2. Results of the Triumph of the Jacobin
Religion
Among the causes that gave the Convention its special
physiognomy, one of the most important was the definite
establishment of a revolutionary religion. A dogma which was at
first in process of formation was at last finally erected.
This dogma was composed of an aggregate of somewhat
inconsistent elements. Nature, the rights
of man, liberty, equality, the social contract, hatred of
tyrants, and popular sovereignty formed the articles of a gospel
which, to its disciples, was above discussion. The new truths
had found apostles who were certain of their power, and who
finally, like believers all the world over, sought to impose them
by force. No heed should be taken of the opinion of unbelievers;
they all deserved to be exterminated.
The hatred of heretics having been always, as we have
seen, in respect of the Reformation, an irreducible
characteristic of great beliefs, we can readily comprehend the
intolerance of the Jacobin religion.
The history of the Reformation proves also that the
conflict between two allied beliefs is very bitter. We must not,
therefore, be astonished that in the Convention the Jacobins
fought furiously against the other republicans, whose faith
hardly differed from their own.
The propaganda of the new apostles was very energetic. To
convert the provinces they sent thither zealous disciples
escorted by guillotines. The inquisitors of the new faith would
have no paltering with error. As Robespierre said, “The
republic is the destruction of everything that is opposed to
it.” What matter that the country refused to be regenerated?
It should be regenerated despite itself. “We will make a
cemetery of France,” said Carrier, “rather than fail to
regenerate it in our own way.”
The Jacobin policy derived from the new faith was very
simple. It consisted in a sort of equalitarian Socialism,
directed by a dictatorship which would brook no opposition.
Of practical ideas consistent with the economic
necessities and the true nature of man, the theorists who ruled
France would have nothing to say. Speech and the guillotine
sufficed them. Their speeches were childish. “Never a
fact,” says Taine, “nothing but abstractions, strings of
sentences about Nature, reason, the people, tyrants, liberty:
like so many puffed-out balloons uselessly jostling in space. If
we did not know that it all ended in practical and dreadful
results, we should think they were games of logic, school
exercises, academical demonstrations, ideological
combinations.”
The theories of the Jacobins amounted practically to an
absolute tyranny. To them it seemed evident that a sovereign
State must be obeyed without discussion by citizens rendered
equal as to conditions and fortune.
The power with which they invested themselves was far
greater than that of the monarchs who had preceded them. They
fixed the prices of merchandise and arrogated the right to
dispose of the life and property of citizens.
Their confidence in the regenerative virtues of the
revolutionary faith was such that after having declared war upon
kings they declared war upon the gods. A calendar was
established from which the saints were banished. They created a
new divinity, Reason, whose worship was celebrated in Notre-Dame,
with ceremonies which were in many ways identical with those of
the Catholic faith, upon the altar of the “late Holy
Virgin.” This cult lasted until Robespierre substituted a
personal religion of which he constituted himself the high
priest.
The sole masters of France, the Jacobins and their
disciples were able to plunder the country with impunity,
although they were never in the majority anywhere.
Their numbers are not easy to determine exactly. We know
only that they were very small. Taine valued them at 5,000 in
Paris, among 700,000 inhabitants; in Besançon 300 among
300,000; and in all France about 300,000.
“A small feudality of brigands, set over a conquered
France,” according to the words of the same author, they were
able, in spite of their small numbers, to dominate the country,
and this for several reasons. In the first place, their faith
gave them a considerable strength. Then, because they
represented the Government, and for centuries the French
had obeyed those who were in command. Finally, because
it was believed that to overthrow them would be to bring
back the ancien régime, which was greatly
dreaded by the numerous purchasers of the national domains.
Their tyranny must have grown frightful indeed to force
so many departments to rise against them.
The first factor of their power was very important. In
the conflict between powerful faiths and weak faiths victory
never falls to the latter. A powerful faith creates strong
wills, which will always overpower weak wills. That the Jacobins
themselves did finally perish was because their accumulated
violence had bound together thousands of weak wills whose united
weight overbalanced their own strong wills.
It is true that the Girondists, whom the Jacobins
persecuted with so much hatred, had also well-established
beliefs, but in the struggle which ensued their
education told against them, together with their respect for
certain traditions and the rights of others, scruples which did
not in the least trouble their adversaries.
“The majority of the sentiments of the
Girondists,” writes Emile Ollivier, “were delicate and
generous; those of the Jacobin mob were low, gross, and brutal.
The name of Vergniaud, compared with that of the `divine' Marat,
measures a gulf which nothing could span.”
Dominating the Convention at the outset by the superiority
of their talents and their eloquence, the Girondists soon fell
under the domination of the Montagnards—worthless energumens,
who carried little weight, but were always active, and who knew
how to excite the passions of the populace. It was violence and
not talent that impressed the Assemblies.
