. As an example of the administration of the ancien régime the same author assures us that “a place in the police cost 300 livres and brought in 400,000.” Such figures surely indicate a great disinterestedness on the part of those who sold such productive employment! He also informs us “that it cost only 120 livres to get people arrested,” and that “under Louis XV. more than 150,000 lettres de cachet were distributed.”

The majority of books dealing with the Revolution are conceived with as little impartiality and critical spirit, which is one reason why this period is really so little known to us.

Certainly there is no lack of documents, but they are absolutely contradictory. To the celebrated description of La Bruyére we may oppose the enthusiastic picture drawn by the English traveller Young of the prosperous condition of the peasants of some of the French provinces.

Were they really crushed by taxation, and did they, as has been stated, pay four-fifths of their revenue instead of a fifth as to-day? Impossible to say with certainty. One capital fact, however, seems to prove that under the ancien régime the situation of the inhabitants of the rural districts could not have been so very wretched, since it seems established that more than a third of the soil had been bought by peasants.

We are better informed as to the financial system. It was very oppressive and extremely complicated. The budgets usually showed deficits, and the imposts of all kinds were raised by tyrannical farmers-general. At the very moment of the Revolution this condition of the finances became the cause of universal discontent, which is expressed in the cahiers of the States General. Let us remark that these cahiers did not represent a previous state of affairs, but an actual condition due to a crisis of poverty produced by the bad harvest of 1788 and the hard winter of 1789. What would these cahiers have told us had they been written ten years earlier?

Despite these unfavourable circumstances the cahiers contained no revolutionary ideas. The most advanced merely asked that taxes should be imposed only with the consent of the States General and paid by all alike. The same cahiers sometimes expressed a wish that the power of the king should be limited by a Constitution defining his rights and those of the nation. If these wishes had been granted a constitutional monarchy could very easily have been substituted for the absolute monarchy, and the Revolution would probably have been avoided.

Unhappily, the nobility and the clergy were too strong and Louis XVI. too weak for such a solution to be possible.

Moreover, it would have been rendered extremely difficult by the demands of the bourgeoisie, who claimed to substitute themselves for the nobles, and were the real authors of the Revolution. The movement started by the middle classes rapidly exceeded their hopes, needs, and aspirations. They had claimed equality for their own profit, but the people also demanded equality. The Revolution thus finally became the popular government which it was not and had no intention of becoming at the outset.

4. Evolution of Monarchical Feeling during the Revolution.

Despite the slow evolution of the affective elements, it is certain that during the Revolution the sentiments, not of the people only, but also of the revolutionary Assemblies with regard to the monarchy, underwent a very rapid change. Between the moment when the legislators of the first Assembly surrounded Louis XVI. with respect and the moment when his head was cut off a very few years had elapsed.

These changes, superficial rather than profound, were in reality a mere transposition of sentiments of the same order. The love which the men of this period professed for the king was transferred to the new Government which had inherited his power. The mechanism of such a transfer may easily be demonstrated.

Under the ancien régime, the sovereign, holding his power by Divine right, was for this reason

invested with a kind of supernatural power. His people looked up to him from every corner of the country.

This mystic belief in the absolute power of royalty was shattered only when repeated experience proved that the power attributed to the adored being was fictitious. He then lost his prestige. Now, when prestige is lost the crowd will not forgive the fallen idol for deluding them, and seek anew the idol without which they cannot exist.

From the outset of the Revolution numerous facts, which were daily repeated, revealed to the most fervent believers the fact that royalty no longer possessed any power, and that there were other powers capable, not only of contending with royalty, but possessed of superior force.

What, for instance, was thought of the royal power by the multitudes who saw the king held in check by the Assembly, and incapable, in the heart of Paris, of defending his strongest fortress against the attacks of armed bands?

The royal weakness thus being obvious, the power of the Assembly was increasing. Now, in the eyes of the crowd weakness has no prestige; it turns always to force.

In the Assemblies feeling was very fluid, but did not evolve very rapidly, for which reason the monarchical faith survived the taking of the Bastille the flight of the king, and his understanding with foreign sovereigns.

The royalist faith was still so powerful that the Parisian riots and the events which led to the execution of Louis XVI. were not enough finally

to destroy, in the provinces, the species of secular piety which enveloped the old monarchy.8

It persisted in a great part of France during the whole of the Revolution, and was the origin of the royalist conspiracies and insurrections in various departments which the Convention had such trouble to suppress. The royalist faith had disappeared in Paris, where the weakness of the king was too plainly visible; but in the provinces the royal power, representing God on earth, still retained its prestige.

The royalist sentiments of the people must have been deeply rooted to survive the guillotine. The royalist movements persisted, indeed, during the whole of the Revolution, and were accentuated under the Directory, when forty-nine departments sent royalist deputies to Paris, which provoked the Directory to the coup d'État of Fructidor.

This monarchical-feeling, with difficulty repressed by the Revolution, contributed to the success of Bonaparte when he came to occupy the throne of the ancient kings, and in great measure to re-establish the ancien régime.

3. CHAPTER III
MENTAL ANARCHY AT THE TIME OF THE REVOLUTION AND THE INFLUENCE ATTRIBUTED TO THE PHILOSOPHERS

1. Origin and Propagation of Revolutionary Ideas.

THE outward life of men in every age is moulded upon an inward life consisting of a framework of traditions, sentiments, and moral influences which direct their conduct and maintain certain fundamental notions which they accept without discussion.

Let the resistance of this social framework weaken, and ideas which could have had no force before will germinate and develop. Certain theories whose success was enormous at the time of the Revolution would have encountered an impregnable wall two centuries earlier.

The aim of these considerations is to recall to the reader the fact that the outward events of revolutions are always a consequence of invisible transformations which have slowly gone forward in men's minds. Any profound study of a revolution necessitates a study of the mental soil upon which the ideas that direct its course have to germinate.

Generally slow in the extreme, the evolution of ideas is often invisible for a whole generation. Its extent can only be grasped by comparing the mental condition

of the same social classes at the two extremities of the curve which the mind has followed. To realise the different conceptions of royalty entertained by educated men under Louis XIV. and Louis XVI., we must compare the political theories of Bossuet and Turgot.

Bossuet expressed the general conceptions of his time concerning the absolute monarchy when he based the authority of a Government upon the will of God, “sole judge of the actions of kings, always irresponsible before men.” Religious faith was then as strong as the monarchical faith from which it seemed inseparable, and no philosopher could have shaken it.

The writings of the reforming ministers of Louis XVI., those of Turgot, for instance, are animated by quite another spirit. Of the Divine right of kings there is hardly a word, and the rights of the peoples begin to be clearly defined.

Many events had contributed to prepare for such an evolution—unfortunate wars, famines, imposts, general poverty at the end of the reign of Louis XV., &c. Slowly destroyed, respect for monarchical authority was replaced by a mental revolt which was ready to manifest itself as soon as occasion should arise.

When once the mental framework commences to crumble the end comes rapidly. This is why at the time of the Revolution ideas were so quickly propagated which were by no means new, but which until then had exerted no influence, as they had not fallen on fruitful ground.

Yet the ideas which were then so attractive and effectual had often been expressed. For a long time they had inspired the politics of England. Two thousand years earlier the Greek and Latin authors

had written in defence of liberty, had cursed tyrants, and proclaimed the rights of popular sovereignty.

The middle classes who effected the Revolution, although, like their fathers, they had learned all these things in text-books, were not in any degree moved by them, because the moment when such ideas could move them had not arrived. How should the people have been impressed by them at a time when all men were accustomed to regard all hierarchies as natural necessities?

The actual influence of the philosophers in the genesis of the Revolution was not that which was attributed to them. They revealed nothing new, but they developed the critical spirit which no dogma can resist once the way is prepared for its downfall.

Under the influence of this developing critical spirit things which were no longer very greatly respected came to be respected less and less. When tradition and prestige had disappeared the social edifice suddenly fell.

This progressive disaggregation finally descended to the people, but was not commenced by the people. The people follows examples, but never sets them.

The philosophers, who could not have exerted any influence over the people, did exert a great influence over the enlightened portion of the nation. The unemployed nobility, who had long been ousted from their old functions, and who were consequently inclined to be censorious, followed their leadership. Incapable of foresight, the nobles were the first to break with the traditions that were their only raison d'être. As steeped in humanitarianism and rationalism as the bourgeoisie of to-day, they continually sapped their

own privileges by their criticisms. As to-day, the most ardent reformers were found among the favourites of fortune. The aristocracy encouraged dissertations on the social contract, the rights of man, and the equality of citizens. At the theatre it applauded plays which criticised privileges, the arbitrariness and the incapacity of men in high places, and abuses of all kinds.

As soon as men lose confidence in the foundations of the mental framework which guides their conduct they feel at first uneasy and then discontented. All classes felt their old motives of action gradually disappearing. Things that had seemed sacred for centuries were now sacred no longer.

The censorious spirit of the nobility and of the writers of the day would not have sufficed to move the heavy load of tradition, but that its action was added to that of other powerful influences. We have already stated, in citing Bossuet, that under the ancien régime the religious and civil governments, widely separated in our days, were intimately connected. To injure one was inevitably to injure the other. Now, even before the monarchical idea was shaken the force of religious tradition was greatly diminished among cultivated men. The constant progress of knowledge had sent an increasing number of minds from theology to science by opposing the truth observed to the truth revealed.

This mental evolution, although as yet very vague, was sufficient to show that the traditions which for so many centuries had guided men had not the value which had been attributed to them, and that it would soon be necessary to replace them.

But where discover the new elements which might; take the place of tradition? Where seek the magic ring which would raise a new social edifice on the remains of that which no longer contented men?

Men were agreed in attributing to reason the power that tradition and the gods seemed to have lost. How could its force be doubted? Its discoveries having been innumerable, was it not legitimate to suppose that by applying it to the construction of societies it would entirely transform them? Its possible function increased very rapidly in the thoughts of the more enlightened, in proportion as tradition seemed more and more to be distrusted.

The sovereign power attributed to reason must be regarded as the culminating idea which not only engendered the Revolution but governed it throughout. During the whole Revolution men gave themselves up to the most persevering efforts to break with the past, and to erect society upon a new plan dictated by logic.

Slowly filtering downward, the rationalistic theories of the philosophers meant to the people simply that all the things which had been regarded as worthy of respect were now no longer worthy. Men being declared equal, the old masters need no longer be obeyed.

The multitude easily succeeded in ceasing to respect what the upper classes themselves no longer respected. When the barrier of respect was down the Revolution was accomplished.

The first result of this new mentality was a general insubordination. Mme. Vigée Lebrun relates that on the promenade at Longchamps men of the people

leaped on the footboards of the carriages, saying, “Next year you will be behind and we shall be inside.”

The populace was not alone in manifesting insubordination and discontent. These sentiments were general on the eve of the Revolution. “The lesser clergy,” says Taine, “are hostile to the prelates; the provincial gentry to the nobility of the court; the vassals to the seigneurs; the peasants to the townsmen,” &c.

This state of mind, which had been communicated from the nobles and clergy to the people, also invaded the army. At the moment the States General were opened Necker said: “We are not sure of the troops.” The officers were becoming humanitarian and philosophical. The soldiers, recruited from the lowest class of the population, did not philosophise, but they no longer obeyed.

In their feeble minds the ideas of equality meant simply the suppression of all leaders and masters, and therefore of all obedience. In 1790 more than twenty régiments threatened their officers, and sometimes, as at Nancy, threw them into prison.

The mental anarchy which, after spreading through all the classes of society, finally invaded the army was the principal cause of the disappearance of the ancien régime. “It was the defection of the army affected by the ideas of the Third Estate,” wrote Rivarol, “that destroyed royalty.”

2. The supposed Influence of the Philosophers of the Eighteenth Century upon the Genesis of the Revolution—Their dislike of Democracy.

Although the philosophers who have been supposed the inspirers of the French Revolution did attack

certain privileges and abuses, we must not for that reason regard them as partisans of popular government. Democracy, whose rôle in Greek history was familiar to them, was generally highly antipathetic to them. They were not ignorant of the destruction and violence which are its invariable accompaniments, and knew that in the time of Aristotle it was already defined as “a State in which everything, even the law, depends on the multitude set up as a tyrant and governed by a few declamatory speakers.”

Pierre Bayle, the true forerunner of Voltaire, recalled in the following terms the consequences of popular government in Athens:—

“If one considers this history, which displays at great length the tumult of the assemblies, the factions dividing the city, the seditious disturbing it, the most illustrious subjects persecuted, exiled, and punished by death at the will of a violent windbag, one would conclude that this people, which so prided itself on its liberty, was really the slave of a small number of caballers, whom they called demagogues, and who made it turn now in this direction, now in that, as their passions changed, almost as the sea heaps the waves now one way, now another, according to the winds which trouble it. You will seek in vain in Macedonia, which was a monarchy, for as many examples of tyranny as Athenian history will afford.”

Montesquieu had no greater admiration for the democracy. Having described the three forms of government—republican, monarchical, and despotic—he shows very clearly what popular government may lead to:—

“Men were free with laws; men would fain be free

without them; what was a maxim is called severity; what was order is called hindrance. Formerly the welfare of individuals constituted the public wealth, but now the public wealth becomes the patrimony of individuals. The republic is spoil, and its strength is merely the power of a few citizens and the licence of all.”

“. . . Little petty tyrants spring up who have all the vices of a single tyrant. Very soon what is left of liberty becomes untenable; a single tyrant arises, and the people loses all, even the advantages of corruption.

“Democracy has therefore two extremes to avoid; the extreme of the spirit of equality leads to the despotism of a single person, as the despotism of a single person leads to conquest.”

The ideal of Montesquieu was the English constitutional government, which prevented the monarchy from degenerating into despotism. Otherwise the influence of this philosopher at the moment of the Revolution was very slight.

As for the Encyclopædists, to whom such a considerable rôle is attributed, they hardly dealt with politics, excepting d'Holbach, a liberal monarchist like Voltaire and Diderot. They wrote chiefly in defence of individual liberty, opposing the encroachments of the Church, at that time extremely intolerant and inimical to philosophers. Being neither Socialists nor democrats, the Revolution could not utilise any of their principles.

Voltaire himself was by no means a partisan of democracy.

“Democracy,” he said, “seems only to suit a very small country, and even then it must be fortunately

situated. Little as it may be, it will make many mistakes, because it will be composed of men. Discord will prevail there as in a convent full of monks; but there will be no St. Bartholomew's day, no Irish massacres, no Sicilian Vespers, no Inquisition, no condemnation to the galleys for having taken water from the sea without paying for it; unless we suppose this republic to be composed of devils in a corner of hell.”

All these men who are supposed to have inspired the Revolution had opinions which were far from subversive, and it is really difficult to see that they had any real influence on the development of the revolutionary movement. Rousseau was one of the very few democratic philosophers of his age, which is why his Contrat Social became the Bible of the men of the Terror. It seemed to furnish the rational justification necessary to excuse the acts deriving from unconscious mystic and affective impulses which no philosophy had inspired.

To be quite truthful, the democratic instincts of Rousseau were by no means above suspicion. He himself considered that his projects for social reorganisation, based upon popular sovereignty, could be applied only to a very small State; and when the Poles asked him for a draft democratic Constitution he advised them to choose a hereditary monarch.

Among the theories of Rousseau that relating to the perfection of the primitive social state had a great success. He asserted, together with various writers of his time, that primitive mankind was perfect; it was corrupted only by society. By modifying society by means of good laws one might bring back the

happiness of the early world. Ignorant of all psychology, he believed that men were the same throughout time and space and that they could all be ruled by the same laws and institutions. This was then the general belief. “The vices and virtues of the people,” wrote Helvetius, “are always a necessary effect of its legislation. . . . How can we doubt that virtue is in the case of all peoples the result of the wisdom, more or less perfect, of the administration?”

There could be no greater mistake.

3. The Philosophical Ideas of the Bourgeoisie at the Time of the Revolution.

It is by no means easy to say just what were the social and political conceptions of a Frenchman of the middle classes at the moment of the Revolution. They might be reduced to a few formulæ concerning fraternity, equality, and popular government, summed up in the celebrated Declaration of the Rights of Man, of which we shall have occasion to quote a few passages.

The philosophers of the eighteenth century do not seem to have been very highly rated by the men of the Revolution. Rarely are they quoted in the speeches of the time. Hypnotised by their classical memories of Greece and Rome, the new legislators re-read their Plato and their Plutarch. They wished to revive the constitution of Sparta, with its manners, its frugal habits, and its laws.

Lycurgus, Solon, Miltiades, Manlius Torquatus, Brutus, Mucius Scævola, even the fabulous Minos himself, became as familiar in the tribune as in the theatre, and the public went crazy over them. The

shades of the heroes of antiquity hovered over the revolutionary assemblies. Posterity alone has replaced them by the shades of the philosophers of the eighteenth century.

We shall see that in reality the men of this period, generally represented as bold innovators guided by subtle philosophers, professed to effect no innovations whatever, but to return to a past long buried in the mists of history, and which, moreover, they scarcely ever in the least understood.

The more reasonable, who did not go so far back for their models, aimed merely at adopting the English constitutional system, of which Montesquieu and Voltaire had sung the praises, and which all nations were finally to imitate without violent crises.

Their ambitions were confined to a desire to perfect the existing monarchy, not to overthrow it. But in time of revolution men often take a very different path from that they propose to take. At the time of the convocation of the States General no one would ever have supposed that a revolution of peaceful bourgeoisie and men of letters would rapidly be transformed into one of the most sanguinary dictatorships of history.

4. CHAPTER IV
PSYCHOLOGICAL ILLUSIONS RESPECTING THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

1. Illusions respecting Primitive Man, the Return to a State of Nature, and the Psychology of the People.

WE have already repeated, and shall again repeat, that the errors of a doctrine do not hinder its propagation, so that all we have to consider here is its influence upon men's minds.

But although the criticism of erroneous doctrines is seldom of practical utility, it is extremely interesting from a psychological point of view. The philosopher who wishes to understand the working of men's minds should always carefully consider the illusions which they live with. Never, perhaps, in the course of history have these illusions appeared so profound and so numerous as during the Revolution.

One of the most prominent was the singular conception of the nature of our first ancestors and primitive societies. Anthropology not having as yet revealed the conditions of our remoter forbears, men supposed, being influenced by the legends of the Bible, that man had issued perfect from the hands of the Creator. The first societies were models which were afterwards ruined by civilisation, but to which mankind must

return. The return to the state of nature was very soon the general cry. “The fundamental principle of all morality, of which I have treated in my writings,” said Rousseau, “is that man is a being naturally good, loving justice and order.”

Modern science, by determining, from the surviving remnants, the conditions of life of our first ancestors, has long ago shown the error of this doctrine. Primitive man has become an ignorant and ferocious brute, as ignorant as the modern savage of goodness, morality, and pity. Governed only by his instinctive impulses, he throws himself on his prey when hunger drives him from his cave, and falls upon his enemy the moment he is aroused by hatred. Reason, not being born, could have no hold over his instincts.

The aim of civilisation, contrary to all revolutionary beliefs, has been not to return to the state of nature but to escape from it. It was precisely because the Jacobins led mankind back to the primitive condition by destroying all the social restraints without which no civilisation can exist that they transformed a political society into a barbarian horde.

The ideas of these theorists concerning the nature of man were about as valuable as those of a Roman general concerning the power of omens. Yet their influence as motives of action was considerable. The Convention was always inspired by such ideas.

The errors concerning our primitive ancestors were excusable enough, since before modern discoveries had shown us the real conditions of their existence these were absolutely unknown. But the absolute ignorance of human psychology displayed by the men of the Revolution is far less easy to understand.

It would really seem as though the philosophers and writers of the eighteenth century must have been totally deficient in the smallest faculty of observation. They lived amidst their contemporaries without seeing them and without understanding them. Above all, they had not a suspicion of the true nature of the popular mind. The man of the people always appeared to them in the likeness of the chimerical model created by their dreams. As ignorant of psychology as of the teachings of history, they considered the plebeian man as naturally good, affectionate, grateful, and always ready to listen to reason.

The speeches delivered by members of the Assembly show how profound were these illusions. When the peasants began to burn the châteaux they were greatly astonished, and addressed them in sentimental harangues, praying them to cease, in order not to “give pain to their good king,” and adjured them “to surprise him by their virtues.”

2. Illusions respecting the Possibility of separating Man from his Past and the Power of Transformation attributed to the Law.

One of the principles which served as a foundation for the revolutionary institutions was that man may readily be cut off from his past, and that a society may be re-made in all its parts by means of institutions. Persuaded in the light of reason that, except for the primitive ages which were to serve as models, the past represented an inheritance of errors and superstitions, the legislators of the day resolved to break entirely with that past. The better to

emphasise their intention, they founded a new era, transformed the calendar, and changed the names of the months and seasons.

Supposing all men to be alike, they thought they could legislate for the human race. Condorcet imagined that he was expressing an evident truth when he said: “A good law must be good for all men, just as a geometrical proposition is true for all.”

The theorists of the Revolution never perceived, behind the world of visible things, the secret springs which moved them. A century of biological progress was needed to show how grievous were their mistakes, and how wholly a being of whatever species depends on its past.

With the influence of the past, the reformers of the Revolution were always clashing, without ever understanding it. They wanted to annihilate it, but were annihilated by it instead.

The faith of law-makers in the absolute power of laws and institutions, rudely shaken by the end of the Revolution, was absolute at its outbreak. Grégoire said from the tribune of the Constituent Assembly, without provoking the least astonishment: “We could if we would change religion, but we do not want to.” We know that they did want to later, and we know how miserably their attempt failed.

Yet the Jacobins had in their hands all the elements of success. Thanks to the completest of tyrannies, all obstacles were removed, and the laws which it pleased them to impose were always accepted. 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.

Although the lesson was a terrible one, it does not seem to have been sufficient for a considerable class of minds, since even in our days we hear Socialists propose to rebuild society from top to bottom according to their chimerical plans.

3. Illusions respecting the Theoretical Value of the great Revolutionary Principles.

The fundamental principles on which the Revolution was based in order to create a new dispensation are contained in the Declarations of Rights which were formulated successively in 1789, 1793, and 1795. All three Declarations agree in proclaiming that “the principle of sovereignty resides in the nation.”

For the rest, the three Declarations differ on several points, notably in the matter of equality. That of 1789 simply states (Article 1): “Men are born and remain free and having equal rights.” That of 1793 goes farther, and assures us (Article 3): “All men are equal by nature.” That of 1795 is more modest and says (Article 3): “Equality consists in the law being the same for all.” Besides this, having mentioned rights, the third Declaration

considers it useful to speak of duties. Its morality is simply that of the Gospel. Article 2 says: “All the duties of a man and a citizen derive from these two principles engraved on all hearts by nature: do not do unto others that which you would not they should do unto you; do constantly unto others the good you would wish to receive from them.”

The essential portions of these proclamations, the only portions which have really survived, were those relating to equality and popular sovereignty.

Despite the weakness of its rational meaning, the part played by the Republican device, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, was considerable.

This magic formula, which is still left engraven on many of our walls until it shall be engraven on our hearts, has really possessed the supernatural power attributed to certain words by the old sorcerers.

Thanks to the new hopes excited by its promises, its power of expansion was considerable. Thousands of men lost their lives for it. Even in our days, when a revolution breaks out in any part of the world, the same formula is always invoked.

Its choice was happy in the extreme. It belongs to the category of indefinite dream-evoking sentences, which every one is free to interpret according to his own desires, hatreds, and hopes. In matters of faith the real sense of words matters very little; it is the meaning attached to them that makes their importance.

Of the three principles of the revolutionary device, equality was most fruitful of consequences. We shall see in another part of this book that it is almost the

only one which still survives, and is still productive of effects.

It was certainly not the Revolution that introduced the idea of equality into the world. Without going back even to the Greek republics, we may remark that the theory of equality was taught in the clearest fashion by Christianity and Islamism. All men, subjects of the one God, were equal before Him, and judged solely according to their merits. The dogma of the equality of souls before God was an essential dogma with Mohammedans as well as with Christians.

But to proclaim a principle is not enough to secure its observation. The Christian Church soon renounced its theoretical equality, and the men of the Revolution only remembered it in their speeches.

The sense of the term “equality” varies according to the persons using it. It often conceals sentiments very contrary to its real sense, and then represents the imperious need of having no one above one, joined to the no less lively desire to feel above others. With the Jacobins of the Revolution, as with those of our days, the word “equality” simply involves a jealous hatred of all superiority. To efface superiority, such men pretend to unify manners, customs, and situations. All despotisms but that exercised by themselves seem odious.

Not being able to avoid the natural inequalities, they deny them. The second Declaration of Rights, that of 1793, affirms, contrary to the evidence, that “all men are equal by nature.”

It would seem that in many of the men of the

Revolution the ardent desire for equality merely concealed an intense need of inequalities. Napoleon was obliged to re-establish titles of nobility and decorations for their benefit. Having shown that it was among the most rabid revolutionists that he found the most docile instruments of domination, Taine continues:—

“Suddenly, through all their preaching of liberty and equality, appeared their authoritative instincts, their need of commanding, even as subordinates, and also, in most cases, an appetite for money or for pleasure. Between the delegate of the Committee of Public Safety and the minister, prefect, or sub-prefect of the Empire the difference is small: it is the same man under the two costumes, first en carmagnole, then in the braided coat.”

The dogma of equality had as its first consequence the proclamation of popular sovereignty by the bourgeoisie. This sovereignty remained otherwise highly theoretical during the whole Revolution.

The principle of authority was the lasting legacy of the Revolution. The two terms “liberty” and “fraternity” which accompany it in the republican device had never much influence. We may even say that they had none during the Revolution and the Empire, but merely served to decorate men's speeches.

Their influence was hardly more considerable later. Fraternity was never practised and the peoples have never cared much for liberty. To-day our working-men have completely surrendered it to their unions.

To sum up: although the Republican motto has

been little applied it has exerted a very great influence. Of the French Revolution practically nothing has remained in the popular mind but the three celebrated words which sum up its gospel, and which its armies spread over Europe.