Читать книгу The French Revolution (Vol.1-3) - Taine Hippolyte - Страница 60

Table of Contents

Popular application of philosophic theory.—Idyllic

celebration of the Contrat-Social.—The two strata of the

human mind.—Permanent disorder.

If there ever was an Utopia which seemed capable of realization, or, what is still more to the purpose, was really applied, converted into a fact, fully established, it is that of Rousseau, in 1789 and during the three following years. For, not only are his principles embodied in the laws, and the Constitution throughout animated with his spirit, but it seems as if the nation looked upon his ideological gambols, his abstract fiction, as serious. This fiction it carried out in every particular. A social contract, at one spontaneous and practical, an immense gathering of men associating together freely for the first time for the recognition of their respective rights, forming a specific compact, and binding themselves by a solemn oath: such is the social recipe prescribed by the philosophers, and which is carried out to the letter. Moreover, as this recipe is esteemed infallible, the imagination is worked upon and the sensibilities of the day are brought into play. It is admitted that men, on again becoming equals, have again become brothers.3102 A sudden and amazing harmony of all volitions and all intelligences will restore the golden age on earth. It is proper, accordingly, to regard the social contract as a festival, an affecting, sublime idyll, in which, from one end of France to the other, all, hand in hand, should assemble and swear to the new compact, with song, with dance, with tears of joy, with shouts of gladness, the worthy beginning of public felicity. With unanimous assent, indeed, the idyll is performed as if according to a written program.

On the 29th of November, 1789, at Etoile, near Valence, the federations began.3103 Twelve thousand National Guards, from the two banks of the Rhône, promise "to remain for ever united, to insure the circulation of grain, and to maintain the laws passed by the National Assembly." On the 13th of December, at Montélimart, six thousand men, the representatives of 27 000 other men, take a similar oath and confederate themselves with the foregoing.—Upon this the excitement spreads from month to month and from province to province. Fourteen towns of the bailiwicks of Franche-Comté form a patriotic league. At Pontivy, Brittany enters into federal relations with Anjou. One thousand National Guards of Vivarais and Languedoc send their delegates to Voute. 48 000 in the Vosges send their deputies to Epinal. During February, March, April, and May, 1790, in Alsace, Champagne, Dauphiny, Orléanais, Touraine, Lyonnais, and Provence, there is the same spectacle. At Draguignan eight thousand National Guards take the oath in the presence of 20 000 spectators. At Lyons 50 000 men, delegates of more than 500 000 others take the civic oath.—But local unions are not sufficient to complete the organization of France; a general union of all Frenchmen must take place. Many of the various National Guards have already written to Paris for the purpose of affiliating themselves with the National Guard there; and, one the 5th of June, the Parisian municipal body having proposed it, the Assembly decrees the universal federation. It is to take place on the 14th of July, everywhere on the same day, both at the center and at the extremities of the kingdom. There is to be one in the principal town of each district and of each department, and one in the capital. To the latter each body of the National Guards is to send deputies in the proportion of one man to every two hundred; and each regiment one officer, one non-commissioned officer, and four privates. Fourteen thousand representatives of the National Guard of the provinces appear on the Champ de Mars, the theater of the festival; also eleven to twelve thousand representatives of the land and marine forces, besides the National Guard of Paris, and sixty thousand spectators on the surrounding slopes, with a still greater crowd on the heights of Chaillot and of Passy. All rise to their feet and swear fidelity to the nation, to the law, to the King and to the new Constitution. When the report of the cannon is heard which announces the taking of the oath, those of the Parisians who have remained at home, men, women, and children, raise their hands in the direction of the Champ de Mars and likewise make their affirmation. In every principal town of every district, department, and commune in France there is the same oath on the same day. Never was there a more perfect social compact heard of. Here, for the first time in the world, everybody beholds a veritable legitimate society, for it is founded on free pledges, on solemn stipulations, and on actual consent. They possess the authentic act and the dated official report of it.3104

There is still something more—the time and the occasion betoken a union of all hearts. The barriers which have hitherto separated men from each other are all removed and without effort. Provincial antagonisms are now to cease: the confederates of Brittany and Anjou write that they no longer desire to be Angevins and Bretons, but simply Frenchmen. All religious discords are to come to an end: at Saint-Jean-du-Gard, near Alais, the Catholic curé and the Protestant pastor embrace each other at the altar; the pastor occupies the best seat in the church, and at the Protestant meeting-house the curé has the place of honor, and listens to the sermon of the pastor.3105 Distinctions of rank and condition will no longer exist; at Saint-Andéol "the honor of taking the oath in the name of the people is conferred on two old men, one ninety-three and the other ninety-four years of age, one a noble and a colonel of the National Guard, and the other a simple peasant." At Paris, two hundred thousand persons of all conditions, ages, and sexes, officers and soldiers, monks and actors, school-boys and masters, dandies and ragamuffins, elegant ladies and fishwives, workmen of every class and the peasants from the vicinity, all flocked to the Champ de Mars to dig the earth which was not ready, and in a week, trundling wheelbarrows and handling the pick-ax as equals and comrades, all voluntarily yoked in the same service, converted a flat surface into a valley between two hills.—At Strasbourg, General Luckner, commander-in-chief, worked a whole afternoon in his shirt-sleeves just like the commonest laborer. The confederates are fed, housed, and have their expenses paid everywhere on all the roads. At Paris the publicans and keepers of furnished houses lower their prices of their own accord, and do not think of robbing their new guests. "The districts," moreover, "feast the provincials to their heart's content.3106 There are meals every day for from twelve to fifteen hundred people." Provincials and Parisians, soldiers and bourgeois, seated and mingled together, drink each other's health and embrace. The soldiers, especially, and the inferior officers are surrounded, welcomed, and entertained to such an extent that they lose their heads, their health, and more besides. One "old trooper, who had been over fifty years in the service, died on the way home, used up with cordials and excess of pleasure." In short, the joy is excessive, as it should be on the great day when the wish of an entire century is accomplished.—Behold ideal felicity, as displayed in the books and illustrations of the time! The natural man buried underneath an artificial civilization is disinterred, and again appears as in early days, as in Tahiti, as in philosophic and literary pastorals, as in bucolic and mythological operas, confiding, affectionate, and happy. "The sight of all these beings again restored to the sweet sentiments of primitive brotherhood is an exquisite delight almost too great for the soul to support," and the Frenchman, more light-hearted and far more childlike than he is to-day, gives himself up unrestrainedly to his social, sympathetic, and generous instincts. Whatever the imagination of the day offers him to increase his emotions, all the classical, rhetorical, and dramatic material at his command, are employed for the embellishment of his festival. Already wildly enthusiastic, he is anxious to increase his enthusiasm.—At Lyons, the fifty thousand confederates from the south range themselves in line of battle around an artificial rock, fifty feet high, covered with shrubs, and surmounted by a Temple of Concord in which stands a huge statue of Liberty; the steps of the rock are decked with flags, and a solemn mass precedes the administration of the oath.—At Paris, an alter dedicated to the nation is erected in the middle of the Champ de Mars, which is transformed into a colossal circus. The regular troops and the federations of the departments stand in position around it, the King being in front with the Queen and the dauphin, while near them are the princes and princesses in a gallery, and the members of the National Assembly in an amphitheater; two hundred priests, draped in their albs and with tricolored belts, officiate around Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun; three hundred drums and twelve hundred musicians all play at once; forty piece of cannon are discharged at one volley, and four hundred thousand cheers go up as if from one threat. Never was such an effort made to intoxicate the senses and strain the nerves beyond their powers of endurance!—The moral machine is made to vibrate to the same and even to a greater extent. For more than a year past, harangues, proclamations, addresses, newspapers and events have daily added one degree more to the pressure. On this occasion, thousands of speeches, multiplied by myriads of newspapers, carry the enthusiasm to the highest pitch. Declamation foams and rolls along in a steady stream of rhetoric everywhere throughout France.3107 In this state of excitement the difference between magniloquence and sincerity, between the false and the true, between show and substance, is no longer distinguishable. The Federation becomes an opera which is seriously played in the open street—children have parts assigned them in it; it occurs to no one that they are puppets, and that the words taken for an expression of the heart are simply memorized speeches that have been put into their mouths. At Besançon, on the return of the confederates, hundreds of "youthful citizens" from twelve to fourteen years of age,3108 in the national uniform, "with sword in hand," march up to the standard of Liberty. Three little girls from eleven to thirteen years old and two little boy of nine years each pronounce "a discourse full of fire and breathing nothing but patriotism;" after which, a young lady of fourteen, raising her voice and pointing to the flag, harangues in turn the crowd, the deputies, the National Guard, the mayor, and the commander of the troops, the scene ending with a ball. This is the universal finale—men and women, children and adults, common people and men of the world, chiefs and subordinates, all, everywhere, frisk about as in the last act of a pastoral drama. At Paris—writes an eye-witness, "I saw chevaliers of Saint-Louis and chaplains dancing in the street with people belonging to their department."3109 At the Champ de Mars, on the day of the Federation, notwithstanding that rain was falling in torrents, "the first arrivals began to dance, and those who came after them, joining in, formed a circle which soon spread over a portion of the Champ de Mars. … Three hundred thousand spectators kept time with their hands." On the following days dancing is kept up on the Champ de Mars and in the streets, and there is drinking and carousing; "there was a ball with refreshments at the Corn-Exchange, and on the site of the Bastille."—At Tours, where fifty-two detachments from the neighboring provinces are collected, about four o'clock in the afternoon,3110 through an irresistible outburst of insane gaiety, "the officers, inferior officers, and soldiers, pell-mell, race through the streets, some with saber in hand and others dancing and shouting 'Vive le Roi!' 'Vive la Nation!' flinging up their hats and compelling every one they met to join in the dance. One of the canons of the cathedral, who happens to be passing quietly along, has a grenadier's cap put on his head," and is dragged into the circle, and after him two monks; "they are often embraced," and then allowed to depart. The carriages of the mayor and the Marquise de Montausier arrive; people mount up behind, get inside, and seat themselves in front, as many as can find room, and force the coachmen to parade through the principal streets in this fashion. There is no malice in it, nothing but sport and the overflow of spirits. "Nobody was maltreated or insulted, although almost every one was drunk."—Nevertheless, there is one bad symptom: the soldiers of the Anjou regiment leave their barracks the following day and "pass the whole night abroad, no one being able to hinder them." And there is another of still graver aspect; at Orleans, after the companies of the National Militia had danced on the square in the evening, "a large number of volunteers marched in procession through the town with drums, shouting out with all their might that the aristocracy must be destroyed, and that priests and aristocrats should be strung up to the lamp post. They enter a suspected coffee-house, drive out the inmates with insults, lay hands on a gentleman who is supposed not to have cried out as correctly and as lustily as themselves, and come near to hanging him.3111—Such is the fruit of the philosophy and the attitudes of the eighteenth century. Men believed that, for the organization of a perfect society and the permanent establishment of freedom, justice, and happiness on earth, an inspiration of sentiments and an act of the will would suffice. The inspiration came and the act was fulfilled; they have been carried away, delighted, affected and out of their minds. Now comes the reaction, when they have to fall back upon themselves. The effort has succeeded in accomplishing all that it could accomplish, namely, a deluge of emotional demonstrations and slogans, a verbal and not a real contract ostentatious fraternity skin-deep, a well-meaning masquerade, an outpouring of feeling evaporating through its own pageantry—in short, an agreeable carnival of a day's duration.

The reason is that in the human mind there are two strata. One superficial, of which men are conscious, the other deep down, of which they are unconscious.3112 The former unstable and vacillating like shifting sand, the latter stable and fixed like a solid rock, to which their caprices and agitation never descend. The latter alone determines the general inclination of the soil, the main current of human activity necessarily following the bent thus prepared for it.—Certainly embraces have been interchanged and oaths have been taken; but after, as before the ceremony, men are just what many centuries of administrative thralldom and one century of political literature have made them. Their ignorance and presumption, their prejudices, hatreds, and distrusts, their inveterate intellectual and emotional habits are still preserved. They are human, and their stomachs need to be filled daily. They have imagination, and, if bread be scarce, they fear that they may not get enough of it. They prefer to keep their money rather than to give it away. For this reason they spurn the claims which the State and individuals have upon them as much as possible. They avoid paying their debts. They willingly lay their hands on public property which is badly protected; finally they are disposed to regard gendarmes and proprietors as detrimental, and all the more so because this has been repeated to them over and over again, day after day, for a whole year.—On the other hand there is no change in the situation of things. They are ever living in a disorganized community, under an impracticable constitution, the passions which sap public order being only the more stimulated by the semblance of fraternity under which they seemed to be allayed. Men cannot be persuaded with impunity that the millennium has come, for they will want to enjoy it immediately, and will tolerate no deception practiced on their expectations. In this violent state, fired by boundless expectations, all their whims appear reasonable and all their opinions rational. They are no longer able to find faults with or control themselves. In their brain, overflowing with emotions and enthusiasm, there is no room but for one intense, absorbing, fixed idea. Each is confident and over-confident in his own opinion; all become impassioned, imperious, and intractable. Having assumed that all obstacles are taken out of the way, they grow indignant at each obstacle they actually encounter. Whatever it may be, they shatter it on the instant, and their over-excited imagination covers with the fine name of patriotism their natural appetite for despotism and domination.

France, accordingly, in the three years which follow the taking of the Bastille, presents a strange spectacle. In the words we find charity and in the laws symmetry; while the actual events present a spectacle of disorder and violence. Afar, is the reign of philosophy; close up is the chaos of the Carlovingian era.

"Foreigners," remarks an observer,3113 "are not aware that, with a great extension of political rights, the liberty of the individual is in law reduced to nothing, while in practice it is subject to the caprice of sixty thousand constitutional assemblies; that no citizen enjoys any protection against the annoyances of these popular assemblies; that, according to the opinions which they entertain of persons and things, they act in one place in one way and in another place in another way. Here, a department, acting for itself and without referring elsewhere, puts an embargo on vessels, while another orders the expulsion of a military detachment essential for the security of places devastated by ruffians; and the minister, who responds to the demands of those interested, replies: 'Such are the orders of the department.' Elsewhere are administrative bodies which, the moment the Assembly decrees relief of consciences and the freedom of nonjuring priests, order the latter out of their homes within 24 hours. Always in advance of or lagging behind the laws; alternately bold and cowardly; daring all things when seconded by public license, and daring nothing to repress it; eager to abuse their momentary authority against the weak in order to acquire titles to popularity in the future; incapable of maintaining order except at the expense of public safety and tranquility; entangled in the reins of their new and complex administration, adding the fury of passion to incapacity and inexperience; such are, for the most part, the men sprung from nothing, void of ideas and drunk with pretension, on whom now rests responsibility for public powers and resources, the interest of security, and the foundations of the power of government. In all sections of the nation, in every branch of the administration, in every report, we detect the confusion of authorities, the uncertainty of obedience, the dissolution of all restraints, the absence of all resources, the deplorable complication of enervated springs, without any of the means of real power, and, for their sole support, laws which, in supposing France to be peopled with men without vices or passions, abandon humanity to its primitive state of independence."

A few months after this, in the beginning of 1792, Malouet sums up all in one phrase:

"It is the Government of Algiers without the Dey."