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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/35215-0.txt b/35215-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e9103be --- /dev/null +++ b/35215-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6718 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The French Revolution, by Hilaire Belloc + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and +most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms +of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you +will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before +using this eBook. + + +Title: The French Revolution + +Author: Hilaire Belloc + +Release Date: February 8, 2011 [EBook #35215] +[Last Updated: March 25, 2022] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +Produced by: Steven Gibbs, Richard J. Shiffer and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FRENCH REVOLUTION *** + + + + + + + + + + THE FRENCH REVOLUTION + + BY + + HILAIRE BELLOC, M.A. + + + AUTHOR OF “DANTON,” “ROBESPIERRE,” “MARIE ANTOINETTE,” “THE OLD ROAD,” + “THE PATH TO ROME,” “PARIS,” “THE HILLS AND THE SEA,” “THE HISTORIC + THAMES,” ETC., ETC. + + + LONDON + + WILLIAMS AND NORGATE + + + RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED, + BRUNSWICK STREET, STAMFORD STREET, S.E., + AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK. + + + + +PREFACE + + +The object of these few pages is not to recount once more the history of +the Revolution: that can be followed in any one of a hundred text-books. +Their object is rather to lay, if that be possible, an explanation of it +before the English reader; so that he may understand both what it was +and how it proceeded, and also why certain problems hitherto unfamiliar +to Englishmen have risen out of it. + +First, therefore, it is necessary to set down, clearly without modern +accretion, that political theory which was a sort of religious creed, +supplying the motive force of the whole business; of the new Civil Code +as of the massacres; of the panics and capitulations as of the +victories; of the successful transformation of society as of the +conspicuous failures in detail which still menace the achievement of the +Revolution. + +This grasped, the way in which the main events followed each other, and +the reason of their interlocking and proceeding as they did must be put +forward--not, I repeat, in the shape of a chronicle, but in the shape of +a thesis. Thus the reader must know not only that the failure of the +royal family’s flight was followed by war, but how and why it was +followed by war. He must not only appreciate the severity of the +government of the great Committee, but why that severity was present, +and of the conditions of war upon which it reposed. But in so explaining +the development of the movement it is necessary to select for +appreciation as the chief figures the characters of the time, since upon +their will and manner depended the fate of the whole. For instance, had +the Queen been French either in blood or in sympathy, had the King been +alert, had any one character retained the old religious motives, all +history would have been changed, and this human company must be seen if +its action and drama are to be comprehended. + +The reader interested in that capital event should further seize (and +but too rarely has an opportunity for seizing) its military aspect; and +this difficulty of his proceeds from two causes: the first, that +historians, even when they recognise the importance of the military side +of some past movement, are careless of the military aspect, and think +it sufficient to relate particular victories and general actions. The +military aspect of any period does not consist in these, but in the +campaigns of which actions, however decisive, are but incidental parts. +In other words, the reader must seize the movement and design of armies +if he is to seize a military period, and these are not commonly given +him. In the second place, the historian, however much alive to the +importance of military affairs, too rarely presents them as part of a +general position. He will make his story a story of war, or again, a +story of civilian development, and the reader will fail to see how the +two combine. + +Now, the Revolution, more than any other modern period, turns upon, and +is explained by, its military history. On this account has so +considerable a space been devoted to the explaining of that feature. + +The reader will note, again, that the quarrel between the Revolution and +the Catholic Church has also been dealt with at length. + +To emphasise this aspect of the revolutionary struggle may seem unusual +and perhaps deserves a word of apology. + +The reader is invited to consider the fact that the Revolution took +place in a country which had, in the first place, definitely determined +during the religious struggle of the sixteenth and seventeenth +centuries to remain in communion with Rome; and had, in the second +place, admitted a very large and important body of converts to the +doctrines of the Reformation. + +The determination of the French people, in the crisis of 1572-1610, to +remain Catholic under a strong central Government, was a capital point +in the future history of France. So was the presence of a wealthy, very +large, and highly cultivated body of dissentients in the midst of the +nation. The two phenomena hardly co-existed elsewhere in Europe. Between +them they lent to the political history of France a peculiar character +which the nineteenth century, even more than the Revolution itself, has +emphasised; and it is the opinion of the present writer that it is +impossible to understand the Revolution unless very high relief is given +to the religious problem. + +If a personal point may be noted, the fact that the writer of these +pages is himself a Catholic and in political sympathy strongly attached +to the political theory of the Revolution, should not be hidden from the +reader. Such personal conditions have perhaps enabled him to treat the +matter more thoroughly than it might have been treated by one who +rejected either Republicanism upon the one hand, or Catholicism upon the +other; but he believes that no personal and therefore exaggerated note +has been allowed to intrude upon his description of what is a definite +piece of objective history lying in the field of record rather than in +that of opinion. + +Some years ago the paramount importance of the quarrel between the +Church and the Revolution might still have been questioned by men who +had no personal experience of the struggle, and of its vast results. +To-day the increasing consequences and the contemporary violence of that +quarrel make its presentation an essential part of any study of the +period. + +The scheme thus outlined will show why I have given this sketch the +divisions in which it lies. + + H. BELLOC. + + _King’s Land, + January 1911._ + + + + +CONTENTS + + PAGE + + PREFACE v + + I THE POLITICAL THEORY OF THE REVOLUTION 13 + + II ROUSSEAU 29 + + III THE CHARACTERS OF THE REVOLUTION: + King Louis XVI 37 + The Queen 45 + Mirabeau 53 + La Fayette 61 + Dumouriez 65 + Danton 67 + Carnot 72 + Marat 74 + Robespierre 77 + + IV THE PHASES OF THE REVOLUTION: + i. From May 1789 to 17th of July 1789 83 + ii. From the 17th of July 1789 to the 6th of October 1789 98 + iii. From October 1789 to June 1791 102 + iv. From June 1791 to September 1792 108 + v. From the Invasion of September 1792 to the Establishment + of the Committee of Public Safety, April 1793 118 + vi. From April 1793 to July 1794 126 + + V THE MILITARY ASPECT OF THE REVOLUTION 142 + One 145 + Two 156 + Three 163 + Four 179 + Five 204 + + VI THE REVOLUTION AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 214 + + INDEX 255 + + + + +THE FRENCH REVOLUTION + + + + +I + +THE POLITICAL THEORY OF THE REVOLUTION + + +The political theory upon which the Revolution proceeded has, especially +in this country, suffered ridicule as local, as ephemeral, and as +fallacious. It is universal, it is eternal, and it is true. + +It may be briefly stated thus: that a political community pretending to +sovereignty, that is, pretending to a moral right of defending its +existence against all other communities, derives the civil and temporal +authority of its laws not from its actual rulers, nor even from its +magistracy, but from itself. + +But the community cannot express authority unless it possesses +_corporate initiative_; that is, unless the mass of its component units +are able to combine for the purpose of a common expression, are +conscious of a common will, and have something in common which makes the +whole sovereign indeed. + +It may be that this power of corporate initiative and of corresponding +corporate expression is forbidden to men. In that case no such thing as +a sovereign community can be said to exist. In that case “patriotism,” +“public opinion,” “the genius of a people,” are terms without meaning. +But the human race in all times and in all places has agreed that such +terms have meaning, and the conception that a community can so live, +order and be itself, is a human conception as consonant to the nature of +man as is his sense of right and wrong; it is much more intimately a +part of that nature than are the common accidents determining human +life, such as nourishment, generation or repose: nay, more intimate a +part of it than anything which attaches to the body. + +This theory of political morals, though subject to a limitless +degradation in practice, underlies the argument of every man who +pretends to regard the conduct of the State as a business affecting the +conscience of citizens. Upon it relies every protest against tyranny and +every denunciation of foreign aggression. + +He that is most enamoured of some set machinery for the government of +men, and who regards the sacramental function of an hereditary monarch +(as in Russia), the organic character of a native oligarchy (as in +England), the mechanical arrangement of election by majorities, or even +in a crisis the intense conviction and therefore the intense activity +and conclusive power of great crowds as salutary to the State, will +invariably, if any one of these engines fail him in the achievement of +what he desires for his country, fall back upon the doctrine of an +ultimately sovereign community. He will complain that though an +election has defeated his ideal, yet true national tradition and true +national sentiment were upon his side. If he defends the action of a +native oligarchy against the leaders of the populace, he does so by an +explanation (more or less explicit) that the oligarchy is more truly +national, that is more truly communal, than the engineered expression of +opinion of which the demagogues (as he will call them) have been the +mouthpieces. Even in blaming men for criticising or restraining an +hereditary monarch the adherent of that monarch will blame them upon the +ground that their action is anti-national, that is anti-communal; and, +in a word, no man pretending to sanity can challenge in matters temporal +and civil the ultimate authority of whatever is felt to be (though with +what difficulty is it not defined!) the general civic sense which builds +up a State. + +Those words “civil” and “temporal” must lead the reader to the next +consideration; which is, that the last authority of all does not reside +even in the community. + +It must be admitted by all those who have considered their own nature +and that of their fellow beings that the ultimate authority in any act +is God. Or if the name of God sound unusual in an English publication +to-day, then what now takes the place of it for many (an imperfect +phrase), “the moral sense.” + +Thus if there be cast together in some abandoned place a community of a +few families so depraved or so necessitous that, against the teachings +of their own consciences, and well knowing that what they are doing is +what we call _wrong_, yet they will unanimously agree to do it, then +that agreement of theirs, though certainly no temporal or civil +authority can be quoted against it, is yet unjustifiable. Another +authority lies behind. Still more evidently would this be true if, of +say, twelve, seven decided (knowing the thing to be wrong) that the +wrong thing should be done, five stood out for the right--and yet the +majority possessed by the seven should be determined a sufficient +authority for the wrongful command. + +But it is to be noted that this axiom only applies where the authority +of the moral law (God, as the author of this book, with due deference to +his readers, would prefer to say) is recognised and yet flouted. If +those twelve families do sincerely believe such and such a general +action to be right, then not only is their authority when they carry it +into practice a civil and a temporal authority; it is an authority +absolute in all respects; and further, if, upon a division of opinion +among them not perhaps a bare majority, nay, perhaps not a majority at +all, but at any rate a determinant current of opinion--determinant in +intensity and in weight, that is, as well as in numbers--declares an +action to be right, then that determinant weight of opinion gives to its +resolve a political authority not only civil and temporal but absolute. +Beyond it and above it there is no appeal. + +In other words, men may justly condemn, and justly have in a thousand +circumstances condemned, the theory that a mere decision on the major +part of the community was necessarily right in morals. It is, for that +matter, self-evident that if one community decides in one fashion, +another, also sovereign, in the opposite fashion, both cannot be right. +Reasoning men have also protested, and justly, against the conception +that what a majority in numbers, or even (what is more compelling still) +a unanimity of decision in a community may order, may not only be wrong +but may be something which that community has no authority to order +since, though it possesses a civil and temporal authority, it acts +against that ultimate authority which is its own consciousness of right. +Men may and do justly protest against the doctrine that a community is +incapable of doing deliberate evil; it is as capable of such an action +as is an individual. But men nowhere do or can deny that the community +acting as it thinks right is ultimately sovereign: there is no +alternative to so plain a truth. + +Let us take it, then, as indubitable that where civil government is +concerned, the community is supreme, if only from the argument that no +organ within the community can prove its right to withstand the +corporate will when once that corporate will shall find expression. + +All arguments which are advanced against this prime axiom of political +ethics are, when they are analysed, found to repose upon a confusion of +thought. Thus a man will say, “This doctrine would lead my country to +abandon her suzerainty over that other nation, but were I to consent to +this, I should be weakening my country, to which I owe allegiance.” The +doctrine compels him to no such muddlement. The community of which he is +a member is free to make its dispositions for safety, and is bound to +preserve its own life. It is for the oppressed to protest and to rebel. + +Similarly, men think that this doctrine in some way jars with the actual +lethargy and actual imbecility of men in their corporate action. It does +nothing of the kind. This lethargy, that imbecility, and all the other +things that limit the application of the doctrine, in no way touch its +right reason, any more than the fact that the speech of all men is +imperfect contradicts the principle that man has a moral right to +self-expression. That a dumb man cannot speak at all, but must write, +is, so far from a contradiction, a proof of the truth that speech is the +prime expression of man; and in the same way a community utterly without +the power of expressing its corporate will is no contradiction, but a +proof, of the general rule that such expression and the imposing of such +decisions are normal to mankind. The very oddity of the contrast between +the abnormal and the normal aids us in our decision, and when we see a +people conquered and not persuaded, yet making no attempt at rebellion, +or a people free from foreign oppression yet bewildered at the prospect +of self-government, the oddity of the phenomenon proves our rule. + +But though all this be true, there stands against the statement of our +political axiom not a contradiction added, but a criticism; and all men +with some knowledge of their fellows and of themselves at once perceive, +_first_, that the psychology of corporate action differs essentially +from the psychology of individual action, and _secondly_, that in +proportion to the number, the discussions, the lack of intimacy, and in +general the friction of the many, corporate action by a community, +corporate self-realisation and the imposition of a corporate will, +varies from the difficult to the impossible. + +On this no words need be wasted. All men who reason and who observe are +agreed that, in proportion to distance, numbers, and complexity, the +difficulty of self-expression within a community increases. We may get +in a lively people explosions of popular will violent, acute, and +certainly real; but rare. We may attempt with a people more lethargic to +obtain some reflection of popular will through the medium of a permanent +machinery of deputation which, less than any other, perhaps, permits a +great community to express itself truly. We may rely upon the national +sympathies of an aristocracy or of a king. But in any case we know that +large communities can only indirectly and imperfectly express themselves +where the permanent government of their whole interest is concerned. Our +attachment, which may be passionate, to the rights of the Common Will we +must satisfy either by demanding a loose federation of small, +self-governing states, or submitting the central government of large +ones to occasional insurrection and to violent corporate expressions of +opinion which shall readjust the relations between the governor and the +governed. + +All this is true: but such a criticism of the theory in political morals +which lay behind the Revolution, the theory that the community is +sovereign, is no contradiction. It only tells us that pure right cannot +act untrammelled in human affairs and that it acts in some conditions +more laboriously than in others: it gives not a jot of authority to any +alternative thesis.[1] + +Such is the general theory of the Revolution to which the command of +Jean Jacques Rousseau over the French tongue gave imperishable +expression in that book whose style and logical connection may be +compared to some exact and strong piece of engineering. He entitled it +the _Contrat Social_, and it became the formula of the Revolutionary +Creed. But though no man, perhaps, has put the prime truth of political +morals so well, that truth was as old as the world; it appears in the +passionate rhetoric of a hundred leaders and has stood at the head or +has been woven into the laws of free States without number. In the +English language the Declaration of Independence is perhaps its noblest +expression. And though this document was posterior to the great work of +Rousseau and (through the genius of Jefferson) was in some part +descended from it, its language, and still more the actions of those who +drafted and supported it, are sufficient to explain what I mean to +English readers. + +Now with this general theory there stand connected on the one hand +certain great principles without which it would have no meaning, and +also on the other hand a number of minor points concerning no more than +the machinery of politics. The first are vital to democracy. The second, +in spite of their great popularity at the time of the Revolution and of +the sanction which the Revolution gave them, nay, of their universality +since the Revolution, have in reality nothing to do with the +revolutionary theory itself. + +Of these two categories the type of the first is the doctrine of the +equality of man; the type of the second is the mere machinery called +“representative.” + +The doctrine of the equality of the man is a transcendent doctrine: a +“dogma,” as we call such doctrines in the field of transcendental +religion. It corresponds to no physical reality which we can grasp, it +is hardly to be adumbrated even by metaphors drawn from physical +objects. We may attempt to rationalise it by saying that what is common +to all men is not _more_ important but _infinitely more_ important than +the accidents by which men differ. We may compare human attributes to +tri-dimensional, and personal attributes to bi-dimensional measurements; +we may say that whatever man has of his nature is the standard of man, +and we may show that in all such things men are potentially equal. None +of these metaphors explains the matter; still less do any of them +satisfy the demand of those to whom the dogma may be incomprehensible. + +Its truth is to be arrived at (for these) in a negative manner. If men +are _not_ equal then no scheme of jurisprudence, no act of justice, no +movement of human indignation, no exaltation of fellowship, has any +meaning. The doctrine of the equality of man is one which, like many of +the great transcendental doctrines, may be proved by the results +consequent upon its absence. It is in man to believe it--and all lively +societies believe it. + +It is certainly not in man to prove the equality of men save, as I have +said, by negation; but it demands no considerable intellectual faculty +to perceive that, void of the doctrine of equality, the conception of +political freedom and of a community’s moral right to self-government +disappear. Now to believe that doctrine positively, and to believe it +ardently, to go on crusade for that religious point, was indeed +characteristic of the French. It required the peculiar and inherited +religious temper of the French which had for so many hundred years +seized and defined point after point in the character of man, to grow +enamoured of this definition and to feel it not in the intellect, but as +it were in their bones. They became soldiers for it, and that enormous +march of theirs, overrunning Europe, which may not inaptly be compared +to their adventures in the twelfth century, when they engaged upon the +Crusades, was inspired by no one part of the doctrine of political +freedom more strongly than by this doctrine of equality. + +The scorn which was in those days universally felt for that pride which +associates itself with things not inherent to a man (notably and most +absurdly with capricious differences of wealth) never ran higher; and +the passionate sense of justice which springs from this profound and +fundamental social dogma of equality, as it moved France during the +Revolution to frenzy, so also moved it to creation. + +Those who ask how it was that a group of men sustaining all the weight +of civil conflict within and of universal war without, yet made time +enough in twenty years to frame the codes which govern modern Europe, to +lay down the foundations of universal education, of a strictly +impersonal scheme of administration, and even in detail to remodel the +material face of society--in a word, to make modern Europe--must be +content for their reply to learn that the Republican Energy had for its +flame and excitant this vision: a sense almost physical of the equality +of man. + +The minor points which wove themselves into the political practice of +democracy during the Revolution, which are not of its principles, and +which would not, were they abstracted, affect its essence, are of quite +another and less noble kind. I have taken as the chief of these the +machinery of deputation or of “representation.” + +The representative system had been designed for a particular purpose +under the influence of the Church and especially of the monastic orders +(who invented it) in the Middle Ages. It had been practised as a useful +check upon the national monarchy in France, and as a useful form of +national expression in times of crisis or when national initiative was +peculiarly demanded. + +In Spain it became, as the Middle Ages proceeded, a very vital national +and local thing, varying from place to place. It is not surprising that +Spain (seeing that in her territory the first experiments in +representation were made) should have thus preserved it, popular and +alive. + +In England Representation, vigorous as everywhere else in the true +Middle Ages, narrowed and decayed at their close, until in the +seventeenth century it had become a mere scheme for aristocratic +government. + +In France for nearly two hundred years before the Revolution it had +fallen into disuse, but an active memory of it still remained; +especially a memory of its value in critical moments when a consultation +of the whole people was required, and when the corporate initiative of +the whole people must be set at work in order to save the State. + +It is no wonder, therefore, that the French, on the eve of the +Revolution, clamoured for a revival of representation, or, as the system +was called in the French tongue, “the States-General.” But as a +permanent machine of government no one in Europe had the least idea how +the system might serve the ends of democracy. In England democracy was +not practised nor was representation connected with the conception of +it. The nation had forgotten democracy as completely as it had forgotten +the religion and the old ideals of the Middle Ages. + +In those parts of Christendom in which this ancient Christian +institution of a parliament had not narrowed to be the mask of an +oligarchy or dwindled to be a mere provincial custom, its use had +disappeared. The ancient function of Representation, when it had been +most lively and vigorous, that is, in the Middle Ages, was occasionally +to initiate a national policy in critical moments, but more generally to +grant taxes. What a democratic parliament might do, no one in 1789 could +conceive. + +There was indeed one great example of democratic representation in +existence: the example of the United States; but the conditions were +wholly different from those of Europe. No true central power yet existed +there; no ancient central institution, no Crown nor any Custom of the +City. The numbers over which American representative democracy then held +power were not to be compared to the twenty-five millions who inhabited +the French realm. And even so, most of what counted in their lives was +regulated by a system of highly local autonomy: for they were as +scattered as they were few, and the wisest and strongest and best were +dependent upon slaves. In Europe, I repeat, the experiment was untried; +and it is one of the chief faults of the French revolutionaries that, +having been compelled in the critical moment of the opening of the +Revolution to the use of election and representation, they envisaged the +permanent use of a similar machinery as a something sacred to and normal +in the democratic State. + +True, they could not foresee modern parliamentarism. Nothing could be +more alien to their conception of the State than the deplorable method +of government which parliamentarism everywhere tends to introduce +to-day. + +True, the French people during the revolutionary wars made short work of +parliamentary theory, and found it a more national thing to follow a +soldier (being by that time all soldiers themselves), and to incarnate +in a dictator the will of the nation. + +But though the French revolutionaries could not have foreseen what we +call “Parliamentarism” to-day, and though the society from which they +sprang made short work of the oligarchic pretensions of a parliament +when the realities of the national struggle had to be considered, yet +they did as a fact pay an almost absurd reverence to the machinery of +representation and election. + +They went so far as to introduce it into their attempted reform of the +Church; they introduced it everywhere into civil government, from the +smallest units to the highest. They even for a moment played with the +illusion in that most real of games which men can ever play at--the +business of arms: they allowed the election of officers. They were led +to do this by that common fallacy, more excusable in them than in us, +which confounds the individual will with the corporate. A representative +(they thought) could in some way be the permanent receptacle of his +electorate. They imagined that corporate initiative was always +sufficiently active, in no matter what divisions or subdivisions, to +react at once upon the delegate, to guide him as may be guided a driven +animal, or to command him as may be commanded a servant. + +It was in vain that Rousseau, the great exponent of the democratic +theory upon which France attempted to proceed, had warned posterity +against the possible results of the representative system: they fell +into the error, and it possesses many of their descendants to this day. + +Rousseau’s searching mind perceived indeed no more than the general +truth that men who consent to a representative system are free only +while the representatives are not sitting. But (as is so often the case +with intuitions of genius) though he saw not the whole of the evil, he +had put his finger upon its central spot, and from that main and just +principle which he laid down--that under a merely representative system +men cannot be really free--flow all those evils which we now know to +attach to this method of government. What a rather clumsy epigram has +called “the audacity of elected persons” is part of this truth. The +evident spectacle of modern parliamentary nations driven against their +will into economic conditions which appal them, proceeds again from the +same truth; the conspicuous and hearty contempt into which parliamentary +institutions have everywhere fallen again proceeds from it, and there +proceeds from it that further derivative plague that the representatives +themselves have now everywhere become more servile than the electorate +and that in all parliamentary countries a few intriguers are the +unworthy depositories of power, and by their service of finance permit +the money-dealers to govern us all to-day. Rousseau, I say, the chief +prophet of the Revolution, had warned the French of this danger. It is a +capital example of his talent, for the experiment of democratic +representation had not yet, in his time, been tried. But much more is +that power of his by which he not only stamped and issued the gold of +democracy as it had never till then been minted. No one man makes a +people or their creed, but Rousseau more than any other man made vocal +the creed of a people, and it is advisable or necessary for the reader +of the Revolution to consider at the outset of his reading of what +nature was Rousseau’s abundant influence upon the men who remodelled the +society of Europe between 1789 and 1794. + +Why did he dominate those five years, and how was it that he dominated +them increasingly? + +An explanation of Rousseau’s power merits a particular digression, for +few who express themselves in the English tongue have cared to +understand it, and in the academies provincial men have been content to +deal with this great writer as though he were in some way inferior to +themselves. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] We need not waste any time upon those who talk about such and such a +form of government being good because “it works.” The use of such +language connotes that the user of it is fatigued by the effort of +thought. For what is “working,” _i.e._ successful action, in any sphere? +The attainment of certain ends in that sphere. What are those ends in a +State? If material well-being, then there is an end to talk of +patriotism, the nation, public opinion and the rest of it which, as we +all very well know, men always have regarded and always will regard as +the supreme matters of public interest. If the end is not material +well-being, but a sense of political freedom and of the power of the +citizen to react upon the State, then to say that an institution “works” +though apparently not democratic, is simply to say that under such and +such conditions that institution achieves the ends of democracy most +nearly. In other words, to contrast the good “working” of an institution +superficially undemocratic with democratic theory is meaningless. The +institution “works” in proportion as it satisfies that political sense +which perfect democracy would, were it attainable, completely satisfy. + + + + +II + +ROUSSEAU + + +In order to appreciate what Rousseau meant to the revolutionary +movement, it is necessary to consider the effect of style upon men. + +Men are influenced by the word. Spoken or written, the _word_ is the +organ of persuasion and, therefore, of moral government. + +Now, degraded as that term has become in our time, there is no proper +term to express the exact use of words save the term “style.” + +What words we use, and in what order we put them, is the whole matter of +style; and a man desiring to influence his fellow men has therefore not +one, but two co-related instruments at his disposal. He cannot use one +without the other. The weakness of the one will ruin the other. These +two instruments are his idea and his style. + +However powerful, native, sympathetic to his hearers’ mood or cogently +provable by reference to new things may be a man’s idea, he cannot +persuade his fellow men to it if he have not words that express it. And +he will persuade them more and more in proportion as his words are well +chosen and in the right order, such order being determined by the genius +of the language whence they are drawn. + +Whether the idea of which Rousseau made himself the exponent in his +famous tract be true or false, need not further concern us in this +little book. We all know that the difficult attempt to realise political +freedom has attracted various communities of men at various times and +repelled others. What English readers rarely hear is that the triumph of +Rousseau depended not only on the first element in persuasion, which is +vision, but also upon the second of the two co-related instruments by +which a man may influence his fellows--to wit, style. It was his choice +of French words and the order in which he arranged them, that gave him +his enormous ascendancy over the generation which was young when he was +old. + +I have alluded to his famous tract, the _Contrat Social_, and here a +second point concerning it may be introduced. This book which gave a +text for the Revolution, the document to which its political theory +could refer, was by no means (as foreign observers have sometimes +imagined) the whole body of writing for which Rousseau was responsible. +To imagine that is to make the very common error of confusing a man with +his books. + +Rousseau wrote on many things: his character was of an exalted, nervous +and diseased sort. Its excessive sensibility degenerated with advancing +years into something not distinguishable from mania. He wrote upon +education, and the glory of his style carried conviction both where he +was right and where the short experience of a hundred years has proved +him to have been wholly wrong. He wrote upon love, and half the lessons +to be drawn from his writing will be condemned by the sane. He wrote +upon botany at vast length; he wrote also upon music--with what success +in either department I am incompetent to determine. He wrote upon human +inequality: and though the sentences were beautiful and the sentiment +just, the analysis was very insufficient and the historical conception +bad. He wrote upon a project for perpetual peace, which was rubbish; and +he wrote upon the government of Poland an essay which was a perfect +masterpiece. + +But when a great writer writes, each of his great writings has a life of +its own, and it was not any of these other writings of Rousseau, on +love or botany, which were the text of the Revolution. The text of the +Revolution was his _Contrat Social_. + +Now it is not too much to say that never in the history of political +theory has a political theory been put forward so lucidly, so +convincingly, so tersely or so accurately as in this short and wonderful +book. The modern publisher in this country would be ashamed to print it: +not for its views (which would now seem commonplace), nor for its +excellence, which would ensure it a failure, but for its brevity. It is +as short as a gospel, and would cover but a hundred pages of one of our +serious reviews. A modern publisher in this city would not know what +price to set upon such a work, and the modern reader in this country +would be puzzled to understand how a great thing could be got within so +narrow a compass. A debate in Parliament or the libretto of a long +pantomime is of greater volume. + +Nevertheless, if it be closely read the _Contrat Social_ will be +discovered to say all that can be said of the moral basis of democracy. +Our ignorance of the historical basis of the State is presumed in the +very opening lines of it. The logical priority of the family to the +State is the next statement. The ridiculous and shameful argument that +strength is the basis of authority--which has never had standing save +among the uninstructed or the superficial--is contemptuously dismissed +in a very simple proof which forms the third chapter, and that chapter +is not a page of a book in length. It is with the fifth chapter that the +powerful argument begins, and the logical precedence of _human +association_ to any particular form of government is the foundation +stone of that analysis. It is this indeed which gives its title to the +book: the moral authority of men in community arises from _conscious +association_; or, as an exact phraseology would have it, a “social +contract.” All the business of democracy as based upon the only moral +authority in a State follows from this first principle, and is developed +in Rousseau’s extraordinary achievement which, much more than any other +writing not religious, has affected the destiny of mankind. + +It is indeed astonishing to one who is well acquainted not only with the +matter, but with the manner of the _Contrat Social_, to remark what +criticisms have been passed upon it by those who either have not read +the work or, having read it, did so with an imperfect knowledge of the +meaning of French words. The two great counter arguments, the one +theoretic the other practical, which democracy has to meet, stand +luminously exposed in these pages, though in so short a treatise the +author might have been excused from considering them. The theoretical +argument against democracy is, of course, that man being prone to evil, +something external to him and indifferent to his passions must be put up +to govern him; the people will corrupt themselves, but a despot or an +oligarchy, when it has satisfied its corrupt desires, still has a wide +margin over which it may rule well because it is indifferent. You +cannot bribe the despot or the oligarch beyond the limit of his desires, +but a whole people can follow its own corrupt desires to the full, and +they will infect all government. + +The full practice of democracy, therefore, says Rousseau, is better +suited to angels than to men. + +As to the practical argument that men are not sufficiently conscious of +the State to practise democracy, save in small communities, that plea +also is recognised and stated better than any one else has stated it. +For there is not in this book an apology for democracy as a method of +government, but a statement of why and how democracy is right. + +The silly confusion which regards a representative method as essentially +democratic has never been more contemptuously dealt with, nor more +thoroughly, than in the few words in which the _Contrat Social_ +dismisses it for ever; though it was left to our own time to discover, +in the school of unpleasant experience, how right was Rousseau in this +particular condemnation. + +Exiguous as are the limits within which the great writer has finally +decided the theory of democracy, he finds space for side issues which +nowhere else but in this book had been orderly considered, and which, +when once one has heard them mentioned, one sees to be of the most +excellent wisdom: that the fundamental laws, or original and particular +bonds, of a new democracy must come from a source external to itself; +that to the nature of the people for whom one is legislating, however +democratic the form of the State, we must conform the particulars of +law; that a democracy cannot live without “tribunes”; that no utterly +inflexible law can be permitted in the State--and hence the necessity +for dictatorship in exceptional times; that no code can foresee future +details--and so forth. + +It would be a legitimate and entertaining task to challenge any man who +had not read the _Contrat Social_ (and this would include most academic +writers upon the treatise) to challenge any such one, I say, to put down +an argument against democratic theory which could not be found within +those few pages, or to suggest a limitation of it which Rousseau had not +touched on. + +If proof were needed of what particular merits this pamphlet displayed, +it would be sufficient to point out that in a time when the problem +represented by religion was least comprehended, when the practice of +religion was at its lowest, and when the meaning, almost, of religion +had left men’s minds, Rousseau was capable of writing his final chapter. + +That the great religious revival of the nineteenth century should have +proved Rousseau’s view of religion in the State to be insufficient is in +no way remarkable, for when Rousseau wrote, that revival was undreamt +of; what is remarkable is that he should have allowed as he did for the +religious sentiment, and above all, that he should have seen how +impossible it is for a selection of Christian dogma to be accepted as a +civic religion. + +It is further amazing that at such a time a man could be found who +should appreciate that for the State, to have unity, it must possess a +religion, and Rousseau’s attempt to define that minimum or substratum of +religion without which unity could not exist in the State unfortunately +became the commonplace of the politicians, and particularly of the +English politicians who succeeded him. Who might not think, for +instance, that he was reading--though better expressed, of course, than +a politician could put it--some “Liberal” politician at Westminster, if +he were to come on such phrases as these with regard to what should be +taught in the schools of the country? + +“The doctrines taught by the State should be simple, few in number, +expressed with precision and without explanation or commentary. The +existence of a powerful God, beneficent, providential and good; the +future life; the happiness of the good and the punishment of evil; the +sanctity of the agreements which bind society together and of laws; +while as for negative doctrines, one is sufficient, and that one is the +wickedness of intolerance.” + +Rousseau’s hundred pages are the direct source of the theory of the +modern State; their lucidity and unmatched economy of diction; their +rigid analysis, their epigrammatic judgment and wisdom--these are the +reservoirs from whence modern democracy has flowed; what are now proved +to be the errors of democracy are errors against which the _Contrat +Social_ warned men; the moral apology of democracy is the moral apology +written by Rousseau; and if in this one point of religion he struck a +more confused and a less determined note than in the rest, it must be +remembered that in his time no other man understood what part religion +played in human affairs; for in his days the few who studied religion +and observed it could not connect it in any way with the political +nature of man, and of those who counted in the intellect of Europe, by +far the greater number thought political problems better solved if +religion (which they had lost) were treated as negligible. They were +wrong--and Rousseau, in his generalities upon the soul, was +insufficient; both were beneath the height of a final theory of man, but +Rousseau came much nearer to comprehension, even in this point of +religion, than did any of his contemporaries. + + + + +III + +THE CHARACTERS OF THE REVOLUTION + + +KING LOUIS XVI + +As might be expected, the character of King Louis XVI has suffered more +distortion at the hands of historians than has any other of the +revolutionary figures; and this because he combined with that personal +character of his a certain office to which were traditionally attached +certain points of view and methods of action which the historian takes +for granted when he deals with the character of the man. As any one +thinking of a judge of some standing upon the English bench cannot but +believe that he is possessed of some learning or some gravity, etc.; as +any one hearing of a famous soldier cannot but believe that he has +certain qualities associated with the business of soldiering, so +historians tend to confuse the personality and character of Louis XVI +with that of his office; they either by contrast exaggerate his unkingly +defects or by sympathy exaggerate his kingly opposition to reform. + +The student will do well to avoid this error and its source, and to +think of Louis as of a man who had been casually introduced, almost +without preparation, into the office which he held. In other words, the +student will do well, in his reading of the Revolution, to consider +Louis XVI simply as a man, and his character as a private character. For +this last of the long, unbroken line of Capetians possessed a character +essentially individual. It was of a type which, no matter what accidents +of fortune might have fallen upon its possessor, would have remained the +same. Nor was ever a man possessed of high office whom high office had +less moulded. + +Men thus impervious to their environment are commonly so from two +causes: either from an intense and vivid personal initiative which may +border upon madness, or from something thick and heavy in their moral +accoutrement which defends against external action the inner personal +temperament. The latter was the case with Louis. + +He was very slow of thought, and very slow of decision. His physical +movements were slow. The movement of his eyes was notably slow. He had a +way of falling asleep under the effort of fatigue at the most +incongruous moments. The things that amused him were of the largest and +most superficial kind. Horse-play, now and then a little touched with +eccentricity, and very plain but unexpected jokes. One may express him +from one aspect by saying that he was one of those men whom you could +never by any chance have hoped to convince of anything. The few things +which he accepted he accepted quite simply, and the process of reasoning +in the mouth of any who approached him was always too rapid for him to +follow. But it must not be imagined on this account that the moral +integument so described was wrapped about a void. On the contrary, it +enclosed a very definite character. Louis possessed a number of intimate +convictions upon which he was not to be shaken. He was profoundly +convinced of the existence and value of a certain corporate tradition in +the organism which he ruled: the French nation. He was national. In this +he differed from many a pedant, many a courtier, many an ecclesiastic, +and many a woman about him, especially his wife. + +He was, again, possessed of all the elements of the Catholic faith. + +It was, indeed, a singular thing for a man of his position at such a +time to hold intimately to religion, but Louis held to it. He confessed, +he communicated, he attended mass, he performed his ordinary +devotions--not by way of tradition or political duty, or State function, +to which religious performance was now reduced in the vast majority of +his wealthy contemporaries, but as an individual for whom these things +had a personal value. Had he, with precisely the same interior spirit, +woken in his bed some morning to find himself a country squire, and to +discover that all his past kingship had been a dream of the night, he +would have continued the practice of his religion as before. + +Now this is a sufficiently remarkable point, for the country squire, the +noble, the lawyer, the university professor of the generation +immediately preceding the Revolution had, as a rule, no conception of +the Catholic Church. With them the faith was dead, save in the case of a +very few who made it, if one may say so without disrespect, a mania, and +in their exaggerations were themselves the proofs of the depth of decay +into which the Church of Gaul had fallen. + +Louis XVI was possessed, then, of religion: it appeared in many of his +acts, in his hesitation to appoint not a few of the many atheist bishops +of the time, in his real agony of responsibility upon the Civil +Constitution of the clergy, and in nothing more than the peculiar +sobriety and solid ritual whereby he prepared for a tragic, sudden, and +ignominious death. + +It is next to be observed that though he was a man not yet in middle +age, and though he was quite devoid of ardour in any form, he had from +the first matured a great basis of courage. It is well to admit that +this quality in him was connected with those slow processes of thought +and action which hampered him, but it is not to be explained by them. No +man yet has become brave through mere stupidity. + +It was not only the accidents of the Revolution that proved this quality +in him: his physical habits proved it long before. He was a resolute and +capable rider of the horse: an aptitude in that exercise is impossible +to the coward. Again, in those by-products of courage which are +apparent, even where no physical danger threatens, he was conspicuous; +he had no hesitation in facing a number of men, and he had aptitude in a +mechanical trade--a business by no means unconnected with virility. + +Now in mentioning his virility, it is of prime importance for the +student to remember, though the matter can be touched upon but lightly, +that Louis, in this department of physical life, suffered from a +mechanical impediment which gravely distorted the first years of his +marriage, which undoubtedly wounded his self-respect, and which was +perhaps the only thing that caused him permanent anxiety. He was cured +by medical aid in the summer of the year 1777, but he was already three +years a king and seven years a husband before that relief came to him. +The tragedy affected his whole life, and, I repeat, must never be +forgotten when one considers either him or Marie Antoinette in their +intimate character, and in their effect as actors in the great drama. + +For the rest, the character of Louis betrayed certain ineptitudes (the +word ineptitude is far more accurate in this connection than the word +weakness), which ineptitudes were peculiarly fatal for the military +office which he held and for the belligerent crisis which he had to +meet. + +Few men are possessed of the eye, the subtle sympathy, the very rapid +power of decision, and the comprehension of human contrasts and +differences which build up the apt leader of an armed force great or +small. Most men are mediocre in the combination of these qualities. But +Louis was quite exceptionally hopeless where they were concerned. He +could never have seen the simplest position nor have appreciated the +military aspects of any character or of any body of men. He could ride, +but he could not ride at the head of a column. He was not merely bad at +this trade, he was nul. Drafted as a private into a conscript army, he +would never have been entrusted with the duties of a corporal. He would +have been impossible as a sergeant; and, possessed of commissioned rank, +ridicule would have compelled him to take his discharge. + +This lack did not only, or chiefly, betray itself in his inability to +meet personally the armed crisis of a revolution; it was not only, or +chiefly, apparent in his complete breakdown during the assault upon the +palace on the 10th of August: it was also, and much more, the disastrous +cause of his inability to oversee, or even to choose, military advisers. + +Those who propose in the early part of the Revolution to check the mob +in Paris, are excellent commanders: but Louis does not know it. Those +who succeed each other at the Ministry of War, or at the head of the +armies during the active part of the revolution are various in the +extreme: but they all seem one to him. Between a fop like Narbonne and a +subtle, trained cavalry man like Dumouriez, Louis made no distinction. +The military qualities of La Fayette (which were not to be despised) +meant no more to him than does music, good or bad, to a deaf man. From +the beginning to the end of the movement, the whole of the military +problem escaped him. + +Another hole in his character, which was of prime importance at such a +time, was his inability to grasp in a clear vision any general social +problem. Maps he could well comprehend, and he could well retain +statistics; but the landscape, as it were, of the Revolution his +protuberant and lethargic eyes completely missed. He was quite unable to +see where lay danger and where support, in what large masses such and +such forces were grouped, and the directions in which they were +advancing, or upon which they must retreat. In this matter he was, as +will be seen in a moment, the very opposite of Mirabeau, and it was on +account of this weakness, or rather this form of nullity, that all +Mirabeau’s vision was wasted upon Louis. + +Finally, he had no working comprehension of Europe. He did not even +exaggerate the powers of the allies in the later phases of the +Revolution when they were marching upon France. He did not either +under-estimate or over-estimate the policy and naval force of Great +Britain, the military resources of his own subjects, the probable +sympathies of the Netherlands (anti-Austrian but Catholic), the decay of +Spain, the division and impotence of the Italian Peninsula. Louis saw +nothing of all these things. + +One may conclude the picture (for the purposes of such a short study as +this) by saying that only one coincidence could have led him through the +labyrinth of the time with success. That coincidence would have been the +presence at his side of a friend fully trusted from childhood, loved, as +religious as himself, and yet possessing precisely those qualities which +he himself lacked. Had Louis found to hand such a lieutenant, the +qualities I have mentioned would have been a sort of keel and ballast +which would have secured the monarchy, for he was not weak, he was not +impulsive, he was not even foolish: he was only wretchedly alone in his +incapacities. Certainly such a nature could trust and rely upon no one +who was not of this intimate kind, and he possessed no such intimate, +let alone an intimate who could command the qualities I have suggested. + +Being what he was, his character is among the half-dozen which +determined the Revolution to take the course which it did. + + +THE QUEEN + +Marie Antoinette presents to history a character which it is of the +highest interest to regard as a whole. It is the business of her +biographers to consider that character as a whole; but in her connection +with the Revolution there is but one aspect of it which is of +importance, and that is the attitude which such a character was bound to +take towards the French nation in the midst of which the Queen found +herself. + +It is the solution of the whole problem which the Queen’s action sets +before us to apprehend the gulf that separated her not only from the +French temperament, but from a comprehension of all French society. Had +she been a woman lacking in energy or in decision, this alien character +in her would have been a small matter, and her ignorance of the French +in every form of their activity, or rather her inability to comprehend +them, would have been but a private failing productive only of certain +local and immediate consequences, and not in any way determining the +great lines of the revolutionary movement. + +As it was, her energy was not only abundant but steadfast; it grew more +secure in its action as it increased with her years, and the initiative +which gave that energy its course never vacillated, but was always +direct. She knew her own mind, and she attempted, often with a partial +success, to realise her convictions. There was no character in touch +with the Executive during the first years of the Revolution comparable +to hers for fixity of purpose and definition of view. + +It was due to this energy and singleness of aim that her +misunderstanding of the material with which she had to deal was of such +fatal importance. + +It was she who chose, before the outbreak of the Revolution, the +succession of those ministers both Liberal and Reactionary, whose unwise +plans upon either side precipitated violence. It was she who called and +then revoked, and later recalled to office the wealthy and +over-estimated Necker; she who substituted for him, and then so +inopportunely threw over Calonne, the most national of the precursors of +the Revolution, and ever after her most bitter enemy; it was she who +advised the more particularly irritating details of resistance after the +meeting of the first revolutionary Parliament; it was she who presided +over (and helped to warp) the plans for the flight of the royal family; +it was she who, after this flight had failed, framed a definite scheme +for the coercion of the French people by the Governments of Europe; it +was she who betrayed to foreign chanceries the French plan of campaign +when war had become inevitable; finally, it was she who inspired the +declaration of Brunswick which accompanied the invasion of French +territory, and she was in particular the author of the famous threat +therein contained to give over Paris to military execution, and to hold +all the popular authorities responsible with their lives for the +restoration of the pre-revolutionary state of affairs. + +As research proceeds, the capital effect of this woman’s continual and +decided interference will be more and more apparent to historians. + +Now Marie Antoinette’s conception of mankind in general was the +conception that you will find prevalent in such societies as that +domestic and warm centre which had nourished her childhood. The romantic +affection of a few equals, the personal loyalty of a handful of personal +servants, the vague histrionic content which permeates the poor at the +sight of great equipages and rich accoutrements, the cheers of a crowd +when such symbols accompanying monarchy are displayed in the +streets--all these were for Marie Antoinette the fundamental political +feelings of mankind. An absence of them she regarded with bewilderment, +an active opposition to them she hated as something at once +incomprehensible and positively evil. + +There was in all this illusion, of course, a great element of what the +English call middle class, and the French bourgeois. To be quite +ignorant of what servitors will say of their masters behind their backs; +not to appreciate that heroic devotion is the faculty of a few; never +to have imagined the discontents of men in general, and the creative +desire for self-expression which inspires men when they act politically; +not to know that men as a whole (and particularly the French people) are +not deceived by the accidents of wealth, nor attach any real inferiority +to poverty; to despise the common will of numbers or to doubt its +existence; to see society established in a hierarchy not of office but +of leisure: all this may seem to the democrat a very unnatural and +despicable mood. But it was not despicable, still less unnatural; in the +case of Marie Antoinette: it was the only experience and the only +conception of society which had ever been given her. She had always +believed, when she gazed upon a mass of the populace, that the +difference between the crowd and herself was a moral reality. The +contrast in external habits between the wealthy, the middle class, and +the poor--a contrast ultimately produced by differences in the +opportunity and leisure which wealth affords--she thought to be +fundamental. Just as children and certain domestic pet animals regard +such economic accidents in society as something real which +differentiates men, so did she;--but she happened to nourish this +illusion in the midst of a people, and within a day’s walk of a capital, +where the misconception had less hold than in any other district of +Europe. + +Of the traits peculiar to the French she knew nothing, or, to put it +more strongly, she could not believe that they really existed. + +The extremes of cruelty into which this people could fall were +inconceivable to her, as were also the extremes of courage to which they +can rise under the same excitements as arouse them to an excess of +hatred. But that character in the French which she most utterly failed +to foresee or to comprehend, was their power of _corporate +organisation_. + +That a multitude could instruct and order themselves for a common +purpose, rapidly acquire and nominate the officers who should bring that +purpose to fruition, and in general pass in one moment from a mere +multitude to an incipient army--that was a faculty which the French had +and have to a peculiar degree, and which she (like so many of our own +contemporaries, and especially those of German blood) could not believe +to be real. This faculty in the French, when it took action and was +apparent in the physical struggles of the Revolution, seemed to her, to +the very end, a sort of nightmare; something which, by all the laws of +reality, _ought not_ to be happening, but somehow or other _was_ +happening in a manner evilly miraculous. It was her ignorance upon this +main point of all that caused her to rely so continually upon the use of +the regular forces, and of those forces in insufficient numbers. She +could not but believe that a few trained soldiery were necessarily the +masters of great civilian bodies; their uniforms were a powerful +argument with her, and mere civilian bodies, however numerous, were +always, in her conception, a dust of disparate and inchoate humanity. +She believed there was nothing to attack or resist in popular numbers +but the opinion, the fear, or the cupidity of the individual. In this +error of judgment concerning the French people she was not peculiar: it +is an error repeated over and over again by foreigners, and even by some +native commentators when they seek to account for some national movement +of the Gauls. The unlearning of it is the first lesson which those who +would either administrate or resist the French should learn. + +In the matter of religion (which the reader may see in these pages to be +of such moment in the revolutionary story), the queen was originally far +more indifferent than her husband, though she observed a certain measure +of personal practice. It was not until her heavy misfortunes came upon +her that any degree of personal devotion appeared in her daily life, +though it must be admitted that, by a sort of premonition of disaster, +she turned to religion in the months immediately preceding the outbreak +of the reform. + +It remains to describe the personal effect she had upon those who were +in her immediate presence. Most of the French aristocracy she repelled. +The same misfortune which made her unable to understand the French +temperament as a whole divorced her from that particular corner of it +which took the shape of French aristocratic tradition. She did not +understand its stiffness, its exactitude, its brilliancy or its +hardness: and she heartily disliked all four. + +On this account she produced on the great families of her court, and +especially upon the women of them, an effect of vulgarity. Had she +survived, and had her misfortunes not been of so tragic an intensity, +the legend she would have left in French society would certainly have +been one of off-handed carelessness, self-indulgence, and lack of +dignity which have for the French of that rank the savour that a loud +voice, a bad accent, an insufficient usage in the rules of daily +conduct, leave upon what is left of a corresponding rank in England +to-day. + +She was, on the other hand, easily deceived by the flattery of place +seekers, and the great power which she wielded in politics just before +the Revolution broke out made her, as it were, a sort of _butt_ of the +politicians. + +They haunted her presence, they depended upon her patronage, and, at the +same time, they secretly ridiculed her. Her carriage, which was designed +to impress onlookers and did have that effect upon most foreigners, +seemed to most of the French observers (of a rank which permitted them +to approach her familiarly) somewhat theatrical and sometimes actually +absurd. The earnestness which she displayed in several lines of conduct, +and notably in her determined animosity to certain characters (as that +of La Fayette, for instance), was of an open and violent sort which +seemed to them merely brutal and unintelligent; her luxury, moreover, +was noticed by the refined world of Versailles to be hardly ever of her +own choosing, but nearly always practised in imitation of others. + +In connection with that trait of luxury, the reader must appreciate at +the outset that it was grievously exaggerated by her contemporaries, and +has been still more exaggerated by posterity. She was not a very +frivolous, still less a dissipated, woman. She was woefully loose in +tongue, but she was certainly virtuous. + +She gambled, but as the times went, and the supposed unlimited fortune +of the Crown, her gambling was not often excessive; her expenditure upon +jewellery and dress would be thought most moderate to-day in the case of +any lady of our wealthier families. On the other hand, her whims were +continual and as continually changing, especially in the earlier part of +her life. + +Since that surrounding world of the Court which she misunderstood and +which had no sympathy with her was ready to find some handle against +her, that handle of dissipation was the easiest for them to seize; but +the accusation was not a just one. + +Had fortune made her the wife of a poor man in a lower class of society, +Marie Antoinette would have been a capable housewife: her abundant +energy would have found a proper channel, and she was in no way by +nature extravagant. + +She had a few very passionate and somewhat too sentimental friendships, +some of which were returned, others of which their objects exploited to +their own advantage. The two most famous were her friendship for the +Princess de Lamballe and for Madame de Polignac. These moved her not +infrequently to unwise acts of patronage which were immediately seized +by the popular voice and turned against her. They were among the few +weaknesses apparent in her general temper. They were certainly ill +balanced and ill judged. + +She indulged also in a number of small and unimportant flirtations which +might almost be called the routine of her rank and world; she had but +one great affection in her life for the other sex, and it was most +ardently returned. Its object was a Swedish noble of her own age, the +very opposite of the French in his temper, romantically chivalrous, +unpractical in the extreme, gentle, intensely reserved; his name Count +Axel de Fersen. The affair remained pure, but she loved him with her +whole heart, and in the last months of her tragedy this emotion must be +regarded as the chief concern of her soul. They saw each other but very +rarely, often they were separated for years; it was this, perhaps, which +lent both glamour and fidelity to the strange romance. + + +MIRABEAU + +Mirabeau, the chief of the “practical” men of the Revolution (as the +English language would render the most salient point in their political +attitude), needs a very particular examination. His influence upon the +early part of the Revolution was so considerable, the effect of his +death was so determinant and final, the speculation as to what _might_ +have happened had he survived is so fruitful, so entertaining, and so +common, and the positive effect of his attitude upon the development of +the Revolution after his death was so wide, that to misunderstand +Mirabeau is in a large measure to misunderstand the whole movement; and +Mirabeau has unfortunately been ill or superficially understood by many +among now three generations of historians; for a comprehension of this +character is not a matter for research nor for accumulated historic +detail, but rather a task for sympathy. + +Mirabeau was essentially an artist, with the powers and the frailties +which we properly associate with that term: that is, strong emotion +appealed to him both internally and externally. He loved to enjoy it +himself, he loved to create it in others. He studied, therefore, and was +a master of, the material by which such emotion may be created; he +himself yielded to strong emotion and sought it where it might be found. +It is foolish alike to belittle and to exaggerate this type of +temperament. Upon it or upon its admixture with other qualities is based +the music, the plastic art, and in a large measure the permanent +literature of the world. This aptitude for the enjoyment and for the +creation in others of emotion clothes intellectual work in a manner +which makes it permanent. This is what we mean when we say that _style_ +is necessary to a book; that a great civilisation may partly be judged +by its architecture; that, as Plato says, music may be moral or immoral, +and so forth. The artist, though he is not at the root of human affairs, +is a necessary and proper ally in their development. + +When I say that Mirabeau was an artist I mean that wherever his energies +might have found play he would there have desired to enjoy and to create +enjoyment through some definite medium. This medium was in part +literary, but much more largely oral expression. To be a _tribune_, that +is the voice of great numbers, to persuade, nay, to please by his very +accents and the very rhythm of his sentences, these things occupied the +man; but he also brought into his art that without which no great art +can exist: mere intellect. + +He believed in the main principles at least which underlay the +revolutionary movement, he understood them and he was prepared to +propagate them; but his power over men was not due to this conviction: +his power over men was wholly that of the artist, and had he by some +accident been engaged in maintaining the attack against democracy, he +would have been nearly as famous as he became under the title of its +defender. We must then always consider Mirabeau as an orator, though an +orator endowed with a fine and clear intelligence and with no small +measure of reasoned faith. + +Much else remains to be said of him. + +He was a gentleman; that is, he both enjoyed and suffered the +consequences which attach to hereditary wealth and to the atmosphere +that surrounds its expenditure. On this account, he being personally +insufficiently provided with wealth, he was for ever in debt, and +regarded the sums necessary to his station in life and to his large +opportunities as things due to him, so to speak, from society. We are +right when we say that he took bribes, but wrong if we imagine that +those bribes bound him as they would bind a man meaner in character or +less lucky in his birth. He stooped as gentlemen will to all manner of +low intrigues, to obtain “the necessary and the wherewith”; that is, +money for his _rôle_. But there was a driving power behind him, bound up +with his whole character, which made it impossible for any such sums to +control his diction or to make of such a man a mere advocate. He was +never that dirtiest of political phenomena, the “party man.” He would +never have been, had he been born a hundred years later and thrust into +the nastiness of modern parliamentary life, “a parliamentary hand.” + +Mirabeau had behind him a certain personal history which we must read in +connection with his temperament. + +He had travelled widely, he knew Englishmen and Germans of the wealthier +classes well. The populace he knew ill even in his own country; abroad +he knew it not at all. He had suffered from his father’s dislike of him, +from the consequence of his own unbridled passions, also not a little +from mere accidental misfortune. Capable of prolonged and faithful +attachment to some woman, the opportunity for that attachment had never +been afforded him until the last few months before his death. Capable of +paying loyal and industrious service to some political system, no +political system had chosen him for its servant. It is a fruitful matter +of speculation to consider what he might have done for the French +monarchy had Fate put him early at Court and given him some voice in the +affairs of the French Executive before the Revolution broke out. As it +was, the Revolution provided him with his opportunity merely because it +broke down old barriers and conventions and was destructive of the +framework of the State in which he lived. He was compelled to enter the +Revolution as something of a destroyer, for by no other avenue could he +be given his chance; but by nature he detested destruction. I mean +(since this phrase is somewhat vague) he detested that spirit which will +disendow a nation of certain permanent institutions serving definite +ends, without a clear scheme of how those institutions should be +replaced by others to serve similar ends. It was on this account that he +was most genuinely and sincerely a defender of the monarchy: a permanent +institution serving the definite ends of national unity and the +repression of tendencies to oligarchy in the State. + +Mirabeau had none of the revolutionary Vision. In mind he was +prematurely aged, for his mind had worked very rapidly over a very +varied field of experience. The pure doctrine of democracy which was a +religion to many of his contemporaries, with all the consequences of a +religion, he had never thought of accepting. But certain consequences of +the proposed reforms strongly appealed to him. He loved to be rid of +meaningless and dead barriers, privileges which no longer corresponded +to real social differences, old traditions in the management of trade +which no longer corresponded to the economic circumstances of his time, +and (this is the pivotal point) the fossils of an old religious creed +which, like nearly all of his rank, he simply took for granted to be +dead: for Mirabeau was utterly divorced from the Catholic Church. + +Much has been said and will be said in these pages concerning the +religious quarrel which, though men hardly knew it at the time, cut +right across the revolutionary effort, and was destined to form the +lasting line of cleavage in French life. There will be repeated again +and again what has already been written, that a reconciliation between +the Catholic Church and the reconstruction of democracy was, though men +did not know it, the chief temporal business of the time, and the reader +of these pages will be made well acquainted in them with the degradation +to which religion had fallen among the cultivated of that generation. +But in the case of Mirabeau this absence of religion must be +particularly insisted upon. It would no more have occurred to Mirabeau +that the Catholic Faith had a future than it could occur to (let us say) +an English politician of thirty years ago that the Irish might become a +wealthy community or that an English Government might within his own +lifetime find itself embarrassed for money. I use this parallel for the +sake of strengthening my contention, but it is indeed a weak parallel. +No contemporary parallel in our strange and rapidly changing times +corresponds to the fixed certitude which permeated the whole of the end +of the eighteenth century that the Catholic Faith was dead. Mirabeau had +perhaps never engaged in his life in intimate conversation a single man +who took the Catholic sacraments seriously, or suffered a moment’s +anxiety upon the tenets of the creed. + +He knew, indeed, that certain women and a much smaller number of +insignificant men wrapped themselves up in old practices of an odd, +superstitious kind; he knew that great, dull areas of ignorant +peasantry, in proportion to their poverty and isolation, repeated by +rote the old formulae of the Faith. But of the Faith as a living thing +he could have no conception. + +He saw on the one hand a clerical institution, economic in character, +providing places and revenues for men of his own rank; he met those men +and never discovered them to have any religion at all. He saw on the +other hand a proposed society in which such a fossil, unjust and +meaningless, must relinquish its grip upon those large revenues. But of +the Faith as a social force, as a thing able to revive, he could have +no conception. It would have seemed to him a mere folly to suggest that +the future might contain the possibility of such a resurrection. The +dissolution of the religious orders, which was largely his work, the +civil constitution of the clergy which he presided over, were to him the +most natural acts in the world. They were the mere sweeping away of a +quantity of inorganic stuff which cumbered the modern State. He felt of +them as we might feel of the purchase of waste spaces in our cities, of +the confiscation of some bad landlords’ property in them. The Church +served no kind of purpose, no one who counted believed in it, it was +defended only by people who enjoyed large revenues from the survival of +what had once been, but was now no longer, a living, social function. + +In everything of the Revolution which he understood Mirabeau was upon +the side of caution. He was not oblivious to the conception of popular +government, he was not even mistrustful of it, but he could not conceive +of it save as acting through the established strength of the wealthier +classes. Of military power he judged very largely through Prussian eyes. +And in long and enthusiastic passages he described the Prussian army as +invincible. Had he lived to see the military enthusiasm of the +Republicans he would utterly have distrusted it. He favoured in his +heart an aristocratic machinery of society--though not an aristocratic +theory of the State; he was quite determined to preserve as a living +but diminished national organ the traditional monarchy of France; he was +curious upon a number of details which were present and close to his +eyes: methods of voting, constitutional checks, commercial codes and the +rest of it. The little equilibriums of diplomacy interested him also, +and the watching of men immediately under his eye in the Parliament. + +It was in the Parliament that his whole activity lay, it was there that +he began to guide the Revolution, it was his absence from the Parliament +after his death that the Revolution most feels in the summer of 1791. + +This very brief sketch does not present Mirabeau to the reader. He can +only be properly presented in his speeches and in the more rhetorical of +his documents. It is probable as time proceeds that his reputation in +this department will grow. His constitutional ideas, based as they were +upon foreign institutions, and especially upon the English of that time, +were not applicable to his own people and are now nearly forgotten: he +was wrong upon English politics as he was wrong upon the German armies, +but he had art over men and his personality endures and increases with +time. + + +LA FAYETTE + +The character of La Fayette has suffered chiefly from his own aloofness +towards his contemporaries on the one hand, and from his rigid adherence +to principle upon the other. Both these causes are clearly connected. +The same quality in him which made him so tenacious of principle made +him contemptuous of the run of men about him. Fundamentally, he was +nearer the extreme Republicans than any other class, from the very fact +of his possessing a clear political creed and a determination to follow +it out to its logical consequence. But there was no chance of his +comprehending the concrete side of the movement or the men engaged upon +it, for his great wealth, inherited in very early life, had cut him off +from experience. His moral fault was undoubtedly ambition. It was an +ambition which worked in the void, as it were, and never measured itself +with other men’s capacities or opportunities. He made no plans for +advancement, not because he would have despised the use of intrigue in +reason, but because he was incapable of working it. He was exceedingly +attached to popularity, when it came he thought it his due; unpopularity +in its turn seemed to him a proof of the vileness of those who despised +him. He made himself too much the measure of his world. + +Undoubtedly a very great part in the moulding of his character proceeded +from his experience in the United States of America. He was then at the +most impressionable and formative period of human life, little more than +a boy, or at least just entering early manhood. He had just married, he +had just come into the administration of his vast fortune. At such a +moment he took part in the victorious rebellion of the English colonies, +and it may be imagined how powerful was the effect of this youthful +vision upon the whole of the man’s future life; because there was no +proletariat in the colonies, he never saw or comprehended the +dispossessed classes of Paris--for that matter he never saw or +comprehended the French peasantry upon his own lands; because a chance +and volunteer soldiery had, under the peculiar conditions of the +half-populated Atlantic seaboard in conjunction with the French fleet +and with the aid of French money and arms, got the better of the small +and heterogeneous forces of George III, he believed that a military +nation like the French, in the midst of powerful enemies, could make +something of an amateur civic force; because a certain type of ease in +social relations was the ideal of many, perhaps of most, of those with +whom he had served in America, he confused so simple and mundane an +ideal with the fierce crusading blast and the sacred passion for +equality which was stirring his own nation when his opportunity for +leadership came. + +It may be said of La Fayette with justice that he never upon a single +occasion did the right thing. It may also be said with justice that he +never did politically any major thing for which his own conscience would +later reproach him. It is noticeable that the Queen held him in +particular odium. He had been a wealthy young noble about the Court, the +friend of all her women friends, and his sympathy with the revolutionary +movement at its inception therefore seemed to her nothing better than +treason. There was also undoubtedly something in his manner which +grievously repelled her; that it was self-sufficient we cannot doubt, +and that it was often futile and therefore exasperating to women, events +are sufficient to show. But Marie Antoinette’s violent personal +antagonism towards La Fayette was not common, though several ardent +spirits (Danton’s, for instance) shared it. The mass of those who came +across La Fayette felt in connection with him a certain irritation or a +certain contempt or a certain rather small and distant respect; he +inspired no enthusiasms, and when he timidly attempted a rebellion +against the new Government after the fall of the monarchy, no one would +sacrifice himself or follow him. + +It may be affirmed of La Fayette that if he had not existed the +Revolution would have pursued much the same course as it did, with this +exception: that there would not have been formed a definitely middle +class armed guard to provoke friction in Paris: the National Guard would +have been more open to all ranks. + +In religion the man was anodyne, Catholic of course by baptism, but +distinctly Protestant in morals and in general tone, in dogma (until the +end of his life) freethinking, of course, like all his contemporaries. +He was personally courageous but foolishly despised the duel. One +anecdote out of many will help to fix his nature in the mind of the +reader. Mirabeau, casting about as usual for aid in his indebtedness, +sent urgently to him as to a fellow noble, a fellow politician and a +fellow supporter of the Crown, begging a loan of £2000. La Fayette +accorded him £1000. + + +DUMOURIEZ + +Dumouriez presents a character particularly difficult for the modern +Englishman to comprehend, so remote is it in circumstance and +fundamentals from those of our time. + +Of good birth, but born in a generation when social differences had +become a jest for intelligent and active men (and he was intelligent and +active), courageous, with a good knowledge of his trade of soldiering, +of rapid decision and excellent judgment where troops or _terrain_ were +concerned, he was all at sea in the comprehension of men, and he bore no +loyalty to the State. + +It is this last feature which will particularly surprise the English +reader, for it is the singular and permanent advantage of oligarchic +communities such as the British that they retain under any stress and +show throughout the whole commonwealth the sense of the State. To betray +the State, to act against its interests, to be imperfectly conscious of +its existence, are crimes or weaknesses unknown to the citizens of an +oligarchy, and a citizen of this country cannot easily conceive of them +to-day. In democracies and despotisms, on the other hand, to forget +one’s duty to the State, to be almost oblivious of its corporate +existence, is a common weakness. There is here a compensation, and by +just so much as despotism and democracy permit rapid, effective and +all-compelling action on the part of the State, by just so much as they +permit sudden and sometimes miraculous enthusiasms which save or which +confirm a State, by that also do they lack the quiet and persistent +consciousness of the State which oligarchy fosters and determines. + +Dumouriez’ excellence as a general can only be appreciated by those who +have looked closely into the constitution of the forces which he was to +command and the adversaries with whom he had to deal. It is the prime +quality of a great commander that his mind stands ready for any change +in circumstances or in the material to his hand, and even when we have +allowed for the element of luck which is so considerable in military +affairs, we must not forget that Dumouriez saved without disaster the +wretched and disorganised bands, inchoate and largely mutinous as to +their old units, worthless and amateur as to their new, which had to +meet, in and behind the Argonne, the model army of Prussia. + +We must not forget that his plan for the invasion of the Low Countries +was a just and sensible one, nor with what skill, after the inevitable +defeat and retreat of the spring of 1793, he saved his command intact. + +As a subordinate to an armed executive, to the Government of Napoleon, +for instance, the man would have been priceless. Nay, had circumstances +permitted him to retain supreme command of civil as of military power, +he would have made no bad dictator. His mere technical skill was so +considerable as to make the large sums paid him by the English +Government seem a good bargain even at our distance of time, and his +plans for the defence of England and for the attack on Napoleon are a +proof of the value at which he was estimated. + +But Dumouriez was quite unable to act under the special circumstances in +which he happened to be placed at the moment of his treason. A mere +ambition had carried him from intrigue to intrigue among the +politicians. He despised them as an active and capable soldier was +compelled to despise them; he was too old to share any of their +enthusiasms, even had his temperament permitted him to entertain any +vision, political or religious. He certainly never felt the least moral +bond attaching him to what was in his eyes the chance anarchy of the +last six months of French Government under which he served, and if he is +to be branded with the title of traitor, then we must brand with the +same title all that multitude of varied men who escaped from the country +in the Emigration, who left it in disgust, or even who remained in +France, but despaired of French fortunes, in the turmoil of 1793. + +It is perhaps a worthy excuse for Dumouriez’ failure to point out that +he also was one of those whom the Court might have used had it known how +to use men; but the Court had no such knowledge. + + +DANTON + +The character of Danton has more widely impressed the world than that of +any other revolutionary leader, because it contained elements +permanently human, independent of the democratic theory of the time, and +necessary neither to the support of that theory nor to the criticism of +it. + +The character of Danton appeals to that sense in man which is interested +in action, and which in the field of letters takes the form of drama. +His vigour, his personal strength of mind and body, the individuality of +his outline, arrest equally the man who loves the Revolution, and the +man who hates it, and the man who is quite indifferent to its success or +failure. + +It is on this very account that historians, especially foreign +historians, have tended to misinterpret the man. Thus Carlyle, who has +great intuition in the matter, yet makes him out farmer-like--which he +certainly was not; Michelet, fascinated by his energy, presents him as +something uncouth, and in general those who would describe Danton stand +at a distance, as it were, where his loud voice and forcible gesture may +best be appreciated; but a man to be seen truly must be seen in +intimacy. + +Danton was essentially a compound of two powerful characters in man. He +was amative or constructive, and at the same time he not only possessed +but liked to exercise lucidity of thought. The combination is among the +strongest of all those that go to build up human personalities. + +That which was amative and constructive in him, his virility if you +will, brought him into close touch with reality; he knew and loved his +own country, for instance, and infinitely preferred its happy survival +to the full development of any political theory. He also knew and loved +his fellow countrymen in detail and as persons; he knew what made a +Frenchman weak and what made him strong. The vein of Huguenotry, though +he did not know it for what it was, he disliked in his compatriots. On +the other hand, the salt and freshness of the French was native to him +and he delighted in it; the freedom of their expression, the noise of +their rhetoric, and the military subsoil of them, were things to all of +which he immediately responded. He understood their sort of laughter, +nor was he shocked, as a man less national would have been, at their +peculiarly national vices, and in especial their lapses into rage. It is +this which must account for what all impartial judgment most blames in +him, which is, his indifference to the cruelties, his absorbed interest +in foreign and military affairs, at the moment of the Massacres of +September. + +This touch with reality made him understand in some fashion (though only +from without) the nature of the Germans. The foolish mania of their +rulers for mere territorial expansion unaccompanied by persuasion or the +spread of their ideas, he comprehended. The vast superiority of their +armies over the disorganised forces of the French in 1792 he clearly +seized: hence on the one hand his grasp of their foreign policy, and on +the other his able negotiation of the retreat after Valmy. He also +understood, however, and more profoundly, the rapid self-organisation of +which his own countrymen were capable, and it was upon this knowledge +that his determination to risk the continuance of the war reposed. It +should be remarked that both in his military and in his quasi-military +action he was himself endowed in a singular degree with that power of +immediate decision which is characteristic of his nation. + +His lucidity of thought permitted him to foresee the consequences of +many a revolutionary decision, and at the same time inclined him to a +strong sympathy with the democratic creed, with the doctrine of +equality, and especially with the remoulding of the national +institutions--particularly his own profession of the law--upon simple +lines. He was undoubtedly a sincere and a convinced revolutionary, and +one whose doctrine more permeated him than did that of many of his +contemporaries their less solid minds. He was not on that account +necessarily republican. Had some accident called his genius into play +earlier in the development of the struggle, he might well, like +Mirabeau, with whom he presents so curious a parallel, have thought it +better for the country to save the Monarchy. + +It must always be remembered that he was a man of wide culture and one +who had achieved an early and satisfactory professional success; he was +earning a sound income at the moment of his youthful marriage; he read +English largely and could speak it. His dress was not inexpensive, and +though somewhat disordered (as it often is with men of intense energy +and constant gesture) it never gave an impression of carelessness or +disarray. He had many and indifferent intellectual interests, and was +capable, therefore, of intelligent application in several fields. He +appreciated the rapid growth of physical science, and at the same time +the complexity of the old social conditions--too widely different from +contemporary truths. + +To religion he was, of course, like all men of that time, utterly +indifferent, but unlike many of them he seized the precise proportion of +its remaining effect upon certain districts and certain sections of the +countrysides. There has been a tendency latterly to exaggerate the part +which Freemasonry played in the launching of him; he was indeed a member +of a masonic lodge, as were, for that matter, all the men, conspicuous +or obscure, democratic or utterly reactionary, who appeared upon the +revolutionary stage: probably the king, certainly old aristocrats like +the father of Madame de Lamballe, and the whole host of the middle +class, from men like Bailly to men like Condorcet. But it is reading +history backwards, and imagining the features of our own time to have +been present a century ago, to make of Masonry the determining element +in his career. + +Danton failed and died from two combined causes: first his health gave +way, secondly he obtruded his sanity and civilian sense into the heated +fury and calculated martial law of the second year of the Republic. To +both that fury and that calculation he was an obstacle; his opposition +to the Terror lost him the support of the enthusiasts, but it was the +interference which such a judgment made in the plans of the soldiers, +and notably of Carnot, that determined his condemnation and death. He +also, like Mirabeau, will undoubtedly increase as the years proceed, +and, if only as a representative of the national temper, become more and +more the typical figure of the Revolution in action. + + +CARNOT + +Carnot, the predecessor of Napoleon, and the organising soldier of the +early revolutionary wars, owed his power to backbone. + +He had not only a good solidity of brain, but an astonishing power of +using it for hours and hours on end. This he owed perhaps to the +excellent physical stock of which he came, the eldest of a very large +family born to a notable lawyer in Burgundy. + +It was Carnot’s pride to hold a commission in the learned arms which +were to transform at that moment the art of war: for as Bonaparte, his +successor, was a gunner, so he was a sapper. His practice of exact +knowledge in application, and the liberal education which his career +demanded, further strengthened the strong character he had inherited. +More important still, in his democratic views he was what none of the +older officers had been, convinced and sincere. He had not come within +the influence of the very wealthy or of the very powerful. He was +young, and he knew his own mind not only in matters of political faith +but in the general domain of philosophy, and in the particular one of +military science. + +It has been said of him that he invented the revolutionary method of +strategical concentration and tactical massing in the field. There is +some truth in this; but the method would not have been possible had he +not also invented, in company with Danton, and supported after Danton +left power, a universal system of conscription. + +Carnot understood, as only trained soldiers can, the value of numbers, +and _he depended with great sagacity upon the national temper_; thus at +Wattignies, which was a victory directly due to his genius, though it +was novel in him to have massed troops suddenly upon the right after a +check on the extreme left of the field, yet the novelty would have been +of no effect had he not comprehended that, with his young fellow +countrymen as troopers, he could depend upon a charge delivered after +thirty-six hours of vigil. + +He used not only the national but also the revolutionary temper in war. +One of the chief features, for instance, of the revolutionary armies +when they began to be successful, was the development of lines of +skirmishers who pushed out hardily before the main bodies and were the +first in the history of modern warfare to learn the use of cover. This +development was spontaneous: it was produced within and by each unit, +not by any general command. But Carnot recognised it at Hoondschoote +and used it ever after. + +The stoical inflexibility of his temper is the noblest among the many +noble characters of his soul. He never admitted the empire, and he +suffered exile, seeming thereby in the eyes of the vilest and most +intelligent of his contemporaries, Fouché, to be a mere fool. He was as +hard with himself as with others, wholly military in the framework of +his mind, and the chief controller of the Terror, which he used, as it +was intended to be used, for the military salvation of the republic. + + +MARAT + +Marat is easily judged. The complete sincerity of the enthusiast is not +difficult to appreciate when his enthusiasm is devoted to a simple human +ideal which has been, as it were, fundamental and common to the human +race. + +Equality within the State and the government of the State by its general +will: these primal dogmas, on the reversion to which the whole +Revolution turned, were Marat’s creed. + +Those who would ridicule or condemn him because he held such a creed, +are manifestly incapable of discussing the matter at all. The ridicule +and condemnation under which Marat justly falls do not attach to the +patent moral truths he held, but to the manner in which he held them. He +did not only hold them isolated from other truths--it is the fault of +the fanatic so to hold any truth--but he held them as though no other +truths existed. And whenever he found his ideal to be in practice +working at a friction or stopped dead, his unnourished and acute +enthusiasms at once sought a scapegoat, discovered a responsible agent, +and suggested a violent outlet, for the delay. + +He was often right when he denounced a political intriguer: he often +would have sacrificed a victim not unjustly condemned, he often +discovered an agent partially responsible, and even the violent +solutions that he suggested were not always impracticable. But it was +the prime error of his tortured mind that beyond victims, and sudden +violent clutches at the success of democracy, there was nothing else he +could conceive. He was incapable of allowing for imperfections, for +stupidities, for the misapprehension of mind by mind, for the mere +action of time, and for all that renders human life infinitely complex +and infinitely adjustable. + +Humour, the reflection of such wisdom, he lacked;--“judgment” (as the +English idiom has it) he lacked still more--if a comparative term may be +attached to two such absolute vacuities. + +It must not be forgotten that so complete an absence of certain +necessary qualities in the building up of a mind are equivalent to +madness. Marat was not sane. His insanity was often generous, the creed +to which it was attached was obvious enough, and in the eyes of most of +us it is a creed to be accepted. But he worked with it as a madman who +is mad on collectivism, let us say, or the rights of property, might +work in our society, thinking of his one thesis, shrieking it and +foaming at the mouth upon it, losing all control when its acceptance was +not even opposed but merely delayed. He was valueless for the +accomplishment of the ends of the Revolution. His doctrine and his +adherence to it were so conspicuously simple and sincere that it is no +wonder the populace made him (for a few months) a sort of symbol of +their demand. + +For the rest, his face, like his character, was tortured; he carried +with him a disease of the skin that irritated perpetually his wholly +unbalanced temper. + +Some say (but one must always beware of so-called “Science” in the +reading of history) that a mixture of racial types produced in him a +perpetual physical disturbance: his face was certainly distorted and +ill-balanced--but physical suggestions of that sort are very +untrustworthy. + +Those who met him in the management of affairs thought him worthless +enough; a few who knew him intimately loved him dearly; more who came +across him continually were fatigued and irritated by his empty +violence. He was, among those young revolutionaries, almost an elderly +man; he was (this should never be forgotten) a distinguished scholar in +his own trade, that of medicine; and he effected less in the Revolution +than any man to whom a reputation of equal prominence happened to +attach. He must stand responsible for the massacres of September.[2] + + +ROBESPIERRE + +No character in the Revolution needs for its comprehension a wider +reading and a greater knowledge of the national character than +Robespierre’s. + +Upon no character does the comprehension of the period more depend, and +none (for reasons I will give in a moment) has been more misunderstood, +not only in the popular legend but in the weighed decisions of competent +historians. + +So true is this that even time, which (in company with scholarship) +usually redresses such errors, has not yet permitted modern authors to +give a true picture of the man. + +The reason of so conspicuous a failure in the domain of history is this: +that side by side with the real Robespierre there existed in the minds +of all his contemporaries _save those who actually came across him in +the junctions of government_, a legendary Robespierre--a Robespierre +popularly imagined; and that this imaginary Robespierre, while it (or +he) has proved odious to posterity, seemed, while he lived, a +fascinating portrait to the man himself, and therefore he accepted it. +For Robespierre, though just, lacked humility. + +The problem is an exceedingly subtle as well as an exceedingly difficult +one. The historian, as he reads his authorities, has perpetually to +distinguish between what is strong and what is weak evidence, and to +recall himself, as he reads, to reality by a recollection of what +Robespierre himself was. If he does not do so he falls at once into the +legend; so powerful is that legend in the numbers that supported it, and +so strongly did Robespierre himself support it by his own attitude. The +legendary Robespierre may be described in a very few lines. + +Conceive a man sincerely convinced of the purest democratic theory, a +man who cared for nothing else but the realisation of that theory, and +who had never sacrificed his pursuit of its realisation in the State to +any personal advantage whatsoever. This man, trusted by the people and +at last idolised by them, becomes more and more powerful. He enters the +governing body (the Committee of Public Safety), he is the master both +within and without that body, and uses his mastery for establishing an +ideal democracy which shall recognise the existence of God and repose +upon civic virtue; and to establish this ideal he has recourse to +terror. He finds that human defections from his ideal are increasingly +numerous: he punishes them by death. The slaughter grows to be enormous; +the best of Democrats are involved in it; at last it can be tolerated no +longer, his immediate subordinates revolt against him in the Committee, +he is outlawed, fails to raise a popular rebellion in his favour in +Paris, is executed, and his system of terror falls to the ground. + +This picture, though purely legendary in tone, contains not only much +truth, but truth of precisely that sort which conspires to make credible +what is false in the whole. + +Robespierre was sincerely attached to the conception of an ideal +democracy; he was incorruptible in the pursuit of it--and to be a +politician and incorruptible amounts to something like what the Church +calls heroic virtue in a man. He _did_ enter the Committee of Public +Safety; he _did_ support the Terror, and when he was overthrown the +Terror _did_ come to an end. Where, then, does the legend differ from +the truth? + +In these capital points, which change it altogether: that Robespierre +was not the chief influence in the Committee of Public Safety, _i.e._ +the all powerful executive of the Republic; that he did not desire the +Terror, that he did not use it, that he even grew disgusted with it, and +that, in general, he was never the man who governed France. + +It need hardly be pointed out how such a truth destroys such a legend. +The whole nature of the twelve months between the summer of 1793 and the +summer of 1794 must vary according as we regard them as Robespierrean or +no: and they were not Robespierrean. + +What were they then, and why has the error that Robespierre was then +master, arisen? + +Those months, which may be roughly called the months of the Terror, +were, as we shall see later in this book, months of martial law; and the +Terror was simply martial law in action--a method of enforcing the +military defence of the country and of punishing all those who +interfered with it or were supposed by the Committee to interfere with +it. + +No one man in the Committee was the author of this system, but the one +most determined to use it and the one who had most occasion to use it, +was undoubtedly the military organiser, Carnot. Side by side with him +one man, such as Barrère, supported it because it kept up the Committee +of Public Safety which gave him all his political position. Another, +such as Saint-Just, supported it because he believed that the winning of +the war (in which he took an active part) would secure democracy +everywhere and for ever. Another, such as Jean Bon, supported it from +the old sectarian bitterness of the Huguenot. But of all men in the +Committee, Robespierre supported the Terror least, and was most +suspected by his colleagues--and increasingly suspected as time went +on--of desiring to interfere with the martial system of the Terror and +to modify it. + +Why, then, was Robespierre popularly identified with the Terror, and +why, when he was executed, did the Terror cease? + +Robespierre was identified with the Terror because he was identified +with the popular clamour of the time, with the extreme democratic +feeling of the time, and its extreme fear of a reaction. Robespierre +being the popular idol, had become also the symbol of a popular frenzy +which was supposed to be ruling the country. But that frenzy was not +ruling the country. What was ruling the country was the Committee of +Public Safety, in which Carnot’s was the chief brain. Robespierre was +indeed the idol of the populace; he was in no way the agent of their +power or of any power. + +Why, when he fell, did the Terror cease if he were not its author? +Because the Terror was acting under a strain; it was with the utmost +difficulty that this absolute, intolerant and intolerable martial system +could be continued when once the fear of invasion was removed. For some +weeks before Robespierre fell the victories had begun to render it +unnecessary. When the Committee saw to it that Robespierre should be +outlawed by the Parliament, they knocked away, without knowing it, the +keystone of their own policy; it was _his_ popular position which made +_their_ policy possible. When he was destroyed they suddenly found that +the Terror could no longer be maintained. Men had borne with it because +of Robespierre, falsely imagining that Robespierre had desired it. +Robespierre gone, men would not bear with it any more. + +Now, finally, if Robespierre himself had always felt opposed to the +system of the Terror, why did he not take the lead in the popular +reaction against it? + +He had his opportunity given him by Danton in December 1793--seven +months before his own catastrophe. The Committee determined to put +Danton out of the way because Danton, in appealing for mercy, was +weakening the martial power of their government. Robespierre might have +saved Danton: he preferred to let him be sacrificed. The reason was that +Robespierre wrongly believed popularity to lie upon the side of the +Terror and against Danton; he was in no way a leader (save in rhetoric +and in rhetoric directed towards what men already desired), and his own +great weakness or vice was the love of popular acclaim. + +Later on, in the summer of 1794, when he actually began to move against +the Terror, he only did so privately. He so misread men that he still +believed the Terror to be popular, and dared not lose his popular name. +A man by nature as sincere as crystal, he was tempted to insincerity in +this major thing, during the last months of his life, and he yielded +completely to the temptation. For the sake of his memory it was +deplorable, and deplorable also for history. His weakness has been the +cause of an historical error as grave as any that can be discovered in +modern letters, and at the same time has wholly maligned him to +posterity. + +A factor in Robespierre’s great public position which is often forgotten +is the great effect of his speeches. That men should still debate, after +so vast a change in taste, whether those speeches were eloquent or no, +is a sufficient proof of their effect. He spoke in an ordered and a +reasoned manner, which bored the fine spirits of the earlier +Parliaments, but well suited the violent convictions of the later +Revolution. His phraseology, his point of view, just jumped with that of +his audience. He could express what they felt, and express it in terms +which they knew to be exact, and which they believed to be grand. For +his manner was never excessive, and those excessive men who heard him in +an excessive mood, were proud to know that their violence could be +expressed with so much scholarship and moderated skill. + +By birth he was of the smaller gentry, though poor. It is an indication +of his character that he had thought of taking Orders, and that in early +youth literary vanity had affected him. He has left no monument; but +from the intensity of his faith and from his practice of it, his name, +though it will hardly increase, will certainly endure. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[2] There is but one trustworthy monograph on Marat. It will interest +the student as a proof of the enthusiasm which Marat can inspire. It is +by Champfleury. + + + + +IV + +THE PHASES OF THE REVOLUTION + + +I + +_From May 1789 to 17th of July 1789._ + +The first point which the reader must hold in the story of the +Revolution is the quarrel between its first Parliament and the Crown. + +Of what nature was that quarrel? + +It was not, as it has sometimes been represented, a simple issue between +privilege and a democratic demand for equality, or between traditional +organs of government and a democratic demand for self-government by the +nation. To imagine this is to read history backwards, and to see in the +untried conditions of 1789 the matured results which only appeared after +years of struggle. + +The prime issue lay between legality and illegality. + +The forms of French law and all the inherited method of French +administration demanded a certain form of authority; a centralised +government of unlimited power. The King was absolute. From him proceeded +in the simplest fashion whatever will was paramount in the State. He +could suspend a debtor’s liabilities, imprison a man without trial, +release him without revision of his case, make war or peace, and in +minor details such as the discipline and administration of public +bodies, the power of the Crown was theoretically and legally equally +supreme. It was not exercised as the enormous power of modern government +is exercised, it did not perpetually enter into every detail of the life +of the poor in the way in which the power of a modern English Government +enters into it; it is in the very nature of such autocratic power that, +while unlimited in theory, it is compelled to an instinctive and +perpetual self-limitation lest it break down; and autocracy maybe +compared in this to aristocracy, or more properly speaking to oligarchy, +the government of a few: for where a few govern they know that their +government reposes upon public opinion or public tolerance; they are +very careful not to exceed certain limits the transgression of which +would weaken the moral foundation of their power; they welcome allies, +they recruit themselves perpetually from other classes in the community. + +In the same way an autocracy always has the desire to be popular. Its +strokes affect the great and the powerful, and are hardly ever aimed at +the mass of the community. The intellectual, the wealthy, the privileged +by birth, fortune or exceptional personal powers, are suspect to it. As +for the mass of men an Autocracy attempts to represent and, in a certain +sense, to obey them. + +Now the French autocracy (for it was no less) erred not in the will to +act thus popularly in the early part of the Revolution, but in the +_knowledge_ requisite for such action. + +The Parliament, shortly after it had met in May 1789, began to show, in +the Commons part of it, the working of that great theory which had +leavened all France for a generation. The Commons said, “We are the +people; at once the symbols of the people, the direct mandatory servants +of the people, and” (though this was a fiction) “we are of the people in +our birth and origin. We are therefore the true sovereign; and the +prince, the head of the Executive, is no more than an organ of +government, morally less in authority than ourselves, who are the true +source of government.” This attitude, which was at the back of all men’s +minds, and which was concentrated, of course, in the Commons, clashed +with legality. It could not express itself in the terms of law, it could +not act save in a fashion which should be, in the strictest sense of the +word, _revolutionary_. + +Now the Crown, on the whole national in sympathy, and comprehending this +new theory well (I mean by the Crown the general body of advisers round +the King, and the King himself), was offended at the illegality not of +the theory or of the pretence (for these were not illegal), but of the +action of the Commons. And this comparatively small source of friction +was the irritant upon which we must fix as the cause of what followed. +The Nobles, by 108 to 47, decided, the day after the opening of the +Parliament, to sit as a separate House. The Clergy, by a much smaller +majority, 133 to 114, came to the same decision, but carefully qualified +it as provisional. The Commons declared that the hall in which they met +should be regarded as the hall of the National Assembly, and later made +it their business (to quote the phrase of the motion) “to attempt to +unite in common all the deputies of the nation in that hall and never to +abandon the principle of voting individually” (that is, not by separate +Houses) “or the principle that the States-General formed one undivided +body.” This attitude was qualified and compromised with to some extent +in the days that followed, but it held the field, and while the Commons +were insisting upon this attitude as a moral right, the Nobles countered +by a reaffirmation of the right of each House to a separate judgment +upon public matters. The Nobles were standing upon legal precedent: the +Commons had nothing in their favour but political theory; if the orders +sat all together and voted as individuals, the Commons, who were in +number equal to the two other Houses combined, would, with their noble +and clerical sympathisers, have a majority. + +Now the King and his advisers, notably Necker, who still had great +weight, were by no means “Impossiblists” in this struggle. They desired +an understanding, and through the last days of May and the first days of +June the attempt at an understanding was made. But the attempt dragged, +and as it seemed that nothing would come of it, on the 10th of June +Sièyes moved that the Assembly should “verify its powers” (a French +phrase for admitting and registering the presence of each member as +acceptable to the whole body, and to the theory of its Constitution), +and that this should be done “in the case of each member” (meaning +members of all the three orders and _not_ of the Commons alone), +“whether the members of the two privileged Houses were present or +absent.” The roll was called and completed upon the 15th. None of the +nobles attended the common roll-call, three of the parish clergy (they +were from the province of Poitou) did so, and thus admitted the right of +the Commons so to act. A dozen of their colleagues joined them later; +but that was all. + +So far there had been no action which could be precisely called illegal +or revolutionary. The Commons had affirmed a right based upon a +political theory which the vast majority of the nation admitted, and the +legal depositary of power, the King, had not yet reproved. One may draw +a parallel and compare the action of the Commons so far to some action +which a trade union, for instance, may take in England; some action the +legality of which is doubtful but upon which the courts have not yet +decided. + +It was upon the 17th of June, two days after the completion of the +roll-call by the Commons, that the first revolutionary act took place, +and the student of the Revolution will do well to put his finger upon +that date and to regard it not indeed as the moral origin of the +movement, but as the precise moment from which the Revolution, as a +Revolution, begins to act. For upon that day the Commons, though in fact +only joined by a handful of the Clerical House, and by none of the +nobility, _declared themselves to be the National Assembly_; that is, +asserted the fiction that Clergy, Nobles and Commons were all present +and voted together. To this declaration they added a definite act of +sovereignty which trespassed upon and contradicted the legal authority +of the Crown. True, the motion was only moved and passed +“provisionally,” but the words used were final, for in this motion the +self-styled “National Assembly” declared that “provisionally” taxes and +dues might be raised upon the old authority but that only until the +National Assembly should disperse; “after which day”--and here we reach +the sacramental formula, as it were, of the crisis--“the National +Assembly _wills and decrees_ that all taxes and dues of whatever nature +which have not been specifically formally and freely granted by the said +Assembly shall cease in every province of the kingdom no matter how such +that province may be administered.” (This is an allusion to the fact +that in some provinces there was a representative machinery, in others +nothing but the direct action of the Crown.) “The Assembly declares that +when it has _in concert with_ (not in obedience to) the King laid down +the principle of a national re-settlement, it will busy itself with the +examination and ordering of the public debt.” Etc., etc. + +Such was the point of departure after which sovereignty was at issue +between the Crown and the States-General; the Crown a known institution +with its traditions stretching back to the Roman Empire, and the +National Assembly a wholly new organ according to its own claims, basing +its authority upon a political theory stretching back to the very +origins of human society. + +Two days later, on the 19th of June, the “National Assembly,” still only +self-styled and possessing only the powers which it had ascribed to +itself beyond all forms of law, set to work, nominated its committees, +and assumed the sovereignty thus claimed. The Nobles protested (notably +the Bishops), and the King, on the advice of Barentin, keeper of the +Seals, determined upon immediate resistance. The excuse was taken that +the Royal Session, as it was called, in which the King would declare his +will, needed the preparation of the hall, and when the Commons presented +themselves at the door of that hall on the next day, the 20th, they +found it shut against them. They adjourned to a neighbouring tennis +court, and took a solemn corporate oath that they would not separate +without giving France a Constitution. They continued to meet, using a +church for that purpose, but on the 23rd the Royal Session was opened +and the King declared his will. + +The reader must especially note that even in this crisis the Crown did +not offer a complete resistance. There was an attempt at compromise. +Necker would have had a more or less complete surrender, the Queen and +her set would have preferred an act of authority which should have +annulled all that the Commons had done. What actually happened was a +permission by the Crown that the three Orders should meet as one body +for certain common interests, but should preserve the system of voting +as separate Houses in “all that might regard the ancient and +constitutional rights of the three Orders, the Constitution to be given +to future Parliaments, feudal property, and the rights and prerogatives +of the two senior Houses.” As a mere numerical test, such a conclusion +would have destroyed the power of the Commons, since, as we have seen, +numbers were the weapon of the Commons, who were equal to the two other +Houses combined, and if all sat together would, with the Liberal +members of the clergy and the nobility, be supreme. But apart from this +numerical test, the act of sovereignty affirmed by the National Assembly +when it declared itself, and itself only, competent to vote taxes, was +annulled. Moreover, the royal declaration ended with a command that on +the next day the three Orders should meet separately. + +Now at this critical point the King was disobeyed. The current of the +time chose the revolutionary bed, and as it began to flow deepened and +confirmed its course with every passing day and event. Already the +majority of the clergy had joined the National Assembly when it had +affirmed its right to sit in spite of the check of the 20th of June. +There was a half-hour on that decisive day of the Royal Session, the +23rd of June, when armed force might have been used for the arrest and +dispersion of the Deputies. They declared themselves inviolable and +their arrest illegal, but there was, of course, no sanction for this +decree. As a fact, not a corporal’s file was used against them. The next +day, the 24th, the majority of the clergy again joined the Commons in +their session (in flat defiance of the King’s orders), and on the 25th, +forty-seven of the nobles followed their example. The King yielded, and +on the 27th, two days later, ordered the three Houses to meet together. + +The National Assembly was now legally constituted, and set out upon its +career. The Crown, the old centre of authority, had abandoned its +position, and had confirmed the Revolution, but in doing so it had acted +as it were in contradiction with itself. It had made technically legal +an illegality which destroyed its own old legal position, but it had +done so with ill-will, and it was evident that some counter-stroke would +be attempted to restore the full powers of the Crown. + +At this point the reader must appreciate what forces were face to face +in the coming struggle. So far, the illegal and revolutionary act of the +17th of June, the Royal Session which replied to that act upon the 23rd, +the King’s decree which yielded to the Commons upon the 27th, had all of +them been but words. If it came to action, what physical forces were +opposed? + +On the side of the Crown was the organised armed force which it +commanded. For it must never be forgotten that the Crown was the +Executive, and remained the Executive right on to the capture of the +palace three years later, and the consummation of the Revolution on the +10th of August, 1792. On the side of the National Assembly was without +doubt the public opinion of the country (but that is not a force that +can be used under arms), and, what was much more to the point, the +municipal organisation of France. + +Space forbids a full description of the origins and strength of the +French municipal system; it is enough to point out that the whole of +Gallic civilisation, probably from a moment earlier than Cæsar’s +invasion, and certainly from the moment when Roman rule was paramount +in Gaul, was a _municipal_ one. It is so still. The countrysides take +their names mainly from their chief towns. The towns were the seats of +the bishops, whose hierarchy had preserved whatever could be preserved +of the ancient world. In the towns were the colleges, the guilds, the +discussion and the corporations which built up the life of the nation. +The chief of these towns was Paris. The old systems of municipal +government, corrupt and varied as they were, could still give the towns +a power of corporate expression. And even where that might be lacking it +was certain that some engine would be found for expressing municipal +action in a crisis of the sort through which France was now passing. In +Paris, for instance, it was seen when the time came for physical force +that the College of Electors, who had chosen the representatives for +that city, were willing to act at once and spontaneously as a municipal +body which should express the initiative of the people. It was the +towns, and especially Paris, prompt at spontaneous organisation, ready +to arm, and when armed competent to frame a fighting force, which was +the physical power behind the Assembly. + +What of the physical power behind the King? His power was, as we have +said, the Regular Armed forces of the country: the army. But it is +characteristic of the moment that only a part of that armed force could +be trusted. For an army is never a mere weapon: it consists of living +men; and though it will act against the general opinion of its members +and will obey orders long after civilians would have broken with the +ties of technical and legal authority, yet there is for armies also a +breaking point in those ties, and the Crown, I repeat, could not use as +a whole the French-speaking and French-born soldiery. Luckily for it, a +very great proportion of the French army at that moment consisted of +foreign mercenaries. + +Since the position was virtually one of war, we must consider what was +the strategical object of this force. Its object was Paris, the chief of +the towns; and round Paris, in the early days of July, the mercenary +regiments were gathered from all quarters. That military concentration +once effected, the gates of the city held, especially upon the north and +upon the west, by encamped regiments and by a particularly large force +of cavalry (ever the arm chosen for the repression of civilians), the +Crown was ready to act. + +On the 11th of July, Necker, who stood for Liberal opinions, was +dismissed. A new ministry was formed, and the counter-revolution begun. +What followed was the immediate rising of Paris. + +The news of Necker’s dismissal reached the masses of the capital (only +an hour’s ride from Versailles) on the afternoon of the 12th, Sunday. +Crowds began to gather; an ineffectual cavalry charge in one of the +outer open spaces of the city only inflamed the popular enthusiasm, for +the soldiers who charged were German mercenary soldiers under the +command of a noble. Public forces were at once organised, arms were +commandeered from the armourers’ shops, the Electoral College, which had +chosen the members of the Assembly for Paris, took command at the Guild +Hall, but the capital point of the insurrection--what made it +possible--was the seizure of a great stock of arms and ammunition, +including cannon, in the depot at the Invalides. + +With such resources the crowd attacked, at the other end of the city, a +fortress and arsenal which had long stood in the popular eye as the +symbol of absolute monarchy, the Bastille. With the absurdly +insufficient garrison of the Bastille, its apparent impregnability to +anything the mob might attempt, the supposed but doubtful treason of its +governor in firing upon those whom he had admitted to parley, we are not +here concerned. The Bastille was rushed, after very considerable efforts +and an appreciable loss in killed and wounded. By the evening of that +day, Tuesday, the 14th of July, 1789, Paris had become a formidable +instrument of war. The next news was the complete capitulation of the +King. + +He came on the morrow to the National Assembly, promising to send away +the troops; he promised to recall Necker, a municipal organisation was +granted to the city, with Bailly for its first mayor, and--a point of +capital importance--an armed militia dependent upon that municipality +was legally formed, with La Fayette at its head. On the 17th Louis +entered Paris to consummate his capitulation, went to the Guild Hall, +appeared in the tricoloured cockade, and the popular battle was won. + +It behoves us here to consider the military aspect of this definitive +act from which the sanction of the Revolution, the physical power behind +it, dates. + +Paris numbered somewhat under a million souls: perhaps no more than +600,000: the number fluctuated with the season. The foreign mercenary +troops who were mainly employed in the repression of the popular feeling +therein, were not sufficient to impose anything like a siege. They could +at the various gates have stopped the provisioning of the city, but then +at any one of those separate points, any one of their detachments upon a +long perimeter more than a day’s march in circumference would certainly +have been attacked and almost as certainly overwhelmed by masses of +partially armed civilians. + +Could the streets have been cleared while the ferment was rising? It is +very doubtful. They were narrow and tortuous in the extreme, the area to +be dealt with was enormous, the tradition of barricades not forgotten, +and the spontaneous action of that excellent fighting material which a +Paris mob contains, had been quite as rapid as anything that could have +been effected by military orders. + +The one great fault was the neglect to cover the Invalides, but even had +the Invalides not been looted, the stock of arms and powder in the city +would have been sufficient to have organised a desperate and prolonged +resistance. The local auxiliary force (of slight military value, it is +true), the “French Guards,” as they were called, were wholly with the +people. And in general, the Crown must be acquitted of any considerable +blunder on the military side of this struggle. It certainly did not fail +from lack of will. + +The truth is (if we consider merely the military aspect of this military +event) that in dealing with large bodies of men who are (a) not +previously disarmed, (b) under conditions where they cannot be +dispersed, and (c) capable by a national tradition or character of some +sort of rapid, spontaneous organisation, the issue will always be +doubtful, and the uncertain factor (which is the tenacity, decision and +common will of the civilians, to which soldiers are to be opposed) is +one that varies within the very widest limits. + +In massing the troops originally, the Crown and its advisers estimated +that uncertain factor at far too low a point. Even contemporary educated +opinion, which was in sympathy with Paris, put it too low. That factor +was, as a fact, so high that no armed force of the size and quality +which the Crown then disposed of, could achieve its object or hold down +the capital. + +As for the absurd conception that any body of men in uniform, however +small, could always have the better of civilian resistance, however +large and well organised, it is not worthy of a moment’s consideration +by those who interest themselves in the realities of military history. +It is worthy only of the academies. + +So ends the first phase of the Revolution. It had lasted from the +opening of the States-General in May to the middle of July 1789. + + +II + +_From the 17th of July 1789 to the 6th of Oct. 1789._ + +We have seen the military conditions under which the attempt at an armed +counter-revolution failed. There follows a short phase of less than +three months, whose character can be quickly described. + +It was that moment of the Revolution in which ideas had the freest play, +in which least had been done to test their application, and most scope +remained for pure enthusiasm. That is why we find in the midst of that +short phase the spontaneous abandonment of the feudal rights by the +nobility. And that is why the violent uprisings all over France +continued. It is the period in which the Declaration of the Rights of +Man and of the Citizen, a document which may fittingly stand side by +side with the Declaration of Independence (for together they form the +noblest monuments of our modern origins), was promulgated. In the same +period were the elements of the future Constitution rapidly debated and +laid down, and notably that national policy of a _Single Chamber_ which +the modern French have imprudently abandoned. In that same period, +however, appeared, and towards the close of it, another form of +resistance on the part of the Crown and of those who advised the Crown. +The King hesitated to accept the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and +similarly hesitated to promulgate the Decree of the 4th of August in +which the nobility had abandoned their feudal dues. It would be foolish +to exaggerate the military aspect of what followed. Louis did call in +troops, but only in numbers sufficient for personal defence, and we can +hardly believe that he intended anything more than to police the +surroundings of his throne. But the brigade (for it was no more, nor was +it of full strength) which he summoned was sufficient to kindle +suspicion; and the determinedly false position of the Queen (who all her +life was haunted by the idea that the regular soldiers, especially if +they were well dressed and held themselves rigidly, were a sort of +talisman) provoked an explosion. A feast was given in which the officers +of the Regiment of Flanders, which had just reached Versailles, were +entertained by the officers of the Guard. It was made the occasion for a +good deal of drunkenness and a violent Royalist manifestation, at which +the Queen was present, which she approved, and which some thought she +had designed. + +The failure of the harvest to relieve the scarcity of bread in Paris, +the permanent state of alarm in which Paris had remained, and of +suspicion for the safety of the Parliament which it continually +entertained since the early part of the summer, needed no more to +provoke an outbreak. It is an error to imagine that that outbreak was +engineered or that such a movement could have been factitious. Great +masses of women (in whom the movement originated), and after them a +whole flood of the populace, marched upon Versailles. + +There was no direct attack upon the palace, though the palace feared +such an attack at any moment. The troops present were sufficient to +prevent violence. + +La Fayette followed in the night at the head of his new Parisian militia +force. + +Too much reliance was placed upon the military character of this force; +the palace was invaded in the early morning, an attempt to assassinate +the Queen on the part of the mob failed, though two of the Guards were +killed. And after scenes whose violence and apparent anarchy only masked +the common determination of the populace, the royal family were +compelled to abandon Versailles and to take up their place in the +Tuileries; the Parliament followed them to Paris, and neither King nor +Parliament returned again to the suburban palace. + +This recapture of the King by Paris is much more significant than a mere +impulse of the mob. The King in Paris, the unison of his person with the +capital city, had been the very sacrament of French life for century +upon century. It was precisely a hundred years since Paris had been +abandoned by Louis XIV for Versailles. The significance of that error +may be understood by the citizens of an aristocratic country if they +will imagine the abandonment of their countrysides by the squires, or, +again, the future historian of our modern industrial civilisation may +understand it when he describes how the wealthy manufacturers abandoned +the cities in which their wealth was made, to dwell outside and apart +from the living interests of their people. + +With the return of the royal family to Paris, and with the presence of +the Assembly within the heart of the national life, one prime factor +appears, which is this: that while the National Assembly proceeds step +by step to what it imagines to be a complete attainment of democracy +(though how partial will soon be seen), the resistance of the Crown is +transformed into a resistance of the mere Court. The attack on the +Revolution becomes a personal thing. The King is still wholly the chief +of the Executive; he can give what commands he wills to the armed force; +he controls receipts and payments; he is for all active purposes the +Government. But he is no longer considering that prime function of his, +nor even using it to restore his old power. He acts henceforward as an +individual, and an individual in danger. The Queen, whose view of the +Revolution and its dangers had always been a purely personal one, is the +directing will in the court-group from this moment, October 1789, +onwards; and the chief preoccupation of that group for eighteen months +is personal safety. Surrounded by the pomp of the Tuileries and amid all +the external appearances of a power still greater than that of any other +monarch in Europe, Louis and his wife and their very few immediate and +devoted friends and followers thought of the palace as a prison, and +never considered their position save as one intolerable. + + +III + +_From October 1789 to June 1791._ + +It is this which must explain all that followed in the succeeding phase, +which lasted from these early days of October 1789 to the last week of +June 1791. Throughout that period of twenty-one months the King is +letting the Revolution take its course, with the fixed idea of thwarting +it at last by flying from it, and perhaps conquering it by foreign aid. +But even this policy is not consecutively followed. The increasing +repugnance of the Court and of the King himself to the revolutionary +development forbids a consecutive and purely hypocritical acceptation of +the National Assembly’s decrees. + +Deliberate and calculated intrigue might yet have saved the monarchy and +the persons of the royal family. Oddly enough, an ally in the struggle, +an excellent intriguer, a saviour of the monarchical institution and a +true defender of the royal persons was at hand: it was at hand in the +person of Mirabeau. + +This man had more and more dominated the Assembly; he had been +conspicuous from its first opening days; he had been its very voice in +the resistance to the King at Versailles; it was he who had replied to +the Master of Ceremonies on June 23, that the Commons would not +disperse; it was he who had moved that the persons of the Commons were +privileged against arrest. He was of a family noble in station and +conspicuous before the people by the wealth and eccentricities of its +head, Mirabeau’s father. He himself was not unknown even before the +Revolution broke out, for his violence, his amours, his intelligence and +his debts. He was a few years older than the King and Queen: his +personality repelled them; none the less his desire to serve them was +sincere; and it was his plan, while retaining the great hold over the +National Assembly which his rhetoric and his use of men furnished him, +to give to the Court and in particular to the Queen, whom he very +greatly and almost reverently admired, such secret advice as might save +them. This advice, as we shall see in a moment, tended more and more to +be an advice for civil war. But Mirabeau’s death at the close of the +phase we are now entering (on April 2, 1791), and the increasing fears +of the King and Queen, between them prevented any statesmanship at all; +they prevented even the statesmanship of intrigue; and the period +became, on the side of the Revolution, a rapid and uncontrolled +development of its democratic theory (limited by the hesitation of the +middle class), and on the side of the Court an increasing demand for +mere physical security and flight, coupled with an increasing +determination to return, and to restore as a popular monarchy the scheme +of the past. + +The eighteen months that intervened between the fixing of the Assembly +and the royal family in Paris, and the death of Mirabeau, are remarkable +for the following points, which must all be considered abreast, as it +were, if we are to understand their combined effects. + +1. This was the period in which the constructive work of the National +Assembly was done, and in which the whole face of the nation was +changed. The advising bodies of lawyers called “Parliaments” were +abolished (eleven months after the King had come to Paris), the Modern +Departments were organised in the place of the old provinces, the old +national and provincial militia was destroyed; but (as it is very +important to remember) _the old regular army was left untouched_. A new +judicature and new rules of procedure were established. A new code +sketched out in the place of “Common Law” muddle. In a word, it was the +period during which most of those things which we regard as +characteristic of the revolutionary work were either brought to their +theoretic conclusion or given at least their main lines. + +2. Among these constructive acts, but so important that it must be +regarded separately, was the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which +will be dealt with at length further in this book; it was the principal +work (and the principal error) of that year and a half. + +3. The general spirit of the Revolution, more difficult to define than +its theory but easy to appreciate as one follows the development of the +movement, increased regularly and enormously in intensity during the +period. The power of the King, who was still at the head of the +Executive, acted more and more as an irritant against public opinion, +and-- + +4. That public opinion began to express itself in a centralised and +national fashion, of which the great federation of the 14th of July +1790, in Paris, on the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille, was the +nucleus and also the symbol. This federation consisted in delegates from +the National Guard throughout the country, and it was of this capital +importance: that it introduced into the revolutionary movement a feature +of soldiery which made even the regular troops for the most part +sympathetic with the enthusiasm of the time. + +5. These eighteen months were, again, filled with the movement of the +“Emigration.” That movement was, of course, the departure of many of the +more prominent of the privileged orders and of a crowd of humbler +nobles, as also of a few ecclesiastics, from France. The King’s brothers +(one fled at the beginning of the emigration, the younger, the Comte +d’Artois; the other, the elder, at its close, and coincidently with the +flight of the King) must especially be noted in this connection; they +formed in company with the more notable of the other emigrants a regular +political body, which intrigued continually beyond the frontiers, in +Germany and Italy, against the Revolution. And-- + +6. It was therefore during these months that the ultimate origins of the +large European war must be found. The armed body of the emigrants under +Condé formed an organised corps upon the Rhine, and though there was not +yet the semblance of an armed movement in Europe besides theirs against +the French, yet by the _émigrés_, as they were called, were sown the +seeds the harvest of which was to be the war of 1792. + +I have said that during these months in which most of the constructive +work of the Revolution was done, in which the seeds of the great war +were sown, and in which the absolute position of the Crown as the head +of the Executive was increasingly irritating to the public opinion of +the French, and especially of the capital, Mirabeau was the one man who +might have preserved the continuity of national institutions by the +preservation of the monarchy. He received money from the Court and in +return gave it advice. The advice was the advice of genius, but it was +listened to less and less in proportion as it was more and more +practical. Mirabeau also favoured the abandonment of Paris by the King, +but he would have had the King leave Paris openly and with an armed +force, withdraw to a neighbouring and loyal centre such as Compiègne, +and thence depend upon the fortunes of civil war. + +Meanwhile the Queen was determined upon a very different and much more +personal plan, into which no conception of statesmanship entered. She +was determined to save the persons of her children, herself and her +husband. Plans of flight were made, postponed and re-postponed. It was +already agreed at the Court that not Mirabeau’s plan should be followed, +but this plan of mere evasion. The army which Bouillé commanded upon the +frontier was to send small detachments along the great road from Paris +to the east; the first of these were to meet the royal fugitives a +little beyond Chalôns and to escort their carriage eastward; each armed +detachment in the chain, as the flight proceeded, was to fall in for its +defence, until, once the town of Varennes was reached, the King and +Queen should be in touch with the main body of the army. + +What was then intended to follow remains obscure. It is fairly certain +that the King did not intend to pass the frontier but to take refuge at +Montmédy. The conflict that would have inevitably broken out could +hardly have been confined to a civil war: foreign armies and the German +mercenaries in the French service were presumably to be organised, in +case the flight succeeded, for a march upon Paris and the complete +restoration of the old state of affairs. + +Had Mirabeau lived this rash and unstatesmanlike plan might yet have +been avoided; it so happened that he died upon April 2, 1791, and soon +after we enter the third phase of the Revolution, which is that leading +directly to the great war, and to the fall of the monarchy. + +Shortly after Mirabeau’s death a tumult, which excessively frightened +the royal family, prevented the King and Queen from leaving the palace +and passing Easter at St. Cloud, in the suburbs. Though further +postponements of their flight followed, the evasion actually took place +in the night of the 20th to 21st of June. It very nearly succeeded, but +by a series of small accidents, the last of which, the famous ride of +Drouet to intercept the fugitives, is among the best-known episodes in +history, the King and Queen and their children were discovered and +arrested at Varennes, within a few hundred yards of safety, and were +brought back to Paris, surrounded by enormous and hostile crowds. With +the failure of this attempt at flight in the end of June 1791, ends the +third phase of the Revolution. + + +IV + +_From June 1791 to September 1792._ + +To understand the capital effect both of this flight and of its failure, +we must once more insist upon the supreme position of the monarchy in +the traditions and instinct of French polity. The unwisdom of the flight +it would be difficult to exaggerate: it is impossible to exaggerate the +moral revolution caused by its failure. It was regarded as virtually an +abdication. The strong body of provincial, silent, and moderate opinion, +which still centred on the King and regarded it as his function to lead +and to govern, was bewildered, and in the main divorced, in the future, +from the Crown. + +It is an excellent proof of what the monarchy had for so long been to +France, that even in such a crisis barely the name of “a republic” was +mentioned, and that only in the intellectual circles in Paris. All the +constitutional and standing forces of society conspired to preserve the +monarchy at the expense of no matter what fictions. The middle class +Militia Guard under La Fayette repressed, in what is known as the +Massacre of the Champ-de-Mars, the beginnings of a popular movement. The +more Radical leaders (among whom was Danton) fled abroad or hid. The +Duke of Orleans utterly failed to take advantage of the moment, or to +get himself proclaimed regent: the monarchical tradition was too strong. + +Immediately after the second anniversary of the taking of the Bastille, +in July, the decrees of Parliament created the fiction that the King was +not responsible for the flight, that he “had been carried off,” and in +the following September, though until then suspended from executive +power, the King, on taking the oath to the Constitution, was once more +at the head of all the forces of the nation. + +But all this patching and reparation of the façade of constitutional +monarchy (a fiction whose tawdriness is more offensive to the French +temper than its falsehood) had come too late. Already the Queen had +written to her brother, the Emperor of Austria, suggesting the +mobilisation of a considerable force, and its encampment on the +frontier, to overawe the revolutionary movement. Her action coincided +within a few days with the end of that great Parliament, which had been +chosen on the most democratic suffrage, and which had transformed the +whole of society and laid the basis of the revolutionary Constitution. +With the meeting of the National Assembly’s successor on the 1st of +October, 1791, war was already possible; that possibility was to be +transformed very soon into probability, and at last into actuality. + +In the new Parliament the weight, not of numbers but of leadership, fell +to a group of enthusiastic and eloquent men who, from the fact that +certain of their principal members came from the Gironde, were called +_The Girondins_. They represented the purest and the most enthusiastic +ideal of democracy, less national, perhaps, than that advocated by men +more extreme than they, but of a sort which, from that time to this, has +been able to rouse the enthusiasm of historians. + +Vergniaud and Isnard were their great orators, Brissot was their +intellectual intriguer, and the wife of Roland, one of their members, +was, as it were, the soul of the whole group. It was the fact that these +men desired war which made war certain, once the temper of this new +second Assembly should be felt. + +The extremists over against them, to whom I have alluded (known as “the +Mountain”), were especially Parisian in character. Robespierre, who had +been first an obscure, and later a sectarian orator of the National +Assembly, though not sitting in this second Parliament, was perhaps the +most prominent figure in that group, for he was the public orator of +Paris; and indeed the Mountain was Paris; Paris, whether inside or +outside the Parliament; Paris acting as the responsible brain of France. +Later, it was the Mountain (that had first opposed the war) which was to +ensure the success of the French arms by a rigidity and despotism in +action such as the purer and less practical minds of the Girondins +abhorred. + +On the 3rd of December, 1791 (to quote a fundamental date in the rapid +progress towards the war which was to transform the Revolution), the +King--writing in a manner which betrays dictation by his wife--begged +the King of Prussia (as _she_ had begged the Emperor) to mobilise an +armed force, and with it to back a Congress that should have for its +object the prevention of the spread of the Revolution. That letter was +typical of the moment. From both sides tension was rapidly proceeding to +the breaking point. Nor was the tension merely upon generalities. The +Revolution had broken a European treaty in the annexation of the Papal +State of Avignon, and it had broken European conventions when it had +abolished in Alsace feudal rights that were possessed by the princes of +the empire. It was as though some State to-day, attempting Collectivism, +should confiscate, along with other property, securities lying in its +banks, but held by the nationals of a foreign State. + +On the revolutionary side also there was a definite point at issue, +which was the permission accorded within the empire for the emigrants to +meet in arms and to threaten the French frontier. + +But these precise and legal points were not the true causes of the war. +The true causes of the war were the desire of the unreformed European +Governments (notably those of Prussia and Austria) that the Revolution +should, in their own interests, be checked, and the conviction that +their armed forces were easily capable of effecting the destruction of +the new French _régime_. + +The Court of Vienna refused to accept a just indemnity that was offered +the princes of the empire in Alsace for the loss of their old feudal +rights; Leopold, the emperor, who was one of the same generation as the +French King and Queen, died upon the 1st of March, 1792, and was +succeeded by a son only twenty-four years of age and easily persuaded to +war. + +On the French side, with the exception of the Mountain and notably of +Robespierre, there was a curious coalition of opinion demanding war. + +The Court and the reactionaries were sufficiently certain of the victory +of the Allies to find their salvation in war. + +The revolutionary party, that is, the mass of public opinion and the +“patriots,” as they called themselves, the Girondins, also, and +especially, desired war as a sort of crusade for the Revolution; they +suffered grievous illusions, as enthusiasts always must, and believed +the French armed forces capable of sustaining the shock. The plans had +already been drawn up for the campaign (and promptly betrayed to the +enemy by the Queen); Dumouriez, an excellent soldier, had from the +middle of March 1792 been the chief person in the ministry, and the +director of foreign affairs, and a month later, on the 20th of April, +war was declared against Austria, or, to be accurate, against “the King +of Hungary and Bohemia.” + +Such was still the official title of Marie Antoinette’s nephew, who, +though now succeeded to the empire, had not yet been crowned emperor. It +was hoped to confine the war to this monarch, and, indeed, the German +princes of the empire did not join him (the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel +was an exception). But the one German power that counted most, the +kingdom of Prussia, which Dumouriez had especially hoped to keep +neutral, joined forces with Austria. The royal letters had done their +work. + +At this critical moment the French armed forces and the French +strongholds were at their worst. The discipline of the army was +deplorable. The regular soldiers of the old _régime_ had lost from six +to nine thousand officers by emigration, and mixed no better than water +and oil with the revolutionary volunteers who had been drafted (to the +number of over two hundred battalions) into the ranks of the army; +moreover, these volunteer battalions were for the most part ill +provided, far below their establishment, some only existed on paper; +none were trained as soldiers should be trained. In a more orderly time, +when the decrees of the Government corresponded with reality, four +hundred thousand men would have held the frontier; such a number was in +the estimates. As it was, from the Swiss mountains to the English +Channel, the French could count on no more than _one-fifth_ of that +number. Eighty thousand alone were under arms. The full Prussian army +was, alone, apart from its allies, close upon treble the size of this +disorganised and insufficient force. + +Panics at once ludicrous and tragic opened the campaign upon the French +side. The King took advantage of them to dismiss his Girondin Ministry +and to form a reactionary Government. The Parliament replied by measures +useless to the conduct of war, and designed only to exasperate the +Crown, which was betraying the nation. It ordered the dismissal of the +royal Guard, the formation of a camp of revolutionary Federals outside +Paris, the transportation of the orthodox priests; in pursuit of the +Court’s determination to resist the Assembly and to await the victorious +allies, Louis vetoed the last two decrees. La Fayette, who was now in +command of the army of the centre, with his headquarters at Sedan, right +upon the route of the invasion, declared for the King. + +Had the armies of Austria and Prussia moved with rapidity at this +moment, the Revolution was at an end. As it was, their mobilisation was +slow, and their march, though accurate, leisurely. It gave time for the +populace of Paris to demonstrate against the palace and the royal family +on the 20th of June. It was not until the first days of August that the +main force of the combined monarchs, under the generalship-in-chief of +the Duke of Brunswick (who had the reputation of being the best general +of his time), set out for the march on Paris. It was not until the 23rd +of August that the invaders took the first French frontier town, Longwy. + +Meanwhile two very important things had lent to the French, in spite of +the wretched insufficiency of their armed force, an intensity of feeling +which did something to supply that insufficiency. In the first place, +the third anniversary of the Fall of the Bastille, the 14th of July, had +called to Paris deputations from all the provinces, many of them armed; +this gave the national feeling unity. In the second place, Brunswick had +issued from Coblentz, which was his base, upon the 25th of that same +month of July, a manifesto which was known in Paris three days later, +and which (though certain modern historians have questioned this) +undoubtedly set revolutionary opinion ablaze. + +This manifesto demanded, in the name of the Allied Army, a complete +restoration of the old _régime_, professed to treat the French and their +new authorities as rebels subject to military execution, and contained a +clause of peculiar gravity, which excited an immediate and exasperated +response from Paris. The authorship of this clause lay with Marie +Antoinette, and it threatened, if there were any attack upon the palace, +to give the capital over to military execution and total subversion. + +Two days later the Federals from Marseilles, a middle-class body of +excellent citizens, though merely amateurs at soldiering and small in +numbers, marched into the city. Their marching song has become famous +under the title of the “Marseillaise.” They had accomplished the +astonishing feat of traversing France, drawing cannon with them, at the +rate of eighteen miles a day, in the height of a torrid summer, for +close upon a month on end. There is no parallel to such an effort in the +history of war, nor did contemporary opinion exaggerate when it saw in +the battalion of Marseilles the centre of the coming fight. + +The shock between the palace and the populace was joined in the morning +of the 10th of August. The palace was held by about six thousand men,[3] +of whom some twelve hundred were regulars of the Swiss Guard. The palace +(the Tuileries) was, or should have been, impregnable. The popular +attack, we may be certain, would have been beaten back had the +connection between the Tuileries and the Louvre on the south been +properly cut. The flooring had indeed been removed at this point for +some distance, but either the gap was not wide enough or the post was +insufficiently guarded; the populace and the Federals, badly beaten in +their main attack upon the long front of the palace, succeeded in +turning its flank where it joined on to the Louvre; they thus enfiladed +the suites of rooms and utterly put an end to the resistance of its +garrison. + +Meanwhile the King and Queen, the Dauphin and his little sister, with +others of the royal household, had taken refuge during the fighting in +the hall of the Parliament. + +After the victory of the populace their fate was debated and decided +upon; they were imprisoned in the Tower of the Temple, a mediæval +fortress still standing in the north-east of Paris, and though monarchy +was not yet formally abolished, the most extreme spirits which the +Revolution then contained, and the most vigorous, stepped into the place +of the old Executive, with Danton at their head. With them appeared in +the seat of Government the spirit of military action, its contempt for +forms and its rapid decision. The known accomplices of the supporters of +the Court’s resistance and alliance with the invaders were arrested by +the hundred. The enrolment of volunteers, already enthusiastic +throughout France, was supported with the new vigour of official aid; +and the Revolution left at once all its old moorings to enter an extreme +phase. At the same moment the frontier was crossed and the national soil +invaded on the 19th of August. + +It is possible that the delay of the Prussians until that moment had +been calculated, for the position in France was complicated and their +decision to fight had been tardily arrived at. It was the news of the +fall of the palace that seems to have decided them. The place, like the +date, of this grave event, deserves to be more famous than it is. +Brunswick touched what was then French soil, in that little triangle +where now German and French Lorraine and Luxembourg meet. The village is +called Redange: thence did the privileged of Europe set out to reach +Paris and to destroy democracy. The first task occupied them for full +twenty-two years, upon the latter they are still engaged. + +What forces the French could there bring against Brunswick were +contemptuously brushed aside. Four days later he had, as we have seen, +taken the frontier stronghold of Longwy; within a week he was in front +of Verdun. + +Verdun had no chance of resistance, no garrison to call a garrison, and +no opportunity for defence. The news that it must fall reached Paris on +the morning of a fatal date, the 2nd of September; after its fall there +would lie nothing between it and the capital; and from that moment the +whole nature of the Revolution is wholly transformed by the +psychological effect of war. + + +V + +_From the invasion of September 1792 to the establishment of the +Committee of Public Safety, April 1793._ + +The fifth phase of the French Revolution may be said to date from these +first days of September 1792, when the news of the successful invasion +was maddening Paris, and when the revolutionary Executive, established +upon the ruins of the old dead monarchy and in its image, was firmly in +the saddle, up to the establishment of the yet more monarchical +“Committee of Public Safety,” seven months later. And these seven months +may be characterised as follows:-- + +They were a period during which it was attempted to carry on the +revolutionary war against the Governments of Europe upon democratic +principles. The attempt failed. In the place of discipline and +comprehension and foresight the rising and intense enthusiasm of the +moment was depended upon for victory. The pure ideal of the Girondin +faction, with the model republic which it hoped to establish, proved +wholly insufficient for the conduct of a war; and to save the nation +from foreign conquest and the great democratic experiment of the +Revolution from disaster, it was necessary that the military and +disciplined side of the French, with all the tyranny that accompanies +that aspect of their national genius, should undertake the completion of +the adventure. + +This period opens with what are called the Massacres of September. I +have said upon a former page that “the known accomplices and supporters +of the Court’s alliance with the invaders were arrested by the hundred,” +upon the fall of the palace and the establishment of a revolutionary +Executive with Danton at its head. + +These prisoners, massed in the jails of the city, were massacred to the +number of eleven hundred by a small but organised band of assassins +during the days when the news of the fall of Verdun was expected and +reached the capital. Such a crime appalled the public conscience of +Europe and of the French people. It must never be confused with the +judicial and military acts of the Terror, nor with the reprisals +undertaken against rebellion, nor with the gross excesses of mob +violence; for though votes in favour of the immediate execution of those +who had sided with the enemies of the country were passed in certain +primary assemblies, the act itself was the mechanical, deliberate and +voluntary choice of a few determined men. It had, therefore, a character +of its own, and that character made it stand out for its contemporaries +as it should stand out for us: it was murder. + +The prisoners were unarmed--nay, though treasonable, they had not +actually taken arms; their destruction was inspired, in most of those +who ordered it, by mere hatred. Those who ordered it were a small +committee acting spontaneously, and Marat was their chief.[4] + +It was under the impression of these massacres that the Deputies of the +new or third Assembly of the Revolution, known to history as _The +Convention_, met in Paris. + +This Parliament was to be at first the actual, later the nominal +governing power in France during the three critical years that followed; +years which were the military salvation of the Revolution, and which +therefore permitted the establishment of the democratic experiment in +modern Europe. + +It was on the 20th of September that the Convention met for its first +sitting, which was held in the palace of the Tuileries. During the hours +of that day, while it was electing its officials, choosing its Speaker +and the rest, the French Army upon the frontier, to its own astonishment +and to that of its enemy, managed to hold in check at the cannonade of +_Valmy_ the allied invaders. + +Upon the morrow the new Assembly met in the riding school (the Manège), +where the two former Assemblies had also sat. It was about to separate +after that day’s sitting when one of the members proposed the abolition +of Royalty; the Convention voted the reform unanimously and dispersed. + +On the third day, the 22nd of September, it was decreed that the public +documents should henceforward bear the date “First Year of the +Republic”; but there was no solemnity on the occasion; the idea of “No +King” was novel and untried; there was as yet no enthusiasm for any save +the monarchic form of government. It was not until the title “Republic” +began to connote in men’s minds political liberty, and had become also +the flag, as it were, for the victorious national defence, that the +Republican name acquired in our Europe, and from France, that strong and +almost religious force which it has since retained. + +The check given to the invaders at Valmy (again to the astonishment of +both soldiers and statesmen!) determined the campaign. Sickness and the +difficulty of communications made the further advance of the invaders +impossible. They negotiated for and obtained an unmolested retreat, and +a few weeks later they had re-crossed the frontier. + +Meanwhile, in Paris the great quarrel had begun between the Municipal +and the National Government, which, because Paris was more decided, more +revolutionary, and, above all, more military in temper than the +Parliament, was destined to terminate in the victory of the capital. The +Girondins still stood in the Assembly for an ideal republic; a republic +enjoying to the utmost limit individual liberty in its citizens and the +autonomy of local government in every city and parish; but opposed to +this ideal, and far more national, was that of the revolutionary +extremists, called in the Convention “the Mountain,” who had the support +of the Municipal Government of Paris (known as “the Commune”), and were +capable of French victories in the field. These stood for the old French +and soldierly conception of a strong central Government, wherewith to +carry on the life-and-death struggle into which the Revolution had now +entered: therefore they conquered. + +All that autumn the quarrel between France and Europe remained doubtful, +for though the armies of the Republic under Dumouriez won the battle of +Jemappes, swept across the north-eastern frontier and occupied Belgium, +while to the south another French army swept right up to the Rhine, +Dumouriez himself knew well enough that a campaign undertaken merely +upon enthusiasm, and with troops so mixed in character and many of them +so undisciplined, would end fatally. But until the advent of the new +year public opinion was not instructed upon these lines, and the +revolutionary war seemed to have passed suddenly from the defence of the +national territory to a crusade against the kings and the aristocratic +Governments of Europe. Enthusiasm, and enthusiasm alone, was the force +of the moment. Violent decrees such as the Declaration of Fraternity +(which decreed an alliance with all people struggling to be free) and +the opening of the Scheldt (a direct violation of treaty rights to which +England, among other nations, was a partner) were characteristic of the +moment; chief act of all, the King was put upon his trial at the bar of +the Parliament. + +It was upon the 4th of January, 1793 (the King had already made his will +upon Christmas Day), that the chief orator of the Girondins moved that +the sentence should be referred to the people for ratification. The fear +of civil war more than anything else forbade this just suggestion to +pass. Upon the 15th of January the question was put to the Parliament, +“whether the King had been guilty of conspiring against public liberty +and of attempting the general safety of the State.” Many were absent and +many abstained: none replied in the negative; the condemnation of Louis +was therefore technically almost a unanimous one. + +The voting on these grave issues was what the French call “nominal”: +that is, each member was called upon “by name” to give his vote--and an +expression of opinion as well if he so chose. A second attempt to appeal +to the people was rejected by 424 to 283. On the third question, which +was the decisive one of the penalty, 721 only could be found to vote, +and of these a bare majority of 53 declared for death as against the +minority, of whom some voted for the death penalty “conditionally”--that +is, not at all--or voted against it. A respite was lost by a majority of +70; and on the 21st of January, 1793, at about ten in the morning, Louis +XVI was guillotined. + +Then followed war with England, with Holland, and with Spain; and almost +at that moment began the inevitable reflux of the military tide. For the +French eruption up to the Rhine in the Low Countries and the Palatinate, +had no permanent military basis upon which to depend. Dumouriez began to +retreat a month after the King’s execution, and on the 18th of March +suffered a decisive defeat at Neerwinden. It was this retreat, followed +by that disaster, which decided the fate of the Girondin attempt to +found a republic ideally, individually, and locally free. Already, +before the battle of Neerwinden was fought, Danton, no longer a +minister, but still the most powerful orator in the Convention, proposed +a special court for trying cases of treason--a court which was later +called “the Revolutionary Tribunal.” The news of Neerwinden prepared the +way for a stronger measure and some exceptional form of government; a +special Parliamentary committee already formed for the control of +ministers was strengthened when, on the 5th of April, after some +negotiation and doubt, Dumouriez, despairing of the armies of the +Republic, thought to ally his forces with the invaders and to restore +order. His soldiers refused to follow him; his treason was apparent; +upon the morrow the Convention nominated that first “Committee of Public +Safety” which, with its successor of the same name, was henceforward the +true despotic and military centre of revolutionary government. It was +granted secrecy in deliberation, the virtual though not the theoretic +control of the Ministry, sums of money for secret expenditure, and, in a +word, all the machinery necessary to a military executive. Rousseau’s +_Dictator_ had appeared, the great mind which had given the _Contrat +Social_ to be the gospel of the Revolution had also foreseen one of the +necessary organs of democracy in its hardest trial; his theory had been +proved necessary and true in fact. Nine members formed this first +Committee: Barère, who may be called the clerk of it, Danton its genius, +and Cambon its financier, were the leading names. + +With the establishment of this truly national and traditional thing, +whose form alone was novel, but whose power and method were native to +all the military tradition of Gaul, the Revolution was saved. We have +now chiefly to follow the way in which the Committee governed and in +which it directed affairs in the great crisis of the war. This sixth +phase lasts for nearly sixteen months, from the beginning of April 1793 +to the 28th of July 1794, and it is convenient to divide those sixteen +months into two divisions. + + +VI + +_From April 1793 to July 1794._ + +The first division of this period, which ends in the height of the +summer of 1793, is the gradual consolidation of the Committee as a new +organ of government and the peril of destruction which it runs, in +common with the nation it governs at the hands of allied Europe. + +The second period includes part of August and all the rest of 1793, and +the first seven months of 1794, during which time the Committee is +successful in its military effort, the nation is saved, and in a manner +curiously dramatic and curiously inconsequential, the martial _régime_ +of the Terror abruptly ceases. + +The first step in the consolidation of the power of the Committee was +their letting loose of the Commune of Paris and the populace it governed +against the Girondins. + +Looked at merely from the point of view of internal politics (upon +which most historians have concentrated) the attack of the populace of +Paris and their Commune against the Parliament seems to be no more than +the end of the long quarrel between the Girondins with their ideal +federal republic, and the capital with its instinct for strong +centralised government. But in the light of the military situation, of +which the Committee of Public Safety were vividly aware, and which it +was their business to control, a very different tale may be told. + +When the defeats began the Parliament had voted a levy of three hundred +thousand men. It was a mere vote which came to very little: not enough +in numbers and still less in moral, for the type of troops recruited +under a system of money forfeit and purchased substitutes was wholly +beneath the task of the great war. + +This law of conscription had been passed upon the 24th of February. The +date for its first application was, in many villages, fixed for the 10th +of March. All that country which borders the estuary of the Loire, to +the north and to the south, a country whose geographical and political +peculiarities need not here detain us, but which is still curiously +individual, began to resist. The decree was unpopular everywhere, of +course, as military service is everywhere unpopular with a settled +population. But here it had no ally, for the Revolution and all its +works were grossly unpopular as well. The error of the Civil +Constitution of the Clergy was a powerful factor in this revolt. The +piety and the orthodoxy of this district were and are exceptional. Some +such resistance in some such quarter was perhaps expected: what was not +expected was its military success. + +Four days before the defeat of Neerwinden itself, and four days after +the decree of conscription in the villages, a horde of peasantry had +taken possession of the town of Chollet in the southern part of this +district, Vendée. Three days before the Committee of Public Safety was +formed the insurgents had defeated regular forces at Machecoul, and had +tortured and put to death their prisoners. The month of April, when the +Committee of Public Safety was first finding its seat in the saddle, saw +the complete success of the rebels. The forces sent against them were +worthless, for all military effort had been concentrated upon the +frontier. Most of them were not even what we should call militia. A +small force of regulars was to have moved from Orleans, but, before they +could attack, Thouars, Parthenay, and Fontenay fell into the power of +the rebels. These posts afforded an advanced triangle right into the +regularly administered territory of the Republic: the great town of +Nantes was outflanked. Even in such a moment the Girondins still clung +to their ideal: an individually free and locally autonomous republic. It +is little wonder that the temper of Paris refused to support them, or +their influence over the Parliament, and we can easily understand how +the new Committee supported Paris in its revolt. + +That revolt took place on the 31st of May. The forces under the command +of the capital did not march, but a deputation of the sections of Paris +demanded the arrest of the leading Girondins. The body of the debating +hall was invaded by the mob. The Committee of Public Safety pretended to +compromise between Paris and the Parliament, but a document, recently +analysed, sufficiently proves that their sympathy was with the Parisian +attack. They proposed, indeed, to put the armed force of Paris at the +disposition of the Assembly: that is, in their own hands. + +That day nothing of moment was done, but the Parliament had proved of no +strength in the face of the capital. On the frontier the advance of the +invaders had begun. The great barrier fortress of Valenciennes relied +for its defence upon the neighbouring camp of Famars. The garrison of +that camp had been compelled to evacuate it by the advance of the Allied +Army upon the 23rd of May, and though some days were to be spent before +the heavy artillery of the Austrians could be emplaced, Valenciennes was +henceforward at the mercy of its besiegers. There was news that La +Vendée was not the only rebellion. Lyons had risen three days before. +There had been heavy fighting. The Royalists and the Girondins had +combined and had carried the town hall and established an +insurrectionary and unelected Municipal Government. Such news, coming +immediately after the 31st of May, roused the capital to action. This +time the Parisian forces actually marched against the Parliament. The +demand for the suspension of the twenty-two named Girondin deputies was +made under arms. Much has been written, and by the best historians, to +make of this successful day a mere conquest by the Commune of Paris over +the Parliament. Though Barère and Danton both protested in public, it +was in reality their politics that conquered with Paris. To the +twenty-two names that the forces of Paris had listed, seven were added. +The great Girondins, Brissot, Vergniaud and the rest, were not indeed +imprisoned, they were considered “under arrest in their houses.” But the +moral authority of the Convention as an administrative machine, not as a +legislative one, was broken on this day, the 2nd of June, 1793. Paris +had ostensibly conquered, but the master who was stronger than ever and +whom Paris had served, was the Committee of Public Safety. + +This first Committee of Public Safety endured to the 10th of July. In +the midst of such a war and of such an internal struggle the Convention +had voted (upon the initiative of the Committee of Public Safety) the +famous Constitution of ’93, that prime document of democracy which, as +though to mock its own ideal, has remained no more than a written thing +from then until now. Therein will be found universal suffrage, therein +the yearly Parliament, therein the referendum, therein the elected +Executive--a thing no Parliament would ever give us to-day. The +Constitution was passed but three weeks after the successful +insurrection of Paris. A fortnight later still, on the 10th of July, the +first of the Committees of Public Safety was followed by its successor. + +All this while the Vendeans were advancing. Nantes, indeed, had held out +against the rebels, but as we shall see in a moment, the Republican +troops had not yet made themselves good. The rebellion of Lyons was +fortifying itself, and a week later was to execute the Radical Chalier. +Marseilles was rising. On the 10th of July the Convention summoned to +its bar Westermann, the friend of Danton, who had just suffered defeat +at the hands of the western rebels. + +It is well to note at this point one of those small individual factors +which determine the fate of States. Danton, the master of all that first +movement towards centralisation, the man who had made the 10th of +August, who had negotiated with the Prussians after Valmy, who had +determined upon and formed a central government against the Girondin +anarchy--had broken down. His health was gone. He was a giant in body, +but for the moment he had tired himself out. + +The renewing of his Committee was proposed: he was thrust out from the +new choice. Barère remained to link the old Committee with the new. A +violent sectarian Calvinist pastor, Jeanbon Saint-André, among the +bravest and most warped of the Revolutionaries; Couthon, a friend of +Robespierre; Saint-Just, a still more intimate friend (a young, +handsome, enormously courageous and decisive man), entered, with others +to the number of nine, the new Committee. Seventeen days later, on the +27th of July, Robespierre replaced one of the minor members thus chosen. +He had precisely a year to live, and it is the moment for fixing before +the reader’s mind the nature of his career. + +Robespierre was at this moment the chief figure in the eyes of the +crowd, and was soon to be the chief revolutionary figure in the eyes of +Europe: that is the first point. The second is of equal importance, and +is far less generally recognised. He was not, and was never destined to +be, the chief force in the revolutionary Government. + +As to the first point, Robespierre had attained this position from the +following combination of circumstances: first, alone of the +revolutionary personalities, he had been continually before the public +eye from the beginning; he had been a member of the first Parliament of +all and had spoken in that Parliament in the first month of its +sessions. Though then obscure in Versailles, he was already well known +in his province and native town of Arras. + +Secondly, this position of his in the public eye was maintained without +a break, and his position and reputation had increased by accumulation +month after month for the whole four years. No one else was left in the +political arena of whom this could be said. All the old reactionaries +had gone, all the moderate men had gone; the figures of 1793 were all +new figures--except Robespierre; and he owed this continued and steady +increase of fame to:-- + +Thirdly, his conspicuous and vivid sincerity. He was more wholly +possessed of the democratic faith of the _Contrat Social_ than any other +man of his time: he had never swerved from an article of it. There is no +better engine for enduring fame than the expression of real convictions. +Moreover-- + +Fourthly, his speeches exactly echoed the opinions of his audience, and +echoed them with a lucidity which his audience could not have commanded. +Whether he possessed true eloquence or no is a matter still debated by +those who are scholars in French letters. But it is certain that he had +in his own time all the effects of a great orator, though his manner was +precise and cold. + +Fifthly, he was possessed of a consistent body of doctrine: that is, he +was not only convinced of the general democratic creed which his +contemporaries held, and he not only held it unswervingly and +uncorruptedly, but he could supplement it with a system of morals and +even something which was the adumbration of religion. + +Sixthly, he had, as such characters always can, but not often do, gather +round themselves, a group of intensely devoted personal admirers and +supporters, chief of whom was the young and splendidly courageous +Saint-Just. + +It was the combination of all these things, I say, which made +Robespierre the chief personality in the public eye when he entered the +Committee of Public Safety on the 27th of July, 1793. + +Now let it be noted that, unlike his follower Saint-Just, and +exceedingly unlike Danton, Robespierre possessed none of those military +qualities without which it is impossible to be responsible for +government over a military nation--especially if that nation be in the +act of war: and such a war! The Committee of Public Safety was the Cæsar +of revolutionary France. Robespierre as a member of that Cæsar was +hopeless. His popularity was an advantage to his colleagues in the +Committee, but his conception of action upon the frontiers was vague, +personal, and futile. His ambition for leadership, if it existed, was +subordinate to his ambition to be the saviour of his people and of their +democratic experiment, and he had no comprehension of those functions of +leadership by which it can co-ordinate detail and impose a plan of +action. Robespierre, therefore, in every crisis of the last year we are +about to study, yielded to his colleagues, never impressed them and +never led them, and yet (it was the irony of his fate) was imagined by +his fellow countrymen and by the warring Governments of Europe to be the +master of them all. + +The first weeks after his appearance in the Committee of Public Safety +were the critical weeks of the whole revolutionary movement. The +despotic action of Paris (which I have concluded to be secretly +supported by the Committee)[5] had provoked insurrection upon all sides +in the provinces. Normandy had protested, and on the 13th of July a +Norman girl stabbed Marat to death. Lyons, as we have seen, had been +some weeks in revolt; Marseilles had rebelled in the first week of June, +Bordeaux and the whole department of the Gironde had of course risen, +for their men were at stake. Later Toulon, the great naval depot of +France, revolted: a reactionary municipal provincial Government was +formed in that port, the little boy imprisoned in the Temple, heir to +the kingdom, was proclaimed under the title of Louis XVII, and before +the end of August the English and Spanish fleets had been admitted into +the harbour and an excellent foreign garrison was defending the town +against the national Government. + +Meanwhile the Allies upon the Belgian frontier were doing what they +could, taking fortress after fortress, and while Mayence was falling on +the Rhine, Valenciennes and Condé were capitulating on the north-eastern +border, and a portion of the Allied Army was marching to besiege +Dunquerque. The insurrection in Vendée, which had broken out in the +early part of the year, though checked by the resistance of Nantes, was +still successful in the field. + +It was in the month of August that a successful effort was made. Carnot, +who soon proved the military genius of the Revolution, entered the +Committee of Public Safety. On the 23rd of the month a true levy, very +different from the futile and insufficiently applied attempt of the +spring, was forced upon the nation by a vote in Parliament. It was a +levy of men, vehicles, animals and provision, and soon furnished +something not far short of half a million soldiers. With September the +tide turned, the first victory in this crisis of the struggle, +Hoondschoote, relieved Dunquerque in the early days of September. By +mid-October a second and decisive victory, that of Wattignies, relieved +Maubeuge. Lyons had been taken, Normandy was pacified long before; by +the end of the year Toulon was reoccupied, and at the same time the last +cohesive force of the Vendeans destroyed. + +But meanwhile the crisis had had a double effect, moral and material. +The moral effect had been a sort of national madness in which the most +extreme measures were proposed and many of them carried through with +what one may call a creative audacity. The calendar itself was changed, +the week itself abolished, the months re-named and re-adjusted. Such an +act sufficiently symbolises the mental attitude of the Revolutionaries. +They were determined upon a new earth. + +There went with this the last and most violent attack upon what was +believed to be the last remnants of Catholicism in the country, a +hideous persecution of the priesthood, in which an uncounted number of +priests died under the rigours of transportation or of violence. The +reprisals against the rebels varied from severity of the most awful kind +to cruelty that was clearly insane, and of which the worst examples took +place at Arras and at Nantes. + +In all this turmoil the governing centre of the country, the Committee +of Public Safety, not only kept its head but used the enormous forces of +the storm for the purposes of achieving military success, under that +system known as “the Terror,” which was for them no more than martial +law, and an engine of their despotic control. Of the two thousand and +more that passed before the revolutionary tribunal and were executed in +Paris, the large majority were those whom the Committee of Public Safety +judged to be obstacles to their military policy; and most were men or +women who had broken some specific part of the martial code which the +Government had laid down. Some were generals who had failed or were +suspected of treason; and some, among the most conspicuous, were +politicians who had attempted to check so absolute a method of +conducting the war. + +Of these the greatest was Danton. Before the end of 1793 he began to +protest against the system of the Terror; he believed, perhaps, that the +country was now safe in the military sense and needed such rigours no +more. But the Committee disagreed, and were evidence available we should +perceive that Carnot in particular determined that such opposition must +cease. Danton and his colleagues--including Desmoulins, the journalist +of the Revolution and the chief publicist who promoted the days of July +1789--were executed in the first week of April 1794. + +Parallel to this action on the part of the Committee was their sudden +attack upon men of the other extreme: the men whose violence, excessive +even for that time, threatened to provoke reaction. Hébert was the chief +of these, the spokesman of the Commune of Paris; and he also perished. + +Meanwhile the Committee had permitted other persecutions and other +deaths, notably that of the Queen. A sane policy would have demanded +that she should be kept a hostage: she was sacrificed to the desire for +vengeance, and her head fell on the same day on which the decisive +battle of Wattignies was won. Later the King’s sister, Madame Elisabeth, +was sacrificed to the same passions, and with her must be counted a +certain proportion of the victims whose destruction could be no part of +the Committee’s scheme, and proceeded purely from the motives of an +ancient hatred, though in the case of many of these who were of +aristocratic birth or of influence through their wealth, it is not easy +to determine how far the possibility of their intrigue with the +foreigner may not have led them to the scaffold. + +In the last four months of the period we are considering in this book, +through April, that is, after the execution of Danton, through May and +June and almost to the end of July, Robespierre appears with a +particular prominence. Fads or doctrines of his own are admitted upon +the Statute Book of the Revolution, notably his religious dogmas of a +personal God and of the immortality of the soul. Nay, a public solemnity +is arranged in honour of such matters, and he is the high priest +therein. The intensity of the idolatry he received was never greater; +the numbers that shared it were, perhaps, diminishing. It is certain +that he did not appreciate how far the supports of his great popularity +were failing. It is certain that he saw only the increasing enthusiasm +of his immediate followers. The Committee still used him as their +tool--notably for an increase of the Terror in June, but it is possible +that for the first time in all these months he began to attempt some +sort of authority within the Committee: we know, for instance, that he +quarrelled with Carnot, who was easily the strongest man therein. + +In the past they had permitted him to indulge a private policy where it +did not interfere with the general military plan. He was largely +responsible, not through his own judgment but from his desire to voice +opinion, for the trial and execution of the Queen. He had temporised +when Danton was beginning his campaign against the Terror at the end of +1793, and it is an ineffaceable blot upon his memory and his justly +earned reputation for integrity and sincerity, that he first permitted +and then helped towards Danton’s execution. We may presume from the few +indications we have that he protested against it in the secret counsels +of the Committee, but he had yielded, and what is more, since Saint-Just +desired to be Danton’s accuser he had furnished Saint-Just with notes +against Danton. Though it was the Committee who were morally responsible +for the extreme extension of the Terror which proceeded during those +last few months, Robespierre had the unwisdom to act as their +instrument, to draft their last decrees, and, believing the Terror to be +popular, to support it in public. It was this that ruined him. The +extreme Terrorists, those who were not yet satiated with vengeance, and +who hated and feared a popular idol, determined to overthrow him. + +The mass of those who might be the next victims and who, knowing nothing +of the secret councils of the Committee, imagined Robespierre to be what +he posed as being, the master of the Committee, were eager for his +removal. In his fictitious character as the supposed chief power in the +State, all the growing nausea against the Terror was directed against +his person. + +Coincidently with such forces, the Committee, whom, relying upon his +public position, he had begun to interfere with, and probably to check +in their military action (he certainly had attempted unsuccessfully to +save certain lives against the decision of his colleagues), determined +to be rid of him. The crisis came in the fourth week of July: or as the +revolutionary calendar then went, in the second week of Thermidor. He +was howled down in the Parliament, an active and clever conspiracy had +organised all the latent forces of opposition to him; he still so +trusted in his popularity that the scene bewildered him, and he was +still so beloved and so ardently followed, that when at that same +sitting he was outlawed, his brother sacrificed himself to follow him. +Saint-Just was included in the sentence, and his strict friend Lebas +voluntarily accepted the same doom. + +What followed was at first a confusion of authority; put under arrest, +the governor of the prison to which Robespierre was dispatched refused +to receive him. He and his sympathisers met in the Hôtel de Ville after +the fall of darkness, and an attempt was made to provoke an +insurrection. There are many and confused accounts of what immediately +followed at midnight, but two things are certain: the populace refused +to rise for Robespierre, and the Parliament, with the Committee at its +back, organised an armed force which easily had the better of the +incipient rebellion at the Hôtel de Ville. It is probable that +Robespierre’s signature was needed to the proclamation of insurrection: +it is certain that he did not complete it, and presumable that he would +not act against all his own theories of popular sovereignty and the +general will. As he sat there with the paper before him and his +signature still unfinished, the armed force of the Parliament burst into +the room, a lad of the name of Merda aimed a pistol from the door at +Robespierre, and shot him in the jaw. (The evidence in favour of this +version is conclusive.) Of his companions, some fled and were captured, +some killed themselves, most were arrested. The next day, the 10th +Thermidor, or 28th of July, 1794, at half-past seven in the evening, +Robespierre, with twenty-one others, was guillotined. + +The irony of history would have it that the fall of this man, which was +chiefly due to his interference with the system of the Terror, broke all +the moral force upon which the Terror itself had resided; for men had +imagined that the Terror was his work, and that, he gone, no excuse was +left for it. A reaction began which makes of this date the true term in +that ascending series of revolutionary effort which had by then +discussed every aspect of democracy, succeeded in the military defence +of that experiment, and laid down, though so far in words only, the +basis of the modern State. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[3] The reader should be warned that these numbers are hotly disputed. +The latest authority will allow no more than 4000. After a full +consultation of the evidence I can reduce the garrison to no less than +6000. + +[4] The legend that Danton was connected with the massacres is based on +insufficient historical foundation. There are several second or third +hand stories in support of it, but the chief positive evidence brought +forward in this connection is the stamped paper of the Minister of +Justice which, it has been amply proved by Dr. Robinet, was taken by a +subordinate and without Danton’s knowledge or complicity. To the much +stupider story that the Federals of Marseilles took part in the +massacres, the modern student need pay no attention; it has been +destroyed piecemeal and on indefeasible documentary evidence in the +monograph of Pollio and Marcel. + +[5] On p. 403 of my monograph on Danton (Nisbet & Co., 1899) the reader +will find an unpublished report of the Committee of Public Safety, drawn +up immediately before the destruction of the Girondins on the 31st of +May. It forms, in my view, conclusive evidence, read in the light of +their other actions, of the Committee’s determination to side with +Paris. + + + + +V + +THE MILITARY ASPECT OF THE REVOLUTION + + +The Revolution would never have achieved its object: on the contrary, it +would have led to no less than a violent reaction against those +principles which were maturing before it broke out, and which it carried +to triumph, had not the armies of revolutionary France proved successful +in the field; but the grasping of this mere historic fact, I mean the +success of the revolutionary armies, is unfortunately no simple matter. + +We all know that as a matter of fact the Revolution was, upon the whole, +successful in imposing its view upon Europe. We all know that from that +success as from a germ has proceeded, and is still proceeding, modern +society. But the nature, the cause and the extent of the military +success which alone made this possible, is widely ignored and still more +widely misunderstood. No other signal military effort which achieved its +object has in history ended in military disaster--yet this was the case +with the revolutionary wars. After twenty years of advance, during which +the ideas of the Revolution were sown throughout Western civilisation, +and had time to take root, the armies of the Revolution stumbled into +the vast trap or blunder of the Russian campaign; this was succeeded by +the decisive defeat of the democratic armies at Leipsic, and the superb +strategy of the campaign of 1814, the brilliant rally of what is called +the Hundred Days, only served to emphasise the completeness of the +apparent failure. For that masterly campaign was followed by Napoleon’s +first abdication, that brilliant rally ended in Waterloo and the ruin of +the French army. When we consider the spread of Grecian culture over +the East by the parallel military triumph of Alexander, or the conquest +of Gaul by the Roman armies under Cæsar, we are met by political +phenomena and a political success no more striking than the success of +the Revolution. The Revolution did as much by the sword as ever did +Alexander or Cæsar, and as surely compelled one of the great +transformations of Europe. But the fact that the great story can be read +to a conclusion of defeat disturbs the mind of the student. + +Again, that element fatal to all accurate study of military history, the +imputation of civilian virtues and motives, enters the mind of the +reader with fatal facility when he studies the revolutionary wars. + +He is tempted to ascribe to the enthusiasm of the troops, nay, to the +political movement itself, a sort of miraculous power. He is apt to use +with regard to the revolutionary victories the word “inevitable,” which, +if ever it applies to the reasoned, willing and conscious action of men, +certainly applies least of all to men when they act as soldiers. + +There are three points which we must carefully bear in mind when we +consider the military history of the Revolution. + +First, that it succeeded: the Revolution, regarded as the political +motive of its armies, won. + +Secondly, that it succeeded through those military aptitudes and +conditions which happened to accompany, but by no means necessarily +accompanied, the strong convictions and the civic enthusiasm of the +time. + +Thirdly, that the element of chance, which every wise and prudent +reasoner will very largely admit into all military affairs, worked in +favour of the Revolution in the critical moments of the early wars. + +With these points fixed, and with a readiness to return to them when we +have appreciated the military story, it is well to begin our study by +telling that story briefly, and upon its most general lines. In so +doing, it will be necessary to cover here and there points which have +already been dealt with in this book, but that is inevitable where one +is writing of the military aspect of any movement, for it is impossible +to deal with that aspect save as a living part of the whole: so knit +into national life is the business of war. + + +ONE + +When the Revolution first approached action, the prospect of a war +between France and any other great Power of the time--England, Prussia, +the Empire, or let us say Russia, or even Spain--was such a prospect as +might have been entertained at any time during the past two or three +generations of men. + +For pretty well a hundred years men had been accustomed to the +consideration of dynastic quarrels supported by a certain type of army, +which in a moment I shall describe. + +I have called these quarrels dynastic; that is, they were mainly +quarrels between the ruling houses of Europe: were mainly motived by +the desire of each ruling house to acquire greater territory and +revenue, and were limited by the determination of all the ruling houses +to maintain certain ideas inviolate, as, for instance, the sacredness of +monarchy, the independence of individual States, etc. Though they were +in the main dynastic, yet in proportion as a dynasty might represent a +united nation, they were national also. The English oligarchy was in +this respect peculiar and more national than any European Government of +its time. It is also true to say that the Russian despotism had behind +it, in most of its military adventures and in all its spirit of +expansion, the subconscious agreement of the people. + +Still, however national, the wars of the time preceding the Revolution +moved within a fixed framework of ideas, as it were, which no commander +and no diplomatist dreamed of exceeding. A, the crowned head of a State, +would have some claims against B, the crowned head of another State, +with regard to certain territories. C, the crowned head or Government of +a third State, would remain neutral or ally himself with either of the +two; if he allied himself, then, as a rule, it was with the weaker +against the stronger, in order to guarantee himself against too great an +increase on the part of a rival. Or, again, a rebellion would break out +against the power of A in some part of his dominions; then would B, +somewhat reluctantly (as the almost unlimited right of an existing +executive was still a strong dogma in men’s minds), tend to ally +himself with the rebels in order to diminish the power of A. + +Human affairs have always in them very strongly and permanently +inherent, the character of a sport: the interest (at any rate of males) +in the conduct of human life is always largely an interest of seeing +that certain rules are kept, and certain points won, according to those +rules. We must, therefore, beware of ridiculing the warfare of the +century preceding the Revolution under the epithet of “a game.” But it +is true of that warfare, and honourably true, that it attempted limited +things in a limited manner; it did not attempt any fundamental change in +society; it was not overtly--since the Thirty Years’ War at least--a +struggle of ideas; it was conducted on behalf of known and limited +interests for known and highly limited objects, and the instruments with +which it was conducted were instruments artificial and segregated from +the general life of nations. + +These instruments were what have been called the “professional” armies. +The term is very insufficient, and, in part, misleading. The gentry of +the various Powers, mixed with whom were certain adventurers not always +of gentle blood, were the officers that led these forces; and for the +major part of the gentry in most European countries, the military career +was the chief field of activity. The men whom they led were not a +peasantry nor a working class, still less a civic force in which the +middle class would find itself engaged: they were the poorest and the +least settled, some would have said the dregs of European life. With the +exception here and there of a man--usually a very young man whom the +fabled romance of this hard but glorious trade had attracted--and with +the exception of certain bodies that followed in a mass and by order the +relics of a feudal lordship, the armies of the period immediately +preceding the Revolution were armies of very poor men, who had sold +themselves into a sort of servitude often exciting and even adventurous, +but not, when we examine it minutely, a career that a free man would +choose. The men were caught by economic necessity, by fraud, and in +other ways, and once caught were held. No better proof of this could be +found than the barbarous severity of the punishments attached to +desertion, or to minor forms of indiscipline. So held, they were used +for the purposes of the game, not only in what would make them +serviceable instruments of war, but also in what would make them +pleasing to their masters. Strict alignment, certain frills of parade +and appearance, all that is required in a theatre or in a pretentious +household, appear in the military regulations of the time. + +I must not in all this be supposed to be belittling that great period +between 1660 and 1789, during which the art of war was most thoroughly +thought out, the traditions of most of our great European armies fixed, +and the permanent military qualities which we still inherit developed. +The men so caught as private soldiers could not but enjoy the game when +it was actively played, for men of European stock will always enjoy the +game of war; they took glory in its recital and in its memories; to be a +soldier, even under the servile conditions of the time, was a proper +subject for pride, and it is further to be remarked that the excesses of +cruelty discoverable in the establishment of their discipline were also +accompanied by very high and lasting examples of military virtue. The +behaviour of the English contingents at Fontenoy afford but one of many +examples of what I mean. + +Still, to understand the wars of the Revolution we must clearly +establish the contrast between the so-called professional armies which +preceded that movement and the armies which the Revolution invented, +used, and bequeathed to the modern world. + +So also, to revert to what was said above, we must recall the dynastic +and limited character of the wars in which the eighteenth century had +been engaged; at the outbreak of the Revolution no other wars were +contemplated by men. + +Had you spoken, for instance, at any moment in 1789, to a statesman, +whether of old experience or only introduced to political life by the +new movement, of the position of Great Britain, he would at once have +discussed that position in the terms of Great Britain’s recent defeat at +the hands of France in the affair of the American colonies. Had you +discussed with him the position of Prussia he would at once have argued +it in connection with Prussia’s secular opposition to Austria and the +Empire. Had you asked him how he considered Spain, he would have spoken +of the situation of Spain as against France in the light of the fact +that Spain was a Bourbon monarchy allied in blood to the French throne. +And so forth. No true statesman imagined at the time, nor, indeed, for +many years, that a war of _ideas_, nor even, strictly speaking, of +_nations_, was possible. Even when such a war was actually in process of +waging, the diplomacy which attempted to establish a peace, the +intrigues whereby alliances were sought, or neutrality negotiated, were +dependent upon the older conception of things; and the historian is +afforded, as he regards this gigantic struggle, the ironic satisfaction +of seeing men fighting upon doctrines the most universal conceivable and +yet perpetually changing their conduct during the struggle according to +conceptions wholly particular, local and ephemeral, and soon to be +entirely swept away by time. + +Napoleon himself must needs marry an Austrian archduchess as part of +this old prejudice, and for years brains as excellent as Danton’s or +Talleyrand’s conjecture the possibility of treating now England, now +Prussia, as neutral to the vast attempt of the French to destroy +privilege in European society! + +One may say that for two years the connection of the revolutionary +movement with arms had no aspect save that of civil war. True, whenever +a considerable change is in progress in society the possibility of +foreign war in connection with it must always arise. Were some European +State, for instance, to make an experiment in Collectivism to-day, the +chance of foreign intervention would certainly be discussed by the +promoters of that experiment. But no serious danger of an armed struggle +between the French and any of their neighbours in connection with the +political experiment of the Revolution was imagined by the mass of +educated men in France itself nor without the boundaries of France +during those first two years. And, I repeat, the military aspect of +those years was confined to civil tumult. Nevertheless, that aspect is +not to be neglected. The way in which the French organised their civil +war (and there was always something of it present from the summer of +1789 onwards) profoundly affected the foreign war that was to follow: +for in their internal struggles great masses of Frenchmen became +habituated to the physical presence, millions to the discussion, of +arms. + +It is, as we have seen in another part of this book, a repeated and +conspicuous error to imagine that the first revolutionary outbreaks were +not met sufficiently sternly by royal troops. On the contrary, the royal +troops were used to the utmost and were defeated. The populace of the +large towns, and especially of Paris, proved itself capable of military +organisation and of military action. When to this capacity had been +added the institution of the militia called the National Guard, there +were already the makings of a nation wholly military. + +Much in this exceptional and new position must be ascribed to the Gallic +character. It may be said that from the fall of the Roman Empire to the +present day that character has been permanently and of its own volition +steeped in the experience of organised fighting. Civil tumult has been +native to it, the risk of death in defence of political objects has been +equally familiar, and the whole trade of arms, its necessary +organisation, its fatigues and its limiting conditions, have been very +familiar to the population throughout all these centuries. But beyond +this the fact that the Revolution prepared men in the school of civil +tumult was of the first advantage for its later aptitude against foreign +Powers. + +It is always well in history to fix a definite starting-point for any +political development, and the starting-point of the revolutionary wars +may easily be fixed at the moment when Louis, his queen and the royal +children attempted to escape to the frontier and to the Army of the +Centre under the command of Bouillé. This happened, as we have seen, in +June 1791. + +Many factors combine to make that date the starting-point. In the first +place, until that moment no actual proof had been apparent in the eyes +of European monarchs of the captivity of their chief exemplar, the king +of France. + +The wild march upon Versailles, in the days of October 1789, had its +parallel in a hundred popular tumults with which Europe was familiar +enough for centuries. But the rapidly succeeding reforms of the year +1790, and even the great religious blunder of 1791, had received the +signature and the public assent of the Crown. The Court, though no +longer at Versailles, was splendid, the power of the King over the +Executive still far greater than that of any other organ in the State, +and indefinitely greater than that of any other individual in the State. +The talk of captivity, of insult and the rest, the outcries of the +emigrants and the perpetual complaint of the French royal family in its +private relations, seemed exaggerated, or at any rate nothing to act +upon, until there came the shock of the King’s attempted flight and +recapture. This clinched things; and it clinched them all the more +because more than one Court, and especially that of Austria, believed +for some days that the escape had been successful. + +Again, the flight and its failure put the army into a ridiculous +posture. Action against the Revolution was never likely, so long as the +discipline and steadiness of the French army were believed in abroad. +But the chief command had hopelessly failed upon that occasion, and it +was evident that the French-speaking troops could not easily be trusted +by the Executive Government or by their own commanders. Furthermore, the +failure of the flight leads the Queen, with her vivacity of spirit and +her rapid though ill-formed plans, to turn for the first time to the +idea of military intervention. Her letters suggesting this (in the form +of a threat rather than a war, it is true) do not begin until after her +capture at Varennes. + +Finally, coincident with that disaster was the open mention of a +Republic, the open suggestion that the King should be deposed, and the +first definite and public challenge to the principles of monarchy which +the Revolution had thrown down before Europe. + +We are, therefore, not surprised to find that this origin of the +military movement was followed in two months by the Declaration of +Pillnitz. + +With the political nature of that Declaration one must deal elsewhere. +Its military character must here be observed. + +The Declaration of Pillnitz corresponded as nearly as possible to what +in the present day would be an order preparatory to mobilising a certain +proportion of the reserve. It cannot with justice be called equivalent +to an order _calling out_ all the reserves, still less equivalent to an +order mobilising upon a war footing the forces of a modern nation, for +such an action is tantamount to a declaration of war (as, for instance, +was the action of the English Government before the South African +struggle), and Pillnitz was very far from that. But Pillnitz was +certainly as drastic a military proceeding as would be the public +intimation by a group of Powers that the reserves had been warned in +connection with their quarrel against another Power. It was, for +instance, quite as drastic as the action of Austria against Servia in +1908. And it was intended to be followed by such submission as is +expected to follow upon the threat of superior force. + +Such was the whole burden of Marie Antoinette’s letters to her brother +(who had called the meeting at Pillnitz), and such was the sense in +which the politicians of the Revolution understood it. + +All that autumn and winter the matter chiefly watched by foreign +diplomatists and the clearest of French thinkers was the condition of +the French forces and of their command. Narbonne’s appointment to the +War Office counted more than any political move, Dumouriez’ succession +to him was the event of the time. Plans of campaign were drawn up (and +promptly betrayed by Marie Antoinette to the enemy), manifold occasions +for actual hostilities were discovered, the Revolution challenged the +Emperor in the matter of the Alsatian princes, the Emperor challenged, +through Kaunitz, the Revolution in a letter directly interfering with +the internal affairs of France, and pretending to a right of _ingérence_ +therein; and on the 20th of April, 1792, war was declared against the +Empire. Prussia thereupon informed the French Government that she made +common cause with the Emperor, and the revolutionary struggle had begun. + +The war discovered no serious features during its first four months: so +slow was the gathering and march of the Allies; but the panics into +which the revolutionary troops fell in the first skirmishes, their lack +of discipline, and the apparent breakdown of the French military power, +made the success of the Invasion in Force, when it should come, seem +certain. The invading army did not cross the frontier until more than a +week after the fall of the palace. Longwy capitulated at once; a week +later, in the last days of August, the great frontier fortress of Verdun +was summoned. It capitulated almost immediately. + + +TWO + +On the 2nd of September Verdun was entered by the Prussians, and a +little outside the gates of the town, near a village bearing the name of +Regret, the allied camp was fixed. Rather more than a week later, on the +11th, the Allies marched against the line of the Argonne. + +The reader will remember that this moment, with the loss of the frontier +fortresses Longwy and Verdun, and the evidence of demoralisation which +that afforded, was also the moment of the September massacres and of the +horrors in Paris. Dumouriez and the mixed French force which he +commanded had been ordered by the Ministers of War to hold the line of +the Argonne against which the Allies were marching. And here it is well +to explain what was meant in a military sense by this word “line.” + +The Argonne is a long, nearly straight range of hills running from the +south northward, a good deal to the west of north. + +Their soil is clay, and though the height of the hills is only three +hundred feet above the plain, their escarpment or steep side is towards +the east, whence an invasion may be expected. They are densely wooded, +from five to eight miles broad, the supply of water in them is bad, in +many parts undrinkable; habitation with its provision for armies and +roads extremely rare. It is necessary to insist upon all these details +because the greater part of civilian readers find it difficult to +understand how formidable an obstacle so comparatively unimportant a +feature in the landscape may be to an army upon the march. It was quite +impossible for the guns, the wagons, and therefore the food and the +ammunition of the invading army, to pass through the forest over the +drenched clay land of that wet autumn save where proper roads existed. +These were only to be found wherever a sort of natural pass negotiated +the range. + +Three of these passes alone existed, and to this day there is very +little choice in the crossing of these hills. The accompanying sketch +will explain their disposition. Through the southernmost went the great +high road from the frontier and Verdun to Paris. At the middle one +(which is called the Gap of Grandpré) Dumouriez was waiting with his +incongruous army. The third and northern one was also held, but less +strongly. The obvious march for an unimpeded invader would have been +from Verdun along the high road, through the southern pass at “Les +Islettes,” and so to Chalôns and on to Paris. But Dumouriez, marching +down rapidly from the north, had set an advanced guard to hold that pass +and was lying himself with the mass of the army on the pass to the north +of it at Grandpré. Against Grandpré the Prussians marched, and meanwhile +the Austrians were attacking the further pass to the north. Both were +forced. Dumouriez fell back southward to St. Menehould. Meanwhile +Kellermann was coming up from Metz to join him, and all the while the +main pass at “Les Islettes,” through which the great road to Paris went, +continued to be held by the French. + +[Illustration: Sketch Map, showing the turning of the positions on the +Argonne and the Cannonade at Valmy, September 1792.] + +The Prussians and the Austrians joined forces in the plain known as the +Champagne Pouilleuse, which lies westward of Argonne. It will be seen +that as they marched south along this plain to meet Dumouriez and to +defeat him, their position was a peculiar one: they were nearer the +enemy’s capital than the enemy’s army was, and yet they had to fight +with their backs to that capital, and their enemy the French had to +fight with their faces towards it. Moreover, it must be remarked that +the communications of the Allied Army were now of a twisted, roundabout +sort, which made the conveyance of provisions and ammunition slow and +difficult--but they counted upon an immediate destruction of Dumouriez’ +force and after that a rapid march on the capital. + +On September 19 Kellermann came up from the south and joined hands with +Dumouriez near St. Menehould, and on the morning of the 20th his force +occupied a roll of land on which there was a windmill and immediately +behind which was the village of Valmy; from this village the ensuing +action was to take its name. It must here be insisted upon that both +armies had been subjected to the very worst weather for more than a +fortnight, but of the two the Prussian force had suffered from this +accident much more severely than the French. Dysentery had already +broken out, and the length and tortuousness of their communications were +greatly emphasised by the condition of the roads. + +On the morning of that day, the 20th of September, a mist impeded all +decisive movements. There was an encounter, half accidental, between an +advanced French battery and the enemy’s guns, but it was not until +mid-morning that the weather lifted enough to show each force its +opponent. Then there took place an action, or rather a cannonade, the +result of which is more difficult to explain, perhaps, than any other +considerable action of the revolutionary wars. For some hours the +Prussian artillery, later reinforced by the Austrian, cannonaded the +French position, having for its central mark the windmill of Valmy, +round which the French forces were grouped. At one moment this cannonade +took effect upon the limbers and ammunition wagons of the French; there +was an explosion which all eye-witnesses have remembered as the chief +feature of the firing, and which certainly threw into confusion for some +moments the ill-assorted troops under Kellermann’s command. At what hour +this took place the witnesses who have left us accounts differ to an +extraordinary extent. Some will have it at noon, others towards the +middle of the afternoon--so difficult is it to have any accurate account +of what happens in the heat of an action. At any rate, if not +coincidently with this success, at some moment not far removed from it, +the Prussian charge was ordered, and it is here that the difficulties of +the historian chiefly appear. That charge was never carried home; +whether, as some believe, because it was discovered, after it was +ordered, to be impossible in the face of the accuracy and intensity of +the French fire, or whether, as is more probably the case, because the +drenched soil compelled the commanders to abandon the movement after it +had begun--whatever the cause may have been, the Prussian force, though +admirably disciplined and led, and though advancing in the most exact +order, failed to carry out its original purpose. It halted halfway up +the slope, and the action remained a mere cannonade without immediate +result apparent upon either side. + +Nevertheless that result ultimately turned out to be very great, and if +we consider its place in history, quite as important as might have been +the result of a decisive action. In the first place, the one day’s delay +which it involved was just more than the calculations of the Allies, +with their long impeded line of communications, had allowed for. In the +next place, a singular increase in determination and moral force was +infused into the disheartened and ill-matched troops of the French +commanders by this piece of resistance. + +We must remember that the French force upon the whole expected and +discounted a defeat, the private soldier especially had no confidence in +the result; and to find that at the first action which had been so long +threatened and had now at last come, he could stand up to the enemy, +produced upon him an exaggerated effect which it would never have had +under other circumstances. + +Finally, we must recollect that whatever causes had forbidden the +Prussian charge forbade on the next day a general advance against the +French position. And all the time the sickness in the Prussian camp was +rapidly increasing. Even that short check of twenty-four hours made a +considerable difference. A further delay of but yet another day, during +which the Allied Army could not decide whether to attack at once or to +stand as they were, very greatly increased the list of inefficients from +illness. + +For a whole week of increasing anxiety and increasing inefficiency the +Allied Army hung thus, impotent, though they were between the French +forces and the capital. Dumouriez ably entertained this hesitation, with +all its accumulating dangers for the enemy, by prolonged negotiations, +until upon the 30th of September the Prussian and Austrian organisation +could stand the strain no longer, and its commanders determined upon +retreat. It was the genius of Danton, as we now know, that chiefly +organised the withdrawal of what might still have been a dangerous +invading force. It is principally due to him that no unwise Jingoism was +permitted to claim a trial of strength with the invader, that he was +allowed to retire with all his guns, his colours and his train. The +retreat was lengthy and unmolested, though watched by the French forces +that discreetly shepherded it but were kept tightly in hand from Paris. +It was more than three weeks later when the Allied Army, upon which +Europe and the French monarchy had counted for an immediate settlement +of the Revolution, re-crossed the frontier, and in this doubtful and +perhaps inexplicable fashion the first campaign of the European Powers +against the Revolution utterly failed. + + +THREE + +Following upon this success, Dumouriez pressed on to what had been, from +the first moment of his power at the head of the army, his personal +plan--to wit, the invasion of the Low Countries. + +To understand why this invasion failed and why Dumouriez thought it +might succeed, we must appreciate the military and political situation +of the Low Countries at the time. They then formed a very wealthy and +cherished portion of the Austrian dominions; they had latterly suffered +from deep disaffection culminating in an open revolution, which was due +to the Emperor of Austria’s narrow and intolerant contempt of religion. +From his first foolish policy of persecution and confiscation he had +indeed retreated, but the feeling of the people was still strongly +opposed to the Government at Vienna. It is remarkable, indeed, and in +part due to the pressure of a strongly Protestant and aristocratic +state, Holland, to the north of them, that the people of the Austrian +Netherlands retained at that time a peculiar attachment to the Catholic +religion. The Revolution was quite as anti-Catholic as the Austrian +Emperor, but of the persecution of the latter the Belgians (as we now +call them) knew something; that of the former they had not yet learnt to +dread. It was, therefore, Dumouriez’ calculation that, in invading this +province of the Austrian power, he would be fighting in friendly +territory. Again, it was separated from the political centre of the +empire; it was, therefore, more or less isolated politically, and even +for military purposes communication with it was not so easy, unless, +indeed, Austria could count on a complete co-operation with Prussia, +which Power had been for now so long her ruthless and persistent rival. + +[Illustration: Sketch Map of towns occupied by French in 1792 and +evacuated in March 1793, with sites of battles of Jemappes and of +Neerwinden, and of Dumouriez’ treason.] + +Favourable, however, as the circumstances appeared for an invasion, two +factors telling heavily against the French had to be counted: the first +was the formation of their army, the second the spirit of rebellion +against any anti-Catholic Government which had given such trouble to +Joseph II. + +Of these two factors by far the most important was, of course, the +first. If the French forces had been homogeneous, in good spirit, and +well trained, they might have held what they won; as a fact, they were +most unhomogeneous, great portions of them were ill trained, and, worst +of all, there was no consistent theory of subordinate command. Men who +imagined that subordinate, that is, regimental, command in an army +could be erected from below, and that a fighting force could resemble a +somewhat lax and turbulent democracy, marched alongside of and were +actually incorporated with old soldiers who had spent their whole +careers under an unquestioned discipline, and under a subordinate +command which came to them they knew not whence, and as it were by fate. +The mere mixture of two such different classes of men in one force would +have been bad enough to deal with, but what was worse, the political +theories of the day fostered the military error of the new battalions +though the politicians dared not interfere with the valuable +organisation of the old. + +The invasion of the Low Countries began with a great, though somewhat +informal and unfruitful success, in the victory of Jemappes. It was the +first striking and dramatic decisive action which the French, always of +an eager appetite for such news, had been given since between forty and +fifty years. The success in America against the English, though +brilliantly won and solidly founded, had not presented occasions of this +character, and Fontenoy was the last national victory which Paris could +remember. Men elderly or old in this autumn of 1792 would have been boys +or very young men when Fontenoy was fought. The eager generation of the +Revolution, with its military appetites and aptitudes, as yet had hardly +expected victory, though victory was ardently desired by them and +peculiarly suitable to their temper. + +It may be imagined, therefore, what an effect the news of Jemappes had +upon the political world in Paris. The action was fought just below the +town of Mons, a few miles over the frontier, and consisted in a somewhat +ill-ordered but successful advance across the River Haine. Whether +because the Austrians, with an inferior force, attempted to hold too +long a line, or because the infantry and even the new French volunteer +battalions, as yet untried by fatigue, proved irresistible in the centre +of the movement, Jemappes was a victory so complete that the attempts of +apologists to belittle it only serve to enhance its character. + +Like many another great and apparently decisive action, however, it bore +no lasting fruit. Both the factors of which I have spoken above appeared +immediately after this success. Belgium was, indeed, over-run by the +French, but in their over-running of it with something like eighty +thousand men, they made no attempt to spare the traditions or to +conciliate the sympathies of the inhabitants. Hardly was Jemappes won +when Mons, the neighbouring fortified frontier town, was at once endowed +with the whole machinery of revolutionary government. Church property +was invaded and occasionally rifled, and the French paper money, the +assignats of which we have heard, poured in to disturb and in places to +ruin the excellent commercial system upon which Belgium then as now +reposed. + +Jemappes was fought upon the 6th of November, 1792. Brussels was entered +upon the 14th, and throughout that winter the Low Countries lay +entirely in the hands of the French. The Commissioners from the +Convention, though endowing Belgium with republican institutions, +treated it as a conquered country, and before the breaking of spring, +the French Parliament voted its annexation to France. This annexation, +the determination of the politicians in Paris that the new Belgian +Government should be republican and anti-Catholic, the maltreatment of +the Church in the occupied country and the increasing ill discipline and +lack of cohesion in his army, left Dumouriez in a position which grew +more and more difficult as the new year, 1793, advanced. It must be +remembered that this moment exactly corresponded with the execution of +the King and the consequent declaration of war by or against France in +the case of one Power after another throughout Europe. Meanwhile, it was +decided, foolishly enough, to proceed from the difficult occupation of +Belgium to the still more difficult occupation of Holland, and the siege +of Maestricht was planned. + +The moment was utterly ill-suited for such a plan. Every Executive in +the civilised world was coalescing openly or secretly, directly or +indirectly, against the revolutionary Government. The first order to +retreat came upon the 8th of March, when the siege of Maestricht was +seen to be impossible, and when the great forces of the Allies were +gathered again to attempt what was to be the really serious attack upon +the Revolution: something far more dangerous, something which much more +nearly achieved success, than the march of the comparatively small force +which had been checked at Valmy. + +For ten days the French retreat continued, when, upon the 18th of March, +Dumouriez risked battle at Neerwinden. His army was defeated. + +The defeat was not disastrous, the retreat was continued in fairly good +order, but a civilian population understands nothing besides the words +defeat and victory; it can appreciate a battle, not a campaign. The news +of the defeat, coming at a moment of crisis in the politics of Paris, +was decisive; it led to grave doubts of Dumouriez’ loyalty to the +revolutionary Government, it shattered his popularity with those who had +continued to believe in him, while the general himself could not but +believe that the material under his command was rapidly deteriorating. +Before the end of the month the army had abandoned all its conquests, +and Valenciennes, in French territory, was reached upon the 27th. The +dash upon Belgium had wholly failed. + +At this moment came one of those political acts which so considerably +disturb any purely military conspectus of the revolutionary wars. +Dumouriez, at the head of his army, which, though in retreat and +defeated, was still intact, determined upon what posterity has justly +called treason, but what to his own mind must have seemed no more than +statesmanship. He proposed an understanding with the enemy and a +combined march upon Paris to restore the monarchical government, and +put an end to what seemed to him, as a soldier, a perfectly hopeless +situation. He certainly believed it impossible for the French army, in +the welter of 1793, to defeat the invader. He saw his own life in peril +merely because he was defeated. He had no toleration for the rising +enthusiasm or delirium of the political theory which had sent him out, +and, even before he had reached French territory, his negotiations with +Coburg, the Austrian commander, had begun. They lasted long. Dumouriez +agreed to put the frontier fortresses of the French into the hands of +the enemy as a guarantee and a pledge; and on the 5th of April all was +ready for the alliance of the two armed forces. + +But just as the treason of Dumouriez is, in the military sense, abnormal +and disturbing to any general conspectus of the campaign, so was the +action of his army. + +The doubtful point of a general command which is political in nature, +and may be unpopular with the rank and file, lies, of course, in the +attitude of the commanders of units, and these unanimously refused to +obey the orders of their chief. It was known that Dumouriez had been +summoned to the bar of the Convention, which body had sent commissioners +to apprehend him. He had arrested the commissioners, and had handed them +over as hostages and prisoners to Coburg. So far from Dumouriez upon the +critical day handing over his force to the enemy, or constituting it a +part of an allied army to march upon the capital, he was compelled to +fly upon the 8th of April; all that disappeared with him, counting many +who later deserted back again to the French colours, was less than a +thousand men--and these foreign mercenaries. + +The consequence of this strange passage upon the political history of +the time we have already seen. Its consequence upon the military history +of it was indirect but profound. The French forces, such as they were, +were still intact, but no general officer could in future be trusted by +Paris, and the stimulus which nations in the critical moments of +invasion and of danger during foreign war seek in patriotism, in the +offering of a high wage to the men and of honours and fortunes to their +commanders, was now sought by the French in the singular, novel and +abnormal experiment of the Terror. Command upon the frontier throughout +1793 and the first part of 1794, during the critical fourteen months, +that is, which decided the fate of the Revolution, and which turned the +tide of arms in favour of the French, was a task accomplished under the +motive power of capital punishment. A blunder was taken as a proof of +treason, and there lay over the ordering of every general movement the +threat of the guillotine. + +What we have now to follow is somewhat over a year of a struggle thus +abnormally organised upon the French side, and finally successful +through the genius of a great organiser, once a soldier, now a +politician, Carnot. The French succeeded by the unshakable conviction +which permitted the political leaders to proceed to all extremity in +their determination to save the Revolution; by the peculiar physical +powers of endurance which their army displayed, and finally, of course, +by certain accidents--for accident will always be a determining factor +in war. + +The spring of 1793, the months of April and May, form the first crisis +of the revolutionary war. The attack about to be delivered is universal, +and seems absolutely certain to succeed. With the exception of the rush +at Jemappes, where less than thirty thousand Austrians were broken +through by a torrent superior in numbers (though even there obviously +ill-organised), no success had attended the revolutionary armies. Their +condition was, even to the eye of the layman, bad, and to the eye of the +expert hopeless. There was no unity apparent in direction, there were +vast lesions in the discipline of the ranks like great holes torn in +some rotten fabric. Even against the forces already mobilised against +it, it had proved powerless, and it might be taken for granted that by +an act more nearly resembling police work than a true campaign, the +Allies would reach Paris and something resembling the old order be soon +restored. What remains is to follow the process by which this +expectation was disappointed. + +The situation at this moment can best be understood by a glance at the +sketch map on p. 178. Two great French advances had been made in the +winter of 1792-93; the one a northern advance, which we have just +detailed, the over-running of Belgium; the other an eastern advance +right up to the Rhine and to the town of Mayence. Both had failed. The +failure in Belgium, culminating in the treason of Dumouriez, has been +read. On the Rhine (where Mayence had been annexed by the French +Parliament just as Belgium had been) the active hostility of the +population and the gathering of the organised forces of the Allies had +the same effect as had been produced in the Low Countries. + +It was on March 21, 1793, that the Prussians crossed the Rhine at +Bacharach, and within that week the French commander, Custine, began to +fall back. On the first of April he was back again in French territory, +leaving the garrison of Mayence, somewhat over twenty thousand men, to +hold out as best it could; a fortnight later the Prussians had +surrounded the town and the siege had begun. + +On the north-eastern front, stretching from the Ardennes to the sea, a +similar state of things was developing. There, a barrier of fortresses +stood between the Allies and Paris, and a series of sieges corresponding +to the siege of Mayence in the east had to be undertaken. At much the +same time as the investment of Mayence, on April 9, the first step in +this military task was taken by the Allies moving in between the +fortress of Condé and the fortress of Valenciennes. Thenceforward it was +the business of the Austrians under Coburg, with the Allies that were to +reach him, to reduce the frontier fortresses one by one, and when his +communications were thus secure, to march upon Paris. + +It is here necessary for the reader unacquainted with military history +to appreciate two points upon which not a little of contemporary +historical writing may mislead him. The first is that both in the Rhine +valley and on the Belgian frontier the forces of the Allies in their +numbers and their organisation were conceived to be overwhelming. The +second is that no competent commander on the spot would have thought of +leaving behind him the garrison of even one untaken fortress. It is +important to insist upon these points, because the political passions +roused by the Revolution are still so strong that men can hardly write +of it without prejudice and bias, and two errors continually present in +these descriptions of the military situation in the spring of 1793, are, +first, that the Allies were weakened by the Polish question, which was +then active, and secondly, that the delay of their commanders before the +French fortresses was unnecessary. + +Both these propositions are put forward with the object of explaining +the ultimate defeat of the enemies of the Revolution: both, however +great the authority behind them, are unhistorical and worthless. The +French success was a military success due to certain military factors +both of design and accident, which will appear in what follows. The +Allies played their part as all the art of war demanded it to be played; +they were ultimately defeated, not from the commission of any such +gross and obvious error in policy or strategy as historians with too +little comprehension of military affairs sometimes pretend, but from the +military superiority of their opponents. + +It is true that the Polish question (that is the necessity the Austrian +and Prussian Governments were each under of watching that the other was +not lessened in importance by the approaching annexations of further +Polish territory with the consequent jealousy and mistrust that arose +from this between Austria and Prussia) was a very important feature of +the moment. But it is bad military history to pretend that this affected +the military situation on the Rhine or in the Netherlands. + +Every campaign is conditioned by its political object. The political +object in this case was to march upon and to occupy Paris. The political +object of a campaign once determined, the size and the organisation of +the enemy are calculated and a certain force is brought against it. No +much larger force is brought than is necessary: to act in such a fashion +would be in military art what paying two or three times the price of an +article would be in commerce. The forces of the Allies upon the Rhine +and in the Netherlands were, in the opinion of every authority of the +time, amply sufficient for their purpose; and more than sufficient: so +much more than sufficient that the attitude of that military opinion +which had to meet the attack--to wit, the professional military opinion +of the French republican soldiers, was that the situation was +desperate, nor indeed was it attempted to be met save by a violent and, +as it were, irrational enthusiasm. + +The second point, the so-called “delay” involved in the sieges +undertaken by the Allies, proves, when it is put forward, an +insufficient acquaintance with contemporary conditions. Any fortress +with a considerable garrison left behind untaken would have meant the +destruction of the Austrian or Prussian communications, and their +destruction at a moment when the Austrian and Prussian forces were +actually advancing over a desperately hostile country. Moreover, when +acting against forces wholly inferior in discipline and organisation, an +untaken fortress is a refuge which one must take peculiar pains to +destroy. To throw himself into such a refuge will always stand before +the commander of those inferior forces as a last resource. It is a +refuge which he will certainly avail himself of ultimately, if it is +permitted to him. And when he has so availed himself of it, it means the +indefinite survival of an armed organisation in the rear of the +advancing invaders. We must conclude, if we are to understand this +critical campaign which changed the history of the world, that Coburg +did perfectly right in laying siege to one fortress after another before +he began what every one expected to be the necessarily successful +advance on Paris. The French despair, as one town after another +surrendered, is an amply sufficient proof of the excellence of his +judgment. + +We approach the military problem of 1793, therefore, with the following +two fields clear before us:-- + +1. In the north-east an advance on Paris, the way to which is blocked by +a quadrilateral of fortresses: Mons, Maubeuge, Condé, and Valenciennes, +with the subsidiary stronghold of Lequesnoy in the neighbourhood of the +last. Mons has been in Austrian hands since Dumouriez’ retreat; Condé is +just cut off from Valenciennes by Coburg’s advance, but has not fallen; +Valenciennes and the neighbouring Lequesnoy are still intact, and so is +Maubeuge. All must be reduced before the advance on Paris can begin. +Behind these fortresses is a French army incapable as yet of attacking +Coburg’s command with any hope of success. Such is the position in the +last fortnight of April. + +2. Meanwhile, on the Rhine the French garrison in Mayence is besieged; +Custine, the French commander in that quarter, has fallen back on the +French town of Landau, and is drawing up what are known in history as +the Lines of Weissembourg. The accompanying sketch map explains their +importance. Reposing upon the two obstacles of the river on the right +and the mountains on the left, they fulfilled precisely the same +functions as a fortress; and those functions we have just described. +Until these lines were carried, the whole of Alsace may be regarded as a +fortress defended by the mountains and the river on two sides, and by +the Lines of Weissembourg on the third. + +A reader unacquainted with military history may ask why the obstruction +was not drawn upon the line of the Prussian advance on Paris. The answer +is that the presence of a force behind fortifications anywhere in the +neighbourhood of a line of communication is precisely equivalent to an +obstacle lying right upon those lines. For no commander can go forward +along the line of his advance and leave a large undestroyed force close +to one side of that line, and so situated that it can come out when he +has passed and cut off his communications; for it is by communications +that an army lives, especially when it is marching in hostile country. + +[Illustration: Strategic situation in early summer of 1793. Mayence +besieged, Condé and Valenciennes about to be besieged. Conditions of the +double advance on Paris.] + +Custine, therefore, behind his Lines of Weissembourg, and the besieged +garrison in Mayence, correspond to the barrier of fortresses on the +north-east and delayed the advance of the Prussians under Wurmser and +Brunswick from the Rhine, just as Condé, Valenciennes, and Maubeuge +prevented the advance of Coburg on the north-east. Such in general was +the situation upon the eastern frontier at the end of that month of +April, 1793. + + +FOUR + +Let us first follow the development of the northern position. It will be +remembered that all Europe was at war against the French. The Austrians +had for allies Dutch troops which joined them at this moment, and +certain English and Hanoverian troops under the Duke of York who also +joined them. + +At this moment, when Coburg found himself in increasing strength, a +tentative French attack upon him was delivered and failed. Dampierre, +who was in command of all this French “Army of the North,” was killed, +and Custine was sent to replace him. The Army of the North did not, as +perhaps it should have done, concentrate into one body to meet Coburg’s +threatened advance; it was perpetually attempting diversions which were +useless because its strength was insufficient. Now it feinted upon the +right towards Namur, now along the sea coast on the left; and these +diversions failed in their object. Before the end of the month, Coburg, +to give himself elbow room, as it were, for the sieges which he was +preparing, compelled the main French force to retreat to a position well +behind Valenciennes. It was immediately after this success of Coburg’s +that Custine arrived to take command on the Belgian frontier, his place +on the Rhine being taken by Houchard. + +Custine was a very able commander, but a most unlucky one. His plan was +the right one: to concentrate all the French forces (abandoning the +Rhine) and so form an army sufficient to cope with Coburg’s. The +Government would not meet him in this, and he devoted himself +immediately to the reorganisation of the Army of the North alone. The +month of June and half of July was taken up in that task. + +Meanwhile, the Austrian siege work had begun, and Condé was the first +object of its attention. Upon July 10 Condé fell. Meanwhile Custine had +been recalled to Paris, and Valenciennes was invested. Custine was +succeeded by Kilmaine, a general of Irish extraction, who maintained his +position for but a short time, and was unable while he maintained it to +do anything. The forces of the Allies continually increased. The number +at Coburg’s disposal free from the business of besieging Valenciennes +was already larger than the force required for that purpose. And yet +another fifteen thousand Hessian troops marched in while the issue of +that siege was in doubt. This great advantage in numbers permitted him +to get rid of the main French force that was still present in front of +him, though not seriously annoying him. + +This force lay due south-west of Valenciennes, and about a day’s march +distant. He depended for the capture of it upon his English and +Hanoverian Allies under the Duke of York, but that general’s march +failed. The distance was too much for his troops in the hot summer +weather, and the French were able to retreat behind the line of the +Scarpe and save their army intact. + +The Duke of York’s talents have been patriotically exaggerated in many a +treatise. He always failed: and this was among the most signal of his +failures. + +Kilmaine had hardly escaped from York, drawn up his army behind the +Scarpe and put it into a position of safety when he in his turn was +deprived of the command, and Houchard was taken from the Rhine just as +Custine had been, and put at the head of the Army of the North. Before +the main French army had taken up this position of safety, Valenciennes +had fallen. It fell on the 28th of July, and its fall, inevitable though +it was and, as one may say, taken for granted by military opinion, was +much the heaviest blow yet delivered. Nothing of importance remained to +block the march of the Armies of the Allies, save Maubeuge. + +At about the same moment occurred three very important changes in the +general military situation, which the reader must note if he is to +understand what follows. + +The first was the sudden serious internal menace opposed to the +Republican Government; the second was the advent of Carnot to power; the +third was the English diversion upon Dunquerque. + +The serious internal menace which the Government of the Republic had to +face was the widespread rebellion which has been dealt with in the +earlier part of this book. The action of the Paris Radicals against the +Girondins had raised whole districts in the provinces. Marseilles, which +had shown signs of disaffection since April, and had begun to raise a +local reactionary force, revolted. So did Bordeaux, Nîmes, and other +great southern towns. Lyons had risen at the end of May and had killed +the Jacobin mayor of the town in the period between the fall of Condé +and that of Valenciennes. The troop which Marseilles had raised against +the Republic was defeated in the field only the day before Valenciennes +fell, but the great seaport was still unoccupied by the forces of the +Government. The Norman march upon Paris had also failed between those +two dates, the fall of Condé and the fall of Valenciennes. The Norman +bark had proved worse than the Norman bite; but the force was so +neighbouring to the capital that it took a very large place in the +preoccupations of the time. The Vendean revolt, though its triumphant +advance was checked before Nantes a fortnight before the fall of Condé, +was still vigorous, and the terrible reprisals against it were hardly +begun. Worst of all, or at least, worst perhaps, after the revolt of +Lyons, was the defection of Toulon. Toulon rose two days before the fall +of Valenciennes, and was prepared to hand itself over (as at last it did +hand itself over) to occupation by the English fleet. + +The dates thus set in their order may somewhat confuse the reader, and I +will therefore summarise the general position of the internal danger +thus: A man in the French camp on the Scheldt, listening to the guns +before Valenciennes fifteen miles away, and hourly expecting their +silence as a signal that the city had surrendered, would have heard by +one post after another how Marseilles still held out against the +Government; how the counter-attack against the successful Vendeans had +but doubtfully begun (all July was full of disasters in that quarter); +how Lyons was furiously successful in her rebellion and had dared to put +to death the Republican mayor of the town; and that the great arsenal +and port at Toulon, the Portsmouth of France upon the Mediterranean, had +sickened of the Government and was about to admit the English fleet. His +only comfort would have been to hear that the Norman march on Paris had +failed--but he would still be under the impression of it and of the +murder of Marat by a Norman woman. + +There is the picture of that sudden internal struggle which coincides +with this moment of the revolutionary war, the moment of the fall of +Condé and of Valenciennes, and the exposure of the frontier. + +The second point, the advent of Carnot into the Committee of Public +Safety, which has already been touched upon in the political part of +this work, has so preponderating a military significance that we must +consider it here also. + +The old Committee of Public Safety, it will be remembered, reached the +end of its legal term on July 10. It was the Committee which the wisdom +of Danton had controlled. The members elected to the new Committee did +not include Carnot, but the military genius of this man was already +public. He came of that strong middle class which is the pivot upon +which the history of modern Europe turns; a Burgundian with lineage, +intensely republican, he had been returned to the Convention and had +voted for the death of the King; a sapper before the Revolution, and one +thoroughly well grounded in his arm and in general reading of military +things, he had been sent by the Convention to the Army of the North on +commission, he had seen its weakness and had watched its experiments. +Upon his return he was not immediately selected for the post in which he +was to transform the revolutionary war. It was not until the 14th of +August that he was given a temporary place upon the Committee which his +talents very soon made permanent. He was given the place merely as a +stopgap to the odious and incompetent fanatic, Saint-André, who was for +the moment away on mission. But from the day of his admission his +superiority in military affairs was so incontestable that he was +virtually a dictator therein, and his first action after the general +lines of organisation had been laid down by him was to impose upon the +frontier armies the necessity of concentration. He introduced what +afterwards Napoleon inherited from him, the tactical venture of “all +upon one throw.” + +It must be remembered that Carnot’s success did not lie in any +revolutionary discovery in connection with the art of war, but rather in +that vast capacity for varied detail which marks the organiser, and in +an intimate sympathy with the national character. He understood the +contempt for parade, the severity or brutality of discipline, the +consciousness of immense powers of endurance which are in the Frenchman +when he becomes a soldier;--and he made use of this understanding of +his. + +It must be further remembered that this powerful genius had behind him +in these first days of his activity the equally powerful genius of +Danton; for it was Danton and he who gave practical shape to that law of +conscription by which the French Revolution suddenly increased its armed +forces by nearly half a million of men, restored the Roman tradition, +and laid the foundation of the armed system on which Europe to-day +depends. With Carnot virtually commander-in-chief of all the armies, and +enabled to impose his decisions in particular upon that Army of the +North which he had studied so recently as a commissioner, the second +factor of the situation I am describing is comprehended. + +The third, as I have said, was the English diversion upon Dunquerque. + +The subsequent failure of the Allies has led to bitter criticism of this +movement. Had the Allies not failed, history would have treated it as +its contemporaries treated it. The forces of the Allies on the +north-eastern frontier were so great and their confidence so +secure--especially after the fall of Valenciennes--that the English +proposal to withdraw their forces for the moment from Coburg’s and to +secure Dunquerque, was not received with any destructive criticism. +Eighteen battalions and fourteen squadrons of the Imperial forces were +actually lent to the Duke of York for this expedition. What is more, +even after that diversion failed, the plan was fixed to begin again when +the last of the other fortresses should have fallen: so little was the +English plan for the capture of the seaport disfavoured by the +commander-in-chief of the Allies. + +That diversion on Dunquerque turned out, however, to be an error of +capital importance. The attempt to capture the city utterly failed, and +the victory which accompanied its repulsion had upon the French that +indefinable but powerful moral effect which largely contributed to their +future successes. + +The accompanying sketch map will explain the position. Valenciennes and +Condé have fallen; Lequesnoy, the small fortress subsidiary to +Valenciennes, has not yet been attacked but comes next in the series, +when the moment was judged propitious for the detachment of the +Anglo-Hanoverian force with a certain number of Imperial Allies to march +to the sea. + +It must always be remembered by the reader of history that military +situations, like the situations upon a chess board, rather happen than +are designed; and the situation which developed at the end of September +upon the extreme north and west of the line which the French were +attempting to hold against the Allies was strategically of this nature. +When the Duke of York insisted upon a division of the forces of the +Allies and an attack upon Dunquerque, no living contemporary foresaw +disaster. + +[Illustration: Showing condition of the frontier fortresses blocking the +road to Paris when the expedition to Dunquerque was decided upon. August +1793.] + +Coburg, indeed, would have preferred the English to remain with him, and +asked them to do so, but he felt in no sort of danger through their +temporary absence, nor, as a matter of fact, was he in any danger +through it. + +Again, though the positions which the Duke of York took up when he +arrived in front of Dunquerque were bad, neither his critics at home, +nor any of his own subordinates, nor any of the enemy, perceived fully +how bad they were. It was, as will presently be seen, a sort of drift, +bad luck combined with bad management, which led to this British +disaster, and (what was all-important for the conduct of the war) to the +first success in a general action which the French had to flatter and +encourage themselves with during all that fatal summer. + +The Duke of York separated his force from that of Coburg just before the +middle of August; besides the British, who were not quite 7,000 strong, +11,000 Austrians, over 10,000 Hanoverians and 7,000 Hessians were under +his command. The total force, therefore, was nearly 37,000 strong. No +one could imagine that, opposed by such troops as the French were able +to put into line, and marching against such wretched defences as those +of Dunquerque then were, the Duke’s army had not a perfectly easy task +before it; and the plan, which was to take Dunquerque and upon the +return to join the Austrian march on Paris, was reasonable and feasible. + +It is important that the reader should firmly seize this and not read +history backward from future events. + +Certain faults are to be observed in the first conduct of the march. It +began on the 15th of August, proceeding from Marchiennes to Menin, and +at the outset displayed that deplorable lack of marching power which the +Duke of York’s command had shown throughout the campaign.[6] From +Marchiennes to Tourcoing is a long day’s march: it took the Duke of York +four days; and, take the march altogether, nine days were spent in +covering less than forty miles. In the course of that march, the British +troops had an opportunity of learning to despise their adversary: they +found at Linselles, upon the flank of their advance, a number of +undisciplined boys who broke the moment the Guards were upon them, and +whose physical condition excited the ridicule of their assailants. The +army proceeded after this purposeless and unfruitful skirmish to the +neighbourhood of the sea coast, and the siege of Dunquerque was +undertaken under conditions which will be clear to the reader from the +following sketch map. + +[Illustration: Operations round Dunquerque. September 1793.] + +The date of the 20th of August must first be fixed in the mind: on that +date the army which was to take Dunquerque was separated into its two +component parts. The first, under the Duke of York, was to attack the +town itself; the second, under the aged Austrian general, Freytag, was +to watch the movement of any approaching enemy and to cover the force +which was besieging the town. Two days later, the Duke of York was +leaving Furnes, which he had made his base for the advance, and Freytag +had with the greatest ease brushed the French posts--mainly of +volunteers--from before him, and was beginning to take up the flanking +positions south and east of Bergues which covered the siege of +Dunquerque. + +Two days later again, on August 24, Freytag had occupied Wormhoudt and +Esquelbecque, capturing guns by the dozen, doing pretty well what he +would with the French outposts, and quite surrounding the town of +Bergues. Wilder was his headquarters. On the same day, the 24th, the +Duke of York had with the greatest ease driven in the advanced posts of +the French before Dunquerque, and shut up the enemy within the town, +while he formed his besieging force outside of it, entrenched in a +position which he had chosen beforehand, reposing upon the sea at his +right, his left on the village of Tetteghem. He was then about 3,000 +yards from the fortifications at Dunquerque. + +Such was the situation upon the dawn of the 25th, when everything was +ready for active operations. And here the reader must look upon the map +for what ultimately proved the ruin of the situation. + +Supposing Freytag round Bergues in the position which the map shows; the +Duke of York in front of Dunquerque as the map also shows him; the two +forces are in touch across the road and the belt of country which unites +Bergues and Dunquerque. The covering army and the besieging force which +it covers are each a wing of one combined body; each communicates with +the other, each can support the other at the main point of effort, and +though between the one and the other eastward there stretches a line of +marshy country--the “meres” which the map indicates--yet a junction +between the two forces exists westward of these, and the two armies can +co-operate by the Bergues-Dunquerque road. + +A factor which the Duke of York may have neglected was the power of +flooding all that flat country round, the road which the French in +Dunquerque, being in possession of the sluices, possessed. They used it +at once: they drowned the low lands to the south of Dunquerque, upon the +very day when the last dispositions of the attacking force were +completed. But more important--and never yet explained--was the +Austrians’ abandonment of Coudequerque. By this error, the main road +itself, standing above the flood, was lost, and from being one strong +army the force of the Allies became two weak ones. Communication was no +longer possible between the Duke of York’s and Freytag’s territories, +and it was of this separation that the French, in spite of their +deplorable organisation and more deplorable personnel, took advantage. + +They took advantage of it slowly. Houchard gathered altogether forty +thousand men near Cassel, but it was ten days before they could be +concentrated. It must again be insisted upon and repeated that, large as +the number was--it was four times as great as Freytag’s now isolated +force--Houchard’s command was made up of men quite two-thirds of whom +were hardly soldiers: volunteers both new and recent, ill-trained +conscripts and so forth. There was no basis of discipline, hardly any +power to enforce it; the men had behaved disgracefully in all the +affairs of outposts, they had been brushed away contemptuously by the +small Austrian force from every position they had held. With all his +numerical superiority the attempt which Houchard was about to make was +very hazardous: and Houchard was a hesitating and uncertain commander. +Furthermore, of the forty thousand men one quarter at least remained out +of action through the ineptitude and political terror of Dumesny, +Houchard’s lieutenant upon the right. + +It was upon the 6th of September that the French advance began along the +whole line; it was a mere pushing in of inferior numbers by superior +numbers, the superior numbers perpetually proving themselves inferior to +the Austrians in military value. Thus, the capture of old Freytag +himself in a night skirmish was at once avenged by the storming of the +village near which he had been caught, and he was re-taken. In actual +fighting and force for force, Houchard’s command found nothing to +encourage it during these first operations. + +The Austrians in falling back concentrated and were soon one compact +body: to attack and dislodge it was the object of the French advance, +but an object hardly to be attained. + +What happened was not only the unexpected success of this advance, but +the gaining by the French of the first decisive action in the long +series which was to terminate twenty years later at Leipsic. + +The army of Freytag fell back upon the village of Hondschoote and stood +there in full force upon the morning of Sunday, the 8th of September. +Houchard attacked it with a force greatly lessened but still double that +of the defenders. So conspicuous, however, was the superiority of the +Austrian regulars over the French raw troops and volunteers that during +this morning of the 8th the result was still doubtful. By the afternoon, +however, the work was done, and the enemy were in a retreat which might +easily have been turned into a rout. A glance at the map will show that +Houchard, had he possessed the initiative common to so many of his +contemporaries, might at once have driven the numerically inferior and +heavily defeated force (it had lost one-third of its men) to the right, +and proceeded himself to cut the communications of the Duke of York and +to destroy his army, which lay packed upon the waterless sand dunes +where the village of Malo-les-Bains now stands. Houchard hesitated; +Freytag escaped; the Duke of York, abandoning his siege-pieces to the +number of forty and much of his heavy baggage, retreated precipitately +through the night to Furnes, right across the front of the French army, +and escaped destruction. + +The Battle of Hoondschoote, therefore, as it is called, raised the siege +of Dunquerque. It was, as I have said, the first successful decisive +action which the Revolution could count since the moment of its extreme +danger and the opening of the general European war. But it was nothing +like what it might have been had Houchard been willing to risk a hardy +stroke. Houchard was therefore recalled, condemned to death, and +executed by the Committee of Public Safety, whose pitiless despotism was +alone capable of saving the nation. He remains the single example of a +general officer who has suffered death for military incompetence after +the gaining of a victory, and his execution is an excellent example of +the way in which the military temper of the Committee, and particularly +of Carnot, refused to consider any factor in the war save those that +make for military success. + +Carnot and the Committee had no patience with the illusions which a +civilian crowd possesses upon mere individual actions: what they saw was +the campaign as a whole, and they knew that Houchard had left the armies +opposite him intact. + +Perhaps his execution was made more certain by the continuance of bad +news from that more important point of the frontier--the direct line of +Austrian advance upon Paris. Here, already, Valenciennes had fallen two +months before, and Condé also. Lequesnoy, the third point of the barrier +line, capitulated on the 11th of September, and the news of that +capitulation reached Paris immediately after the news of Hondschoote. No +fortress was now left between the Allies and the capital but Maubeuge. +Coburg marched upon it at once. + +Not only had he that immense superiority in the quality of his troops +which must be still insisted upon, but numerically also he was three to +one when, on the 28th of September, at dawn, he crossed the Sambre above +and below Maubeuge, and by noon of that day had contained the French +army in that neighbourhood within the lines of the fortress. + +The situation was critical in the extreme: Maubeuge was ill prepared to +stand siege; it was hardly provisioned; its garrison was of varied and, +on the whole, of bad quality. In mere victuals it could stand out for +but a few days, and, worst of all, it had behind it the continued +example of necessary and fatal surrenders which had marked the whole +summer. The orders of the Committee of Public Safety to its commander +were terse: “Your head shall answer for Maubeuge.” After the receipt of +that message no more came through the lines. + +The reader, if he be unaccustomed to military history, does well to note +that in every action and in every campaign there is some one factor of +position or of arms or of time which explains the result. Each has a +pivot or hinge, as it were, upon which the whole turns. It was now upon +Maubeuge that the revolutionary war thus depended. At risk of +oversimplifying a complex story, I would lay this down as the prime +condition for the understanding of the early revolutionary wars: had +Maubeuge fallen, the road to Paris lay open and the trick was +done[7]--and here we must consider again the effect in the field of +Carnot’s genius. + +In the first place, he had provided numbers not on paper, but in +reality; the Committee, through a decree of the Assembly, had +despotically “requisitioned” men, animals, vehicles and supplies. The +levy was a reality. Mere numbers then raw, but increasing, had begun to +pour into the north-east. It was they that had told at Hoondschoote, it +was they that were to tell in front of Maubeuge. + +Secondly, as the Committee supplied the necessary initiative, Carnot +supplied the necessary personality of war. His own will and own brain +could come to one decision in one moment, and did so. It was he, as we +shall see, who won the critical action. He chose Jourdan, a man whose +quaint military career we must reluctantly leave aside in so brief a +study as this, but at any rate an amateur, and put him in Houchard’s +command over the Army of the Northern Frontier, and that command was +extended from right away beyond the Ardennes to the sea. He ordered (and +Jourdan obeyed) the concentration of men from all down that lengthy line +to the right and the left upon one point, Guise. To leave the rest of +the frontier weak was a grave risk only to be excused by very rapid +action and success: both these were to follow. The concentration was +effected in four days. Troops from the extreme north could not come in +time. The furthest called upon were beyond Arras, with sixty-five miles +of route between them and Guise. This division (which shall be typical +of many), not quite eight thousand strong, left on receiving orders in +the morning of the 3rd of October and entered Guise in the course of the +6th. The rate of marching and the synchrony of these movements of +imperfect troops should especially be noted by any one who would +understand how the Revolution succeeded. + +[Illustration: The rapid eight days’ concentration in front of Maubeuge. +October 1783.] + +A second division of over thirteen thousand men followed along the +parallel road, with a similar time table. From the other end of his +line, a detachment under Beauregard, just over four thousand men, was +called up from the extreme right. It will serve as a typical example +upon the eastern side of this lightning concentration. It had been +gathered near Carignan, a town full fourteen miles beyond Sedan. It +picked up reinforcements on the way and marched into Fourmies upon the +11th, after covering just seventy miles in the three and a half days. +With its arrival the concentration was complete, and not a moment too +soon, for the bombardment of Maubeuge was about to begin. From the 11th +to the 15th of October the army was advanced and drawn up in line, a +day’s march in front of Guise, with its centre at Avesnes and facing the +covering army of Coburg, which lay entrenched upon a long wooded crest +with the valley of the Sambre upon its right and the village of +Wattignies, on a sort of promontory of high land, upon its left. + +The Austrian position was reconnoitred upon the 14th. Upon the 15th the +general attack was delivered and badly repelled. When darkness fell upon +that day few in the army could have believed that Maubeuge was +succourable--and it was a question of hours. + +Carnot, however, sufficiently knew the virtues as the vices of his novel +troops, the troops of the great levy, stiffened with a proportion of +regulars, to attempt an extraordinary thing. He marched eight thousand +from his left and centre, over to his right during the night, and in the +morning of the 16th his right, in front of the Austrian left at +Wattignies had, by this conversion, become far the strongest point of +the whole line. + +A dense mist had covered the end of this operation as the night had +covered its inception, and that mist endured until nearly midday. The +Austrians upon the heights had no hint of the conversion, and Wattignies +was only held by three regiments. If they expected a renewed attack at +all, they can only have expected it in the centre, or even upon the left +where the French had suffered most the day before. + +Initiative in war is essentially a calculation of risk, and with high +initiative the risk is high. What Carnot gambled upon (for Jourdan was +against the experiment) when he moved those young men through the night, +was the possibility of getting active work out of them after a day’s +furious action, the forced marches of the preceding week and on top of +it all a sleepless night of further marching. Most of the men who were +prepared to charge on the French right as the day broadened and the mist +lifted on that 16th of October, had been on foot for thirty hours. The +charge was delivered, and was successful. The unexpected numbers thus +concentrated under Wattignies carried that extreme position, held the +height, and arrived, therefore, on the flank of the whole Austrian line, +which, had not the effort of the aggressors exhausted them, would have +been rolled up in its whole length. As it was, the Austrians retreated +unmolested and in good order across the Sambre. The siege of Maubeuge +was raised; and the next day the victorious French army entered the +fortress. + +Thus was successfully passed the turning-point of the revolutionary +wars. + +Two months later the other gate of the country was recovered. In the +moment when Maubeuge was relieved, the enemy had pierced the lines of +Wissembourg. It is possible that an immediate and decisive understanding +among the Allies might then have swept all Alsace; but such an +understanding was lacking. The disarrayed “Army of the Rhine” was got +into some sort of order, notably through the enthusiasm of Hoche and the +silent control of Pichegru. At the end of November the Prussians stood +on the defensive at Kaiserslautern. Hoche hammered at them for three +days without success. What really turned the scale was the floods of men +and material that the levy and the requisitioning were pouring in. Just +before Christmas the enemy evacuated Haguenau. Landau they still held; +but a decisive action fought upon Boxing Day, a true soldiers’ battle, +determined by the bayonet, settled the fate of the Allies on this point. +The French entered Wissembourg again, and Landau was relieved after a +siege of four months and a display of tenacity which had done not a +little to turn the tide of the war. + +Meanwhile the news had come in that the last of the serious internal +rebellions was crushed. Toulon had been re-captured, the English fleet +driven out; the town, the harbour and the arsenal had fallen into the +hands of the French largely through the science of a young major of +artillery (not captain: I have discussed the point elsewhere), +Bonaparte, and this had taken place a week before the relief of Landau. +The last confused horde of La Vendée had been driven from the walls of +Granville in Normandy, to which it had erred and drifted rather than +retreated. At Mans on the 13th of December it was cut to pieces, and at +Savenay on the 23rd, three days before the great victory in Alsace, it +was destroyed. A long peasant-and-bandit struggle, desperate yet hardly +to be called guerilla, continued through the next year behind the hedges +of Lower Brittany and of Vendée, but the danger to the State and to the +Revolution was over. The year 1793 ended, therefore, with the complete +relief of the whole territory of the Republic, save a narrow strip upon +the Belgian frontier, complete domination of it by its Cæsar, the +Committee of Public Safety; with two-thirds of a million of men under +arms, and the future of the great experiment apparently secure. + +The causes of the wonder have been discussed, and will be discussed +indefinitely. Primarily, they resided in the re-creation of a strong +central power; secondly, in the combination of vast numbers and of a +reckless spirit of sacrifice. The losses on the National side were +perpetually and heavily superior to those of the Allies--in Alsace they +had been three to one; and we shall better understand the duel when we +appreciate that in the short eight years between the opening of the war +and the triumph of Napoleon at Marengo, there had fallen in killed and +wounded, on the French side, over seven hundred thousand men. + + +FIVE + +The story of 1794 is but the consequence of what we have just read. It +was the little belt or patch upon the Belgian frontier which was still +in the hands of the enemy that determined the nature of the campaign. + +It was not until spring that the issue was joined. The Emperor of +Austria reached Brussels on the 2nd day of April, and a fortnight later +reviewed his army. The French line drawn up in opposition to it suffered +small but continual reverses until the close of the month. + +On the 29th Clerfayt suffered a defeat which led to the fall, or rather +the escape, of the small garrison of Menin. Clerfayt was beaten again at +Courtray a fortnight later; but all these early engagements in the +campaign were of no decisive moment. Tourcoing was to be the first heavy +blow that should begin to settle matters, Fleurus was to clinch them. + +No battle can be less satisfactorily described in a few lines than that +of Tourcoing, so different did it appear to either combatant, so +opposite are the plans of what was expected on either side, and of what +happened, so confused are the various accounts of contemporaries. The +accusations of treason which nearly always arise after a disaster, and +especially a disaster overtaking an allied force, are particularly +monstrous, and may be dismissed: in particular the childish legend which +pretends that the Austrians desired an English defeat. + +What the French say is that excellent forced marching and scientific +concentration permitted them to attack the enemy before the junction of +his various forces was effected. What the Allies say is (if they are +speaking for their centre) that it was shamefully abandoned and +unsupported by the two wings; if they are speaking for the wings, that +the centre had no business to advance, when it saw that the two wings +were not up in time to co-operate. + +One story goes that the Archduke Charles was incapacitated by a fit; +Lord Acton has lent his considerable authority to this amusing version. +At any rate, what happened was this:-- + +The Allies lay along the river Scheldt on Friday, the 16th of May: +Tournay was their centre, with the Duke of York in command of the chief +force there; five or six miles north, down the river, was one extremity +of their line at a place called Warcoing: it was a body of Hanoverians. +The left, under the Archduke Charles, was Austrian and had reached a +place a day’s march south of Tournay called St. Amand. Over against the +Allies lay a large French force also occupying a wide front of over +fifteen miles, the centre of which was Tourcoing, then a village. Its +left was in front of the fortress of Courtrai. Now, behind the French, +up country northward in the opposite direction from the line of the +Allies on the Scheldt was another force of the Allies under Clerfayt. +The plan was that the Allied right should advance on to Mouscron and +take it. The Allied centre should advance on to Tourcoing and Mouveaux +and take them, while the left should march across the upper waters of +the river Marque, forcing the bridges that crossed that marshy stream, +and come up alongside the centre. In other words, there was to be an +attack all along the French line from the south, and while it was +proceeding, Clerfayt, from the north of the French, was to cross the Lys +and attack also. + +On the day of the 17th what happened was this: The left of the Allies, +marching from St. Amand, came up half a day late; the right of the +Allies took Mouscron, but were beaten out of it by the French. The +centre of the Allies fulfilled their programme, reaching Tourcoing and +its neighbourhood by noon and holding their positions. It is to the +honour of English arms that this success was accomplished by a force a +third of which was British and the most notable bayonet work in which +was done by the Guards. Meanwhile, Clerfayt was late in moving and in +crossing the river Lys, which lay between him and his objective. + +[Illustration: Tourcoing. May 16 to 18, 1794. + +The breakdown of the attempt of the Allies to cut off the French near +Courtrai from Lille was due to their failure to synchronise They should +have been in line from A to B at noon of the 17th with Clerfayt at C.] + +When night fell, therefore, on the first day of the action, a glance at +the map will show that instead of one solid line advancing against the +French from A to B, and the northern force in touch with it at C, the +Allied formation was an absurd projection in the middle, due to the +success of the mixed and half-British force under the Duke of York: a +success which had not been maintained on the two wings. A bulge of this +sort in an attacking line is on the face of it disastrous. The enemy +have only to be rapid in falling upon either flank of it and the bulge +can be burst in. The French were rapid, and burst in the bulge was. By +concentrating their forces against this one central part of the Allies +they fought three to one. + +That same capacity which at Wattignies had permitted them to scorn sleep +and to be indefatigable in marching, put them on the road before three +o’clock in the morning of Sunday, the 18th, and with the dawn they fell +upon the central force of the Allies, attacking it from all three sides. + +It is on this account that the battle is called the Battle of Tourcoing, +for Tourcoing was the most advanced point to which the centre of the +Allies had reached. The Germans, upon the Duke of York’s right at +Tourcoing, felt the first brunt of the attack. The Duke of York himself, +with his mixed, half-British force, came in for the blow immediately +afterwards, and while it was still early morning. The Germans at +Tourcoing began to fall back. The Duke of York’s force, to the left of +them, was left isolated: its commander ought not to have hung on so +long. But the defence was maintained with the utmost gallantry for the +short time during which it was still possible. The retreat began about +nine in the morning and was kept orderly for the first two miles, but +after that point it was a rout. The drivers of the British cannon fled, +and the guns, left without teams, blocked the precipitate flight of the +cavalry. Their disorder communicated itself at once to the Guards, and +to the line. + +Even in this desperate strait some sort of order was restored, notably +by the Guards Brigade, which were apparently the first to form, and a +movement that could still be called a retreat was pursued towards the +south. The Duke of York himself was chased from spinney to spinney and +escaped by a stroke of luck, finding a bridge across the last brook held +by a detachment of Hessians. In this way were the central columns, who +between them numbered not a third of the total force of the Allies, +destroyed. + +Clerfayt had first advanced--but far too late to save the centre--and +then retreated. The Archduke Charles, upon the left, was four hours late +in marching to the help of the Duke of York; the right wing of the +Allies was not even late: it spent the morning in an orderly artillery +duel with the French force opposed to it. By five in the afternoon +defeat was admitted and a general retreat of the Allies ordered. + +I have said that many reasons are given to account for the disaster of +Tourcoing, one of the very few in which a British force has been routed +upon the Continent; but I confess that if I were asked for an +explanation of my own, I would say that it was simply due to the gross +lack of synchrony on the part of the Allies, and that this in its turn +was taken advantage of by the power both of vigil and of marching which +the French troops, still inferior in most military characteristics, had +developed and maintained, and which (a more important matter) their +commanders knew how to use. + +This heavy blow, delivered on the 18th of May, in spite of a successful +rally a week later, finally convinced the Emperor that the march on +Paris was impossible. Eleven days later, on the 29th, it was announced +in the camp of Tournay, upon which the Allied army had fallen back, that +the Emperor had determined to return to Vienna. The Allied army was +indeed still left upon that front, but the French continued to pour up +against it. It was again their numbers that brought about the next and +the final victory. + +Far off, upon the east of that same line, the army which is famous in +history and in song as that of the Sambre et Meuse was violently +attempting to cross the Sambre and to turn the line of the Allies. +Coburg reinforced his right opposite the French left, but numbers had +begun to bewilder him. The enthusiasm of Saint-Just, the science of +Carnot, decided victory at this eastern end of the line. + +Six times the passage of the Sambre had failed. Reinforcements continued +to reach the army, and the seventh attempt succeeded. + +Charleroi, which is the main fortress blocking the passage of the +Sambre at this place, could be, and was, invested when once the river +was crossed by the French. It capitulated in a week. But the evacuation +of Charleroi was but just accomplished when Coburg, seventy thousand +strong, appeared in relief of the city. + +[Illustration: Showing effect of _Ypres_, _Charleroi_ and _Fleurus_ in +wholly throwing back the Allies in June 1794. + +_Ypres_ captured on June 19 by the French, they march on Oudenarde and +pass it on June 25 to 27. Meanwhile _Charleroi_ has also surrendered to +the French, and when, immediately afterwards, the Austrians try to +relieve it, they are beaten at _Fleurus_ and retire on Brussels. + +Thus the English at _Tournai_ and all the Allied Forces at _Condé_, +_Valenciennes_, _Landrecies_, and _Mons_ are imperilled and must +surrender or retire.] + +The plateau above the town where the great struggle was decided, is +known as that of Fleurus, and it was upon the 26th of June that the +armies were there engaged. Never before had forces so equal permitted +the French any success. It had hitherto been the ceaseless +requisitioning of men to supply their insufficient training and command, +which had accomplished the salvation of the country. At Fleurus, though +there was still some advantage on the French side, the numbers were +more nearly equal. + +The action was not determined for ten hours, and on the French centre +and left was nearly lost, when the Reserves’ and Marceau’s obstinacy in +front of Fleurus village itself at last decided it. + +The consequences of the victory were final. As the French right advanced +from Fleurus the French left advanced from Ypres, and the centre became +untenable for the Allies. The four French fortresses which the enemy +still garrisoned in that Belgian “belt” of which I have spoken, were +invested and re-captured. By the 10th of July the French were in +Brussels, the English were beaten back upon Holland, the Austrians +retreating upon the Rhine, and the continuous success of the +revolutionary armies was assured. + + * * * * * + +While these things were proceeding upon land, however, there had +appeared a factor in the war which modern desire for comfort and, above +all, for commercial security has greatly exaggerated, but which the +student will do well to note in its due proportion. This factor was the +military weakness of France at sea. + +In mere numbers the struggle was entered upon with fleets in the ratio +of about two to one, while to the fleet of Great Britain, already twice +as large as its opponent, must be added the fleets of the Allies. But +numbers did not then, nor will they in the future, really decide the +issue of maritime war. It was the supremacy of English gunnery which +turned the scale. This triumphant superiority was proved in the battle +of the 1st of June, 1794. + +The English fleet under Lord Howe attacked the French fleet which was +waiting to escort a convoy of grain into Brest; the forces came in +contact upon the 28th of May, and the action was a running one of three +days. + +Two examples must suffice to prove how determining was the superiority +of the British fire. The _Queen Charlotte_, in the final action, found +herself caught between the _Montagne_ and the _Jacobin_. We have the +figures of the losses during the duel of these two flagships. The _Queen +Charlotte_ lost forty-two men in the short and furious exchange, the +_Montagne_ alone three hundred. Again, consider the total figures. The +number of the crews on both sides was nearly equal, but their losses +were as eleven to five. It cannot be too often repeated that the initial +advantage which the English fleet gained in the great war, which it +maintained and increased as that war proceeded, and which it made +absolute at Trafalgar, was an advantage mainly due to the guns. + +The reader must not expect in a sketch which ends with the fall of +Robespierre any treatise, however short, upon the effect of sea power in +the revolutionary wars. It has of late years been grossly exaggerated, +the reaction which will follow this exaggeration may as grossly belittle +it. It prevented the invasion of England, it permitted the exasperation +and wearing out of the French forces in the Peninsula. But it could not +have determined the fate of Napoleon. That was determined by his Russian +miscalculation and by his subsequent and consequent defeat at Leipsic. + +Upon the early success of the Revolution and the resulting establishment +of European democracy, with which alone these pages deal, sea power was +of no considerable effect. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[6] Incidentally it should be noted how true it is that this supreme +military quality is a matter of organisation rather than of the physical +power of troops; in the Napoleonic wars the marching power of the +English troops was often proved exceptional, and perhaps the greatest of +all feats accomplished by a small body was that of the Light Brigade +marching to the succour of Wellington at Talavera. + +[7] I must not, in fairness to the reader, neglect the great mass of +opinion, from Jomini to Mr. Fortescue’s classic work upon the British +Army, which lays it down that the Allies had but to mask the frontier +fortresses and to advance their cavalry rapidly along the Paris road. +Historical hypothesis can never be more than a matter of judgment, but I +confess that this view has always seemed to me to ignore--as purely +military historians and especially foreign ones might well ignore--the +social condition of “’93.” Cavalry is the weakest of all arms with which +to deal with sporadic, unorganised, but determined resistance. To pass +through the densely populated country of the Paris road may be compared +to the forcing of an open town, and cavalry can never be relied upon for +_that_. As for the army moving as a whole without a perfect security in +its communications, the matter need not even be discussed; and it must +further be remembered that, the moment such an advance began, an +immediate concentration from the north would have fallen upon the +ill-guarded lines of supply. It may be taken that Coburg knew his +business when he sat down before this, the last of the fortresses. + + + + +VI + +THE REVOLUTION AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH + + +The last and the most important of the aspects which the French +Revolution presents to a foreign, and in particular to an English +reader, is the antagonism which arose between it and the Church. + +As this is the most important so it is the most practical of the +historical problems which the Revolution sets the student to solve; for +the opposition of the Church’s organisation in France has at once been +the most profound which the Revolution has had to encounter, the most +active in its methods, and the only one which has increased in strength +as time proceeded. It is hardly too much to say that the Revolution +would, in France at least, have achieved its object and created a +homogeneous, centralised democracy, had not this great quarrel between +the Republic and the Church arisen; and one may legitimately contrast +the ready pliancy of men to political suggestion and the easy story of +their institutions where men knew nothing of the Church, with the great +storms that arise and the fundamental quarrels that are challenged +wherever men are acquainted with the burning truths of Catholicism. + +Finally, the struggle between the Catholic Church and the Revolution is +not only the most important and the most practical, but also by an +unhappy coincidence the most difficult of comprehension of all the +matters presented to us by the great change. + +We have seen in this book that one department of revolutionary history, +the second in importance, perhaps, to the religious department, was also +difficult of comprehension--to wit, the military department. And we have +seen (or at least I have postulated) that the difficulty of following +the military fortunes of the Republic was due to the mass of detail, to +the technical character of the information to be acquired and to the +natural unfamiliarity of the general reader with the elements of +military science. In other words, an accurate knowledge of great numbers +of facts, the proper disposition of these facts in their order of +military importance, and the correlation of a great number of +disconnected actions and plans will alone permit us to grasp the +function of the armies in the development and establishment of the +modern State through the revolutionary wars. + +Now in this second and greater problem, the problem of the function +played by religion, it is an exactly opposite method which can alone be +of service. + +We must examine the field generally, and still more generally we must +forget details that here only bewilder, and see in the largest possible +outline what forces were really at issue, why their conflict occurred, +upon what points that conflict was vital. Any more particular plan will +land us, as it has landed so many thousands of controversialists, in +mere invective on one side or the other, till we come to see nothing but +a welter of treason on the part of priests, and of massacre upon the +part of democrats. + +Men would, did they try to unravel the skein by analysing the documents +of the Vatican or of the French archives, come apparently upon nothing +but a host of petty, base, and often personal calculations; or again, +did they attempt to take a local sample of the struggle and to follow it +in one department of thought, they would come upon nothing but a whirl +of conflict with no sort of clue to the motives that lay behind. + +The contrast between the military and the religious problem of the +French Revolution is like the contrast between the geological +composition and the topographical contours of a countryside. To +understand the first we must bore and dig, we must take numerous samples +of soil and subject them to analysis, we must make ourselves acquainted +with detail in its utmost recesses. But for the second, the more general +our standpoint, the wider our gaze, and the more comprehensive our +judgment, the more accurately do we grasp the knowledge we have set out +to seek. + +We must, then, approach our business by asking at the outset the most +general question of all: “_Was there a necessary and fundamental quarrel +between the doctrines of the Revolution and those of the Catholic +Church?_” + +Those ill acquainted with either party, and therefore ill equipped for +reply, commonly reply with assurance in the affirmative. The French (and +still more the non-French) Republican who may happen, by the accident of +his life, to have missed the Catholic Church, to have had no intimacy +with any Catholic character, no reading of Catholic philosophy, and +perhaps even no chance view of so much as an external Catholic ceremony, +replies unhesitatingly that the Church is the necessary enemy of the +Revolution. Again, the _émigré_, the wealthy woman, the recluse, any one +of the many contemporary types to whom the democratic theory of the +Revolution came as a complete novelty, and to-day the wealthy families +in that tradition, reply as unhesitatingly that the Revolution is the +necessary enemy of the Church. The reply seems quite sufficient to the +Tory squire in England or Germany, who may happen to be a Catholic by +birth or by conversion; and it seems equally obvious to (let us say) a +democratic member of some Protestant Church in one of the new countries. + +Historically and logically, theologically also, those who affirm a +necessary antagonism between the Republic and the Church are in error. +Those who are best fitted to approach the problem by their knowledge +both of what the Revolution attempted and of what Catholic philosophy +is, find it in proportion to their knowledge difficult or impossible to +answer that fundamental question in the affirmative. They cannot call +the Revolution a necessary enemy of the Church, nor the Church of +Democracy. + +What is more, minds at once of the most active and of the best +instructed sort are the very minds which find it difficult to explain +how any such quarrel can have arisen. French history itself is full of +the names of those for whom not so much a reconciliation between the +Revolution and the Church, as a statement that no real quarrel existed +between them, was the motive of politics; and almost in proportion to a +man’s knowledge of his fellows in Catholic societies, almost in that +proportion is the prime question I have asked answered by such a man in +the negative. A man who knows both the Faith and the Republic will tell +you that there is not and cannot be any necessary or fundamental reason +why conflict should have arisen between a European Democracy and the +Catholic Church. + +When we examine those who concern themselves with the deepest and most +abstract side of the quarrel, we find the same thing. It is impossible +for the theologian, or even for the practical ecclesiastical teacher, to +put his finger upon a political doctrine essential to the Revolution and +to say, “This doctrine is opposed to Catholic dogma or to Catholic +morals.” Conversely, it is impossible for the Republican to put his +finger upon a matter of ecclesiastical discipline or religious dogma and +to say, “This Catholic point is at issue with my political theory of the +State.” + +Thousands of active men upon either side would have been only too +willing during the last hundred years to discover some such issue, and +it has proved undiscoverable. In a word, only those Democrats who know +little of the Catholic Church can say that of its nature it forbids +democracy; and only those Catholics who have a confused or imperfect +conception of democracy can say that of its nature it is antagonistic to +the Catholic Church. + +Much that is taught by the purely temporal theory of the one is +indifferent to the transcendental and supernatural philosophy of the +other. In some points, where there is contact (as in the conception of +the dignity of man and of the equality of men) there is agreement. To +sum up, the Republican cannot by his theory persecute the Church; the +Church cannot by her theory excommunicate the Republican. + +Why, then, it must next be asked, has there in practice arisen so +furious and so enormous a conflict, a conflict whose activity and whose +consequence are not narrowing but broadening to-day? + +It may be replied to this second question, which is only less general +than the first, in one of two manners. + +One may say that the actions of men are divided not by theories but by +spiritual atmospheres, as it were. According to this view men act under +impulses not ideal but actual: impulses which affect great numbers and +yet in their texture correspond to the complex but united impulses of an +individual personality. Thus, though there be no conflict demonstrable +between the theology of the Catholic Church and the political theory of +the Revolution, yet there may be necessary and fundamental conflict +between the _Persons_ we call the Revolution and the Church, and between +the vivifying principles by which either lives. That is one answer that +can be, and is, given. + +Or one may give a totally different answer and say, “There was no +quarrel between the theology of the Catholic Church and the political +theory of the Revolution; but the folly of this statesman, the ill +drafting of that law, the misconception of such and such an institution, +the coincidence of war breaking out at such and such a moment and +affecting men in such and such a fashion--all these material accidents +bred a misunderstanding between the two great forces, led into conflict +the human officers and the human organisations which directed them; and +conflict once established feeds upon, and grows from, its own +substance.” + +Now, if that first form of reply be given to the question we have posed, +though it is sufficient for the type of philosophy which uses it, though +it is certainly explanatory of all human quarrels, and though it in +particular satisfies a particular modern school of thought, it is +evident that history, properly so called, cannot deal with it. + +You may say that the Revolution was the expression of a spirit far more +real than any theory, that this spirit is no more susceptible of +analysis or definition than is the personality of a single human +character, and that this reality was in conflict with another +reality--to wit, the Catholic Church. You may even (as some minds by no +means negligible have done) pass into the field of mysticism in the +matter, and assert that really personal forces, wills superior and +external to man, Demons and Angels, drove the Revolution against the +Catholic Church, and created The Republic to be an anti-Catholic force +capable of meeting and of defeating that Church, which (by its own +definition of itself) is not a theory, but the expression of a +Personality and a Will. To put it in old-fashioned terms, you may say +that the Revolution was the work of antichrist;--but with that kind of +reply, I repeat, history cannot deal. + +If it be true that, in spite of an absence of contradictory intellectual +theories, there is a fundamental spiritual contradiction between the +Revolution and the Catholic Church, then time will test the business; we +shall see in that case a perpetual extension of the quarrel until the +Revolution becomes principally a force for the extinction of +Catholicism, and the Catholic Church appears to the supporter of the +Revolution not as his principal, but as his only enemy. Such a +development has not arisen in a hundred years; a process of time far +more lengthy will alone permit us to judge whether the supposed duello +is a real matter or a phantasm. + +The second type of answer, the answer which pretends to explain the +antagonism by a definite series of events, does concern the historian. + +Proceeding upon the lines of that second answer, he can bring his +science to bear and use the instruments of his trade; and he can show +(as I propose to show in what follows) how, although no quarrel can be +found between the theory of the Revolution and that of the Church, an +active quarrel did in fact spring up between the Revolution in action +and the authorities of Catholicism; a quarrel which a hundred years has +not appeased, but accentuated. + + * * * * * + +Behind the revolutionary quarrel lay the condition of the Church in the +French State since the settlement of the quarrel of the Reformation. + +With what that quarrel of the Reformation was, the reader is +sufficiently familiar. For, roughly speaking, a hundred years, from the +first years of the sixteenth century to the first years of the +seventeenth (from the youth of Henry VIII to the boyhood of Charles I in +England), a great attempt was made to change (as one party would have +said to amend, as the other would have said to denaturalise) the _whole +body_ of Western Christendom. A _general_ movement of attack upon the +inherited form of the Church, and a general resistance to that attack, +was at work throughout European civilisation; and either antagonist +hoped for a universal success, the one of what he called “The +Reformation of religion,” the other of what he called “The Divine +Institution and visible unity of the Catholic Church.” + +At the end of such a period it became apparent that no such general +result had been, or could be, attained. All that part of the West which +had rejected the authority of the See of Rome began to appear as a +separate territorial region permanently divided from the rest; all that +part of Europe which had retained the Authority of the See of Rome began +to appear as another region of territory. The line of cleavage between +the two was beginning to define itself as a geographical line, and +nearly corresponded to the line which, centuries before, had divided the +Roman and civilised world from the Barbarians. + +The Province of Britain had an exceptional fate. Though Roman in origin +and of the ancient civilisation in its foundation, it fell upon the +non-Roman side of the new boundary; while Ireland, which the Roman +Empire had never organised or instructed, remained, alone of the +external parts of Europe, in communion with Rome. Italy, Spain, and in +the main southern or Romanised Germany, refused ultimately to abandon +their tradition of civilisation and of religion. But in Gaul it was +otherwise--and the action of Gaul during the Reformation must be seized +if its modern religious quarrels are to be apprehended. A very +considerable proportion of the French landed and mercantile classes, +that is of the wealthy men of the country, were in sympathy with the new +religious doctrines and the new social organisation which had now taken +root in England, Scotland, Holland, northern Germany and Scandinavia, +and which were destined in those countries to lead to the domination of +wealth. These French squires and traders were called the Huguenots. + +The succeeding hundred years, from 1615 to 1715, let us say, were a +settlement, not without bloodshed, of the unsatisfied quarrel of the +preceding century. All Englishmen know what happened in England; how the +last vestiges of Catholicism were crushed out and all the social and +political consequences of Protestantism established in the State. + +There was, even in that same seventeenth century, a separate, but +futile, attempt to destroy Catholicism in Ireland. In Germany a struggle +of the utmost violence had only led to a similar regional result. The +first third of that hundred years concluded in the Peace of Westphalia, +and left the Protestant and Catholic territorial divisions much what we +now know them. + +In France, however, the peculiar phenomenon remained of a body powerful +in numbers and (what was far more important) in wealth and social power, +scattered throughout the territory of the kingdom, organised and, by +this time, fixedly anti-Catholic, and therefore anti-national. + +The nation had recovered its traditional line and had insisted upon the +victory of a strong executive, and that executive Catholic. France, +therefore, in this period of settlement, became an absolute monarchy +whose chief possessed tremendous and immediate powers, and a monarchy +which incorporated with itself all the great elements of the national +tradition, _including the Church_. + +It is the name of Louis XIV, of course, which symbolises this great +time; his very long reign precisely corresponds to it. He was born +coincidently with that universal struggle for a religious settlement in +Europe, which I have described as characteristic of the time; he died +precisely at its close; and under him it seemed as though the +reconstructed power of Gaul and the defence of organised Catholicism +were to be synonymous. + +But there were two elements of disruption in that homogeneous body which +Louis XIV apparently commanded. The very fact that the Church had thus +become in France an unshakable national institution, chilled the vital +source of Catholicism. Not only did the hierarchy stand in a perpetual +suspicion of the Roman See, and toy with the conception of national +independence, but they, and all the official organisation of French +Catholicism, put the security of the national establishment and its +intimate attachment to the general political structure of the State, far +beyond the sanctity of Catholic dogma or the practice of Catholic +morals. + +That political structure--the French monarchy--seemed to be of granite +and eternal. Had it indeed survived, the Church in Gaul would doubtless, +in spite of its attachment to so mundane a thing as the crown, have +still survived to enjoy one of those resurrections which have never +failed it in the past, and would have returned, by some creative +reaction, to its principle of life. But for the moment the consequence +of this fixed political establishment was that scepticism, and all those +other active forces of the mind which play upon religion in any Catholic +State, had full opportunity. The Church was, so to speak, not concerned +to defend itself but only its method of existence. It was as though a +garrison, forgetting the main defences of a place, had concentrated all +its efforts upon the security of one work which contained its supplies +of food. + +Wit, good verse, sincere enthusiasm, a lucid exposition of whatever in +the human mind perpetually rebels against transcendental affirmations, +were allowed every latitude and provoked no effective reply. But overt +acts of disrespect to ecclesiastical authority were punished with +rigour. + +While in the wealthy, the bureaucratic, and the governing classes, to +ridicule the Faith was an attitude taken for granted, seriously to +attack the privileges or position of its ministers was ungentlemanly, +and was not allowed. It did not shock the hierarchy that one of its +Apostolic members should be a witty atheist; that another should go +hunting upon Corpus Christi, nearly upset the Blessed Sacrament in his +gallop, and forget what day it was when the accident occurred. The +bishops found nothing remarkable in seeing a large proportion of their +body to be loose livers, or in some of them openly presenting their +friends to their mistresses as might be done by any great lay noble +round them. That a diocese or any other spiritual charge should be +divorced from its titular chief, seemed to them as natural as does to us +the absence from his modern regiment of some titular foreign colonel. +Unquestioned also by the bishops were the poverty, the neglect, and the +uninstruction of the parish clergy; nay--and this is by far the +principal feature--the abandonment of religion by all but a very few of +the French millions, no more affected the ecclesiastical officials of +the time than does the starvation of our poor affect, let us say, one of +our professional politicians. It was a thing simply taken for granted. + +The reader must seize that moribund condition of the religious life of +France upon the eve of the Revolution, for it is at once imperfectly +grasped by the general run of historians, and is also the only fact +which thoroughly explains what followed. The swoon of the Faith in the +eighteenth century is the negative foundation upon which the strange +religious experience of the French was about to rise. France, in the +generation before the Revolution, was passing through a phase in which +the Catholic Faith was at a lower ebb than it had ever been since the +preaching and establishment of it in Gaul. + +This truth is veiled by more than one circumstance. Thus many official +acts, notably marriages and the registration of births, took place under +a Catholic form, and indeed Catholic forms had a monopoly of them. +Again, the State wore Catholic clothes, as it were: the public occasions +of pomp were full of religious ceremony. Few of the middle classes went +to Mass in the great towns, hardly any of the artisans; but the Churches +were “official.” Great sums of money--including official money--were at +the disposal of the Church; and the great ecclesiastics were men from +whom solid favours could be got. Again, the historic truth is masked by +the language and point of view of the great Catholic reaction which has +taken place in our own time. + +It is safe to say that where one adult of the educated classes concerned +himself seriously with the Catholic Faith and Practice in France before +the Revolution, there are five to-day. But in between lies the violent +episode of the persecution, and the Catholic reaction in our time +perpetually tends to contrast a supposed pre-revolutionary “Catholic” +society with the revolutionary fury. “Look,” say its champions, “at the +dreadful way in which the Revolution treated the Church.” And as they +say this the converse truth appears obvious and they seem to imply, +“Think how different it must have been before the Revolution persecuted +the Church!” The very violence of the modern reaction towards +Catholicism has exaggerated the revolutionary persecution, and in doing +so has made men forget that apart from other evidence of the decline of +religion, it is obvious that persecution could never have arisen without +a strong and continuous historical backing. You could not have had a +Diocletian in the thirteenth century with the spirit of the Crusaders +just preceding him; you could not have had Henry VIII if the England of +the fifteenth century just preceding him had been an England devoted to +the monastic profession. And you could not have had the revolutionary +fury against the Catholic Church in France if the preceding generation +had been actively Catholic even in a considerable portion. + +As a fact, of course it was not: and in the popular indifference to or +hatred of the Church the principal factor was the strict brotherhood not +so much of Church and State as of Church and executive Government. + +But there was another factor. We were describing a little way back how +in France there had arisen, during the movement of the Reformation, a +wealthy, powerful and numerically large Huguenot body. In mere numbers +it dwindled, but it maintained throughout the seventeenth century a very +high position, both of privilege and (what was its characteristic) of +money-power; and even to-day, though their birth-rate is, of course, +lower than the average of the nation, the French Huguenots number close +upon a million, and are far wealthier, upon the average, than their +fellow citizens. It is their wealth which dominates the trade of +certain districts, which exercises so great an effect upon the +universities, the publishing trade, and the press; and in general lends +them such weight in the affairs of the nation. + +Now the Huguenot had in France a special and permanent quarrel with the +monarchy, and therefore with the Catholic Church, which, precisely +because it was not of the vivid and intense kind which is associated +with popular and universal religions, was the more secretly ubiquitous. +His quarrel was that, having been highly privileged for nearly a +century, the member of “a State within a State,” and for more than a +generation free to hold assemblies separate from and often antagonistic +to the national Government, these privileges had been suddenly removed +from him by the Government of Louis XIV a century before the Revolution. +The quarrel was more political than religious; it was a sort of “Home +Rule” quarrel. For though the Huguenots were spread throughout France, +they had possessed special cities and territories wherein their spirit +and, to a certain extent, their private self-government, formed +_enclaves_ of particularism within the State. + +They had held this position, as I have said, for close upon a hundred +years, and it was not until a date contemporary with the violent +settlement of the religious trouble in England by the expulsion of James +II that a similar settlement, less violent, achieved (as it was thought) +a similar religious unity in France. But that unity was not achieved. +The Huguenots, though no longer permitted to exist as a State within a +State, remained, for the hundred years between the Revocation of the +Edict of Nantes and the outbreak of the Revolution, a powerful and +ever-watchful body. They stood upon the flank of the attack which +intellectual scepticism was making upon the Catholic Church, they were +prepared to take advantage of that scepticism’s first political victory, +and since the Revolution they have been the most powerful and, after the +Freemasons, with whom they are largely identified, the most strongly +organised, of the anti-clerical forces in the country. + +The Jews, whose action since the Revolution has been so remarkable in +this same business, were not, in the period immediately preceding it, of +any considerable influence, and their element in the coalition may be +neglected. + +Such, then, was the position when the Revolution was preparing. Within +memory of all men living, the Church had become more and more official, +the masses of the great towns had wholly lost touch with it; the +intelligence of the country was in the main drawn to the Deist or even +to the purely sceptical propaganda, the powerful Huguenot body was ready +prepared for an alliance with any foe of Catholicism, and in the eyes of +the impoverished town populace--notably in Paris, which had long +abandoned the practice of religion--the human organisation of the +Church, the hierarchy, the priesthood, and the few but very wealthy +religious orders which still lingered on in dwindling numbers, were but +a portion of the privileged world which the populace hated and was +prepared to destroy. + +It is upon such a spirit and in such conditions of the national +religious life that the Revolution begins to work. In the National +Assembly you have the great body of the Commons which determines the +whole, touched only here and there with men in any way acquainted with +or devoted to Catholic practice, and those men for the most part +individual and eccentric, that is, uncatholic, almost in proportion to +the genuineness of their religious feeling. Among the nobility the +practice of religion was a social habit with some--as a mental attitude +the Faith was forgotten among all but a very few. Among the clergy a +very wealthy hierarchy, no one of them prepared to defend the Church +with philosophical argument, and almost unanimous in regarding itself as +a part of the old political machine, was dominant; while the +representatives of the lower clergy, strongly democratic in character, +were at first more occupied with the establishment of democracy than +with the impending attack upon the material and temporal organisation of +the Church. + +Now, that material and temporal organisation offered at the very +beginning of the debates an opportunity for attack which no other +department of the old _régime_ could show. + +The immediate peril of the State was financial. The pretext and even to +some extent the motive for the calling of the States-General was the +necessity for finding money. The old fiscal machinery had broken down, +and as always happens when a fiscal machine breaks down, the hardship it +involved, and the pressure upon individuals which it involved, appeared +to be universal. _There was no immediate and easily available fund of +wealth upon which the Executive could lay hands save the wealth of the +clergy._ + +The feudal dues of the nobles, if abandoned, must fall rather to the +peasantry than to the State. Of the existing taxes few could be +increased without peril, and none with any prospect of a large +additional revenue. The charge for debt alone was one-half of the total +receipts of the State, the deficit was, in proportion to the revenue, +overwhelming. Face to face with that you had an institution not popular, +one whose public functions were followed by but a small proportion of +the population, one in which income was most unequally distributed, and +one whose feudal property yielded in dues an amount equal to more than a +quarter of the total revenue of the State. Add to this a system of +tithes which produced nearly as much again, and it will be apparent +under what a financial temptation the Assembly lay. + +It may be argued, of course, that the right of the Church to this +ecclesiastical property, whether in land or in tithes, was absolute, and +that the confiscation of the one or of the other form of revenue was +mere theft. But such was not the legal conception of the moment. The +wealth of the Church was not even (and this is most remarkable) +defended as absolute property by the generality of those who enjoyed it. +The tone of the debates which suppressed the tithes, and later +confiscated the Church lands, was a tone of discussion upon legal +points, precedents, public utility, and so forth. There was not heard in +it, in any effective degree, the assertion of mere moral right; though +in that time the moral rights of property were among the first of +political doctrines. + +It was not, however, the confiscation of the Church lands and the +suppression of the tithe which founded the quarrel between the +Revolution and the clergy. No financial or economic change is ever more +than a preparation for, or a permissive condition of, a moral change. It +is never the cause of a moral change. Even the suppression of the +religious houses in the beginning of 1790 must not be taken as the point +of departure in the great quarrel. The religious orders in France were +at that moment too decayed in zeal and in numbers, too wealthy and much +too removed from the life of the nation, for this to be the case. The +true historical point of departure from which we must date the beginning +of this profound debate between the Revolution and Catholicism, is to be +found in the morning of the 30th of May, 1790, when a parliamentary +committee (the Ecclesiastical Committee) presented to the House its plan +for the reform of the Constitution of the Church in Gaul. + +The enormity of that act is now apparent to the whole world. The +proposal, at the bidding of chance representatives not elected _ad hoc_, +to change the dioceses and the sees of Catholic France, the decision of +an ephemeral political body to limit to such and such ties (and very +feeble they were) the bond between the Church of France and the Holy +See, the suppression of the Cathedral Chapters, the seemingly farcical +proposal that bishops should be elected, nay, priests also thus chosen, +the submission of the hierarchy in the matter of residence and travel to +a civil authority which openly declared itself indifferent in matters of +religion,--all this bewilders the modern mind. How, we ask, could men so +learned, so enthusiastic, so laborious and so closely in touch with all +the realities of their time, make a blunder of that magnitude? Much +more, how did such a blunder escape the damnation of universal mockery +and immediate impotence? The answer is to be discovered in what has just +been laid down with so much insistence: the temporary eclipse of +religion in France before the Revolution broke out. + +The men who framed the Constitution of the Clergy, the men who voted it, +nay, even the men who argued against it, all had at the back of their +minds three conceptions which they were attempting to reconcile: of +those three conceptions one was wholly wrong, one was imperfect because +superficial, the third alone was true. And these three conceptions were, +first, that the Catholic Church was a moribund superstition, secondly, +that it possessed in its organisation and tradition a power to be +reckoned with, and thirdly, that the State, its organs, and their +corporate inheritance of action, were so bound up with the Catholic +Church that it was impossible to effect any general political settlement +in which that body both external to France and internal, should be +neglected. + +Of these three conceptions, had the first been as true as the last, it +would have saved the Constitution of the Clergy and the reputation for +common-sense of those who framed it. + +It was certainly true that Catholicism had for so many centuries been +bound up in the framework of the State that the Parliament must +therefore do something with the Church in the general settlement of the +nation: it could not merely leave the Church on one side. + +It was also superficially true that the Church was a power to be +reckoned with politically, quite apart from the traditional union of +Church and State--but only superficially true. What the revolutionary +politicians feared was the intrigue of those who commanded the +organisation of the Catholic Church, men whom they knew for the most +part to be without religion, and the sincerity of all of whom they +naturally doubted. A less superficial and a more solid judgment of the +matter would have discovered that the real danger lay in the animosity +or intrigue against the Civil Constitution, not of the corrupt +hierarchy, but of the sincere though ill-instructed and dwindling +minority which was still loyally attached to the doctrines and +discipline of the Church. But even this superficial judgment would not +have been fatal, had not the judgment of the National Assembly been +actually erroneous upon the first point--the vitality of the Faith. + +Had the Catholic Church been, as nearly all educated men then imagined, +a moribund superstition, had the phase of decline through which it was +passing been a phase comparable to that through which other religions +have passed in their last moments, had it been supported by ancient +families from mere tradition, clung to by remote peasants from mere +ignorance and isolation, abandoned (as it was) in the towns simply +because the towns had better opportunities of intellectual enlightenment +and of acquiring elementary knowledge in history and the sciences; had, +in a word, the imaginary picture which these men drew in their minds of +the Catholic Church and its fortunes been an exact one, then the Civil +Constitution of the Clergy would have been a statesmanlike act. It would +have permitted the hold of the Catholic Church upon such districts as it +still retained to vanish slowly and without shock. It proposed to keep +alive at a reasonable salary the ministers of a ritual which would +presumably have lost all vitality before the last of its pensioners was +dead; it would have prepared a bed, as it were, upon which the last of +Catholicism in Gaul could peacefully pass away. The action of the +politicians in framing the Constitution would have seemed more generous +with every passing decade and their wisdom in avoiding offence to the +few who still remained faithful, would have been increasingly applauded. + +On the other hand, and from the point of view of the statesman, the +Civil Constitution of the Clergy bound strictly to the State and made +responsible to it those ancient functions, not yet dead, of the +episcopacy and all its train. It was a wise and a just consideration on +the part of the Assembly that religions retain their machinery long +after they are dead, and if that machinery has ever been a State +machinery it must remain subject to the control of the State: and +subject not only up to the moment when the living force which once +animated it is fled, but much longer; up, indeed, to the moment when the +surviving institutions of the dead religion break down and perish. + +So argued the National Assembly and its committee, and, I repeat, the +argument was just and statesmanlike, prudent and full of foresight, save +for one miscalculation. The Catholic Church was not dead, and was not +even dying. It was exhibiting many of the symptoms which in other +organisms and institutions correspond to the approach of death, but the +Catholic Church is an organism and an institution quite unlike any +other. It fructifies and expands immediately under the touch of a lethal +weapon; it has at its very roots the conception that material prosperity +is stifling to it, poverty and misfortune nutritious. + +The men of the National Assembly would have acted more wisely had they +closely studied the story of Ireland (then but little known), or had +they even made themselves acquainted with the methods by which the +Catholic Church in Britain, after passing in the fifteenth century +through a phase somewhat similar to that under which it was sinking in +Gaul in the eighteenth, was stifled under Henry and Elizabeth. + +But the desire of the men of 1789 was not to kill the Church but to let +it die; they thought it dying. Their desire was only to make that death +decent and of no hurt to the nation, and to control the political action +of a hierarchy that had been wealthy and was bound up with the old +society that was crumbling upon every side. + +The Civil Constitution of the Clergy failed: it lit the civil war, it +dug the pit which divided Catholicism from the Revolution at the moment +of the foreign invasion, it segregated the loyal priest in such a +fashion that his order could not but appear to the populace as an order +of traitors, and it led, in the furnace of 1793, to the great +persecution from the memories of which the relations between the French +democracy and the Church have not recovered. + +It is important to trace the actual steps of the failure; for when we +appreciate what the dates were, how short the time which was left for +judgment or for revision, and how immediately disaster followed upon +error, we can understand what followed and we can understand it in no +other way. + +If we find an enduring quarrel between two families whose cause of +contention we cannot seize and whose mutual hostility we find +unreasonable, to learn that it proceeded from a cataclysm too rapid and +too violent for either to have exercised judgment upon it will enable us +to excuse or at least to comprehend the endurance of their antagonism. +Now, it was a cataclysm which fell upon the relations of the Church and +State immediately after the error which the Parliament had committed; a +cataclysm quite out of proportion to their intentions, as indeed are +most sudden disasters quite out of proportion to the forces that bring +them about. + +It was, as we have seen, in the summer of 1790--upon the 12th of +July--that the Civil Constitution of the Clergy was approved by the +Assembly. But it was not until the 26th of August that the King +consented to sign. Nor was there at the moment any attempt to give the +law effect. The protests of the bishops, for instance, came out quite at +leisure, in the month of October, and the active principle of the whole +of the Civil Constitution--to wit, the presentation of the Civic Oath +which the clergy were required to take, was not even debated until the +end of the year. + +This Civic Oath, which is sometimes used as a bugbear in the matter, was +no more than an engagement under the sanction of an oath that the bishop +or priest taking it would maintain the new _régime_--though that +_régime_ included the constitution of the clergy; the oath involved no +direct breach with Catholic doctrine or practice. It was, indeed, a +folly to impose it, and it was a folly based upon the ignorance of the +politicians (and of many of the bishops of the day) as to the nature of +the Catholic Church. But the oath was not, nor was it intended to be, a +measure of persecution. Many of the parish clergy took it, and most of +them probably took it in good faith: nor did it discredit the oath with +the public that it was refused by all save four of the acting bishops, +for the condition of the hierarchy in pre-revolutionary France was +notorious. The action of the bishops appeared in the public eye to be +purely political, and the ready acceptance of the oath by so many, +though a minority, of the lower clergy argued strongly in its favour. + +Nevertheless, no Catholic priest or bishop or layman could take that +oath without landing himself in disloyalty to his religion; and that for +the same reason which led St. Thomas of Canterbury to make his curious +and fruitful stand against the reasonable and inevitable, as much as +against the unreasonable, governmental provisions of his time. The +Catholic Church is an institution of necessity autonomous. It cannot +admit the right of any other power exterior to its own organisation to +impose upon it a modification of its discipline, nor, above all, a new +conception of its hieratic organisation. + +The reader must carefully distinguish between the acceptation by the +Church of a detail of economic reform, the consent to suppress a +corporation at the request of the civil power, or even to forego certain +traditional political rights, and the admission of the general principle +of civil control. To that general principle the Assembly, in framing the +Constitution of the Clergy, was quite evidently committed. To admit such +a co-ordinate external and civil power, or rather to admit a _superior_ +external power, is in theory to deny the principle of Catholicism, and +in practice to make of the Catholic Church what the other State +religions of Christendom have become. + +I have said that not until the end of the year 1790 was the debate +opened upon the proposition to compel the clergy to take the oath. + +It is a singular commentary upon the whole affair that compulsion should +have been the subject for debate at all. It should have followed, one +would have imagined, normally from the law. But so exceptional had been +the action of the Assembly and, as they now were beginning to find, so +perilous, that a special decree was necessary--and the King’s signature +to it--before this normal consequence of a measure which had been law +for months, could be acted upon. + +Here let the reader pause and consider with what that moment--the end of +1790--coincided. + +The assignats, paper-money issued upon the security of the confiscated +estates of the Church, had already depreciated 10 per cent. Those who +had first accepted them were paying throughout France a penny in the +livre, or as we may put it, a penny farthing on the shilling, for what +must have seemed to most of them the obstinacy of one single +corporation--and that an unpopular one--against the decrees of the +National Assembly. + +It was now the moment when a definite reaction against the Revolution +was first taking shape, and when the populace was first beginning +uneasily to have suspicion of it; it was the moment when the Court was +beginning to negotiate for flight; it was the moment when (though the +populace did not know it) Mirabeau was advising the King with all his +might to seize upon the enforcement of the priests’ oath as an +opportunity for civil war. + +The whole air of that winter was charged with doubt and mystery: in the +minds of all who had enthusiastically followed the march of the +Revolution, the short days of that rigorous cold of 1790-91 contained +passages of despair, and a very brief period was to suffice for making +the clerical oath not only the test of democracy against reaction, but +the wedge that should split the nation in two. + +With the very opening of the new year, on the 4th of January, the +bishops and priests in the Assembly were summoned to take the oath to +the King, the Nation, and the Law; but that law included the Civil +Constitution of the Clergy, and they refused. Within three months +Mirabeau was dead, the flight of the King determined on, the suspicion +of Paris at white heat, the oath taken or refused throughout France, +and the schismatic priests introduced into their parishes--it may be +imagined with what a clamour and with how many village quarrels! In that +same fortnight appeared the papal brief, long delayed, and known as the +Brief “_Caritas_,” denouncing the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. Six +weeks later, at the end of May, the papal representative at the French +Court was withdrawn, and in that act religious war declared. + +Throughout this quarrel, which was now exactly of a year’s duration, but +the acute phase of which had lasted only six months, every act of either +party to it necessarily tended to make the conflict more violent. Not +only was there no opportunity for conciliation, but in the very nature +of things the most moderate counsel had to range itself on one side or +the other, and every public act which touched in any way upon the sore +point, though it touched but indirectly, and with no desire on the part +of the actors to rouse the passions of the moment, immediately appeared +as a provocation upon one side or the other. + +It was inevitable that it should be so, with a population which had +abandoned the practice of religion, with the attachment of the clerical +organisation to the organisation of the old _régime_, with the strict +bond of discipline that united the priesthood of the Church in France +into one whole, and above all with the necessity under which the +Revolution was, at this stage, of finding a definite and tangible +enemy. + +This last point is of the very first importance. Public opinion was +exasperated and inflamed, for the King was known to be an opponent of +the democratic movement; yet he signed the bills and could not be +overtly attacked. The Queen was known to be a violent opponent of it; +but she did not actually govern. The Governments of Europe were known to +be opponents; but no diplomatic note had yet appeared of which public +opinion could make an object for attack. + +The resistance, therefore, offered by the clergy to the Civil +Constitution, had just that effect which a nucleus will have in the +crystallisation of some solution. It polarised the energies of the +Revolution, it provided a definite foil, a definite negative, a definite +counterpoint, a definite butt. Here was a simple issue. Men wearing a +special uniform, pursuing known functions, performing a known part in +society--to wit, the priests--were now for the most part the enemies of +the new democratic Constitution that was in preparation. They would not +take the oath of loyalty to it: they were everywhere in secret rebellion +against it and, where they were dispossessed of their cures, in open +rebellion. The clergy, therefore, that is the non-juring clergy (and the +conforming clergy were an experiment that soon became a fiction), were +after April 1791, in the eyes of all the democrats of the time, the +plainest and most tangible form of the opposition to democracy. + +To the way in which I have presented the problem a great deal more might +be added. The very fact that the democratic movement had come after a +period of unfaith, and was non-Catholic in its springs, would have +tended to produce that quarrel. So would the necessary attachment of the +Catholic to authority and the easy confusion between the principle of +authority and claims of a traditional monarchy. Again, the elements of +vanity, of material greed, and of a false finality which are to be +discovered in any purely democratic theory of the State, will between +them always bring this theory into some conflict with religion. The +centuries during which the throne and the altar had stood as twin +symbols, especially in France, the very terminology of religious +metaphor which had been forged during the centuries of monarchical +institutions in Europe, helped to found the great quarrel. But, I +repeat, the overt act without which the quarrel could never have become +the terribly great thing it did, the master blunder which destroyed the +unity of the revolutionary movement, was the Civil Constitution of the +Clergy. + +So much for the first year of the schism, May 1790 to May 1791. The +second year is but an intensification of the process apparent in the +first. + +It opens with the King’s flight in June 1791: that is, with the first +open act of enmity taken against the authority of the National +Parliament since, two years before, the National Parliament had declared +itself supreme. Already the Court had been generally identified with the +resistance of the clergy, and a particular example of this had appeared +in the opinion that the King’s attempted journey to St. Cloud in April +had been prompted by a desire to have communion at the hands of a +non-juring priest.[8] When, therefore, the King fled, though his flight +had nothing whatsoever to do with the clerical quarrel, it was +associated in men’s minds with the clerical quarrel through his attempt +to leave Paris in April and from a long association of the Court with +the clerical resistance. The outburst of anti-monarchical feeling which +followed the flight was at the same time an outburst of anti-clerical +feeling; but the clergy were everywhere and could be attacked +everywhere. The Declaration of Pillnitz, which the nation very rightly +interpreted as the beginning of an armed European advance against the +French democracy, was felt to be a threat not only in favour of the King +but in favour also of the rebellious ecclesiastics. + +And so forth. The uneasy approach of war throughout that autumn and +winter of 1791-92, the peculiar transformation of the French +temperament which war or its approach invariably produces--a sort of +constructive exaltation and creative passion--began to turn a great part +of its energy or fury against the very persons of the orthodox priests. + +The new Parliament, the “Legislative” as it was called, had not been +sitting two months when it passed, upon November 29, 1791, the decree +that non-juring priests should be deprived of their stipend. And here +again we must note the curious lack of adjustment between law and fact +in all this clerical quarrel! For more than a year public money had been +paid to men who, under the law, should not during the whole of that year +have touched any salary! Yet, as in the case of the oath, special action +was necessary, and moreover the Parliament added to this tardy and +logical consequence of the law a declaration that those who had not so +taken the oath within eight days of their decree should be rendered +“suspect.” + +The word “suspect” is significant. The Parliament even now could not +act, at least it could not act without the King; and this word +“suspect,” which carried no material consequences with it, was one that +might cover a threat of things worse than regular and legal punishment. +It was like the mark that some power not authorised or legal makes upon +the door of those whom that power has singled out for massacre in some +city. + +Three weeks later Louis vetoed the decree refusing stipends to +non-jurors, and the year 1791 ended with the whole matter in suspense +but with exasperation increasing to madness. + +The first three months of 1792 saw no change. The non-juring clergy were +still tolerated by the Executive in their illegal position, and, what is +more extraordinary, still received public money and were still for the +most part in possession of their cures; the conception that the clergy +were the prime, or at any rate the most obvious, enemies of the new +_régime_ now hardened into a fixed opinion which the attempted +persecution of religion, as the one party called it, the obstinate and +anti-national rebellion of factious priests, as the other party called +it, was rapidly approaching real persecution and real rebellion. + +With April 1792 came the war, and all the passions of the war. + +The known hostility of the King to the Revolution was now become +something far worse: his known sympathy with an enemy under arms. To +force the King into the open was henceforward the main tactic of the +revolutionary body. + +Now for those whose object was forcing Louis XVI to open declarations of +hostility against the nation, his religion was an obvious instrument. In +no point could one come to closer grips with the King than on this +question of the Church, where already, in December 1791, he had +exercised his veto. + +On May 27, 1792, therefore, Guadet and Vergniaud, the Girondins, moved +that a priest who had refused to take the oath should be subjected to +transportation upon the mere demand of any twenty taxpayers within that +assembly of parishes known as a “Canton.” It was almost exactly two +years since the Civil Constitution of the Clergy had first been reported +to the House by the Ecclesiastical Committee of the Constituent or +National Assembly. + +It must not be forgotten under what external conditions this violent +act, the first true act of persecution, was demanded. It was already a +month since, upon the 20th of April, the war had opened upon the Belgian +frontier by a disgraceful panic and the murder of General Dillon; almost +contemporaneous with that breakdown was the corresponding panic and +flight of the French troops in their advance to Mons. All Europe was +talking of the facile march upon Paris which could now be undertaken; +and in general this decree against the priests was but part of the +exasperated policy which was rising to meet the terror of the invasion. + +It was followed, of course, by the decree dismissing the Royal Guard, +and, rather more than a week later, by the demand for the formation of a +camp of volunteers under the walls of Paris. But with this we are not +here concerned. The King vetoed the decree against the non-juring +priests, and in the wild two months that followed the orthodox clergy +were, in the mind of the populace, and particularly the populace of +Paris, identified with the cause of the re-establishment of the old +_régime_ and the success of the invading foreign armies. + +With the crash of the 10th of August the persecution began: the true +persecution, which was to the growing bitterness of the previous two +years what a blow is to the opening words of a quarrel. + +The decree of the 27th of May was put into force within eleven days of +the fall of the Tuileries. True, it was not put into force in that +crudity which the Parliament had demanded: the non-juring priests were +given a fortnight to leave the kingdom, and if they failed to avail +themselves of the delay were to be transported. + +From this date to the end of the Terror, twenty-three months later, the +story of the relations between the Revolution and the Church, though +wild and terrible, is simple: it is a story of mere persecution +culminating in extremes of cruelty and in the supposed uprooting of +Christianity in France. + +The orthodox clergy were everywhere regarded by this time as the typical +enemies of the revolutionary movement; they themselves regarded the +revolutionary movement, by this time, as being principally an attempt to +destroy the Catholic Church. + +Within seven months of the fall of the monarchy, from the 18th of March, +1793, the priests, whether non-juring or schismatic, might, on the +denunciation of any six citizens, be subjected to transportation. + +There followed immediately a general attack upon religion. The attempted +closing of all churches was, of course, a failure, but it was firmly +believed that such attachment as yet remained to the Catholic Church was +due only to the ignorance of the provincial districts which displayed +it, or to the self-seeking of those who fostered it. The attempt at mere +“de-christianisation,” as it was called, failed, but the months of +terror and cruelty, the vast number of martyrdoms (for they were no +less) and the incredible sufferings and indignities to which the priests +who attempted to remain in the country were subjected, burnt itself, as +it were, into the very fibre of the Catholic organisation in France, and +remained, in spite of political theory one way or the other, and in +spite of the national sympathies of the priesthood, the one great active +memory inherited from that time. + +Conversely, the picture of the priest, his habit and character, as the +fatal and necessary opponent of the revolutionary theory, became so +fixed in the mind of the Republican that two generations did nothing to +eliminate it, and that even in our time the older men, in spite of pure +theory, cannot rid themselves of an imagined connection between the +Catholic Church and an international conspiracy against democracy. Nor +does this non-rational but very real feeling lack support from the +utterances of those who, in opposing the political theory of the French +Revolution, consistently quote the Catholic Church as its necessary and +holy antagonist. + +The attempt to “de-christianise” France failed, as I have said, +completely. Public worship was restored, and the Concordat of Napoleon +was believed to have settled the relations between Church and State in a +permanent fashion. We have lived to see it dissolved; but this +generation will not see, nor perhaps the generation succeeding it, the +issue of the struggle between two bodies of thought which are divided by +no process of reason, but profoundly divorced by the action of vivid and +tragic historical memories. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[8] This opinion has entered into so many Protestant and non-Catholic +histories of the Revolution that it is worth criticising once again in +this little book. The King was perfectly free to receive communion +privately from the hands of orthodox priests, did so receive it, and had +received communion well within the canonical times. There was little +ecclesiastical reason for the attempted leaving of Paris for St. Cloud +on Monday the 18th April, 1791, save the _custom_ (not the religious +duty) of communicating in public on Easter Sunday itself; it was a +political move. + + + + +INDEX + + + Alexander the Great, 144 + Argonne, the, 156 + Arras, 132, 137 + Artois, Comte d’, 105 + Avignon, 111 + + Bacharach, 173 + Bailly, 71, 95 + Barentin, 89 + Barrère, 80, 125, 130, 131 + Bastille, the, 95, 105, 109, 115 + Beauregard, 200 + Belgium, 123, 167, 169, 173 + Bergues, 191 + Bordeaux, 135 + Bouillé, 107, 152 + Brissot, 110, 130 + Brunswick, Duke of, 115, 118, 178 + Brussels, 168 + + Cæsar, 144 + Calonne, 46 + Cambon, 125 + Carignan, 200 + Carlyle, Thomas, 68 + Carnot, 72-74, 80, 81, 136, 139, 171, 184, 186, 195, 197, 198, 200, + 201 + Cassel, 192 + Chalôns, 107, 158 + Champ-de-Mars, Massacre of, 109 + Champfleury, 77 + Charleroi, 210, 211 + Charles I of England, 222 + Chollet, 128 + Clerfayt, 206, 207, 209 + Coblentz, 115 + Coburg, 170, 173, 176, 177, 179, 186, 188, 196, 210 + Committee of Public Safety, 78, 79, 80, 81, 119, 125, 126, 128, 129, + 131, 134, 136, 137, 140, 183, 195, 196, 203 + Condé, 106 + Condé, fortress of, 135, 173, 177, 178, 180, 182, 183, 186, 195 + Condorcet, 71 + _Contrat Social_, 21, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37, 125, 133 + Coudequerque, 192 + Couthon, 131 + Custine, 177, 178, 179, 180 + + Danton, 64, 67-72, 73, 81, 82, 109, 117, 119, 120, 125, 130, 131, 135, + 137, 138, 139, 150, 162, 184, 185 + Desmoulins, 138 + Dillon, General, 250 + Drouet, 108 + Dumouriez, 43, 65-67, 113, 123, 124, 125, 155, 157, 158, 159, 162, + 163, 165, 168, 169, 170, 173 + Dunquerque, 135, 136, 181, 185, 186, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 195 + + England, 14, 124, 145 + Elizabeth, Queen of England, 239 + Esquelbecque, 191 + + Fersen, Count Axel de, 53 + Fleurus, 211, 212 + Fontenay, 128 + Fontenoy, 149, 166 + Fouché, 74 + Freemasonry, 71, 231 + Freytag, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194 + Furnes, 190, 194 + + George III of England, 63 + Gironde, 110 + _Girondins, The_, 110, 112, 119, 122, 123, 129, 249 + Grandpré, 158 + Guadet, 249 + Guise, 198, 200 + + Haguenau, 202 + Haine, the River, 167 + Hébert, 138 + Henry VIII of England, 222, 229, 239 + Hesse-Cassel, Landgrave of, 113 + Hoche, 202 + Holland, 124, 163 + Hoondschoote, 74, 136, 195, 196, 197 + Houchard, 179, 181, 192, 193, 194, 195, 198 + Howe, Lord, 213 + + Ireland, 239 + Isnard, 110 + + James II of England, 230 + Jefferson, 21 + Jemappes, 123, 166, 167 + Joseph II of Austria, 112, 163, 165 + Jourdan, 198 + + Kaiserslautern, 202 + Kaunitz, 155 + Kellermann, 159, 160 + Kilmaine, 180, 181 + + La Fayette, 43, 51, 61-65, 95, 100, 109, 114 + Lamballe, Princess de, 53, 71 + Landau, 177, 202, 203 + Lebas, 141 + Leipsic, 143, 214 + Lequesnoy, 177, 186, 195 + Linselles, 189 + Longwy, 115, 118, 156 + Lorraine, 118 + Louis XIV of France, 100, 225, 230 + Louis XVI of France, vi, 37-45, 71, 84, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, + 93, 95, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 107, 108, 109, 111, 114, + 117, 123, 124, 152, 153, 243, 245, 246, 247, 248, 249, 250 + Louis XVII of France, 135 + Louvre, the, 116, 117 + Luxembourg, 118 + Lyons, 129, 136, 182, 183 + Lys, the River, 206, 207 + + Machecoul, 128 + Maestricht, 168 + Malo-les-Bains, 194 + Marat, 74-77, 120, 135, 183 + Marcel, 120 + Marchionnes, 189 + Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, vi, 45-53, 63, 64, 90, 99, 100, + 101, 102, 103, 106, 107, 108, 109, 113, 116, 117, 138, 139, 152, + 153, 155, 245 + Marque, the River, 206 + “Marseillaise,” the, 116 + Marseilles, 116, 131, 135, 182 + Maubeuge, 136, 177, 178, 181, 196, 197, 202 + Mayence, 135, 173, 177, 178 + Merda, 142 + Metz, 159 + Michelet, 68 + Mirabeau, 44, 53-61, 64, 70, 72, 102, 103, 104, 106, 107, 243 + Mons, 167, 177, 250 + Montmédy, 107 + Mouveau, 206 + + Namur, 179 + Nantes, 128, 131, 136, 137, 182 + Napoleon I, 66, 67, 72, 143, 150, 205, 214, 253 + Narbonne, 43, 155 + Necker, 46, 90, 94, 95 + Neerwinden, 124, 125, 128, 169 + + Orleans, 128 + Orleans, Duke of, 109 + + Parthenay, 128 + Pichegru, 202 + Pillnitz, 154, 247 + Poland, 31 + Polignac, Madame de, 53 + Pollio, 120 + + Redange, 118 + Robespierre, 77-83, 111, 112, 132, 133, 134, 140, 141, 142, 213 + Robinet, Dr., 120 + Roland, 110 + Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 20, 21, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, + 36, 37, 125 + Russia, 14 + + St. Amand, 206 + Saint-André, Jeanbon, 80, 131, 185 + St. Cloud, 108, 247 + Saint-Just, 80, 131, 133, 140, 141, 210 + St. Menehould, 159 + Scheldt, the, 123, 183, 205, 206 + Sedan, 114 + Servia, 155 + Sièyes, 87 + Spain, 24, 44, 124, 150 + + Talavera, 189 + Talleyrand, 150 + Terror, the, 79, 80, 81, 82, 120, 137, 139, 140, 142, 251 + Tetteghem, 191 + Thouars, 128 + Toulon, 135, 136, 182, 183, 203 + Tourcoing, 189, 206, 208, 209 + Tournay, 210 + Trafalgar, 213 + Tuileries, the, 100, 101, 116, 121, 251 + + Valenciennes, 129, 135, 169, 173, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, + 186, 195 + Valmy, 121, 122, 131, 158, 159, 160, 169 + Varennes, 107, 108, 154 + Vendée, 128, 135, 203 + Verdun, 118, 120, 156, 157 + Vergniaud, 110, 130, 249 + Versailles, 52, 94, 99, 100, 102, 152, 153 + Vienna, 163, 210 + + Warcoing, 205 + Waterloo, 143 + Wattignies, 73, 136, 201, 208 + Wellington, Duke of, 189 + Westermann, 131 + Wilder, 191 + Wissembourg, 202 + Wormhoudt, 191 + Wurmser, 178 + + York, Duke of, 179, 181, 186, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 194, 205, 208, + 209 + + * * * * * + +_Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London and Bungay._ + + + + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FRENCH REVOLUTION *** + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/3/5/2/1/35215/ + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without 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*/ + empty-cells: show; /* usual default is hide */ + border-spacing: 0.0em 0.0em; + font-size: 90%;} + td {padding-left: 0.5em; padding-right: 0.5em;} + td.right {text-align: right;} + td.left {text-align: left;} + td.indent {padding-left: 2.0em;} + td.center {text-align: center;} + table.toc {line-height: 1.1em; + font-size: 90%; + width: 90%;} + /* Links ------------------------------------------------ */ + a:link {color: blue; background-color: inherit; text-decoration: none} + link {color: blue; background-color: inherit; text-decoration: none} + a:visited {color: blue; background-color: inherit; text-decoration: none} + a:hover {color: red; background-color: inherit} + </style> +</head> +<body> + + +<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The French Revolution, by Hilaire Belloc</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and +most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms +of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online +at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you +are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the +country where you are located before using this eBook. +</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The French Revolution</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Hilaire Belloc</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: February 8, 2011 [EBook #35215]<br /> +[Most recently updated: March 25, 2022]</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Steven Gibbs, Richard J. Shiffer and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net</div> +<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FRENCH REVOLUTION ***</div> + + + + +<div class="titlePage"> +<h1>THE FRENCH<br /> +REVOLUTION</h1> + +<p>BY</p> + +<p>HILAIRE BELLOC, M.A.</p> + + +<p><small>AUTHOR OF “DANTON,” “ROBESPIERRE,” “MARIE ANTOINETTE,” “THE OLD ROAD,” +“THE PATH TO ROME,” “PARIS,” “THE HILLS AND THE SEA,” “THE HISTORIC +THAMES,” ETC., ETC.</small></p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>LONDON<br /> +WILLIAMS AND NORGATE</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p><span class="sc">Richard Clay and Sons, Limited</span>,<br /> +<small>BRUNSWICK STREET, STAMFORD STREET, S.E.,<br /> +AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.</small></p> +</div> + +<hr /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</a></span></p> + +<h2><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE"></a>PREFACE</h2> + + +<p>The object of these few pages is not to recount once more the history of +the Revolution: that can be followed in any one of a hundred text-books. +Their object is rather to lay, if that be possible, an explanation of it +before the English reader; so that he may understand both what it was +and how it proceeded, and also why certain problems hitherto unfamiliar +to Englishmen have risen out of it.</p> + +<p>First, therefore, it is necessary to set down, clearly without modern +accretion, that political theory which was a sort of religious creed, +supplying the motive force of the whole business; of the new Civil Code +as of the massacres; of the panics and capitulations as of the +victories; of the successful transformation of society as of the +conspicuous failures in detail which still menace the achievement of the +Revolution.</p> + +<p>This grasped, the way in which the main events followed each other, and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</a></span>the reason of their interlocking and proceeding as they did must be put +forward—not, I repeat, in the shape of a chronicle, but in the shape of +a thesis. Thus the reader must know not only that the failure of the +royal family’s flight was followed by war, but how and why it was +followed by war. He must not only appreciate the severity of the +government of the great Committee, but why that severity was present, +and of the conditions of war upon which it reposed. But in so explaining +the development of the movement it is necessary to select for +appreciation as the chief figures the characters of the time, since upon +their will and manner depended the fate of the whole. For instance, had +the Queen been French either in blood or in sympathy, had the King been +alert, had any one character retained the old religious motives, all +history would have been changed, and this human company must be seen if +its action and drama are to be comprehended.</p> + +<p>The reader interested in that capital event should further seize (and +but too rarely has an opportunity for seizing) its military aspect; and +this difficulty of his proceeds from two causes: the first, that +historians, even when they recognise the importance of the military side +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span>of some past movement, are careless of the military aspect, and think +it sufficient to relate particular victories and general actions. The +military aspect of any period does not consist in these, but in the +campaigns of which actions, however decisive, are but incidental parts. +In other words, the reader must seize the movement and design of armies +if he is to seize a military period, and these are not commonly given +him. In the second place, the historian, however much alive to the +importance of military affairs, too rarely presents them as part of a +general position. He will make his story a story of war, or again, a +story of civilian development, and the reader will fail to see how the +two combine.</p> + +<p>Now, the Revolution, more than any other modern period, turns upon, and +is explained by, its military history. On this account has so +considerable a space been devoted to the explaining of that feature.</p> + +<p>The reader will note, again, that the quarrel between the Revolution and +the Catholic Church has also been dealt with at length.</p> + +<p>To emphasise this aspect of the revolutionary struggle may seem unusual +and perhaps deserves a word of apology.</p> + +<p>The reader is invited to consider the fact that the Revolution took +place in a country which had, in the first place, definitely determined +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span>during the religious struggle of the sixteenth and seventeenth +centuries to remain in communion with Rome; and had, in the second +place, admitted a very large and important body of converts to the +doctrines of the Reformation.</p> + +<p>The determination of the French people, in the crisis of 1572-1610, to +remain Catholic under a strong central Government, was a capital point +in the future history of France. So was the presence of a wealthy, very +large, and highly cultivated body of dissentients in the midst of the +nation. The two phenomena hardly co-existed elsewhere in Europe. Between +them they lent to the political history of France a peculiar character +which the nineteenth century, even more than the Revolution itself, has +emphasised; and it is the opinion of the present writer that it is +impossible to understand the Revolution unless very high relief is given +to the religious problem.</p> + +<p>If a personal point may be noted, the fact that the writer of these +pages is himself a Catholic and in political sympathy strongly attached +to the political theory of the Revolution, should not be hidden from the +reader. Such personal conditions have perhaps enabled him to treat the +matter more thoroughly than it might have been treated by one who +rejected either Republicanism upon the one hand, or Catholicism upon the +other; but he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span> believes that no personal and therefore exaggerated note +has been allowed to intrude upon his description of what is a definite +piece of objective history lying in the field of record rather than in +that of opinion.</p> + +<p>Some years ago the paramount importance of the quarrel between the +Church and the Revolution might still have been questioned by men who +had no personal experience of the struggle, and of its vast results. +To-day the increasing consequences and the contemporary violence of that +quarrel make its presentation an essential part of any study of the +period.</p> + +<p>The scheme thus outlined will show why I have given this sketch the +divisions in which it lies.</p> + +<p class="author">H. Belloc.</p> +<p class="addr"><i>King’s Land,<br /> +January 1911.</i></p> + + +<hr /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[Pg x]</a></span><br /></p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[Pg xi]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2> + + + +<div class="center"> +<table class="toc" summary="toc"> +<tr><td class="right"> </td><td class="left"> </td><td class="right"><span class="sc">page</span></td></tr> +<tr><td class="right"> </td><td class="left"><span class="sc">Preface</span></td><td class="right"><a href="#Page_v"><b>v</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="right">I</td><td class="left"><span class="sc">The Political Theory of The Revolution</span></td><td class="right"><a href="#I"><b>13</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="right">II</td><td class="left"><span class="sc">Rousseau</span></td><td class="right"><a href="#II"><b>29</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="right">III</td><td class="left"><span class="sc">The Characters of the Revolution:</span></td></tr> +<tr><td class="right"> </td><td class="indent left">King Louis XVI</td><td class="right"><a href="#III_1"><b>37</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="right"> </td><td class="indent left">The Queen</td><td class="right"><a href="#III_2"><b>45</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="right"> </td><td class="indent left">Mirabeau</td><td class="right"><a href="#III_3"><b>53</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="right"> </td><td class="indent left">La Fayette</td><td class="right"><a href="#III_4"><b>61</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="right"> </td><td class="indent left">Dumouriez</td><td class="right"><a href="#III_5"><b>65</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="right"> </td><td class="indent left">Danton</td><td class="right"><a href="#III_6"><b>67</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="right"> </td><td class="indent left">Carnot</td><td class="right"><a href="#III_7"><b>72</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="right"> </td><td class="indent left">Marat</td><td class="right"><a href="#III_8"><b>74</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="right"> </td><td class="indent left">Robespierre</td><td class="right"><a href="#III_9"><b>77</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="right">IV</td><td class="left"><span class="sc">The Phases of the Revolution:</span></td></tr> +<tr><td class="right"> </td><td class="indent left">i. From May 1789 to 17th of July 1789</td><td class="right"><a href="#IV_1"><b>83</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="right"> </td><td class="indent left">ii. From the 17th of July 1789 to the 6th of October 1789</td><td class="right"><a href="#IV_2"><b>98</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="right"> </td><td class="indent left">iii. From October 1789 to June 1791</td><td class="right"><a href="#IV_3"><b>102</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="right"> </td><td class="indent left">iv. From June 1791 to September 1792</td><td class="right"><a href="#IV_4"><b>108</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="right"> </td><td class="indent left">v. From the Invasion of September 1792 to the Establishment of the Committee of Public Safety, April 1793</td><td class="right"><a href="#IV_5"><b>118</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="right"> </td><td class="indent left">vi. From April 1793 to July 1794</td><td class="right"><a href="#IV_6"><b>126</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="right">V</td><td class="left"><span class="sc">The Military Aspect of the Revolution</span></td><td class="right"><a href="#V"><b>142</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="right"> </td><td class="indent left">One</td><td class="right"><a href="#V_1"><b>145</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="right"> </td><td class="indent left">Two</td><td class="right"><a href="#V_2"><b>156</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="right"> </td><td class="indent left">Three</td><td class="right"><a href="#V_3"><b>163</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="right"> </td><td class="indent left">Four</td><td class="right"><a href="#V_4"><b>179</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="right"> </td><td class="indent left">Five</td><td class="right"><a href="#V_5"><b>204</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="right">VI</td><td class="left"><span class="sc">The Revolution and the Catholic Church</span></td><td class="right"><a href="#VI"><b>214</b></a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="right"> </td><td class="left"><span class="sc">Index</span></td><td class="right"><a href="#INDEX"><b>255</b></a></td></tr> +</table></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[Pg xii]</a></span></p> + +<hr /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="THE_FRENCH_REVOLUTION" id="THE_FRENCH_REVOLUTION"></a>THE FRENCH REVOLUTION</h2> + + + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="I" id="I"></a>I<br /><br /> +<small>THE POLITICAL THEORY OF THE REVOLUTION</small></h2> + +<p><span class="sc">The</span> political theory upon which the Revolution proceeded has, especially +in this country, suffered ridicule as local, as ephemeral, and as +fallacious. It is universal, it is eternal, and it is true.</p> + +<p>It may be briefly stated thus: that a political community pretending to +sovereignty, that is, pretending to a moral right of defending its +existence against all other communities, derives the civil and temporal +authority of its laws not from its actual rulers, nor even from its +magistracy, but from itself.</p> + +<p>But the community cannot express authority unless it possesses +<i>corporate initiative</i>; that is, unless the mass of its component units +are able to combine for the purpose of a common expression, are +conscious of a common will, and have something in common which makes the +whole sovereign indeed.</p> + +<p>It may be that this power of corporate initiative and of corresponding +corporate expression is forbidden to men. In that case<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> no such thing as +a sovereign community can be said to exist. In that case “patriotism,” +“public opinion,” “the genius of a people,” are terms without meaning. +But the human race in all times and in all places has agreed that such +terms have meaning, and the conception that a community can so live, +order and be itself, is a human conception as consonant to the nature of +man as is his sense of right and wrong; it is much more intimately a +part of that nature than are the common accidents determining human +life, such as nourishment, generation or repose: nay, more intimate a +part of it than anything which attaches to the body.</p> + +<p>This theory of political morals, though subject to a limitless +degradation in practice, underlies the argument of every man who +pretends to regard the conduct of the State as a business affecting the +conscience of citizens. Upon it relies every protest against tyranny and +every denunciation of foreign aggression.</p> + +<p>He that is most enamoured of some set machinery for the government of +men, and who regards the sacramental function of an hereditary monarch +(as in Russia), the organic character of a native oligarchy (as in +England), the mechanical arrangement of election by majorities, or even +in a crisis the intense conviction and therefore the intense activity +and conclusive power of great crowds as salutary to the State, will +invariably, if any one of these engines fail him in the achievement of +what he desires for his country, fall back upon the doctrine of an +ultimately sovereign community.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> He will complain that though an +election has defeated his ideal, yet true national tradition and true +national sentiment were upon his side. If he defends the action of a +native oligarchy against the leaders of the populace, he does so by an +explanation (more or less explicit) that the oligarchy is more truly +national, that is more truly communal, than the engineered expression of +opinion of which the demagogues (as he will call them) have been the +mouthpieces. Even in blaming men for criticising or restraining an +hereditary monarch the adherent of that monarch will blame them upon the +ground that their action is anti-national, that is anti-communal; and, +in a word, no man pretending to sanity can challenge in matters temporal +and civil the ultimate authority of whatever is felt to be (though with +what difficulty is it not defined!) the general civic sense which builds +up a State.</p> + +<p>Those words “civil” and “temporal” must lead the reader to the next +consideration; which is, that the last authority of all does not reside +even in the community.</p> + +<p>It must be admitted by all those who have considered their own nature +and that of their fellow beings that the ultimate authority in any act +is God. Or if the name of God sound unusual in an English publication +to-day, then what now takes the place of it for many (an imperfect +phrase), “the moral sense.”</p> + +<p>Thus if there be cast together in some abandoned place a community of a +few families so depraved or so necessitous that, against the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> teachings +of their own consciences, and well knowing that what they are doing is +what we call <i>wrong</i>, yet they will unanimously agree to do it, then +that agreement of theirs, though certainly no temporal or civil +authority can be quoted against it, is yet unjustifiable. Another +authority lies behind. Still more evidently would this be true if, of +say, twelve, seven decided (knowing the thing to be wrong) that the +wrong thing should be done, five stood out for the right—and yet the +majority possessed by the seven should be determined a sufficient +authority for the wrongful command.</p> + +<p>But it is to be noted that this axiom only applies where the authority +of the moral law (God, as the author of this book, with due deference to +his readers, would prefer to say) is recognised and yet flouted. If +those twelve families do sincerely believe such and such a general +action to be right, then not only is their authority when they carry it +into practice a civil and a temporal authority; it is an authority +absolute in all respects; and further, if, upon a division of opinion +among them not perhaps a bare majority, nay, perhaps not a majority at +all, but at any rate a determinant current of opinion—determinant in +intensity and in weight, that is, as well as in numbers—declares an +action to be right, then that determinant weight of opinion gives to its +resolve a political authority not only civil and temporal but absolute. +Beyond it and above it there is no appeal.</p> + +<p>In other words, men may justly condemn,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> and justly have in a thousand +circumstances condemned, the theory that a mere decision on the major +part of the community was necessarily right in morals. It is, for that +matter, self-evident that if one community decides in one fashion, +another, also sovereign, in the opposite fashion, both cannot be right. +Reasoning men have also protested, and justly, against the conception +that what a majority in numbers, or even (what is more compelling still) +a unanimity of decision in a community may order, may not only be wrong +but may be something which that community has no authority to order +since, though it possesses a civil and temporal authority, it acts +against that ultimate authority which is its own consciousness of right. +Men may and do justly protest against the doctrine that a community is +incapable of doing deliberate evil; it is as capable of such an action +as is an individual. But men nowhere do or can deny that the community +acting as it thinks right is ultimately sovereign: there is no +alternative to so plain a truth.</p> + +<p>Let us take it, then, as indubitable that where civil government is +concerned, the community is supreme, if only from the argument that no +organ within the community can prove its right to withstand the +corporate will when once that corporate will shall find expression.</p> + +<p>All arguments which are advanced against this prime axiom of political +ethics are, when they are analysed, found to repose upon a confusion of +thought. Thus a man will say, “This doctrine would lead my country to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> +abandon her suzerainty over that other nation, but were I to consent to +this, I should be weakening my country, to which I owe allegiance.” The +doctrine compels him to no such muddlement. The community of which he is +a member is free to make its dispositions for safety, and is bound to +preserve its own life. It is for the oppressed to protest and to rebel.</p> + +<p>Similarly, men think that this doctrine in some way jars with the actual +lethargy and actual imbecility of men in their corporate action. It does +nothing of the kind. This lethargy, that imbecility, and all the other +things that limit the application of the doctrine, in no way touch its +right reason, any more than the fact that the speech of all men is +imperfect contradicts the principle that man has a moral right to +self-expression. That a dumb man cannot speak at all, but must write, +is, so far from a contradiction, a proof of the truth that speech is the +prime expression of man; and in the same way a community utterly without +the power of expressing its corporate will is no contradiction, but a +proof, of the general rule that such expression and the imposing of such +decisions are normal to mankind. The very oddity of the contrast between +the abnormal and the normal aids us in our decision, and when we see a +people conquered and not persuaded, yet making no attempt at rebellion, +or a people free from foreign oppression yet bewildered at the prospect +of self-government, the oddity of the phenomenon proves our rule.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span></p> + +<p>But though all this be true, there stands against the statement of our +political axiom not a contradiction added, but a criticism; and all men +with some knowledge of their fellows and of themselves at once perceive, +<i>first</i>, that the psychology of corporate action differs essentially +from the psychology of individual action, and <i>secondly</i>, that in +proportion to the number, the discussions, the lack of intimacy, and in +general the friction of the many, corporate action by a community, +corporate self-realisation and the imposition of a corporate will, +varies from the difficult to the impossible.</p> + +<p>On this no words need be wasted. All men who reason and who observe are +agreed that, in proportion to distance, numbers, and complexity, the +difficulty of self-expression within a community increases. We may get +in a lively people explosions of popular will violent, acute, and +certainly real; but rare. We may attempt with a people more lethargic to +obtain some reflection of popular will through the medium of a permanent +machinery of deputation which, less than any other, perhaps, permits a +great community to express itself truly. We may rely upon the national +sympathies of an aristocracy or of a king. But in any case we know that +large communities can only indirectly and imperfectly express themselves +where the permanent government of their whole interest is concerned. Our +attachment, which may be passionate, to the rights of the Common Will we +must satisfy either by demanding a loose federation of small, +self-governing states, or submitting the central<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> government of large +ones to occasional insurrection and to violent corporate expressions of +opinion which shall readjust the relations between the governor and the +governed.</p> + +<p>All this is true: but such a criticism of the theory in political morals +which lay behind the Revolution, the theory that the community is +sovereign, is no contradiction. It only tells us that pure right cannot +act untrammelled in human affairs and that it acts in some conditions +more laboriously than in others: it gives not a jot of authority to any +alternative thesis.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p> + +<p>Such is the general theory of the Revolution to which the command of +Jean Jacques Rousseau over the French tongue gave imperishable<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> +expression in that book whose style and logical connection may be +compared to some exact and strong piece of engineering. He entitled it +the <i>Contrat Social</i>, and it became the formula of the Revolutionary +Creed. But though no man, perhaps, has put the prime truth of political +morals so well, that truth was as old as the world; it appears in the +passionate rhetoric of a hundred leaders and has stood at the head or +has been woven into the laws of free States without number. In the +English language the Declaration of Independence is perhaps its noblest +expression. And though this document was posterior to the great work of +Rousseau and (through the genius of Jefferson) was in some part +descended from it, its language, and still more the actions of those who +drafted and supported it, are sufficient to explain what I mean to +English readers.</p> + +<p>Now with this general theory there stand connected on the one hand +certain great principles without which it would have no meaning, and +also on the other hand a number of minor points concerning no more than +the machinery of politics. The first are vital to democracy. The second, +in spite of their great popularity at the time of the Revolution and of +the sanction which the Revolution gave them, nay, of their universality +since the Revolution, have in reality nothing to do with the +revolutionary theory itself.</p> + +<p>Of these two categories the type of the first is the doctrine of the +equality of man; the type of the second is the mere machinery called +“representative.”<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span></p> + +<p>The doctrine of the equality of the man is a transcendent doctrine: a +“dogma,” as we call such doctrines in the field of transcendental +religion. It corresponds to no physical reality which we can grasp, it +is hardly to be adumbrated even by metaphors drawn from physical +objects. We may attempt to rationalise it by saying that what is common +to all men is not <i>more</i> important but <i>infinitely more</i> important than +the accidents by which men differ. We may compare human attributes to +tri-dimensional, and personal attributes to bi-dimensional measurements; +we may say that whatever man has of his nature is the standard of man, +and we may show that in all such things men are potentially equal. None +of these metaphors explains the matter; still less do any of them +satisfy the demand of those to whom the dogma may be incomprehensible.</p> + +<p>Its truth is to be arrived at (for these) in a negative manner. If men +are <i>not</i> equal then no scheme of jurisprudence, no act of justice, no +movement of human indignation, no exaltation of fellowship, has any +meaning. The doctrine of the equality of man is one which, like many of +the great transcendental doctrines, may be proved by the results +consequent upon its absence. It is in man to believe it—and all lively +societies believe it.</p> + +<p>It is certainly not in man to prove the equality of men save, as I have +said, by negation; but it demands no considerable intellectual faculty +to perceive that, void of the doctrine of equality, the conception of +political freedom and of a community’s moral<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> right to self-government +disappear. Now to believe that doctrine positively, and to believe it +ardently, to go on crusade for that religious point, was indeed +characteristic of the French. It required the peculiar and inherited +religious temper of the French which had for so many hundred years +seized and defined point after point in the character of man, to grow +enamoured of this definition and to feel it not in the intellect, but as +it were in their bones. They became soldiers for it, and that enormous +march of theirs, overrunning Europe, which may not inaptly be compared +to their adventures in the twelfth century, when they engaged upon the +Crusades, was inspired by no one part of the doctrine of political +freedom more strongly than by this doctrine of equality.</p> + +<p>The scorn which was in those days universally felt for that pride which +associates itself with things not inherent to a man (notably and most +absurdly with capricious differences of wealth) never ran higher; and +the passionate sense of justice which springs from this profound and +fundamental social dogma of equality, as it moved France during the +Revolution to frenzy, so also moved it to creation.</p> + +<p>Those who ask how it was that a group of men sustaining all the weight +of civil conflict within and of universal war without, yet made time +enough in twenty years to frame the codes which govern modern Europe, to +lay down the foundations of universal education, of a strictly +impersonal scheme of administration,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> and even in detail to remodel the +material face of society—in a word, to make modern Europe—must be +content for their reply to learn that the Republican Energy had for its +flame and excitant this vision: a sense almost physical of the equality +of man.</p> + +<p>The minor points which wove themselves into the political practice of +democracy during the Revolution, which are not of its principles, and +which would not, were they abstracted, affect its essence, are of quite +another and less noble kind. I have taken as the chief of these the +machinery of deputation or of “representation.”</p> + +<p>The representative system had been designed for a particular purpose +under the influence of the Church and especially of the monastic orders +(who invented it) in the Middle Ages. It had been practised as a useful +check upon the national monarchy in France, and as a useful form of +national expression in times of crisis or when national initiative was +peculiarly demanded.</p> + +<p>In Spain it became, as the Middle Ages proceeded, a very vital national +and local thing, varying from place to place. It is not surprising that +Spain (seeing that in her territory the first experiments in +representation were made) should have thus preserved it, popular and +alive.</p> + +<p>In England Representation, vigorous as everywhere else in the true +Middle Ages, narrowed and decayed at their close, until in the +seventeenth century it had become a mere scheme for aristocratic +government.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span></p> + +<p>In France for nearly two hundred years before the Revolution it had +fallen into disuse, but an active memory of it still remained; +especially a memory of its value in critical moments when a consultation +of the whole people was required, and when the corporate initiative of +the whole people must be set at work in order to save the State.</p> + +<p>It is no wonder, therefore, that the French, on the eve of the +Revolution, clamoured for a revival of representation, or, as the system +was called in the French tongue, “the States-General.” But as a +permanent machine of government no one in Europe had the least idea how +the system might serve the ends of democracy. In England democracy was +not practised nor was representation connected with the conception of +it. The nation had forgotten democracy as completely as it had forgotten +the religion and the old ideals of the Middle Ages.</p> + +<p>In those parts of Christendom in which this ancient Christian +institution of a parliament had not narrowed to be the mask of an +oligarchy or dwindled to be a mere provincial custom, its use had +disappeared. The ancient function of Representation, when it had been +most lively and vigorous, that is, in the Middle Ages, was occasionally +to initiate a national policy in critical moments, but more generally to +grant taxes. What a democratic parliament might do, no one in 1789 could +conceive.</p> + +<p>There was indeed one great example of democratic representation in +existence: the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> example of the United States; but the conditions were +wholly different from those of Europe. No true central power yet existed +there; no ancient central institution, no Crown nor any Custom of the +City. The numbers over which American representative democracy then held +power were not to be compared to the twenty-five millions who inhabited +the French realm. And even so, most of what counted in their lives was +regulated by a system of highly local autonomy: for they were as +scattered as they were few, and the wisest and strongest and best were +dependent upon slaves. In Europe, I repeat, the experiment was untried; +and it is one of the chief faults of the French revolutionaries that, +having been compelled in the critical moment of the opening of the +Revolution to the use of election and representation, they envisaged the +permanent use of a similar machinery as a something sacred to and normal +in the democratic State.</p> + +<p>True, they could not foresee modern parliamentarism. Nothing could be +more alien to their conception of the State than the deplorable method +of government which parliamentarism everywhere tends to introduce +to-day.</p> + +<p>True, the French people during the revolutionary wars made short work of +parliamentary theory, and found it a more national thing to follow a +soldier (being by that time all soldiers themselves), and to incarnate +in a dictator the will of the nation.</p> + +<p>But though the French revolutionaries<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> could not have foreseen what we +call “Parliamentarism” to-day, and though the society from which they +sprang made short work of the oligarchic pretensions of a parliament +when the realities of the national struggle had to be considered, yet +they did as a fact pay an almost absurd reverence to the machinery of +representation and election.</p> + +<p>They went so far as to introduce it into their attempted reform of the +Church; they introduced it everywhere into civil government, from the +smallest units to the highest. They even for a moment played with the +illusion in that most real of games which men can ever play at—the +business of arms: they allowed the election of officers. They were led +to do this by that common fallacy, more excusable in them than in us, +which confounds the individual will with the corporate. A representative +(they thought) could in some way be the permanent receptacle of his +electorate. They imagined that corporate initiative was always +sufficiently active, in no matter what divisions or subdivisions, to +react at once upon the delegate, to guide him as may be guided a driven +animal, or to command him as may be commanded a servant.</p> + +<p>It was in vain that Rousseau, the great exponent of the democratic +theory upon which France attempted to proceed, had warned posterity +against the possible results of the representative system: they fell +into the error, and it possesses many of their descendants to this day.</p> + +<p>Rousseau’s searching mind perceived indeed<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> no more than the general +truth that men who consent to a representative system are free only +while the representatives are not sitting. But (as is so often the case +with intuitions of genius) though he saw not the whole of the evil, he +had put his finger upon its central spot, and from that main and just +principle which he laid down—that under a merely representative system +men cannot be really free—flow all those evils which we now know to +attach to this method of government. What a rather clumsy epigram has +called “the audacity of elected persons” is part of this truth. The +evident spectacle of modern parliamentary nations driven against their +will into economic conditions which appal them, proceeds again from the +same truth; the conspicuous and hearty contempt into which parliamentary +institutions have everywhere fallen again proceeds from it, and there +proceeds from it that further derivative plague that the representatives +themselves have now everywhere become more servile than the electorate +and that in all parliamentary countries a few intriguers are the +unworthy depositories of power, and by their service of finance permit +the money-dealers to govern us all to-day. Rousseau, I say, the chief +prophet of the Revolution, had warned the French of this danger. It is a +capital example of his talent, for the experiment of democratic +representation had not yet, in his time, been tried. But much more is +that power of his by which he not only stamped and issued the gold of +democracy as it had<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> never till then been minted. No one man makes a +people or their creed, but Rousseau more than any other man made vocal +the creed of a people, and it is advisable or necessary for the reader +of the Revolution to consider at the outset of his reading of what +nature was Rousseau’s abundant influence upon the men who remodelled the +society of Europe between 1789 and 1794.</p> + +<p>Why did he dominate those five years, and how was it that he dominated +them increasingly?</p> + +<p>An explanation of Rousseau’s power merits a particular digression, for +few who express themselves in the English tongue have cared to +understand it, and in the academies provincial men have been content to +deal with this great writer as though he were in some way inferior to +themselves.</p> + + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> We need not waste any time upon those who talk about such +and such a form of government being good because “it works.” The use of +such language connotes that the user of it is fatigued by the effort of +thought. For what is “working,” <i>i.e.</i> successful action, in any sphere? +The attainment of certain ends in that sphere. What are those ends in a +State? If material well-being, then there is an end to talk of +patriotism, the nation, public opinion and the rest of it which, as we +all very well know, men always have regarded and always will regard as +the supreme matters of public interest. If the end is not material +well-being, but a sense of political freedom and of the power of the +citizen to react upon the State, then to say that an institution “works” +though apparently not democratic, is simply to say that under such and +such conditions that institution achieves the ends of democracy most +nearly. In other words, to contrast the good “working” of an institution +superficially undemocratic with democratic theory is meaningless. The +institution “works” in proportion as it satisfies that political sense +which perfect democracy would, were it attainable, completely satisfy.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II<br /><br /> +<small>ROUSSEAU</small></h2> + +<p><span class="sc">In</span> order to appreciate what Rousseau meant to the revolutionary +movement, it is necessary to consider the effect of style upon men.</p> + +<p>Men are influenced by the word. Spoken or written, the <i>word</i> is the +organ of persuasion and, therefore, of moral government.</p> + +<p>Now, degraded as that term has become in our time, there is no proper +term to express the exact use of words save the term “style.”<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span></p> + +<p>What words we use, and in what order we put them, is the whole matter of +style; and a man desiring to influence his fellow men has therefore not +one, but two co-related instruments at his disposal. He cannot use one +without the other. The weakness of the one will ruin the other. These +two instruments are his idea and his style.</p> + +<p>However powerful, native, sympathetic to his hearers’ mood or cogently +provable by reference to new things may be a man’s idea, he cannot +persuade his fellow men to it if he have not words that express it. And +he will persuade them more and more in proportion as his words are well +chosen and in the right order, such order being determined by the genius +of the language whence they are drawn.</p> + +<p>Whether the idea of which Rousseau made himself the exponent in his +famous tract be true or false, need not further concern us in this +little book. We all know that the difficult attempt to realise political +freedom has attracted various communities of men at various times and +repelled others. What English readers rarely hear is that the triumph of +Rousseau depended not only on the first element in persuasion, which is +vision, but also upon the second of the two co-related instruments by +which a man may influence his fellows—to wit, style. It was his choice +of French words and the order in which he arranged them, that gave him +his enormous ascendancy over the generation which was young when he was +old.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span></p> + +<p>I have alluded to his famous tract, the <i>Contrat Social</i>, and here a +second point concerning it may be introduced. This book which gave a +text for the Revolution, the document to which its political theory +could refer, was by no means (as foreign observers have sometimes +imagined) the whole body of writing for which Rousseau was responsible. +To imagine that is to make the very common error of confusing a man with +his books.</p> + +<p>Rousseau wrote on many things: his character was of an exalted, nervous +and diseased sort. Its excessive sensibility degenerated with advancing +years into something not distinguishable from mania. He wrote upon +education, and the glory of his style carried conviction both where he +was right and where the short experience of a hundred years has proved +him to have been wholly wrong. He wrote upon love, and half the lessons +to be drawn from his writing will be condemned by the sane. He wrote +upon botany at vast length; he wrote also upon music—with what success +in either department I am incompetent to determine. He wrote upon human +inequality: and though the sentences were beautiful and the sentiment +just, the analysis was very insufficient and the historical conception +bad. He wrote upon a project for perpetual peace, which was rubbish; and +he wrote upon the government of Poland an essay which was a perfect +masterpiece.</p> + +<p>But when a great writer writes, each of his great writings has a life of +its own, and it was<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> not any of these other writings of Rousseau, on +love or botany, which were the text of the Revolution. The text of the +Revolution was his <i>Contrat Social</i>.</p> + +<p>Now it is not too much to say that never in the history of political +theory has a political theory been put forward so lucidly, so +convincingly, so tersely or so accurately as in this short and wonderful +book. The modern publisher in this country would be ashamed to print it: +not for its views (which would now seem commonplace), nor for its +excellence, which would ensure it a failure, but for its brevity. It is +as short as a gospel, and would cover but a hundred pages of one of our +serious reviews. A modern publisher in this city would not know what +price to set upon such a work, and the modern reader in this country +would be puzzled to understand how a great thing could be got within so +narrow a compass. A debate in Parliament or the libretto of a long +pantomime is of greater volume.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, if it be closely read the <i>Contrat Social</i> will be +discovered to say all that can be said of the moral basis of democracy. +Our ignorance of the historical basis of the State is presumed in the +very opening lines of it. The logical priority of the family to the +State is the next statement. The ridiculous and shameful argument that +strength is the basis of authority—which has never had standing save +among the uninstructed or the superficial—is contemptuously dismissed +in a very simple proof which forms the third chapter,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> and that chapter +is not a page of a book in length. It is with the fifth chapter that the +powerful argument begins, and the logical precedence of <i>human +association</i> to any particular form of government is the foundation +stone of that analysis. It is this indeed which gives its title to the +book: the moral authority of men in community arises from <i>conscious +association</i>; or, as an exact phraseology would have it, a “social +contract.” All the business of democracy as based upon the only moral +authority in a State follows from this first principle, and is developed +in Rousseau’s extraordinary achievement which, much more than any other +writing not religious, has affected the destiny of mankind.</p> + +<p>It is indeed astonishing to one who is well acquainted not only with the +matter, but with the manner of the <i>Contrat Social</i>, to remark what +criticisms have been passed upon it by those who either have not read +the work or, having read it, did so with an imperfect knowledge of the +meaning of French words. The two great counter arguments, the one +theoretic the other practical, which democracy has to meet, stand +luminously exposed in these pages, though in so short a treatise the +author might have been excused from considering them. The theoretical +argument against democracy is, of course, that man being prone to evil, +something external to him and indifferent to his passions must be put up +to govern him; the people will corrupt themselves, but a despot or an +oligarchy, when it has satisfied its corrupt desires, still has a wide +margin<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> over which it may rule well because it is indifferent. You +cannot bribe the despot or the oligarch beyond the limit of his desires, +but a whole people can follow its own corrupt desires to the full, and +they will infect all government.</p> + +<p>The full practice of democracy, therefore, says Rousseau, is better +suited to angels than to men.</p> + +<p>As to the practical argument that men are not sufficiently conscious of +the State to practise democracy, save in small communities, that plea +also is recognised and stated better than any one else has stated it. +For there is not in this book an apology for democracy as a method of +government, but a statement of why and how democracy is right.</p> + +<p>The silly confusion which regards a representative method as essentially +democratic has never been more contemptuously dealt with, nor more +thoroughly, than in the few words in which the <i>Contrat Social</i> +dismisses it for ever; though it was left to our own time to discover, +in the school of unpleasant experience, how right was Rousseau in this +particular condemnation.</p> + +<p>Exiguous as are the limits within which the great writer has finally +decided the theory of democracy, he finds space for side issues which +nowhere else but in this book had been orderly considered, and which, +when once one has heard them mentioned, one sees to be of the most +excellent wisdom: that the fundamental laws, or original and particular +bonds, of a new democracy must come from a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> source external to itself; +that to the nature of the people for whom one is legislating, however +democratic the form of the State, we must conform the particulars of +law; that a democracy cannot live without “tribunes”; that no utterly +inflexible law can be permitted in the State—and hence the necessity +for dictatorship in exceptional times; that no code can foresee future +details—and so forth.</p> + +<p>It would be a legitimate and entertaining task to challenge any man who +had not read the <i>Contrat Social</i> (and this would include most academic +writers upon the treatise) to challenge any such one, I say, to put down +an argument against democratic theory which could not be found within +those few pages, or to suggest a limitation of it which Rousseau had not +touched on.</p> + +<p>If proof were needed of what particular merits this pamphlet displayed, +it would be sufficient to point out that in a time when the problem +represented by religion was least comprehended, when the practice of +religion was at its lowest, and when the meaning, almost, of religion +had left men’s minds, Rousseau was capable of writing his final chapter.</p> + +<p>That the great religious revival of the nineteenth century should have +proved Rousseau’s view of religion in the State to be insufficient is in +no way remarkable, for when Rousseau wrote, that revival was undreamt +of; what is remarkable is that he should have allowed as he did for the +religious sentiment, and above all, that he should have seen how<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> +impossible it is for a selection of Christian dogma to be accepted as a +civic religion.</p> + +<p>It is further amazing that at such a time a man could be found who +should appreciate that for the State, to have unity, it must possess a +religion, and Rousseau’s attempt to define that minimum or substratum of +religion without which unity could not exist in the State unfortunately +became the commonplace of the politicians, and particularly of the +English politicians who succeeded him. Who might not think, for +instance, that he was reading—though better expressed, of course, than +a politician could put it—some “Liberal” politician at Westminster, if +he were to come on such phrases as these with regard to what should be +taught in the schools of the country?</p> + +<p>“The doctrines taught by the State should be simple, few in number, +expressed with precision and without explanation or commentary. The +existence of a powerful God, beneficent, providential and good; the +future life; the happiness of the good and the punishment of evil; the +sanctity of the agreements which bind society together and of laws; +while as for negative doctrines, one is sufficient, and that one is the +wickedness of intolerance.”</p> + +<p>Rousseau’s hundred pages are the direct source of the theory of the +modern State; their lucidity and unmatched economy of diction; their +rigid analysis, their epigrammatic judgment and wisdom—these are the +reservoirs from whence modern democracy has flowed; what are now proved +to be the errors of democracy are errors against which<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> the <i>Contrat +Social</i> warned men; the moral apology of democracy is the moral apology +written by Rousseau; and if in this one point of religion he struck a +more confused and a less determined note than in the rest, it must be +remembered that in his time no other man understood what part religion +played in human affairs; for in his days the few who studied religion +and observed it could not connect it in any way with the political +nature of man, and of those who counted in the intellect of Europe, by +far the greater number thought political problems better solved if +religion (which they had lost) were treated as negligible. They were +wrong—and Rousseau, in his generalities upon the soul, was +insufficient; both were beneath the height of a final theory of man, but +Rousseau came much nearer to comprehension, even in this point of +religion, than did any of his contemporaries.</p> + + + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III<br /><br /> +<small>THE CHARACTERS OF THE REVOLUTION</small></h2> + + +<h3><a name="III_1" id="III_1"></a>KING LOUIS XVI</h3> + +<p><span class="sc">As</span> might be expected, the character of King Louis XVI has suffered more +distortion at the hands of historians than has any other of the +revolutionary figures; and this because he combined with that personal +character of his a certain office to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> which were traditionally attached +certain points of view and methods of action which the historian takes +for granted when he deals with the character of the man. As any one +thinking of a judge of some standing upon the English bench cannot but +believe that he is possessed of some learning or some gravity, etc.; as +any one hearing of a famous soldier cannot but believe that he has +certain qualities associated with the business of soldiering, so +historians tend to confuse the personality and character of Louis XVI +with that of his office; they either by contrast exaggerate his unkingly +defects or by sympathy exaggerate his kingly opposition to reform.</p> + +<p>The student will do well to avoid this error and its source, and to +think of Louis as of a man who had been casually introduced, almost +without preparation, into the office which he held. In other words, the +student will do well, in his reading of the Revolution, to consider +Louis XVI simply as a man, and his character as a private character. For +this last of the long, unbroken line of Capetians possessed a character +essentially individual. It was of a type which, no matter what accidents +of fortune might have fallen upon its possessor, would have remained the +same. Nor was ever a man possessed of high office whom high office had +less moulded.</p> + +<p>Men thus impervious to their environment are commonly so from two +causes: either from an intense and vivid personal initiative<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> which may +border upon madness, or from something thick and heavy in their moral +accoutrement which defends against external action the inner personal +temperament. The latter was the case with Louis.</p> + +<p>He was very slow of thought, and very slow of decision. His physical +movements were slow. The movement of his eyes was notably slow. He had a +way of falling asleep under the effort of fatigue at the most +incongruous moments. The things that amused him were of the largest and +most superficial kind. Horse-play, now and then a little touched with +eccentricity, and very plain but unexpected jokes. One may express him +from one aspect by saying that he was one of those men whom you could +never by any chance have hoped to convince of anything. The few things +which he accepted he accepted quite simply, and the process of reasoning +in the mouth of any who approached him was always too rapid for him to +follow. But it must not be imagined on this account that the moral +integument so described was wrapped about a void. On the contrary, it +enclosed a very definite character. Louis possessed a number of intimate +convictions upon which he was not to be shaken. He was profoundly +convinced of the existence and value of a certain corporate tradition in +the organism which he ruled: the French nation. He was national. In this +he differed from many a pedant, many a courtier, many an ecclesiastic, +and many a woman about him, especially his wife.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span></p> + +<p>He was, again, possessed of all the elements of the Catholic faith.</p> + +<p>It was, indeed, a singular thing for a man of his position at such a +time to hold intimately to religion, but Louis held to it. He confessed, +he communicated, he attended mass, he performed his ordinary +devotions—not by way of tradition or political duty, or State function, +to which religious performance was now reduced in the vast majority of +his wealthy contemporaries, but as an individual for whom these things +had a personal value. Had he, with precisely the same interior spirit, +woken in his bed some morning to find himself a country squire, and to +discover that all his past kingship had been a dream of the night, he +would have continued the practice of his religion as before.</p> + +<p>Now this is a sufficiently remarkable point, for the country squire, the +noble, the lawyer, the university professor of the generation +immediately preceding the Revolution had, as a rule, no conception of +the Catholic Church. With them the faith was dead, save in the case of a +very few who made it, if one may say so without disrespect, a mania, and +in their exaggerations were themselves the proofs of the depth of decay +into which the Church of Gaul had fallen.</p> + +<p>Louis XVI was possessed, then, of religion: it appeared in many of his +acts, in his hesitation to appoint not a few of the many atheist bishops +of the time, in his real agony of responsibility upon the Civil +Constitution of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> the clergy, and in nothing more than the peculiar +sobriety and solid ritual whereby he prepared for a tragic, sudden, and +ignominious death.</p> + +<p>It is next to be observed that though he was a man not yet in middle +age, and though he was quite devoid of ardour in any form, he had from +the first matured a great basis of courage. It is well to admit that +this quality in him was connected with those slow processes of thought +and action which hampered him, but it is not to be explained by them. No +man yet has become brave through mere stupidity.</p> + +<p>It was not only the accidents of the Revolution that proved this quality +in him: his physical habits proved it long before. He was a resolute and +capable rider of the horse: an aptitude in that exercise is impossible +to the coward. Again, in those by-products of courage which are +apparent, even where no physical danger threatens, he was conspicuous; +he had no hesitation in facing a number of men, and he had aptitude in a +mechanical trade—a business by no means unconnected with virility.</p> + +<p>Now in mentioning his virility, it is of prime importance for the +student to remember, though the matter can be touched upon but lightly, +that Louis, in this department of physical life, suffered from a +mechanical impediment which gravely distorted the first years of his +marriage, which undoubtedly wounded his self-respect, and which was +perhaps the only thing that caused him permanent<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> anxiety. He was cured +by medical aid in the summer of the year 1777, but he was already three +years a king and seven years a husband before that relief came to him. +The tragedy affected his whole life, and, I repeat, must never be +forgotten when one considers either him or Marie Antoinette in their +intimate character, and in their effect as actors in the great drama.</p> + +<p>For the rest, the character of Louis betrayed certain ineptitudes (the +word ineptitude is far more accurate in this connection than the word +weakness), which ineptitudes were peculiarly fatal for the military +office which he held and for the belligerent crisis which he had to +meet.</p> + +<p>Few men are possessed of the eye, the subtle sympathy, the very rapid +power of decision, and the comprehension of human contrasts and +differences which build up the apt leader of an armed force great or +small. Most men are mediocre in the combination of these qualities. But +Louis was quite exceptionally hopeless where they were concerned. He +could never have seen the simplest position nor have appreciated the +military aspects of any character or of any body of men. He could ride, +but he could not ride at the head of a column. He was not merely bad at +this trade, he was nul. Drafted as a private into a conscript army, he +would never have been entrusted with the duties of a corporal. He would +have been impossible as a sergeant; and, possessed of commissioned rank, +ridicule would have compelled him to take his discharge.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span></p> + +<p>This lack did not only, or chiefly, betray itself in his inability to +meet personally the armed crisis of a revolution; it was not only, or +chiefly, apparent in his complete breakdown during the assault upon the +palace on the 10th of August: it was also, and much more, the disastrous +cause of his inability to oversee, or even to choose, military advisers.</p> + +<p>Those who propose in the early part of the Revolution to check the mob +in Paris, are excellent commanders: but Louis does not know it. Those +who succeed each other at the Ministry of War, or at the head of the +armies during the active part of the revolution are various in the +extreme: but they all seem one to him. Between a fop like Narbonne and a +subtle, trained cavalry man like Dumouriez, Louis made no distinction. +The military qualities of La Fayette (which were not to be despised) +meant no more to him than does music, good or bad, to a deaf man. From +the beginning to the end of the movement, the whole of the military +problem escaped him.</p> + +<p>Another hole in his character, which was of prime importance at such a +time, was his inability to grasp in a clear vision any general social +problem. Maps he could well comprehend, and he could well retain +statistics; but the landscape, as it were, of the Revolution his +protuberant and lethargic eyes completely missed. He was quite unable to +see where lay danger and where support, in what large masses such and +such forces were<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> grouped, and the directions in which they were +advancing, or upon which they must retreat. In this matter he was, as +will be seen in a moment, the very opposite of Mirabeau, and it was on +account of this weakness, or rather this form of nullity, that all +Mirabeau’s vision was wasted upon Louis.</p> + +<p>Finally, he had no working comprehension of Europe. He did not even +exaggerate the powers of the allies in the later phases of the +Revolution when they were marching upon France. He did not either +under-estimate or over-estimate the policy and naval force of Great +Britain, the military resources of his own subjects, the probable +sympathies of the Netherlands (anti-Austrian but Catholic), the decay of +Spain, the division and impotence of the Italian Peninsula. Louis saw +nothing of all these things.</p> + +<p>One may conclude the picture (for the purposes of such a short study as +this) by saying that only one coincidence could have led him through the +labyrinth of the time with success. That coincidence would have been the +presence at his side of a friend fully trusted from childhood, loved, as +religious as himself, and yet possessing precisely those qualities which +he himself lacked. Had Louis found to hand such a lieutenant, the +qualities I have mentioned would have been a sort of keel and ballast +which would have secured the monarchy, for he was not weak, he was not +impulsive, he was not even foolish: he was only wretchedly alone in his +incapacities. Certainly such a nature could trust<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> and rely upon no one +who was not of this intimate kind, and he possessed no such intimate, +let alone an intimate who could command the qualities I have suggested.</p> + +<p>Being what he was, his character is among the half-dozen which +determined the Revolution to take the course which it did.</p> + + +<h3><a name="III_2" id="III_2"></a>THE QUEEN</h3> + +<p>Marie Antoinette presents to history a character which it is of the +highest interest to regard as a whole. It is the business of her +biographers to consider that character as a whole; but in her connection +with the Revolution there is but one aspect of it which is of +importance, and that is the attitude which such a character was bound to +take towards the French nation in the midst of which the Queen found +herself.</p> + +<p>It is the solution of the whole problem which the Queen’s action sets +before us to apprehend the gulf that separated her not only from the +French temperament, but from a comprehension of all French society. Had +she been a woman lacking in energy or in decision, this alien character +in her would have been a small matter, and her ignorance of the French +in every form of their activity, or rather her inability to comprehend +them, would have been but a private failing productive only of certain +local and immediate consequences, and not in any way determining the +great lines of the revolutionary movement.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span></p> + +<p>As it was, her energy was not only abundant but steadfast; it grew more +secure in its action as it increased with her years, and the initiative +which gave that energy its course never vacillated, but was always +direct. She knew her own mind, and she attempted, often with a partial +success, to realise her convictions. There was no character in touch +with the Executive during the first years of the Revolution comparable +to hers for fixity of purpose and definition of view.</p> + +<p>It was due to this energy and singleness of aim that her +misunderstanding of the material with which she had to deal was of such +fatal importance.</p> + +<p>It was she who chose, before the outbreak of the Revolution, the +succession of those ministers both Liberal and Reactionary, whose unwise +plans upon either side precipitated violence. It was she who called and +then revoked, and later recalled to office the wealthy and +over-estimated Necker; she who substituted for him, and then so +inopportunely threw over Calonne, the most national of the precursors of +the Revolution, and ever after her most bitter enemy; it was she who +advised the more particularly irritating details of resistance after the +meeting of the first revolutionary Parliament; it was she who presided +over (and helped to warp) the plans for the flight of the royal family; +it was she who, after this flight had failed, framed a definite scheme +for the coercion of the French people by the Governments of Europe; it +was she who betrayed to foreign chanceries<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> the French plan of campaign +when war had become inevitable; finally, it was she who inspired the +declaration of Brunswick which accompanied the invasion of French +territory, and she was in particular the author of the famous threat +therein contained to give over Paris to military execution, and to hold +all the popular authorities responsible with their lives for the +restoration of the pre-revolutionary state of affairs.</p> + +<p>As research proceeds, the capital effect of this woman’s continual and +decided interference will be more and more apparent to historians.</p> + +<p>Now Marie Antoinette’s conception of mankind in general was the +conception that you will find prevalent in such societies as that +domestic and warm centre which had nourished her childhood. The romantic +affection of a few equals, the personal loyalty of a handful of personal +servants, the vague histrionic content which permeates the poor at the +sight of great equipages and rich accoutrements, the cheers of a crowd +when such symbols accompanying monarchy are displayed in the +streets—all these were for Marie Antoinette the fundamental political +feelings of mankind. An absence of them she regarded with bewilderment, +an active opposition to them she hated as something at once +incomprehensible and positively evil.</p> + +<p>There was in all this illusion, of course, a great element of what the +English call middle class, and the French bourgeois. To be quite +ignorant of what servitors will say of their masters behind their backs; +not to appreciate<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> that heroic devotion is the faculty of a few; never +to have imagined the discontents of men in general, and the creative +desire for self-expression which inspires men when they act politically; +not to know that men as a whole (and particularly the French people) are +not deceived by the accidents of wealth, nor attach any real inferiority +to poverty; to despise the common will of numbers or to doubt its +existence; to see society established in a hierarchy not of office but +of leisure: all this may seem to the democrat a very unnatural and +despicable mood. But it was not despicable, still less unnatural; in the +case of Marie Antoinette: it was the only experience and the only +conception of society which had ever been given her. She had always +believed, when she gazed upon a mass of the populace, that the +difference between the crowd and herself was a moral reality. The +contrast in external habits between the wealthy, the middle class, and +the poor—a contrast ultimately produced by differences in the +opportunity and leisure which wealth affords—she thought to be +fundamental. Just as children and certain domestic pet animals regard +such economic accidents in society as something real which +differentiates men, so did she;—but she happened to nourish this +illusion in the midst of a people, and within a day’s walk of a capital, +where the misconception had less hold than in any other district of +Europe.</p> + +<p>Of the traits peculiar to the French she<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> knew nothing, or, to put it +more strongly, she could not believe that they really existed.</p> + +<p>The extremes of cruelty into which this people could fall were +inconceivable to her, as were also the extremes of courage to which they +can rise under the same excitements as arouse them to an excess of +hatred. But that character in the French which she most utterly failed +to foresee or to comprehend, was their power of <i>corporate +organisation</i>.</p> + +<p>That a multitude could instruct and order themselves for a common +purpose, rapidly acquire and nominate the officers who should bring that +purpose to fruition, and in general pass in one moment from a mere +multitude to an incipient army—that was a faculty which the French had +and have to a peculiar degree, and which she (like so many of our own +contemporaries, and especially those of German blood) could not believe +to be real. This faculty in the French, when it took action and was +apparent in the physical struggles of the Revolution, seemed to her, to +the very end, a sort of nightmare; something which, by all the laws of +reality, <i>ought not</i> to be happening, but somehow or other <i>was</i> +happening in a manner evilly miraculous. It was her ignorance upon this +main point of all that caused her to rely so continually upon the use of +the regular forces, and of those forces in insufficient numbers. She +could not but believe that a few trained soldiery were necessarily the +masters of great civilian bodies; their uniforms were a powerful +argument with her, and mere civilian bodies,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> however numerous, were +always, in her conception, a dust of disparate and inchoate humanity. +She believed there was nothing to attack or resist in popular numbers +but the opinion, the fear, or the cupidity of the individual. In this +error of judgment concerning the French people she was not peculiar: it +is an error repeated over and over again by foreigners, and even by some +native commentators when they seek to account for some national movement +of the Gauls. The unlearning of it is the first lesson which those who +would either administrate or resist the French should learn.</p> + +<p>In the matter of religion (which the reader may see in these pages to be +of such moment in the revolutionary story), the queen was originally far +more indifferent than her husband, though she observed a certain measure +of personal practice. It was not until her heavy misfortunes came upon +her that any degree of personal devotion appeared in her daily life, +though it must be admitted that, by a sort of premonition of disaster, +she turned to religion in the months immediately preceding the outbreak +of the reform.</p> + +<p>It remains to describe the personal effect she had upon those who were +in her immediate presence. Most of the French aristocracy she repelled. +The same misfortune which made her unable to understand the French +temperament as a whole divorced her from that particular corner of it +which took the shape of French aristocratic tradition. She did not +understand its stiffness,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> its exactitude, its brilliancy or its +hardness: and she heartily disliked all four.</p> + +<p>On this account she produced on the great families of her court, and +especially upon the women of them, an effect of vulgarity. Had she +survived, and had her misfortunes not been of so tragic an intensity, +the legend she would have left in French society would certainly have +been one of off-handed carelessness, self-indulgence, and lack of +dignity which have for the French of that rank the savour that a loud +voice, a bad accent, an insufficient usage in the rules of daily +conduct, leave upon what is left of a corresponding rank in England +to-day.</p> + +<p>She was, on the other hand, easily deceived by the flattery of place +seekers, and the great power which she wielded in politics just before +the Revolution broke out made her, as it were, a sort of <i>butt</i> of the +politicians.</p> + +<p>They haunted her presence, they depended upon her patronage, and, at the +same time, they secretly ridiculed her. Her carriage, which was designed +to impress onlookers and did have that effect upon most foreigners, +seemed to most of the French observers (of a rank which permitted them +to approach her familiarly) somewhat theatrical and sometimes actually +absurd. The earnestness which she displayed in several lines of conduct, +and notably in her determined animosity to certain characters (as that +of La Fayette, for instance), was of an open and violent sort which +seemed to them merely brutal and unintelligent; her luxury, moreover, +was noticed by the refined<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> world of Versailles to be hardly ever of her +own choosing, but nearly always practised in imitation of others.</p> + +<p>In connection with that trait of luxury, the reader must appreciate at +the outset that it was grievously exaggerated by her contemporaries, and +has been still more exaggerated by posterity. She was not a very +frivolous, still less a dissipated, woman. She was woefully loose in +tongue, but she was certainly virtuous.</p> + +<p>She gambled, but as the times went, and the supposed unlimited fortune +of the Crown, her gambling was not often excessive; her expenditure upon +jewellery and dress would be thought most moderate to-day in the case of +any lady of our wealthier families. On the other hand, her whims were +continual and as continually changing, especially in the earlier part of +her life.</p> + +<p>Since that surrounding world of the Court which she misunderstood and +which had no sympathy with her was ready to find some handle against +her, that handle of dissipation was the easiest for them to seize; but +the accusation was not a just one.</p> + +<p>Had fortune made her the wife of a poor man in a lower class of society, +Marie Antoinette would have been a capable housewife: her abundant +energy would have found a proper channel, and she was in no way by +nature extravagant.</p> + +<p>She had a few very passionate and somewhat too sentimental friendships, +some of which were returned, others of which their objects<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> exploited to +their own advantage. The two most famous were her friendship for the +Princess de Lamballe and for Madame de Polignac. These moved her not +infrequently to unwise acts of patronage which were immediately seized +by the popular voice and turned against her. They were among the few +weaknesses apparent in her general temper. They were certainly ill +balanced and ill judged.</p> + +<p>She indulged also in a number of small and unimportant flirtations which +might almost be called the routine of her rank and world; she had but +one great affection in her life for the other sex, and it was most +ardently returned. Its object was a Swedish noble of her own age, the +very opposite of the French in his temper, romantically chivalrous, +unpractical in the extreme, gentle, intensely reserved; his name Count +Axel de Fersen. The affair remained pure, but she loved him with her +whole heart, and in the last months of her tragedy this emotion must be +regarded as the chief concern of her soul. They saw each other but very +rarely, often they were separated for years; it was this, perhaps, which +lent both glamour and fidelity to the strange romance.</p> + + +<h3><a name="III_3" id="III_3"></a>MIRABEAU</h3> + +<p>Mirabeau, the chief of the “practical” men of the Revolution (as the +English language would render the most salient point in their political +attitude), needs a very particular<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> examination. His influence upon the +early part of the Revolution was so considerable, the effect of his +death was so determinant and final, the speculation as to what <i>might</i> +have happened had he survived is so fruitful, so entertaining, and so +common, and the positive effect of his attitude upon the development of +the Revolution after his death was so wide, that to misunderstand +Mirabeau is in a large measure to misunderstand the whole movement; and +Mirabeau has unfortunately been ill or superficially understood by many +among now three generations of historians; for a comprehension of this +character is not a matter for research nor for accumulated historic +detail, but rather a task for sympathy.</p> + +<p>Mirabeau was essentially an artist, with the powers and the frailties +which we properly associate with that term: that is, strong emotion +appealed to him both internally and externally. He loved to enjoy it +himself, he loved to create it in others. He studied, therefore, and was +a master of, the material by which such emotion may be created; he +himself yielded to strong emotion and sought it where it might be found. +It is foolish alike to belittle and to exaggerate this type of +temperament. Upon it or upon its admixture with other qualities is based +the music, the plastic art, and in a large measure the permanent +literature of the world. This aptitude for the enjoyment and for the +creation in others of emotion clothes intellectual work in a manner +which makes it permanent. This<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> is what we mean when we say that <i>style</i> +is necessary to a book; that a great civilisation may partly be judged +by its architecture; that, as Plato says, music may be moral or immoral, +and so forth. The artist, though he is not at the root of human affairs, +is a necessary and proper ally in their development.</p> + +<p>When I say that Mirabeau was an artist I mean that wherever his energies +might have found play he would there have desired to enjoy and to create +enjoyment through some definite medium. This medium was in part +literary, but much more largely oral expression. To be a <i>tribune</i>, that +is the voice of great numbers, to persuade, nay, to please by his very +accents and the very rhythm of his sentences, these things occupied the +man; but he also brought into his art that without which no great art +can exist: mere intellect.</p> + +<p>He believed in the main principles at least which underlay the +revolutionary movement, he understood them and he was prepared to +propagate them; but his power over men was not due to this conviction: +his power over men was wholly that of the artist, and had he by some +accident been engaged in maintaining the attack against democracy, he +would have been nearly as famous as he became under the title of its +defender. We must then always consider Mirabeau as an orator, though an +orator endowed with a fine and clear intelligence and with no small +measure of reasoned faith.</p> + +<p>Much else remains to be said of him.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span></p> + +<p>He was a gentleman; that is, he both enjoyed and suffered the +consequences which attach to hereditary wealth and to the atmosphere +that surrounds its expenditure. On this account, he being personally +insufficiently provided with wealth, he was for ever in debt, and +regarded the sums necessary to his station in life and to his large +opportunities as things due to him, so to speak, from society. We are +right when we say that he took bribes, but wrong if we imagine that +those bribes bound him as they would bind a man meaner in character or +less lucky in his birth. He stooped as gentlemen will to all manner of +low intrigues, to obtain “the necessary and the wherewith”; that is, +money for his <i>rôle</i>. But there was a driving power behind him, bound up +with his whole character, which made it impossible for any such sums to +control his diction or to make of such a man a mere advocate. He was +never that dirtiest of political phenomena, the “party man.” He would +never have been, had he been born a hundred years later and thrust into +the nastiness of modern parliamentary life, “a parliamentary hand.”</p> + +<p>Mirabeau had behind him a certain personal history which we must read in +connection with his temperament.</p> + +<p>He had travelled widely, he knew Englishmen and Germans of the wealthier +classes well. The populace he knew ill even in his own country; abroad +he knew it not at all. He had suffered from his father’s dislike of him, +from the consequence of his own unbridled<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> passions, also not a little +from mere accidental misfortune. Capable of prolonged and faithful +attachment to some woman, the opportunity for that attachment had never +been afforded him until the last few months before his death. Capable of +paying loyal and industrious service to some political system, no +political system had chosen him for its servant. It is a fruitful matter +of speculation to consider what he might have done for the French +monarchy had Fate put him early at Court and given him some voice in the +affairs of the French Executive before the Revolution broke out. As it +was, the Revolution provided him with his opportunity merely because it +broke down old barriers and conventions and was destructive of the +framework of the State in which he lived. He was compelled to enter the +Revolution as something of a destroyer, for by no other avenue could he +be given his chance; but by nature he detested destruction. I mean +(since this phrase is somewhat vague) he detested that spirit which will +disendow a nation of certain permanent institutions serving definite +ends, without a clear scheme of how those institutions should be +replaced by others to serve similar ends. It was on this account that he +was most genuinely and sincerely a defender of the monarchy: a permanent +institution serving the definite ends of national unity and the +repression of tendencies to oligarchy in the State.</p> + +<p>Mirabeau had none of the revolutionary Vision. In mind he was +prematurely aged, for his mind had worked very rapidly over<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> a very +varied field of experience. The pure doctrine of democracy which was a +religion to many of his contemporaries, with all the consequences of a +religion, he had never thought of accepting. But certain consequences of +the proposed reforms strongly appealed to him. He loved to be rid of +meaningless and dead barriers, privileges which no longer corresponded +to real social differences, old traditions in the management of trade +which no longer corresponded to the economic circumstances of his time, +and (this is the pivotal point) the fossils of an old religious creed +which, like nearly all of his rank, he simply took for granted to be +dead: for Mirabeau was utterly divorced from the Catholic Church.</p> + +<p>Much has been said and will be said in these pages concerning the +religious quarrel which, though men hardly knew it at the time, cut +right across the revolutionary effort, and was destined to form the +lasting line of cleavage in French life. There will be repeated again +and again what has already been written, that a reconciliation between +the Catholic Church and the reconstruction of democracy was, though men +did not know it, the chief temporal business of the time, and the reader +of these pages will be made well acquainted in them with the degradation +to which religion had fallen among the cultivated of that generation. +But in the case of Mirabeau this absence of religion must be +particularly insisted upon. It would no more have occurred to Mirabeau<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> +that the Catholic Faith had a future than it could occur to (let us say) +an English politician of thirty years ago that the Irish might become a +wealthy community or that an English Government might within his own +lifetime find itself embarrassed for money. I use this parallel for the +sake of strengthening my contention, but it is indeed a weak parallel. +No contemporary parallel in our strange and rapidly changing times +corresponds to the fixed certitude which permeated the whole of the end +of the eighteenth century that the Catholic Faith was dead. Mirabeau had +perhaps never engaged in his life in intimate conversation a single man +who took the Catholic sacraments seriously, or suffered a moment’s +anxiety upon the tenets of the creed.</p> + +<p>He knew, indeed, that certain women and a much smaller number of +insignificant men wrapped themselves up in old practices of an odd, +superstitious kind; he knew that great, dull areas of ignorant +peasantry, in proportion to their poverty and isolation, repeated by +rote the old formulae of the Faith. But of the Faith as a living thing +he could have no conception.</p> + +<p>He saw on the one hand a clerical institution, economic in character, +providing places and revenues for men of his own rank; he met those men +and never discovered them to have any religion at all. He saw on the +other hand a proposed society in which such a fossil, unjust and +meaningless, must relinquish its grip upon those large revenues. But of +the Faith<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> as a social force, as a thing able to revive, he could have +no conception. It would have seemed to him a mere folly to suggest that +the future might contain the possibility of such a resurrection. The +dissolution of the religious orders, which was largely his work, the +civil constitution of the clergy which he presided over, were to him the +most natural acts in the world. They were the mere sweeping away of a +quantity of inorganic stuff which cumbered the modern State. He felt of +them as we might feel of the purchase of waste spaces in our cities, of +the confiscation of some bad landlords’ property in them. The Church +served no kind of purpose, no one who counted believed in it, it was +defended only by people who enjoyed large revenues from the survival of +what had once been, but was now no longer, a living, social function.</p> + +<p>In everything of the Revolution which he understood Mirabeau was upon +the side of caution. He was not oblivious to the conception of popular +government, he was not even mistrustful of it, but he could not conceive +of it save as acting through the established strength of the wealthier +classes. Of military power he judged very largely through Prussian eyes. +And in long and enthusiastic passages he described the Prussian army as +invincible. Had he lived to see the military enthusiasm of the +Republicans he would utterly have distrusted it. He favoured in his +heart an aristocratic machinery of society—though not an aristocratic +theory of the State; he was quite determined to preserve as a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> living +but diminished national organ the traditional monarchy of France; he was +curious upon a number of details which were present and close to his +eyes: methods of voting, constitutional checks, commercial codes and the +rest of it. The little equilibriums of diplomacy interested him also, +and the watching of men immediately under his eye in the Parliament.</p> + +<p>It was in the Parliament that his whole activity lay, it was there that +he began to guide the Revolution, it was his absence from the Parliament +after his death that the Revolution most feels in the summer of 1791.</p> + +<p>This very brief sketch does not present Mirabeau to the reader. He can +only be properly presented in his speeches and in the more rhetorical of +his documents. It is probable as time proceeds that his reputation in +this department will grow. His constitutional ideas, based as they were +upon foreign institutions, and especially upon the English of that time, +were not applicable to his own people and are now nearly forgotten: he +was wrong upon English politics as he was wrong upon the German armies, +but he had art over men and his personality endures and increases with +time.</p> + + +<h3><a name="III_4" id="III_4"></a>LA FAYETTE</h3> + +<p>The character of La Fayette has suffered chiefly from his own aloofness +towards his contemporaries on the one hand, and from his rigid adherence +to principle upon the other. Both these causes are clearly connected. +The<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> same quality in him which made him so tenacious of principle made +him contemptuous of the run of men about him. Fundamentally, he was +nearer the extreme Republicans than any other class, from the very fact +of his possessing a clear political creed and a determination to follow +it out to its logical consequence. But there was no chance of his +comprehending the concrete side of the movement or the men engaged upon +it, for his great wealth, inherited in very early life, had cut him off +from experience. His moral fault was undoubtedly ambition. It was an +ambition which worked in the void, as it were, and never measured itself +with other men’s capacities or opportunities. He made no plans for +advancement, not because he would have despised the use of intrigue in +reason, but because he was incapable of working it. He was exceedingly +attached to popularity, when it came he thought it his due; unpopularity +in its turn seemed to him a proof of the vileness of those who despised +him. He made himself too much the measure of his world.</p> + +<p>Undoubtedly a very great part in the moulding of his character proceeded +from his experience in the United States of America. He was then at the +most impressionable and formative period of human life, little more than +a boy, or at least just entering early manhood. He had just married, he +had just come into the administration of his vast fortune. At such a +moment he took part in the victorious rebellion of the English colonies, +and it may be imagined how powerful was the effect of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> this youthful +vision upon the whole of the man’s future life; because there was no +proletariat in the colonies, he never saw or comprehended the +dispossessed classes of Paris—for that matter he never saw or +comprehended the French peasantry upon his own lands; because a chance +and volunteer soldiery had, under the peculiar conditions of the +half-populated Atlantic seaboard in conjunction with the French fleet +and with the aid of French money and arms, got the better of the small +and heterogeneous forces of George III, he believed that a military +nation like the French, in the midst of powerful enemies, could make +something of an amateur civic force; because a certain type of ease in +social relations was the ideal of many, perhaps of most, of those with +whom he had served in America, he confused so simple and mundane an +ideal with the fierce crusading blast and the sacred passion for +equality which was stirring his own nation when his opportunity for +leadership came.</p> + +<p>It may be said of La Fayette with justice that he never upon a single +occasion did the right thing. It may also be said with justice that he +never did politically any major thing for which his own conscience would +later reproach him. It is noticeable that the Queen held him in +particular odium. He had been a wealthy young noble about the Court, the +friend of all her women friends, and his sympathy with the revolutionary +movement at its inception therefore seemed to her nothing better than +treason. There was also undoubtedly<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> something in his manner which +grievously repelled her; that it was self-sufficient we cannot doubt, +and that it was often futile and therefore exasperating to women, events +are sufficient to show. But Marie Antoinette’s violent personal +antagonism towards La Fayette was not common, though several ardent +spirits (Danton’s, for instance) shared it. The mass of those who came +across La Fayette felt in connection with him a certain irritation or a +certain contempt or a certain rather small and distant respect; he +inspired no enthusiasms, and when he timidly attempted a rebellion +against the new Government after the fall of the monarchy, no one would +sacrifice himself or follow him.</p> + +<p>It may be affirmed of La Fayette that if he had not existed the +Revolution would have pursued much the same course as it did, with this +exception: that there would not have been formed a definitely middle +class armed guard to provoke friction in Paris: the National Guard would +have been more open to all ranks.</p> + +<p>In religion the man was anodyne, Catholic of course by baptism, but +distinctly Protestant in morals and in general tone, in dogma (until the +end of his life) freethinking, of course, like all his contemporaries. +He was personally courageous but foolishly despised the duel. One +anecdote out of many will help to fix his nature in the mind of the +reader. Mirabeau, casting about as usual for aid in his indebtedness, +sent urgently to him as to a fellow noble, a fellow politician and a +fellow supporter of the Crown, begging<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> a loan of £2000. La Fayette +accorded him £1000.</p> + + +<h3><a name="III_5" id="III_5"></a>DUMOURIEZ</h3> + +<p>Dumouriez presents a character particularly difficult for the modern +Englishman to comprehend, so remote is it in circumstance and +fundamentals from those of our time.</p> + +<p>Of good birth, but born in a generation when social differences had +become a jest for intelligent and active men (and he was intelligent and +active), courageous, with a good knowledge of his trade of soldiering, +of rapid decision and excellent judgment where troops or <i>terrain</i> were +concerned, he was all at sea in the comprehension of men, and he bore no +loyalty to the State.</p> + +<p>It is this last feature which will particularly surprise the English +reader, for it is the singular and permanent advantage of oligarchic +communities such as the British that they retain under any stress and +show throughout the whole commonwealth the sense of the State. To betray +the State, to act against its interests, to be imperfectly conscious of +its existence, are crimes or weaknesses unknown to the citizens of an +oligarchy, and a citizen of this country cannot easily conceive of them +to-day. In democracies and despotisms, on the other hand, to forget +one’s duty to the State, to be almost oblivious of its corporate +existence, is a common weakness. There is here a compensation, and by +just so much as despotism and democracy permit rapid, effective and +all-compelling action on<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> the part of the State, by just so much as they +permit sudden and sometimes miraculous enthusiasms which save or which +confirm a State, by that also do they lack the quiet and persistent +consciousness of the State which oligarchy fosters and determines.</p> + +<p>Dumouriez’ excellence as a general can only be appreciated by those who +have looked closely into the constitution of the forces which he was to +command and the adversaries with whom he had to deal. It is the prime +quality of a great commander that his mind stands ready for any change +in circumstances or in the material to his hand, and even when we have +allowed for the element of luck which is so considerable in military +affairs, we must not forget that Dumouriez saved without disaster the +wretched and disorganised bands, inchoate and largely mutinous as to +their old units, worthless and amateur as to their new, which had to +meet, in and behind the Argonne, the model army of Prussia.</p> + +<p>We must not forget that his plan for the invasion of the Low Countries +was a just and sensible one, nor with what skill, after the inevitable +defeat and retreat of the spring of 1793, he saved his command intact.</p> + +<p>As a subordinate to an armed executive, to the Government of Napoleon, +for instance, the man would have been priceless. Nay, had circumstances +permitted him to retain supreme command of civil as of military power, +he would have made no bad dictator. His mere technical skill was so +considerable as to make the large sums paid him by the English<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> +Government seem a good bargain even at our distance of time, and his +plans for the defence of England and for the attack on Napoleon are a +proof of the value at which he was estimated.</p> + +<p>But Dumouriez was quite unable to act under the special circumstances in +which he happened to be placed at the moment of his treason. A mere +ambition had carried him from intrigue to intrigue among the +politicians. He despised them as an active and capable soldier was +compelled to despise them; he was too old to share any of their +enthusiasms, even had his temperament permitted him to entertain any +vision, political or religious. He certainly never felt the least moral +bond attaching him to what was in his eyes the chance anarchy of the +last six months of French Government under which he served, and if he is +to be branded with the title of traitor, then we must brand with the +same title all that multitude of varied men who escaped from the country +in the Emigration, who left it in disgust, or even who remained in +France, but despaired of French fortunes, in the turmoil of 1793.</p> + +<p>It is perhaps a worthy excuse for Dumouriez’ failure to point out that +he also was one of those whom the Court might have used had it known how +to use men; but the Court had no such knowledge.</p> + + +<h3><a name="III_6" id="III_6"></a>DANTON</h3> + +<p>The character of Danton has more widely impressed the world than that of +any other<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> revolutionary leader, because it contained elements +permanently human, independent of the democratic theory of the time, and +necessary neither to the support of that theory nor to the criticism of +it.</p> + +<p>The character of Danton appeals to that sense in man which is interested +in action, and which in the field of letters takes the form of drama. +His vigour, his personal strength of mind and body, the individuality of +his outline, arrest equally the man who loves the Revolution, and the +man who hates it, and the man who is quite indifferent to its success or +failure.</p> + +<p>It is on this very account that historians, especially foreign +historians, have tended to misinterpret the man. Thus Carlyle, who has +great intuition in the matter, yet makes him out farmer-like—which he +certainly was not; Michelet, fascinated by his energy, presents him as +something uncouth, and in general those who would describe Danton stand +at a distance, as it were, where his loud voice and forcible gesture may +best be appreciated; but a man to be seen truly must be seen in +intimacy.</p> + +<p>Danton was essentially a compound of two powerful characters in man. He +was amative or constructive, and at the same time he not only possessed +but liked to exercise lucidity of thought. The combination is among the +strongest of all those that go to build up human personalities.</p> + +<p>That which was amative and constructive in him, his virility if you +will, brought him<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> into close touch with reality; he knew and loved his +own country, for instance, and infinitely preferred its happy survival +to the full development of any political theory. He also knew and loved +his fellow countrymen in detail and as persons; he knew what made a +Frenchman weak and what made him strong. The vein of Huguenotry, though +he did not know it for what it was, he disliked in his compatriots. On +the other hand, the salt and freshness of the French was native to him +and he delighted in it; the freedom of their expression, the noise of +their rhetoric, and the military subsoil of them, were things to all of +which he immediately responded. He understood their sort of laughter, +nor was he shocked, as a man less national would have been, at their +peculiarly national vices, and in especial their lapses into rage. It is +this which must account for what all impartial judgment most blames in +him, which is, his indifference to the cruelties, his absorbed interest +in foreign and military affairs, at the moment of the Massacres of +September.</p> + +<p>This touch with reality made him understand in some fashion (though only +from without) the nature of the Germans. The foolish mania of their +rulers for mere territorial expansion unaccompanied by persuasion or the +spread of their ideas, he comprehended. The vast superiority of their +armies over the disorganised forces of the French in 1792 he clearly +seized: hence on the one hand his grasp of their foreign policy, and on +the other his able negotiation of the retreat after Valmy.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> He also +understood, however, and more profoundly, the rapid self-organisation of +which his own countrymen were capable, and it was upon this knowledge +that his determination to risk the continuance of the war reposed. It +should be remarked that both in his military and in his quasi-military +action he was himself endowed in a singular degree with that power of +immediate decision which is characteristic of his nation.</p> + +<p>His lucidity of thought permitted him to foresee the consequences of +many a revolutionary decision, and at the same time inclined him to a +strong sympathy with the democratic creed, with the doctrine of +equality, and especially with the remoulding of the national +institutions—particularly his own profession of the law—upon simple +lines. He was undoubtedly a sincere and a convinced revolutionary, and +one whose doctrine more permeated him than did that of many of his +contemporaries their less solid minds. He was not on that account +necessarily republican. Had some accident called his genius into play +earlier in the development of the struggle, he might well, like +Mirabeau, with whom he presents so curious a parallel, have thought it +better for the country to save the Monarchy.</p> + +<p>It must always be remembered that he was a man of wide culture and one +who had achieved an early and satisfactory professional success; he was +earning a sound income at the moment of his youthful marriage; he read +English largely and could speak it. His dress was not inexpensive, and +though somewhat<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> disordered (as it often is with men of intense energy +and constant gesture) it never gave an impression of carelessness or +disarray. He had many and indifferent intellectual interests, and was +capable, therefore, of intelligent application in several fields. He +appreciated the rapid growth of physical science, and at the same time +the complexity of the old social conditions—too widely different from +contemporary truths.</p> + +<p>To religion he was, of course, like all men of that time, utterly +indifferent, but unlike many of them he seized the precise proportion of +its remaining effect upon certain districts and certain sections of the +countrysides. There has been a tendency latterly to exaggerate the part +which Freemasonry played in the launching of him; he was indeed a member +of a masonic lodge, as were, for that matter, all the men, conspicuous +or obscure, democratic or utterly reactionary, who appeared upon the +revolutionary stage: probably the king, certainly old aristocrats like +the father of Madame de Lamballe, and the whole host of the middle +class, from men like Bailly to men like Condorcet. But it is reading +history backwards, and imagining the features of our own time to have +been present a century ago, to make of Masonry the determining element +in his career.</p> + +<p>Danton failed and died from two combined causes: first his health gave +way, secondly he obtruded his sanity and civilian sense into the heated +fury and calculated martial law of the second year of the Republic. To +both that<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> fury and that calculation he was an obstacle; his opposition +to the Terror lost him the support of the enthusiasts, but it was the +interference which such a judgment made in the plans of the soldiers, +and notably of Carnot, that determined his condemnation and death. He +also, like Mirabeau, will undoubtedly increase as the years proceed, +and, if only as a representative of the national temper, become more and +more the typical figure of the Revolution in action.</p> + + +<h3><a name="III_7" id="III_7"></a>CARNOT</h3> + +<p>Carnot, the predecessor of Napoleon, and the organising soldier of the +early revolutionary wars, owed his power to backbone.</p> + +<p>He had not only a good solidity of brain, but an astonishing power of +using it for hours and hours on end. This he owed perhaps to the +excellent physical stock of which he came, the eldest of a very large +family born to a notable lawyer in Burgundy.</p> + +<p>It was Carnot’s pride to hold a commission in the learned arms which +were to transform at that moment the art of war: for as Bonaparte, his +successor, was a gunner, so he was a sapper. His practice of exact +knowledge in application, and the liberal education which his career +demanded, further strengthened the strong character he had inherited. +More important still, in his democratic views he was what none of the +older officers had been, convinced and sincere. He had not come within +the influence of the very wealthy or of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> the very powerful. He was +young, and he knew his own mind not only in matters of political faith +but in the general domain of philosophy, and in the particular one of +military science.</p> + +<p>It has been said of him that he invented the revolutionary method of +strategical concentration and tactical massing in the field. There is +some truth in this; but the method would not have been possible had he +not also invented, in company with Danton, and supported after Danton +left power, a universal system of conscription.</p> + +<p>Carnot understood, as only trained soldiers can, the value of numbers, +and <i>he depended with great sagacity upon the national temper</i>; thus at +Wattignies, which was a victory directly due to his genius, though it +was novel in him to have massed troops suddenly upon the right after a +check on the extreme left of the field, yet the novelty would have been +of no effect had he not comprehended that, with his young fellow +countrymen as troopers, he could depend upon a charge delivered after +thirty-six hours of vigil.</p> + +<p>He used not only the national but also the revolutionary temper in war. +One of the chief features, for instance, of the revolutionary armies +when they began to be successful, was the development of lines of +skirmishers who pushed out hardily before the main bodies and were the +first in the history of modern warfare to learn the use of cover. This +development was spontaneous: it was produced within and by each unit, +not by any general<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> command. But Carnot recognised it at Hoondschoote +and used it ever after.</p> + +<p>The stoical inflexibility of his temper is the noblest among the many +noble characters of his soul. He never admitted the empire, and he +suffered exile, seeming thereby in the eyes of the vilest and most +intelligent of his contemporaries, Fouché, to be a mere fool. He was as +hard with himself as with others, wholly military in the framework of +his mind, and the chief controller of the Terror, which he used, as it +was intended to be used, for the military salvation of the republic.</p> + + +<h3><a name="III_8" id="III_8"></a>MARAT</h3> + +<p>Marat is easily judged. The complete sincerity of the enthusiast is not +difficult to appreciate when his enthusiasm is devoted to a simple human +ideal which has been, as it were, fundamental and common to the human +race.</p> + +<p>Equality within the State and the government of the State by its general +will: these primal dogmas, on the reversion to which the whole +Revolution turned, were Marat’s creed.</p> + +<p>Those who would ridicule or condemn him because he held such a creed, +are manifestly incapable of discussing the matter at all. The ridicule +and condemnation under which Marat justly falls do not attach to the +patent moral truths he held, but to the manner in which he held them. He +did not only hold them isolated from other truths—it is the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> fault of +the fanatic so to hold any truth—but he held them as though no other +truths existed. And whenever he found his ideal to be in practice +working at a friction or stopped dead, his unnourished and acute +enthusiasms at once sought a scapegoat, discovered a responsible agent, +and suggested a violent outlet, for the delay.</p> + +<p>He was often right when he denounced a political intriguer: he often +would have sacrificed a victim not unjustly condemned, he often +discovered an agent partially responsible, and even the violent +solutions that he suggested were not always impracticable. But it was +the prime error of his tortured mind that beyond victims, and sudden +violent clutches at the success of democracy, there was nothing else he +could conceive. He was incapable of allowing for imperfections, for +stupidities, for the misapprehension of mind by mind, for the mere +action of time, and for all that renders human life infinitely complex +and infinitely adjustable.</p> + +<p>Humour, the reflection of such wisdom, he lacked;—“judgment” (as the +English idiom has it) he lacked still more—if a comparative term may be +attached to two such absolute vacuities.</p> + +<p>It must not be forgotten that so complete an absence of certain +necessary qualities in the building up of a mind are equivalent to +madness. Marat was not sane. His insanity was often generous, the creed +to which it was attached was obvious enough, and in the eyes of most of +us it is a creed to be<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> accepted. But he worked with it as a madman who +is mad on collectivism, let us say, or the rights of property, might +work in our society, thinking of his one thesis, shrieking it and +foaming at the mouth upon it, losing all control when its acceptance was +not even opposed but merely delayed. He was valueless for the +accomplishment of the ends of the Revolution. His doctrine and his +adherence to it were so conspicuously simple and sincere that it is no +wonder the populace made him (for a few months) a sort of symbol of +their demand.</p> + +<p>For the rest, his face, like his character, was tortured; he carried +with him a disease of the skin that irritated perpetually his wholly +unbalanced temper.</p> + +<p>Some say (but one must always beware of so-called “Science” in the +reading of history) that a mixture of racial types produced in him a +perpetual physical disturbance: his face was certainly distorted and +ill-balanced—but physical suggestions of that sort are very +untrustworthy.</p> + +<p>Those who met him in the management of affairs thought him worthless +enough; a few who knew him intimately loved him dearly; more who came +across him continually were fatigued and irritated by his empty +violence. He was, among those young revolutionaries, almost an elderly +man; he was (this should never be forgotten) a distinguished scholar in +his own trade, that of medicine; and he effected less in the Revolution +than any man to whom a reputation of equal prominence<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> happened to +attach. He must stand responsible for the massacres of September.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p> + + +<h3><a name="III_9" id="III_9"></a>ROBESPIERRE</h3> + +<p>No character in the Revolution needs for its comprehension a wider +reading and a greater knowledge of the national character than +Robespierre’s.</p> + +<p>Upon no character does the comprehension of the period more depend, and +none (for reasons I will give in a moment) has been more misunderstood, +not only in the popular legend but in the weighed decisions of competent +historians.</p> + +<p>So true is this that even time, which (in company with scholarship) +usually redresses such errors, has not yet permitted modern authors to +give a true picture of the man.</p> + +<p>The reason of so conspicuous a failure in the domain of history is this: +that side by side with the real Robespierre there existed in the minds +of all his contemporaries <i>save those who actually came across him in +the junctions of government</i>, a legendary Robespierre—a Robespierre +popularly imagined; and that this imaginary Robespierre, while it (or +he) has proved odious to posterity, seemed, while he lived, a +fascinating portrait to the man himself, and therefore he accepted it. +For Robespierre, though just, lacked humility.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span></p> + +<p>The problem is an exceedingly subtle as well as an exceedingly difficult +one. The historian, as he reads his authorities, has perpetually to +distinguish between what is strong and what is weak evidence, and to +recall himself, as he reads, to reality by a recollection of what +Robespierre himself was. If he does not do so he falls at once into the +legend; so powerful is that legend in the numbers that supported it, and +so strongly did Robespierre himself support it by his own attitude. The +legendary Robespierre may be described in a very few lines.</p> + +<p>Conceive a man sincerely convinced of the purest democratic theory, a +man who cared for nothing else but the realisation of that theory, and +who had never sacrificed his pursuit of its realisation in the State to +any personal advantage whatsoever. This man, trusted by the people and +at last idolised by them, becomes more and more powerful. He enters the +governing body (the Committee of Public Safety), he is the master both +within and without that body, and uses his mastery for establishing an +ideal democracy which shall recognise the existence of God and repose +upon civic virtue; and to establish this ideal he has recourse to +terror. He finds that human defections from his ideal are increasingly +numerous: he punishes them by death. The slaughter grows to be enormous; +the best of Democrats are involved in it; at last it can be tolerated no +longer, his immediate subordinates revolt against him in the Committee, +he is outlawed, fails to raise a popular rebellion<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> in his favour in +Paris, is executed, and his system of terror falls to the ground.</p> + +<p>This picture, though purely legendary in tone, contains not only much +truth, but truth of precisely that sort which conspires to make credible +what is false in the whole.</p> + +<p>Robespierre was sincerely attached to the conception of an ideal +democracy; he was incorruptible in the pursuit of it—and to be a +politician and incorruptible amounts to something like what the Church +calls heroic virtue in a man. He <i>did</i> enter the Committee of Public +Safety; he <i>did</i> support the Terror, and when he was overthrown the +Terror <i>did</i> come to an end. Where, then, does the legend differ from +the truth?</p> + +<p>In these capital points, which change it altogether: that Robespierre +was not the chief influence in the Committee of Public Safety, <i>i.e.</i> +the all powerful executive of the Republic; that he did not desire the +Terror, that he did not use it, that he even grew disgusted with it, and +that, in general, he was never the man who governed France.</p> + +<p>It need hardly be pointed out how such a truth destroys such a legend. +The whole nature of the twelve months between the summer of 1793 and the +summer of 1794 must vary according as we regard them as Robespierrean or +no: and they were not Robespierrean.</p> + +<p>What were they then, and why has the error that Robespierre was then +master, arisen?</p> + +<p>Those months, which may be roughly called<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> the months of the Terror, +were, as we shall see later in this book, months of martial law; and the +Terror was simply martial law in action—a method of enforcing the +military defence of the country and of punishing all those who +interfered with it or were supposed by the Committee to interfere with +it.</p> + +<p>No one man in the Committee was the author of this system, but the one +most determined to use it and the one who had most occasion to use it, +was undoubtedly the military organiser, Carnot. Side by side with him +one man, such as Barrère, supported it because it kept up the Committee +of Public Safety which gave him all his political position. Another, +such as Saint-Just, supported it because he believed that the winning of +the war (in which he took an active part) would secure democracy +everywhere and for ever. Another, such as Jean Bon, supported it from +the old sectarian bitterness of the Huguenot. But of all men in the +Committee, Robespierre supported the Terror least, and was most +suspected by his colleagues—and increasingly suspected as time went +on—of desiring to interfere with the martial system of the Terror and +to modify it.</p> + +<p>Why, then, was Robespierre popularly identified with the Terror, and +why, when he was executed, did the Terror cease?</p> + +<p>Robespierre was identified with the Terror because he was identified +with the popular clamour of the time, with the extreme democratic +feeling of the time, and its extreme fear of a reaction. Robespierre +being the popular<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> idol, had become also the symbol of a popular frenzy +which was supposed to be ruling the country. But that frenzy was not +ruling the country. What was ruling the country was the Committee of +Public Safety, in which Carnot’s was the chief brain. Robespierre was +indeed the idol of the populace; he was in no way the agent of their +power or of any power.</p> + +<p>Why, when he fell, did the Terror cease if he were not its author? +Because the Terror was acting under a strain; it was with the utmost +difficulty that this absolute, intolerant and intolerable martial system +could be continued when once the fear of invasion was removed. For some +weeks before Robespierre fell the victories had begun to render it +unnecessary. When the Committee saw to it that Robespierre should be +outlawed by the Parliament, they knocked away, without knowing it, the +keystone of their own policy; it was <i>his</i> popular position which made +<i>their</i> policy possible. When he was destroyed they suddenly found that +the Terror could no longer be maintained. Men had borne with it because +of Robespierre, falsely imagining that Robespierre had desired it. +Robespierre gone, men would not bear with it any more.</p> + +<p>Now, finally, if Robespierre himself had always felt opposed to the +system of the Terror, why did he not take the lead in the popular +reaction against it?</p> + +<p>He had his opportunity given him by Danton in December 1793—seven +months before his own catastrophe. The Committee<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> determined to put +Danton out of the way because Danton, in appealing for mercy, was +weakening the martial power of their government. Robespierre might have +saved Danton: he preferred to let him be sacrificed. The reason was that +Robespierre wrongly believed popularity to lie upon the side of the +Terror and against Danton; he was in no way a leader (save in rhetoric +and in rhetoric directed towards what men already desired), and his own +great weakness or vice was the love of popular acclaim.</p> + +<p>Later on, in the summer of 1794, when he actually began to move against +the Terror, he only did so privately. He so misread men that he still +believed the Terror to be popular, and dared not lose his popular name. +A man by nature as sincere as crystal, he was tempted to insincerity in +this major thing, during the last months of his life, and he yielded +completely to the temptation. For the sake of his memory it was +deplorable, and deplorable also for history. His weakness has been the +cause of an historical error as grave as any that can be discovered in +modern letters, and at the same time has wholly maligned him to +posterity.</p> + +<p>A factor in Robespierre’s great public position which is often forgotten +is the great effect of his speeches. That men should still debate, after +so vast a change in taste, whether those speeches were eloquent or no, +is a sufficient proof of their effect. He spoke in an ordered and a +reasoned manner, which bored the fine spirits of the earlier +Parliaments,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> but well suited the violent convictions of the later +Revolution. His phraseology, his point of view, just jumped with that of +his audience. He could express what they felt, and express it in terms +which they knew to be exact, and which they believed to be grand. For +his manner was never excessive, and those excessive men who heard him in +an excessive mood, were proud to know that their violence could be +expressed with so much scholarship and moderated skill.</p> + +<p>By birth he was of the smaller gentry, though poor. It is an indication +of his character that he had thought of taking Orders, and that in early +youth literary vanity had affected him. He has left no monument; but +from the intensity of his faith and from his practice of it, his name, +though it will hardly increase, will certainly endure.</p> + + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> There is but one trustworthy monograph on Marat. It will +interest the student as a proof of the enthusiasm which Marat can +inspire. It is by Champfleury.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV<br /><br /> +<small>THE PHASES OF THE REVOLUTION</small></h2> + + +<h3><a name="IV_1" id="IV_1"></a>I<br /> +<small><i>From May 1789 to 17th of July 1789.</i></small></h3> + +<p><span class="sc">The</span> first point which the reader must hold in the story of the +Revolution is the quarrel between its first Parliament and the Crown.</p> + +<p>Of what nature was that quarrel?</p> + +<p>It was not, as it has sometimes been represented, a simple issue between +privilege and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> a democratic demand for equality, or between traditional +organs of government and a democratic demand for self-government by the +nation. To imagine this is to read history backwards, and to see in the +untried conditions of 1789 the matured results which only appeared after +years of struggle.</p> + +<p>The prime issue lay between legality and illegality.</p> + +<p>The forms of French law and all the inherited method of French +administration demanded a certain form of authority; a centralised +government of unlimited power. The King was absolute. From him proceeded +in the simplest fashion whatever will was paramount in the State. He +could suspend a debtor’s liabilities, imprison a man without trial, +release him without revision of his case, make war or peace, and in +minor details such as the discipline and administration of public +bodies, the power of the Crown was theoretically and legally equally +supreme. It was not exercised as the enormous power of modern government +is exercised, it did not perpetually enter into every detail of the life +of the poor in the way in which the power of a modern English Government +enters into it; it is in the very nature of such autocratic power that, +while unlimited in theory, it is compelled to an instinctive and +perpetual self-limitation lest it break down; and autocracy maybe +compared in this to aristocracy, or more properly speaking to oligarchy, +the government of a few: for where a few govern they know that their +government reposes upon<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> public opinion or public tolerance; they are +very careful not to exceed certain limits the transgression of which +would weaken the moral foundation of their power; they welcome allies, +they recruit themselves perpetually from other classes in the community.</p> + +<p>In the same way an autocracy always has the desire to be popular. Its +strokes affect the great and the powerful, and are hardly ever aimed at +the mass of the community. The intellectual, the wealthy, the privileged +by birth, fortune or exceptional personal powers, are suspect to it. As +for the mass of men an Autocracy attempts to represent and, in a certain +sense, to obey them.</p> + +<p>Now the French autocracy (for it was no less) erred not in the will to +act thus popularly in the early part of the Revolution, but in the +<i>knowledge</i> requisite for such action.</p> + +<p>The Parliament, shortly after it had met in May 1789, began to show, in +the Commons part of it, the working of that great theory which had +leavened all France for a generation. The Commons said, “We are the +people; at once the symbols of the people, the direct mandatory servants +of the people, and” (though this was a fiction) “we are of the people in +our birth and origin. We are therefore the true sovereign; and the +prince, the head of the Executive, is no more than an organ of +government, morally less in authority than ourselves, who are the true +source of government.” This attitude, which was at the back of all men’s +minds, and which was concentrated, of course, in the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> Commons, clashed +with legality. It could not express itself in the terms of law, it could +not act save in a fashion which should be, in the strictest sense of the +word, <i>revolutionary</i>.</p> + +<p>Now the Crown, on the whole national in sympathy, and comprehending this +new theory well (I mean by the Crown the general body of advisers round +the King, and the King himself), was offended at the illegality not of +the theory or of the pretence (for these were not illegal), but of the +action of the Commons. And this comparatively small source of friction +was the irritant upon which we must fix as the cause of what followed. +The Nobles, by 108 to 47, decided, the day after the opening of the +Parliament, to sit as a separate House. The Clergy, by a much smaller +majority, 133 to 114, came to the same decision, but carefully qualified +it as provisional. The Commons declared that the hall in which they met +should be regarded as the hall of the National Assembly, and later made +it their business (to quote the phrase of the motion) “to attempt to +unite in common all the deputies of the nation in that hall and never to +abandon the principle of voting individually” (that is, not by separate +Houses) “or the principle that the States-General formed one undivided +body.” This attitude was qualified and compromised with to some extent +in the days that followed, but it held the field, and while the Commons +were insisting upon this attitude as a moral right, the Nobles countered +by a reaffirmation of the right of each House to a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> separate judgment +upon public matters. The Nobles were standing upon legal precedent: the +Commons had nothing in their favour but political theory; if the orders +sat all together and voted as individuals, the Commons, who were in +number equal to the two other Houses combined, would, with their noble +and clerical sympathisers, have a majority.</p> + +<p>Now the King and his advisers, notably Necker, who still had great +weight, were by no means “Impossiblists” in this struggle. They desired +an understanding, and through the last days of May and the first days of +June the attempt at an understanding was made. But the attempt dragged, +and as it seemed that nothing would come of it, on the 10th of June +Sièyes moved that the Assembly should “verify its powers” (a French +phrase for admitting and registering the presence of each member as +acceptable to the whole body, and to the theory of its Constitution), +and that this should be done “in the case of each member” (meaning +members of all the three orders and <i>not</i> of the Commons alone), +“whether the members of the two privileged Houses were present or +absent.” The roll was called and completed upon the 15th. None of the +nobles attended the common roll-call, three of the parish clergy (they +were from the province of Poitou) did so, and thus admitted the right of +the Commons so to act. A dozen of their colleagues joined them later; +but that was all.</p> + +<p>So far there had been no action which could be precisely called illegal +or revolutionary.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> The Commons had affirmed a right based upon a +political theory which the vast majority of the nation admitted, and the +legal depositary of power, the King, had not yet reproved. One may draw +a parallel and compare the action of the Commons so far to some action +which a trade union, for instance, may take in England; some action the +legality of which is doubtful but upon which the courts have not yet +decided.</p> + +<p>It was upon the 17th of June, two days after the completion of the +roll-call by the Commons, that the first revolutionary act took place, +and the student of the Revolution will do well to put his finger upon +that date and to regard it not indeed as the moral origin of the +movement, but as the precise moment from which the Revolution, as a +Revolution, begins to act. For upon that day the Commons, though in fact +only joined by a handful of the Clerical House, and by none of the +nobility, <i>declared themselves to be the National Assembly</i>; that is, +asserted the fiction that Clergy, Nobles and Commons were all present +and voted together. To this declaration they added a definite act of +sovereignty which trespassed upon and contradicted the legal authority +of the Crown. True, the motion was only moved and passed +“provisionally,” but the words used were final, for in this motion the +self-styled “National Assembly” declared that “provisionally” taxes and +dues might be raised upon the old authority but that only until the +National Assembly should disperse;<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> “after which day”—and here we reach +the sacramental formula, as it were, of the crisis—“the National +Assembly <i>wills and decrees</i> that all taxes and dues of whatever nature +which have not been specifically formally and freely granted by the said +Assembly shall cease in every province of the kingdom no matter how such +that province may be administered.” (This is an allusion to the fact +that in some provinces there was a representative machinery, in others +nothing but the direct action of the Crown.) “The Assembly declares that +when it has <i>in concert with</i> (not in obedience to) the King laid down +the principle of a national re-settlement, it will busy itself with the +examination and ordering of the public debt.” Etc., etc.</p> + +<p>Such was the point of departure after which sovereignty was at issue +between the Crown and the States-General; the Crown a known institution +with its traditions stretching back to the Roman Empire, and the +National Assembly a wholly new organ according to its own claims, basing +its authority upon a political theory stretching back to the very +origins of human society.</p> + +<p>Two days later, on the 19th of June, the “National Assembly,” still only +self-styled and possessing only the powers which it had ascribed to +itself beyond all forms of law, set to work, nominated its committees, +and assumed the sovereignty thus claimed. The Nobles protested (notably +the Bishops), and the King, on the advice of Barentin, keeper of the +Seals, determined upon immediate<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> resistance. The excuse was taken that +the Royal Session, as it was called, in which the King would declare his +will, needed the preparation of the hall, and when the Commons presented +themselves at the door of that hall on the next day, the 20th, they +found it shut against them. They adjourned to a neighbouring tennis +court, and took a solemn corporate oath that they would not separate +without giving France a Constitution. They continued to meet, using a +church for that purpose, but on the 23rd the Royal Session was opened +and the King declared his will.</p> + +<p>The reader must especially note that even in this crisis the Crown did +not offer a complete resistance. There was an attempt at compromise. +Necker would have had a more or less complete surrender, the Queen and +her set would have preferred an act of authority which should have +annulled all that the Commons had done. What actually happened was a +permission by the Crown that the three Orders should meet as one body +for certain common interests, but should preserve the system of voting +as separate Houses in “all that might regard the ancient and +constitutional rights of the three Orders, the Constitution to be given +to future Parliaments, feudal property, and the rights and prerogatives +of the two senior Houses.” As a mere numerical test, such a conclusion +would have destroyed the power of the Commons, since, as we have seen, +numbers were the weapon of the Commons, who were equal to the two other +Houses combined, and if all<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> sat together would, with the Liberal +members of the clergy and the nobility, be supreme. But apart from this +numerical test, the act of sovereignty affirmed by the National Assembly +when it declared itself, and itself only, competent to vote taxes, was +annulled. Moreover, the royal declaration ended with a command that on +the next day the three Orders should meet separately.</p> + +<p>Now at this critical point the King was disobeyed. The current of the +time chose the revolutionary bed, and as it began to flow deepened and +confirmed its course with every passing day and event. Already the +majority of the clergy had joined the National Assembly when it had +affirmed its right to sit in spite of the check of the 20th of June. +There was a half-hour on that decisive day of the Royal Session, the +23rd of June, when armed force might have been used for the arrest and +dispersion of the Deputies. They declared themselves inviolable and +their arrest illegal, but there was, of course, no sanction for this +decree. As a fact, not a corporal’s file was used against them. The next +day, the 24th, the majority of the clergy again joined the Commons in +their session (in flat defiance of the King’s orders), and on the 25th, +forty-seven of the nobles followed their example. The King yielded, and +on the 27th, two days later, ordered the three Houses to meet together.</p> + +<p>The National Assembly was now legally constituted, and set out upon its +career. The Crown, the old centre of authority, had<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> abandoned its +position, and had confirmed the Revolution, but in doing so it had acted +as it were in contradiction with itself. It had made technically legal +an illegality which destroyed its own old legal position, but it had +done so with ill-will, and it was evident that some counter-stroke would +be attempted to restore the full powers of the Crown.</p> + +<p>At this point the reader must appreciate what forces were face to face +in the coming struggle. So far, the illegal and revolutionary act of the +17th of June, the Royal Session which replied to that act upon the 23rd, +the King’s decree which yielded to the Commons upon the 27th, had all of +them been but words. If it came to action, what physical forces were +opposed?</p> + +<p>On the side of the Crown was the organised armed force which it +commanded. For it must never be forgotten that the Crown was the +Executive, and remained the Executive right on to the capture of the +palace three years later, and the consummation of the Revolution on the +10th of August, 1792. On the side of the National Assembly was without +doubt the public opinion of the country (but that is not a force that +can be used under arms), and, what was much more to the point, the +municipal organisation of France.</p> + +<p>Space forbids a full description of the origins and strength of the +French municipal system; it is enough to point out that the whole of +Gallic civilisation, probably from a moment earlier than Cæsar’s +invasion, and certainly from the moment when Roman rule<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> was paramount +in Gaul, was a <i>municipal</i> one. It is so still. The countrysides take +their names mainly from their chief towns. The towns were the seats of +the bishops, whose hierarchy had preserved whatever could be preserved +of the ancient world. In the towns were the colleges, the guilds, the +discussion and the corporations which built up the life of the nation. +The chief of these towns was Paris. The old systems of municipal +government, corrupt and varied as they were, could still give the towns +a power of corporate expression. And even where that might be lacking it +was certain that some engine would be found for expressing municipal +action in a crisis of the sort through which France was now passing. In +Paris, for instance, it was seen when the time came for physical force +that the College of Electors, who had chosen the representatives for +that city, were willing to act at once and spontaneously as a municipal +body which should express the initiative of the people. It was the +towns, and especially Paris, prompt at spontaneous organisation, ready +to arm, and when armed competent to frame a fighting force, which was +the physical power behind the Assembly.</p> + +<p>What of the physical power behind the King? His power was, as we have +said, the Regular Armed forces of the country: the army. But it is +characteristic of the moment that only a part of that armed force could +be trusted. For an army is never a mere weapon: it consists of living +men; and though it will<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> act against the general opinion of its members +and will obey orders long after civilians would have broken with the +ties of technical and legal authority, yet there is for armies also a +breaking point in those ties, and the Crown, I repeat, could not use as +a whole the French-speaking and French-born soldiery. Luckily for it, a +very great proportion of the French army at that moment consisted of +foreign mercenaries.</p> + +<p>Since the position was virtually one of war, we must consider what was +the strategical object of this force. Its object was Paris, the chief of +the towns; and round Paris, in the early days of July, the mercenary +regiments were gathered from all quarters. That military concentration +once effected, the gates of the city held, especially upon the north and +upon the west, by encamped regiments and by a particularly large force +of cavalry (ever the arm chosen for the repression of civilians), the +Crown was ready to act.</p> + +<p>On the 11th of July, Necker, who stood for Liberal opinions, was +dismissed. A new ministry was formed, and the counter-revolution begun. +What followed was the immediate rising of Paris.</p> + +<p>The news of Necker’s dismissal reached the masses of the capital (only +an hour’s ride from Versailles) on the afternoon of the 12th, Sunday. +Crowds began to gather; an ineffectual cavalry charge in one of the +outer open spaces of the city only inflamed the popular enthusiasm, for +the soldiers who charged were German mercenary soldiers<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> under the +command of a noble. Public forces were at once organised, arms were +commandeered from the armourers’ shops, the Electoral College, which had +chosen the members of the Assembly for Paris, took command at the Guild +Hall, but the capital point of the insurrection—what made it +possible—was the seizure of a great stock of arms and ammunition, +including cannon, in the depot at the Invalides.</p> + +<p>With such resources the crowd attacked, at the other end of the city, a +fortress and arsenal which had long stood in the popular eye as the +symbol of absolute monarchy, the Bastille. With the absurdly +insufficient garrison of the Bastille, its apparent impregnability to +anything the mob might attempt, the supposed but doubtful treason of its +governor in firing upon those whom he had admitted to parley, we are not +here concerned. The Bastille was rushed, after very considerable efforts +and an appreciable loss in killed and wounded. By the evening of that +day, Tuesday, the 14th of July, 1789, Paris had become a formidable +instrument of war. The next news was the complete capitulation of the +King.</p> + +<p>He came on the morrow to the National Assembly, promising to send away +the troops; he promised to recall Necker, a municipal organisation was +granted to the city, with Bailly for its first mayor, and—a point of +capital importance—an armed militia dependent upon that municipality +was legally formed, with La Fayette at its head. On the 17th Louis +entered Paris to consummate his<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> capitulation, went to the Guild Hall, +appeared in the tricoloured cockade, and the popular battle was won.</p> + +<p>It behoves us here to consider the military aspect of this definitive +act from which the sanction of the Revolution, the physical power behind +it, dates.</p> + +<p>Paris numbered somewhat under a million souls: perhaps no more than +600,000: the number fluctuated with the season. The foreign mercenary +troops who were mainly employed in the repression of the popular feeling +therein, were not sufficient to impose anything like a siege. They could +at the various gates have stopped the provisioning of the city, but then +at any one of those separate points, any one of their detachments upon a +long perimeter more than a day’s march in circumference would certainly +have been attacked and almost as certainly overwhelmed by masses of +partially armed civilians.</p> + +<p>Could the streets have been cleared while the ferment was rising? It is +very doubtful. They were narrow and tortuous in the extreme, the area to +be dealt with was enormous, the tradition of barricades not forgotten, +and the spontaneous action of that excellent fighting material which a +Paris mob contains, had been quite as rapid as anything that could have +been effected by military orders.</p> + +<p>The one great fault was the neglect to cover the Invalides, but even had +the Invalides not been looted, the stock of arms and powder in the city +would have been sufficient to have organised a desperate and prolonged +resistance.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> The local auxiliary force (of slight military value, it is +true), the “French Guards,” as they were called, were wholly with the +people. And in general, the Crown must be acquitted of any considerable +blunder on the military side of this struggle. It certainly did not fail +from lack of will.</p> + +<p>The truth is (if we consider merely the military aspect of this military +event) that in dealing with large bodies of men who are (a) not +previously disarmed, (b) under conditions where they cannot be +dispersed, and (c) capable by a national tradition or character of some +sort of rapid, spontaneous organisation, the issue will always be +doubtful, and the uncertain factor (which is the tenacity, decision and +common will of the civilians, to which soldiers are to be opposed) is +one that varies within the very widest limits.</p> + +<p>In massing the troops originally, the Crown and its advisers estimated +that uncertain factor at far too low a point. Even contemporary educated +opinion, which was in sympathy with Paris, put it too low. That factor +was, as a fact, so high that no armed force of the size and quality +which the Crown then disposed of, could achieve its object or hold down +the capital.</p> + +<p>As for the absurd conception that any body of men in uniform, however +small, could always have the better of civilian resistance, however +large and well organised, it is not worthy of a moment’s consideration +by those who interest themselves in the realities of military history. +It is worthy only of the academies.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span></p> + +<p>So ends the first phase of the Revolution. It had lasted from the +opening of the States-General in May to the middle of July 1789.</p> + + +<h3><a name="IV_2" id="IV_2"></a>II<br /> +<small><i>From the 17th of July 1789 to the 6th of Oct. 1789.</i></small></h3> + +<p>We have seen the military conditions under which the attempt at an armed +counter-revolution failed. There follows a short phase of less than +three months, whose character can be quickly described.</p> + +<p>It was that moment of the Revolution in which ideas had the freest play, +in which least had been done to test their application, and most scope +remained for pure enthusiasm. That is why we find in the midst of that +short phase the spontaneous abandonment of the feudal rights by the +nobility. And that is why the violent uprisings all over France +continued. It is the period in which the Declaration of the Rights of +Man and of the Citizen, a document which may fittingly stand side by +side with the Declaration of Independence (for together they form the +noblest monuments of our modern origins), was promulgated. In the same +period were the elements of the future Constitution rapidly debated and +laid down, and notably that national policy of a <i>Single Chamber</i> which +the modern French have imprudently abandoned. In that same period, +however, appeared, and towards the close of it, another form of +resistance on the part of the Crown and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> of those who advised the Crown. +The King hesitated to accept the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and +similarly hesitated to promulgate the Decree of the 4th of August in +which the nobility had abandoned their feudal dues. It would be foolish +to exaggerate the military aspect of what followed. Louis did call in +troops, but only in numbers sufficient for personal defence, and we can +hardly believe that he intended anything more than to police the +surroundings of his throne. But the brigade (for it was no more, nor was +it of full strength) which he summoned was sufficient to kindle +suspicion; and the determinedly false position of the Queen (who all her +life was haunted by the idea that the regular soldiers, especially if +they were well dressed and held themselves rigidly, were a sort of +talisman) provoked an explosion. A feast was given in which the officers +of the Regiment of Flanders, which had just reached Versailles, were +entertained by the officers of the Guard. It was made the occasion for a +good deal of drunkenness and a violent Royalist manifestation, at which +the Queen was present, which she approved, and which some thought she +had designed.</p> + +<p>The failure of the harvest to relieve the scarcity of bread in Paris, +the permanent state of alarm in which Paris had remained, and of +suspicion for the safety of the Parliament which it continually +entertained since the early part of the summer, needed no more to +provoke an outbreak. It is an error to imagine that that outbreak was +engineered<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> or that such a movement could have been factitious. Great +masses of women (in whom the movement originated), and after them a +whole flood of the populace, marched upon Versailles.</p> + +<p>There was no direct attack upon the palace, though the palace feared +such an attack at any moment. The troops present were sufficient to +prevent violence.</p> + +<p>La Fayette followed in the night at the head of his new Parisian militia +force.</p> + +<p>Too much reliance was placed upon the military character of this force; +the palace was invaded in the early morning, an attempt to assassinate +the Queen on the part of the mob failed, though two of the Guards were +killed. And after scenes whose violence and apparent anarchy only masked +the common determination of the populace, the royal family were +compelled to abandon Versailles and to take up their place in the +Tuileries; the Parliament followed them to Paris, and neither King nor +Parliament returned again to the suburban palace.</p> + +<p>This recapture of the King by Paris is much more significant than a mere +impulse of the mob. The King in Paris, the unison of his person with the +capital city, had been the very sacrament of French life for century +upon century. It was precisely a hundred years since Paris had been +abandoned by Louis XIV for Versailles. The significance of that error +may be understood by the citizens of an aristocratic country if they +will imagine the abandonment of their countrysides<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> by the squires, or, +again, the future historian of our modern industrial civilisation may +understand it when he describes how the wealthy manufacturers abandoned +the cities in which their wealth was made, to dwell outside and apart +from the living interests of their people.</p> + +<p>With the return of the royal family to Paris, and with the presence of +the Assembly within the heart of the national life, one prime factor +appears, which is this: that while the National Assembly proceeds step +by step to what it imagines to be a complete attainment of democracy +(though how partial will soon be seen), the resistance of the Crown is +transformed into a resistance of the mere Court. The attack on the +Revolution becomes a personal thing. The King is still wholly the chief +of the Executive; he can give what commands he wills to the armed force; +he controls receipts and payments; he is for all active purposes the +Government. But he is no longer considering that prime function of his, +nor even using it to restore his old power. He acts henceforward as an +individual, and an individual in danger. The Queen, whose view of the +Revolution and its dangers had always been a purely personal one, is the +directing will in the court-group from this moment, October 1789, +onwards; and the chief preoccupation of that group for eighteen months +is personal safety. Surrounded by the pomp of the Tuileries and amid all +the external appearances of a power still greater than that of any other +monarch<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> in Europe, Louis and his wife and their very few immediate and +devoted friends and followers thought of the palace as a prison, and +never considered their position save as one intolerable.</p> + + +<h3><a name="IV_3" id="IV_3"></a>III<br /> +<small><i>From October 1789 to June 1791.</i></small></h3> + +<p>It is this which must explain all that followed in the succeeding phase, +which lasted from these early days of October 1789 to the last week of +June 1791. Throughout that period of twenty-one months the King is +letting the Revolution take its course, with the fixed idea of thwarting +it at last by flying from it, and perhaps conquering it by foreign aid. +But even this policy is not consecutively followed. The increasing +repugnance of the Court and of the King himself to the revolutionary +development forbids a consecutive and purely hypocritical acceptation of +the National Assembly’s decrees.</p> + +<p>Deliberate and calculated intrigue might yet have saved the monarchy and +the persons of the royal family. Oddly enough, an ally in the struggle, +an excellent intriguer, a saviour of the monarchical institution and a +true defender of the royal persons was at hand: it was at hand in the +person of Mirabeau.</p> + +<p>This man had more and more dominated the Assembly; he had been +conspicuous from its first opening days; he had been its very voice in +the resistance to the King at Versailles; it was he who had replied to +the Master of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> Ceremonies on June 23, that the Commons would not +disperse; it was he who had moved that the persons of the Commons were +privileged against arrest. He was of a family noble in station and +conspicuous before the people by the wealth and eccentricities of its +head, Mirabeau’s father. He himself was not unknown even before the +Revolution broke out, for his violence, his amours, his intelligence and +his debts. He was a few years older than the King and Queen: his +personality repelled them; none the less his desire to serve them was +sincere; and it was his plan, while retaining the great hold over the +National Assembly which his rhetoric and his use of men furnished him, +to give to the Court and in particular to the Queen, whom he very +greatly and almost reverently admired, such secret advice as might save +them. This advice, as we shall see in a moment, tended more and more to +be an advice for civil war. But Mirabeau’s death at the close of the +phase we are now entering (on April 2, 1791), and the increasing fears +of the King and Queen, between them prevented any statesmanship at all; +they prevented even the statesmanship of intrigue; and the period +became, on the side of the Revolution, a rapid and uncontrolled +development of its democratic theory (limited by the hesitation of the +middle class), and on the side of the Court an increasing demand for +mere physical security and flight, coupled with an increasing +determination to return, and to restore as a popular monarchy the scheme +of the past.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span></p> + +<p>The eighteen months that intervened between the fixing of the Assembly +and the royal family in Paris, and the death of Mirabeau, are remarkable +for the following points, which must all be considered abreast, as it +were, if we are to understand their combined effects.</p> + +<p>1. This was the period in which the constructive work of the National +Assembly was done, and in which the whole face of the nation was +changed. The advising bodies of lawyers called “Parliaments” were +abolished (eleven months after the King had come to Paris), the Modern +Departments were organised in the place of the old provinces, the old +national and provincial militia was destroyed; but (as it is very +important to remember) <i>the old regular army was left untouched</i>. A new +judicature and new rules of procedure were established. A new code +sketched out in the place of “Common Law” muddle. In a word, it was the +period during which most of those things which we regard as +characteristic of the revolutionary work were either brought to their +theoretic conclusion or given at least their main lines.</p> + +<p>2. Among these constructive acts, but so important that it must be +regarded separately, was the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which +will be dealt with at length further in this book; it was the principal +work (and the principal error) of that year and a half.</p> + +<p>3. The general spirit of the Revolution, more difficult to define than +its theory but easy to appreciate as one follows the development<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> of the +movement, increased regularly and enormously in intensity during the +period. The power of the King, who was still at the head of the +Executive, acted more and more as an irritant against public opinion, +and—</p> + +<p>4. That public opinion began to express itself in a centralised and +national fashion, of which the great federation of the 14th of July +1790, in Paris, on the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille, was the +nucleus and also the symbol. This federation consisted in delegates from +the National Guard throughout the country, and it was of this capital +importance: that it introduced into the revolutionary movement a feature +of soldiery which made even the regular troops for the most part +sympathetic with the enthusiasm of the time.</p> + +<p>5. These eighteen months were, again, filled with the movement of the +“Emigration.” That movement was, of course, the departure of many of the +more prominent of the privileged orders and of a crowd of humbler +nobles, as also of a few ecclesiastics, from France. The King’s brothers +(one fled at the beginning of the emigration, the younger, the Comte +d’Artois; the other, the elder, at its close, and coincidently with the +flight of the King) must especially be noted in this connection; they +formed in company with the more notable of the other emigrants a regular +political body, which intrigued continually beyond the frontiers, in +Germany and Italy, against the Revolution. And<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>—</p> + +<p>6. It was therefore during these months that the ultimate origins of the +large European war must be found. The armed body of the emigrants under +Condé formed an organised corps upon the Rhine, and though there was not +yet the semblance of an armed movement in Europe besides theirs against +the French, yet by the <i>émigrés</i>, as they were called, were sown the +seeds the harvest of which was to be the war of 1792.</p> + +<p>I have said that during these months in which most of the constructive +work of the Revolution was done, in which the seeds of the great war +were sown, and in which the absolute position of the Crown as the head +of the Executive was increasingly irritating to the public opinion of +the French, and especially of the capital, Mirabeau was the one man who +might have preserved the continuity of national institutions by the +preservation of the monarchy. He received money from the Court and in +return gave it advice. The advice was the advice of genius, but it was +listened to less and less in proportion as it was more and more +practical. Mirabeau also favoured the abandonment of Paris by the King, +but he would have had the King leave Paris openly and with an armed +force, withdraw to a neighbouring and loyal centre such as Compiègne, +and thence depend upon the fortunes of civil war.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile the Queen was determined upon a very different and much more +personal plan, into which no conception of statesmanship entered. She +was determined to save<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> the persons of her children, herself and her +husband. Plans of flight were made, postponed and re-postponed. It was +already agreed at the Court that not Mirabeau’s plan should be followed, +but this plan of mere evasion. The army which Bouillé commanded upon the +frontier was to send small detachments along the great road from Paris +to the east; the first of these were to meet the royal fugitives a +little beyond Chalôns and to escort their carriage eastward; each armed +detachment in the chain, as the flight proceeded, was to fall in for its +defence, until, once the town of Varennes was reached, the King and +Queen should be in touch with the main body of the army.</p> + +<p>What was then intended to follow remains obscure. It is fairly certain +that the King did not intend to pass the frontier but to take refuge at +Montmédy. The conflict that would have inevitably broken out could +hardly have been confined to a civil war: foreign armies and the German +mercenaries in the French service were presumably to be organised, in +case the flight succeeded, for a march upon Paris and the complete +restoration of the old state of affairs.</p> + +<p>Had Mirabeau lived this rash and unstatesmanlike plan might yet have +been avoided; it so happened that he died upon April 2, 1791, and soon +after we enter the third phase of the Revolution, which is that leading +directly to the great war, and to the fall of the monarchy.</p> + +<p>Shortly after Mirabeau’s death a tumult,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> which excessively frightened +the royal family, prevented the King and Queen from leaving the palace +and passing Easter at St. Cloud, in the suburbs. Though further +postponements of their flight followed, the evasion actually took place +in the night of the 20th to 21st of June. It very nearly succeeded, but +by a series of small accidents, the last of which, the famous ride of +Drouet to intercept the fugitives, is among the best-known episodes in +history, the King and Queen and their children were discovered and +arrested at Varennes, within a few hundred yards of safety, and were +brought back to Paris, surrounded by enormous and hostile crowds. With +the failure of this attempt at flight in the end of June 1791, ends the +third phase of the Revolution.</p> + + +<h3><a name="IV_4" id="IV_4"></a>IV<br /> +<small><i>From June 1791 to September 1792.</i></small></h3> + +<p>To understand the capital effect both of this flight and of its failure, +we must once more insist upon the supreme position of the monarchy in +the traditions and instinct of French polity. The unwisdom of the flight +it would be difficult to exaggerate: it is impossible to exaggerate the +moral revolution caused by its failure. It was regarded as virtually an +abdication. The strong body of provincial, silent, and moderate opinion, +which still centred on the King and regarded it as his function to lead +and to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> govern, was bewildered, and in the main divorced, in the future, +from the Crown.</p> + +<p>It is an excellent proof of what the monarchy had for so long been to +France, that even in such a crisis barely the name of “a republic” was +mentioned, and that only in the intellectual circles in Paris. All the +constitutional and standing forces of society conspired to preserve the +monarchy at the expense of no matter what fictions. The middle class +Militia Guard under La Fayette repressed, in what is known as the +Massacre of the Champ-de-Mars, the beginnings of a popular movement. The +more Radical leaders (among whom was Danton) fled abroad or hid. The +Duke of Orleans utterly failed to take advantage of the moment, or to +get himself proclaimed regent: the monarchical tradition was too strong.</p> + +<p>Immediately after the second anniversary of the taking of the Bastille, +in July, the decrees of Parliament created the fiction that the King was +not responsible for the flight, that he “had been carried off,” and in +the following September, though until then suspended from executive +power, the King, on taking the oath to the Constitution, was once more +at the head of all the forces of the nation.</p> + +<p>But all this patching and reparation of the façade of constitutional +monarchy (a fiction whose tawdriness is more offensive to the French +temper than its falsehood) had come too late. Already the Queen had +written to her brother, the Emperor of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> Austria, suggesting the +mobilisation of a considerable force, and its encampment on the +frontier, to overawe the revolutionary movement. Her action coincided +within a few days with the end of that great Parliament, which had been +chosen on the most democratic suffrage, and which had transformed the +whole of society and laid the basis of the revolutionary Constitution. +With the meeting of the National Assembly’s successor on the 1st of +October, 1791, war was already possible; that possibility was to be +transformed very soon into probability, and at last into actuality.</p> + +<p>In the new Parliament the weight, not of numbers but of leadership, fell +to a group of enthusiastic and eloquent men who, from the fact that +certain of their principal members came from the Gironde, were called +<i>The Girondins</i>. They represented the purest and the most enthusiastic +ideal of democracy, less national, perhaps, than that advocated by men +more extreme than they, but of a sort which, from that time to this, has +been able to rouse the enthusiasm of historians.</p> + +<p>Vergniaud and Isnard were their great orators, Brissot was their +intellectual intriguer, and the wife of Roland, one of their members, +was, as it were, the soul of the whole group. It was the fact that these +men desired war which made war certain, once the temper of this new +second Assembly should be felt.</p> + +<p>The extremists over against them, to whom I have alluded (known as “the +Mountain”), were especially Parisian in character. Robespierre,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> who had +been first an obscure, and later a sectarian orator of the National +Assembly, though not sitting in this second Parliament, was perhaps the +most prominent figure in that group, for he was the public orator of +Paris; and indeed the Mountain was Paris; Paris, whether inside or +outside the Parliament; Paris acting as the responsible brain of France. +Later, it was the Mountain (that had first opposed the war) which was to +ensure the success of the French arms by a rigidity and despotism in +action such as the purer and less practical minds of the Girondins +abhorred.</p> + +<p>On the 3rd of December, 1791 (to quote a fundamental date in the rapid +progress towards the war which was to transform the Revolution), the +King—writing in a manner which betrays dictation by his wife—begged +the King of Prussia (as <i>she</i> had begged the Emperor) to mobilise an +armed force, and with it to back a Congress that should have for its +object the prevention of the spread of the Revolution. That letter was +typical of the moment. From both sides tension was rapidly proceeding to +the breaking point. Nor was the tension merely upon generalities. The +Revolution had broken a European treaty in the annexation of the Papal +State of Avignon, and it had broken European conventions when it had +abolished in Alsace feudal rights that were possessed by the princes of +the empire. It was as though some State to-day, attempting Collectivism, +should confiscate, along with other property,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> securities lying in its +banks, but held by the nationals of a foreign State.</p> + +<p>On the revolutionary side also there was a definite point at issue, +which was the permission accorded within the empire for the emigrants to +meet in arms and to threaten the French frontier.</p> + +<p>But these precise and legal points were not the true causes of the war. +The true causes of the war were the desire of the unreformed European +Governments (notably those of Prussia and Austria) that the Revolution +should, in their own interests, be checked, and the conviction that +their armed forces were easily capable of effecting the destruction of +the new French <i>régime</i>.</p> + +<p>The Court of Vienna refused to accept a just indemnity that was offered +the princes of the empire in Alsace for the loss of their old feudal +rights; Leopold, the emperor, who was one of the same generation as the +French King and Queen, died upon the 1st of March, 1792, and was +succeeded by a son only twenty-four years of age and easily persuaded to +war.</p> + +<p>On the French side, with the exception of the Mountain and notably of +Robespierre, there was a curious coalition of opinion demanding war.</p> + +<p>The Court and the reactionaries were sufficiently certain of the victory +of the Allies to find their salvation in war.</p> + +<p>The revolutionary party, that is, the mass of public opinion and the +“patriots,” as they called themselves, the Girondins, also, and +especially, desired war as a sort of crusade for<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> the Revolution; they +suffered grievous illusions, as enthusiasts always must, and believed +the French armed forces capable of sustaining the shock. The plans had +already been drawn up for the campaign (and promptly betrayed to the +enemy by the Queen); Dumouriez, an excellent soldier, had from the +middle of March 1792 been the chief person in the ministry, and the +director of foreign affairs, and a month later, on the 20th of April, +war was declared against Austria, or, to be accurate, against “the King +of Hungary and Bohemia.”</p> + +<p>Such was still the official title of Marie Antoinette’s nephew, who, +though now succeeded to the empire, had not yet been crowned emperor. It +was hoped to confine the war to this monarch, and, indeed, the German +princes of the empire did not join him (the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel +was an exception). But the one German power that counted most, the +kingdom of Prussia, which Dumouriez had especially hoped to keep +neutral, joined forces with Austria. The royal letters had done their +work.</p> + +<p>At this critical moment the French armed forces and the French +strongholds were at their worst. The discipline of the army was +deplorable. The regular soldiers of the old <i>régime</i> had lost from six +to nine thousand officers by emigration, and mixed no better than water +and oil with the revolutionary volunteers who had been drafted (to the +number of over two hundred battalions) into the ranks of the army; +moreover, these<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> volunteer battalions were for the most part ill +provided, far below their establishment, some only existed on paper; +none were trained as soldiers should be trained. In a more orderly time, +when the decrees of the Government corresponded with reality, four +hundred thousand men would have held the frontier; such a number was in +the estimates. As it was, from the Swiss mountains to the English +Channel, the French could count on no more than <i>one-fifth</i> of that +number. Eighty thousand alone were under arms. The full Prussian army +was, alone, apart from its allies, close upon treble the size of this +disorganised and insufficient force.</p> + +<p>Panics at once ludicrous and tragic opened the campaign upon the French +side. The King took advantage of them to dismiss his Girondin Ministry +and to form a reactionary Government. The Parliament replied by measures +useless to the conduct of war, and designed only to exasperate the +Crown, which was betraying the nation. It ordered the dismissal of the +royal Guard, the formation of a camp of revolutionary Federals outside +Paris, the transportation of the orthodox priests; in pursuit of the +Court’s determination to resist the Assembly and to await the victorious +allies, Louis vetoed the last two decrees. La Fayette, who was now in +command of the army of the centre, with his headquarters at Sedan, right +upon the route of the invasion, declared for the King.</p> + +<p>Had the armies of Austria and Prussia moved with rapidity at this +moment, the Revolution was at an end. As it was, their<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> mobilisation was +slow, and their march, though accurate, leisurely. It gave time for the +populace of Paris to demonstrate against the palace and the royal family +on the 20th of June. It was not until the first days of August that the +main force of the combined monarchs, under the generalship-in-chief of +the Duke of Brunswick (who had the reputation of being the best general +of his time), set out for the march on Paris. It was not until the 23rd +of August that the invaders took the first French frontier town, Longwy.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile two very important things had lent to the French, in spite of +the wretched insufficiency of their armed force, an intensity of feeling +which did something to supply that insufficiency. In the first place, +the third anniversary of the Fall of the Bastille, the 14th of July, had +called to Paris deputations from all the provinces, many of them armed; +this gave the national feeling unity. In the second place, Brunswick had +issued from Coblentz, which was his base, upon the 25th of that same +month of July, a manifesto which was known in Paris three days later, +and which (though certain modern historians have questioned this) +undoubtedly set revolutionary opinion ablaze.</p> + +<p>This manifesto demanded, in the name of the Allied Army, a complete +restoration of the old <i>régime</i>, professed to treat the French and their +new authorities as rebels subject to military execution, and contained a +clause of peculiar gravity, which excited an immediate and exasperated +response from Paris. The authorship of this clause lay with Marie<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> +Antoinette, and it threatened, if there were any attack upon the palace, +to give the capital over to military execution and total subversion.</p> + +<p>Two days later the Federals from Marseilles, a middle-class body of +excellent citizens, though merely amateurs at soldiering and small in +numbers, marched into the city. Their marching song has become famous +under the title of the “Marseillaise.” They had accomplished the +astonishing feat of traversing France, drawing cannon with them, at the +rate of eighteen miles a day, in the height of a torrid summer, for +close upon a month on end. There is no parallel to such an effort in the +history of war, nor did contemporary opinion exaggerate when it saw in +the battalion of Marseilles the centre of the coming fight.</p> + +<p>The shock between the palace and the populace was joined in the morning +of the 10th of August. The palace was held by about six thousand men,<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> +of whom some twelve hundred were regulars of the Swiss Guard. The palace +(the Tuileries) was, or should have been, impregnable. The popular +attack, we may be certain, would have been beaten back had the +connection between the Tuileries and the Louvre on the south been +properly cut. The flooring had indeed been removed at this point for +some distance, but either the gap was not wide enough or the post was +insufficiently guarded; the populace and the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> Federals, badly beaten in +their main attack upon the long front of the palace, succeeded in +turning its flank where it joined on to the Louvre; they thus enfiladed +the suites of rooms and utterly put an end to the resistance of its +garrison.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile the King and Queen, the Dauphin and his little sister, with +others of the royal household, had taken refuge during the fighting in +the hall of the Parliament.</p> + +<p>After the victory of the populace their fate was debated and decided +upon; they were imprisoned in the Tower of the Temple, a mediæval +fortress still standing in the north-east of Paris, and though monarchy +was not yet formally abolished, the most extreme spirits which the +Revolution then contained, and the most vigorous, stepped into the place +of the old Executive, with Danton at their head. With them appeared in +the seat of Government the spirit of military action, its contempt for +forms and its rapid decision. The known accomplices of the supporters of +the Court’s resistance and alliance with the invaders were arrested by +the hundred. The enrolment of volunteers, already enthusiastic +throughout France, was supported with the new vigour of official aid; +and the Revolution left at once all its old moorings to enter an extreme +phase. At the same moment the frontier was crossed and the national soil +invaded on the 19th of August.</p> + +<p>It is possible that the delay of the Prussians until that moment had +been calculated, for the position in France was complicated and their +decision to fight had been tardily arrived<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> at. It was the news of the +fall of the palace that seems to have decided them. The place, like the +date, of this grave event, deserves to be more famous than it is. +Brunswick touched what was then French soil, in that little triangle +where now German and French Lorraine and Luxembourg meet. The village is +called Redange: thence did the privileged of Europe set out to reach +Paris and to destroy democracy. The first task occupied them for full +twenty-two years, upon the latter they are still engaged.</p> + +<p>What forces the French could there bring against Brunswick were +contemptuously brushed aside. Four days later he had, as we have seen, +taken the frontier stronghold of Longwy; within a week he was in front +of Verdun.</p> + +<p>Verdun had no chance of resistance, no garrison to call a garrison, and +no opportunity for defence. The news that it must fall reached Paris on +the morning of a fatal date, the 2nd of September; after its fall there +would lie nothing between it and the capital; and from that moment the +whole nature of the Revolution is wholly transformed by the +psychological effect of war.</p> + + +<h3><a name="IV_5" id="IV_5"></a>V<br /> +<small><i>From the invasion of September 1792 to the establishment of the +Committee of Public Safety, April 1793.</i></small></h3> + +<p>The fifth phase of the French Revolution may be said to date from these +first days of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> September 1792, when the news of the successful invasion +was maddening Paris, and when the revolutionary Executive, established +upon the ruins of the old dead monarchy and in its image, was firmly in +the saddle, up to the establishment of the yet more monarchical +“Committee of Public Safety,” seven months later. And these seven months +may be characterised as follows:—</p> + +<p>They were a period during which it was attempted to carry on the +revolutionary war against the Governments of Europe upon democratic +principles. The attempt failed. In the place of discipline and +comprehension and foresight the rising and intense enthusiasm of the +moment was depended upon for victory. The pure ideal of the Girondin +faction, with the model republic which it hoped to establish, proved +wholly insufficient for the conduct of a war; and to save the nation +from foreign conquest and the great democratic experiment of the +Revolution from disaster, it was necessary that the military and +disciplined side of the French, with all the tyranny that accompanies +that aspect of their national genius, should undertake the completion of +the adventure.</p> + +<p>This period opens with what are called the Massacres of September. I +have said upon a former page that “the known accomplices and supporters +of the Court’s alliance with the invaders were arrested by the hundred,” +upon the fall of the palace and the establishment of a revolutionary +Executive with Danton at its head.</p> + +<p>These prisoners, massed in the jails of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> city, were massacred to the +number of eleven hundred by a small but organised band of assassins +during the days when the news of the fall of Verdun was expected and +reached the capital. Such a crime appalled the public conscience of +Europe and of the French people. It must never be confused with the +judicial and military acts of the Terror, nor with the reprisals +undertaken against rebellion, nor with the gross excesses of mob +violence; for though votes in favour of the immediate execution of those +who had sided with the enemies of the country were passed in certain +primary assemblies, the act itself was the mechanical, deliberate and +voluntary choice of a few determined men. It had, therefore, a character +of its own, and that character made it stand out for its contemporaries +as it should stand out for us: it was murder.</p> + +<p>The prisoners were unarmed—nay, though treasonable, they had not +actually taken arms; their destruction was inspired, in most of those +who ordered it, by mere hatred. Those who ordered it were a small +committee acting spontaneously, and Marat was their chief.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span></p> + +<p>It was under the impression of these massacres that the Deputies of the +new or third Assembly of the Revolution, known to history as <i>The +Convention</i>, met in Paris.</p> + +<p>This Parliament was to be at first the actual, later the nominal +governing power in France during the three critical years that followed; +years which were the military salvation of the Revolution, and which +therefore permitted the establishment of the democratic experiment in +modern Europe.</p> + +<p>It was on the 20th of September that the Convention met for its first +sitting, which was held in the palace of the Tuileries. During the hours +of that day, while it was electing its officials, choosing its Speaker +and the rest, the French Army upon the frontier, to its own astonishment +and to that of its enemy, managed to hold in check at the cannonade of +<i>Valmy</i> the allied invaders.</p> + +<p>Upon the morrow the new Assembly met in the riding school (the Manège), +where the two former Assemblies had also sat. It was about to separate +after that day’s sitting when one of the members proposed the abolition +of Royalty; the Convention voted the reform unanimously and dispersed.</p> + +<p>On the third day, the 22nd of September, it was decreed that the public +documents should henceforward bear the date “First Year of the +Republic”; but there was no solemnity on the occasion; the idea of “No +King” was novel and untried; there was as yet no enthusiasm for any save +the monarchic form of government. It was not until the title “Republic” +began to connote in men’s<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> minds political liberty, and had become also +the flag, as it were, for the victorious national defence, that the +Republican name acquired in our Europe, and from France, that strong and +almost religious force which it has since retained.</p> + +<p>The check given to the invaders at Valmy (again to the astonishment of +both soldiers and statesmen!) determined the campaign. Sickness and the +difficulty of communications made the further advance of the invaders +impossible. They negotiated for and obtained an unmolested retreat, and +a few weeks later they had re-crossed the frontier.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, in Paris the great quarrel had begun between the Municipal +and the National Government, which, because Paris was more decided, more +revolutionary, and, above all, more military in temper than the +Parliament, was destined to terminate in the victory of the capital. The +Girondins still stood in the Assembly for an ideal republic; a republic +enjoying to the utmost limit individual liberty in its citizens and the +autonomy of local government in every city and parish; but opposed to +this ideal, and far more national, was that of the revolutionary +extremists, called in the Convention “the Mountain,” who had the support +of the Municipal Government of Paris (known as “the Commune”), and were +capable of French victories in the field. These stood for the old French +and soldierly conception of a strong central Government, wherewith to +carry on the life-and-death struggle into which the Revolution had now +entered: therefore they conquered.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span></p> + +<p>All that autumn the quarrel between France and Europe remained doubtful, +for though the armies of the Republic under Dumouriez won the battle of +Jemappes, swept across the north-eastern frontier and occupied Belgium, +while to the south another French army swept right up to the Rhine, +Dumouriez himself knew well enough that a campaign undertaken merely +upon enthusiasm, and with troops so mixed in character and many of them +so undisciplined, would end fatally. But until the advent of the new +year public opinion was not instructed upon these lines, and the +revolutionary war seemed to have passed suddenly from the defence of the +national territory to a crusade against the kings and the aristocratic +Governments of Europe. Enthusiasm, and enthusiasm alone, was the force +of the moment. Violent decrees such as the Declaration of Fraternity +(which decreed an alliance with all people struggling to be free) and +the opening of the Scheldt (a direct violation of treaty rights to which +England, among other nations, was a partner) were characteristic of the +moment; chief act of all, the King was put upon his trial at the bar of +the Parliament.</p> + +<p>It was upon the 4th of January, 1793 (the King had already made his will +upon Christmas Day), that the chief orator of the Girondins moved that +the sentence should be referred to the people for ratification. The fear +of civil war more than anything else forbade this just suggestion to +pass. Upon the 15th of January the question was put to the Parliament, +“whether the King had been<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> guilty of conspiring against public liberty +and of attempting the general safety of the State.” Many were absent and +many abstained: none replied in the negative; the condemnation of Louis +was therefore technically almost a unanimous one.</p> + +<p>The voting on these grave issues was what the French call “nominal”: +that is, each member was called upon “by name” to give his vote—and an +expression of opinion as well if he so chose. A second attempt to appeal +to the people was rejected by 424 to 283. On the third question, which +was the decisive one of the penalty, 721 only could be found to vote, +and of these a bare majority of 53 declared for death as against the +minority, of whom some voted for the death penalty “conditionally”—that +is, not at all—or voted against it. A respite was lost by a majority of +70; and on the 21st of January, 1793, at about ten in the morning, Louis +XVI was guillotined.</p> + +<p>Then followed war with England, with Holland, and with Spain; and almost +at that moment began the inevitable reflux of the military tide. For the +French eruption up to the Rhine in the Low Countries and the Palatinate, +had no permanent military basis upon which to depend. Dumouriez began to +retreat a month after the King’s execution, and on the 18th of March +suffered a decisive defeat at Neerwinden. It was this retreat, followed +by that disaster, which decided the fate of the Girondin attempt to +found a republic ideally, individually, and locally free. Already, +before the battle of Neerwinden<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> was fought, Danton, no longer a +minister, but still the most powerful orator in the Convention, proposed +a special court for trying cases of treason—a court which was later +called “the Revolutionary Tribunal.” The news of Neerwinden prepared the +way for a stronger measure and some exceptional form of government; a +special Parliamentary committee already formed for the control of +ministers was strengthened when, on the 5th of April, after some +negotiation and doubt, Dumouriez, despairing of the armies of the +Republic, thought to ally his forces with the invaders and to restore +order. His soldiers refused to follow him; his treason was apparent; +upon the morrow the Convention nominated that first “Committee of Public +Safety” which, with its successor of the same name, was henceforward the +true despotic and military centre of revolutionary government. It was +granted secrecy in deliberation, the virtual though not the theoretic +control of the Ministry, sums of money for secret expenditure, and, in a +word, all the machinery necessary to a military executive. Rousseau’s +<i>Dictator</i> had appeared, the great mind which had given the <i>Contrat +Social</i> to be the gospel of the Revolution had also foreseen one of the +necessary organs of democracy in its hardest trial; his theory had been +proved necessary and true in fact. Nine members formed this first +Committee: Barère, who may be called the clerk of it, Danton its genius, +and Cambon its financier, were the leading names.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span></p> + +<p>With the establishment of this truly national and traditional thing, +whose form alone was novel, but whose power and method were native to +all the military tradition of Gaul, the Revolution was saved. We have +now chiefly to follow the way in which the Committee governed and in +which it directed affairs in the great crisis of the war. This sixth +phase lasts for nearly sixteen months, from the beginning of April 1793 +to the 28th of July 1794, and it is convenient to divide those sixteen +months into two divisions.</p> + + +<h3><a name="IV_6" id="IV_6"></a>VI<br /> +<small><i>From April 1793 to July 1794.</i></small></h3> + +<p>The first division of this period, which ends in the height of the +summer of 1793, is the gradual consolidation of the Committee as a new +organ of government and the peril of destruction which it runs, in +common with the nation it governs at the hands of allied Europe.</p> + +<p>The second period includes part of August and all the rest of 1793, and +the first seven months of 1794, during which time the Committee is +successful in its military effort, the nation is saved, and in a manner +curiously dramatic and curiously inconsequential, the martial <i>régime</i> +of the Terror abruptly ceases.</p> + +<p>The first step in the consolidation of the power of the Committee was +their letting loose of the Commune of Paris and the populace it governed +against the Girondins.</p> + +<p>Looked at merely from the point of view of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> internal politics (upon +which most historians have concentrated) the attack of the populace of +Paris and their Commune against the Parliament seems to be no more than +the end of the long quarrel between the Girondins with their ideal +federal republic, and the capital with its instinct for strong +centralised government. But in the light of the military situation, of +which the Committee of Public Safety were vividly aware, and which it +was their business to control, a very different tale may be told.</p> + +<p>When the defeats began the Parliament had voted a levy of three hundred +thousand men. It was a mere vote which came to very little: not enough +in numbers and still less in moral, for the type of troops recruited +under a system of money forfeit and purchased substitutes was wholly +beneath the task of the great war.</p> + +<p>This law of conscription had been passed upon the 24th of February. The +date for its first application was, in many villages, fixed for the 10th +of March. All that country which borders the estuary of the Loire, to +the north and to the south, a country whose geographical and political +peculiarities need not here detain us, but which is still curiously +individual, began to resist. The decree was unpopular everywhere, of +course, as military service is everywhere unpopular with a settled +population. But here it had no ally, for the Revolution and all its +works were grossly unpopular as well. The error of the Civil +Constitution of the Clergy was a powerful factor in this revolt. The +piety and the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> orthodoxy of this district were and are exceptional. Some +such resistance in some such quarter was perhaps expected: what was not +expected was its military success.</p> + +<p>Four days before the defeat of Neerwinden itself, and four days after +the decree of conscription in the villages, a horde of peasantry had +taken possession of the town of Chollet in the southern part of this +district, Vendée. Three days before the Committee of Public Safety was +formed the insurgents had defeated regular forces at Machecoul, and had +tortured and put to death their prisoners. The month of April, when the +Committee of Public Safety was first finding its seat in the saddle, saw +the complete success of the rebels. The forces sent against them were +worthless, for all military effort had been concentrated upon the +frontier. Most of them were not even what we should call militia. A +small force of regulars was to have moved from Orleans, but, before they +could attack, Thouars, Parthenay, and Fontenay fell into the power of +the rebels. These posts afforded an advanced triangle right into the +regularly administered territory of the Republic: the great town of +Nantes was outflanked. Even in such a moment the Girondins still clung +to their ideal: an individually free and locally autonomous republic. It +is little wonder that the temper of Paris refused to support them, or +their influence over the Parliament, and we can easily understand how +the new Committee supported Paris in its revolt.</p> + +<p>That revolt took place on the 31st of May.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> The forces under the command +of the capital did not march, but a deputation of the sections of Paris +demanded the arrest of the leading Girondins. The body of the debating +hall was invaded by the mob. The Committee of Public Safety pretended to +compromise between Paris and the Parliament, but a document, recently +analysed, sufficiently proves that their sympathy was with the Parisian +attack. They proposed, indeed, to put the armed force of Paris at the +disposition of the Assembly: that is, in their own hands.</p> + +<p>That day nothing of moment was done, but the Parliament had proved of no +strength in the face of the capital. On the frontier the advance of the +invaders had begun. The great barrier fortress of Valenciennes relied +for its defence upon the neighbouring camp of Famars. The garrison of +that camp had been compelled to evacuate it by the advance of the Allied +Army upon the 23rd of May, and though some days were to be spent before +the heavy artillery of the Austrians could be emplaced, Valenciennes was +henceforward at the mercy of its besiegers. There was news that La +Vendée was not the only rebellion. Lyons had risen three days before. +There had been heavy fighting. The Royalists and the Girondins had +combined and had carried the town hall and established an +insurrectionary and unelected Municipal Government. Such news, coming +immediately after the 31st of May, roused the capital to action. This +time the Parisian forces actually marched against the Parliament.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> The +demand for the suspension of the twenty-two named Girondin deputies was +made under arms. Much has been written, and by the best historians, to +make of this successful day a mere conquest by the Commune of Paris over +the Parliament. Though Barère and Danton both protested in public, it +was in reality their politics that conquered with Paris. To the +twenty-two names that the forces of Paris had listed, seven were added. +The great Girondins, Brissot, Vergniaud and the rest, were not indeed +imprisoned, they were considered “under arrest in their houses.” But the +moral authority of the Convention as an administrative machine, not as a +legislative one, was broken on this day, the 2nd of June, 1793. Paris +had ostensibly conquered, but the master who was stronger than ever and +whom Paris had served, was the Committee of Public Safety.</p> + +<p>This first Committee of Public Safety endured to the 10th of July. In +the midst of such a war and of such an internal struggle the Convention +had voted (upon the initiative of the Committee of Public Safety) the +famous Constitution of ’93, that prime document of democracy which, as +though to mock its own ideal, has remained no more than a written thing +from then until now. Therein will be found universal suffrage, therein +the yearly Parliament, therein the referendum, therein the elected +Executive—a thing no Parliament would ever give us to-day. The +Constitution was passed but three weeks<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> after the successful +insurrection of Paris. A fortnight later still, on the 10th of July, the +first of the Committees of Public Safety was followed by its successor.</p> + +<p>All this while the Vendeans were advancing. Nantes, indeed, had held out +against the rebels, but as we shall see in a moment, the Republican +troops had not yet made themselves good. The rebellion of Lyons was +fortifying itself, and a week later was to execute the Radical Chalier. +Marseilles was rising. On the 10th of July the Convention summoned to +its bar Westermann, the friend of Danton, who had just suffered defeat +at the hands of the western rebels.</p> + +<p>It is well to note at this point one of those small individual factors +which determine the fate of States. Danton, the master of all that first +movement towards centralisation, the man who had made the 10th of +August, who had negotiated with the Prussians after Valmy, who had +determined upon and formed a central government against the Girondin +anarchy—had broken down. His health was gone. He was a giant in body, +but for the moment he had tired himself out.</p> + +<p>The renewing of his Committee was proposed: he was thrust out from the +new choice. Barère remained to link the old Committee with the new. A +violent sectarian Calvinist pastor, Jeanbon Saint-André, among the +bravest and most warped of the Revolutionaries; Couthon, a friend of +Robespierre; Saint-Just, a still more intimate friend (a young, +handsome, enormously courageous<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> and decisive man), entered, with others +to the number of nine, the new Committee. Seventeen days later, on the +27th of July, Robespierre replaced one of the minor members thus chosen. +He had precisely a year to live, and it is the moment for fixing before +the reader’s mind the nature of his career.</p> + +<p>Robespierre was at this moment the chief figure in the eyes of the +crowd, and was soon to be the chief revolutionary figure in the eyes of +Europe: that is the first point. The second is of equal importance, and +is far less generally recognised. He was not, and was never destined to +be, the chief force in the revolutionary Government.</p> + +<p>As to the first point, Robespierre had attained this position from the +following combination of circumstances: first, alone of the +revolutionary personalities, he had been continually before the public +eye from the beginning; he had been a member of the first Parliament of +all and had spoken in that Parliament in the first month of its +sessions. Though then obscure in Versailles, he was already well known +in his province and native town of Arras.</p> + +<p>Secondly, this position of his in the public eye was maintained without +a break, and his position and reputation had increased by accumulation +month after month for the whole four years. No one else was left in the +political arena of whom this could be said. All the old reactionaries +had gone, all the moderate men had gone; the figures of 1793 were all +new figures—except Robespierre;<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> and he owed this continued and steady +increase of fame to:—</p> + +<p>Thirdly, his conspicuous and vivid sincerity. He was more wholly +possessed of the democratic faith of the <i>Contrat Social</i> than any other +man of his time: he had never swerved from an article of it. There is no +better engine for enduring fame than the expression of real convictions. +Moreover—</p> + +<p>Fourthly, his speeches exactly echoed the opinions of his audience, and +echoed them with a lucidity which his audience could not have commanded. +Whether he possessed true eloquence or no is a matter still debated by +those who are scholars in French letters. But it is certain that he had +in his own time all the effects of a great orator, though his manner was +precise and cold.</p> + +<p>Fifthly, he was possessed of a consistent body of doctrine: that is, he +was not only convinced of the general democratic creed which his +contemporaries held, and he not only held it unswervingly and +uncorruptedly, but he could supplement it with a system of morals and +even something which was the adumbration of religion.</p> + +<p>Sixthly, he had, as such characters always can, but not often do, gather +round themselves, a group of intensely devoted personal admirers and +supporters, chief of whom was the young and splendidly courageous +Saint-Just.</p> + +<p>It was the combination of all these things, I say, which made +Robespierre the chief<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> personality in the public eye when he entered the +Committee of Public Safety on the 27th of July, 1793.</p> + +<p>Now let it be noted that, unlike his follower Saint-Just, and +exceedingly unlike Danton, Robespierre possessed none of those military +qualities without which it is impossible to be responsible for +government over a military nation—especially if that nation be in the +act of war: and such a war! The Committee of Public Safety was the Cæsar +of revolutionary France. Robespierre as a member of that Cæsar was +hopeless. His popularity was an advantage to his colleagues in the +Committee, but his conception of action upon the frontiers was vague, +personal, and futile. His ambition for leadership, if it existed, was +subordinate to his ambition to be the saviour of his people and of their +democratic experiment, and he had no comprehension of those functions of +leadership by which it can co-ordinate detail and impose a plan of +action. Robespierre, therefore, in every crisis of the last year we are +about to study, yielded to his colleagues, never impressed them and +never led them, and yet (it was the irony of his fate) was imagined by +his fellow countrymen and by the warring Governments of Europe to be the +master of them all.</p> + +<p>The first weeks after his appearance in the Committee of Public Safety +were the critical weeks of the whole revolutionary movement. The +despotic action of Paris (which I have concluded to be secretly +supported<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> by the Committee)<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> had provoked insurrection upon all sides +in the provinces. Normandy had protested, and on the 13th of July a +Norman girl stabbed Marat to death. Lyons, as we have seen, had been +some weeks in revolt; Marseilles had rebelled in the first week of June, +Bordeaux and the whole department of the Gironde had of course risen, +for their men were at stake. Later Toulon, the great naval depot of +France, revolted: a reactionary municipal provincial Government was +formed in that port, the little boy imprisoned in the Temple, heir to +the kingdom, was proclaimed under the title of Louis XVII, and before +the end of August the English and Spanish fleets had been admitted into +the harbour and an excellent foreign garrison was defending the town +against the national Government.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile the Allies upon the Belgian frontier were doing what they +could, taking fortress after fortress, and while Mayence was falling on +the Rhine, Valenciennes and Condé were capitulating on the north-eastern +border, and a portion of the Allied Army was marching to besiege +Dunquerque. The insurrection in Vendée, which had broken out in the +early part of the year, though<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> checked by the resistance of Nantes, was +still successful in the field.</p> + +<p>It was in the month of August that a successful effort was made. Carnot, +who soon proved the military genius of the Revolution, entered the +Committee of Public Safety. On the 23rd of the month a true levy, very +different from the futile and insufficiently applied attempt of the +spring, was forced upon the nation by a vote in Parliament. It was a +levy of men, vehicles, animals and provision, and soon furnished +something not far short of half a million soldiers. With September the +tide turned, the first victory in this crisis of the struggle, +Hoondschoote, relieved Dunquerque in the early days of September. By +mid-October a second and decisive victory, that of Wattignies, relieved +Maubeuge. Lyons had been taken, Normandy was pacified long before; by +the end of the year Toulon was reoccupied, and at the same time the last +cohesive force of the Vendeans destroyed.</p> + +<p>But meanwhile the crisis had had a double effect, moral and material. +The moral effect had been a sort of national madness in which the most +extreme measures were proposed and many of them carried through with +what one may call a creative audacity. The calendar itself was changed, +the week itself abolished, the months re-named and re-adjusted. Such an +act sufficiently symbolises the mental attitude of the Revolutionaries. +They were determined upon a new earth.</p> + +<p>There went with this the last and most<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> violent attack upon what was +believed to be the last remnants of Catholicism in the country, a +hideous persecution of the priesthood, in which an uncounted number of +priests died under the rigours of transportation or of violence. The +reprisals against the rebels varied from severity of the most awful kind +to cruelty that was clearly insane, and of which the worst examples took +place at Arras and at Nantes.</p> + +<p>In all this turmoil the governing centre of the country, the Committee +of Public Safety, not only kept its head but used the enormous forces of +the storm for the purposes of achieving military success, under that +system known as “the Terror,” which was for them no more than martial +law, and an engine of their despotic control. Of the two thousand and +more that passed before the revolutionary tribunal and were executed in +Paris, the large majority were those whom the Committee of Public Safety +judged to be obstacles to their military policy; and most were men or +women who had broken some specific part of the martial code which the +Government had laid down. Some were generals who had failed or were +suspected of treason; and some, among the most conspicuous, were +politicians who had attempted to check so absolute a method of +conducting the war.</p> + +<p>Of these the greatest was Danton. Before the end of 1793 he began to +protest against the system of the Terror; he believed, perhaps, that the +country was now safe in the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> military sense and needed such rigours no +more. But the Committee disagreed, and were evidence available we should +perceive that Carnot in particular determined that such opposition must +cease. Danton and his colleagues—including Desmoulins, the journalist +of the Revolution and the chief publicist who promoted the days of July +1789—were executed in the first week of April 1794.</p> + +<p>Parallel to this action on the part of the Committee was their sudden +attack upon men of the other extreme: the men whose violence, excessive +even for that time, threatened to provoke reaction. Hébert was the chief +of these, the spokesman of the Commune of Paris; and he also perished.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile the Committee had permitted other persecutions and other +deaths, notably that of the Queen. A sane policy would have demanded +that she should be kept a hostage: she was sacrificed to the desire for +vengeance, and her head fell on the same day on which the decisive +battle of Wattignies was won. Later the King’s sister, Madame Elisabeth, +was sacrificed to the same passions, and with her must be counted a +certain proportion of the victims whose destruction could be no part of +the Committee’s scheme, and proceeded purely from the motives of an +ancient hatred, though in the case of many of these who were of +aristocratic birth or of influence through their wealth, it is not easy +to determine how far the possibility of their intrigue with the +foreigner may not have led them to the scaffold.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span></p> + +<p>In the last four months of the period we are considering in this book, +through April, that is, after the execution of Danton, through May and +June and almost to the end of July, Robespierre appears with a +particular prominence. Fads or doctrines of his own are admitted upon +the Statute Book of the Revolution, notably his religious dogmas of a +personal God and of the immortality of the soul. Nay, a public solemnity +is arranged in honour of such matters, and he is the high priest +therein. The intensity of the idolatry he received was never greater; +the numbers that shared it were, perhaps, diminishing. It is certain +that he did not appreciate how far the supports of his great popularity +were failing. It is certain that he saw only the increasing enthusiasm +of his immediate followers. The Committee still used him as their +tool—notably for an increase of the Terror in June, but it is possible +that for the first time in all these months he began to attempt some +sort of authority within the Committee: we know, for instance, that he +quarrelled with Carnot, who was easily the strongest man therein.</p> + +<p>In the past they had permitted him to indulge a private policy where it +did not interfere with the general military plan. He was largely +responsible, not through his own judgment but from his desire to voice +opinion, for the trial and execution of the Queen. He had temporised +when Danton was beginning his campaign against the Terror at the end of +1793, and it is an ineffaceable<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> blot upon his memory and his justly +earned reputation for integrity and sincerity, that he first permitted +and then helped towards Danton’s execution. We may presume from the few +indications we have that he protested against it in the secret counsels +of the Committee, but he had yielded, and what is more, since Saint-Just +desired to be Danton’s accuser he had furnished Saint-Just with notes +against Danton. Though it was the Committee who were morally responsible +for the extreme extension of the Terror which proceeded during those +last few months, Robespierre had the unwisdom to act as their +instrument, to draft their last decrees, and, believing the Terror to be +popular, to support it in public. It was this that ruined him. The +extreme Terrorists, those who were not yet satiated with vengeance, and +who hated and feared a popular idol, determined to overthrow him.</p> + +<p>The mass of those who might be the next victims and who, knowing nothing +of the secret councils of the Committee, imagined Robespierre to be what +he posed as being, the master of the Committee, were eager for his +removal. In his fictitious character as the supposed chief power in the +State, all the growing nausea against the Terror was directed against +his person.</p> + +<p>Coincidently with such forces, the Committee, whom, relying upon his +public position, he had begun to interfere with, and probably to check +in their military action (he certainly had attempted unsuccessfully to +save certain lives against the decision of his colleagues),<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> determined +to be rid of him. The crisis came in the fourth week of July: or as the +revolutionary calendar then went, in the second week of Thermidor. He +was howled down in the Parliament, an active and clever conspiracy had +organised all the latent forces of opposition to him; he still so +trusted in his popularity that the scene bewildered him, and he was +still so beloved and so ardently followed, that when at that same +sitting he was outlawed, his brother sacrificed himself to follow him. +Saint-Just was included in the sentence, and his strict friend Lebas +voluntarily accepted the same doom.</p> + +<p>What followed was at first a confusion of authority; put under arrest, +the governor of the prison to which Robespierre was dispatched refused +to receive him. He and his sympathisers met in the Hôtel de Ville after +the fall of darkness, and an attempt was made to provoke an +insurrection. There are many and confused accounts of what immediately +followed at midnight, but two things are certain: the populace refused +to rise for Robespierre, and the Parliament, with the Committee at its +back, organised an armed force which easily had the better of the +incipient rebellion at the Hôtel de Ville. It is probable that +Robespierre’s signature was needed to the proclamation of insurrection: +it is certain that he did not complete it, and presumable that he would +not act against all his own theories of popular sovereignty and the +general will. As he sat there with the paper before him and his<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> +signature still unfinished, the armed force of the Parliament burst into +the room, a lad of the name of Merda aimed a pistol from the door at +Robespierre, and shot him in the jaw. (The evidence in favour of this +version is conclusive.) Of his companions, some fled and were captured, +some killed themselves, most were arrested. The next day, the 10th +Thermidor, or 28th of July, 1794, at half-past seven in the evening, +Robespierre, with twenty-one others, was guillotined.</p> + +<p>The irony of history would have it that the fall of this man, which was +chiefly due to his interference with the system of the Terror, broke all +the moral force upon which the Terror itself had resided; for men had +imagined that the Terror was his work, and that, he gone, no excuse was +left for it. A reaction began which makes of this date the true term in +that ascending series of revolutionary effort which had by then +discussed every aspect of democracy, succeeded in the military defence +of that experiment, and laid down, though so far in words only, the +basis of the modern State.</p> + + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> The reader should be warned that these numbers are hotly +disputed. The latest authority will allow no more than 4000. After a +full consultation of the evidence I can reduce the garrison to no less +than 6000.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> The legend that Danton was connected with the massacres is +based on insufficient historical foundation. There are several second or +third hand stories in support of it, but the chief positive evidence +brought forward in this connection is the stamped paper of the Minister +of Justice which, it has been amply proved by Dr. Robinet, was taken by +a subordinate and without Danton’s knowledge or complicity. To the much +stupider story that the Federals of Marseilles took part in the +massacres, the modern student need pay no attention; it has been +destroyed piecemeal and on indefeasible documentary evidence in the +monograph of Pollio and Marcel.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> On p. 403 of my monograph on Danton (Nisbet & Co., 1899) +the reader will find an unpublished report of the Committee of Public +Safety, drawn up immediately before the destruction of the Girondins on +the 31st of May. It forms, in my view, conclusive evidence, read in the +light of their other actions, of the Committee’s determination to side +with Paris.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V<br /><br /> +<small>THE MILITARY ASPECT OF THE REVOLUTION</small></h2> + + +<p><span class="sc">The</span> Revolution would never have achieved its object: on the contrary, it +would have led to no less than a violent reaction against<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> those +principles which were maturing before it broke out, and which it carried +to triumph, had not the armies of revolutionary France proved successful +in the field; but the grasping of this mere historic fact, I mean the +success of the revolutionary armies, is unfortunately no simple matter.</p> + +<p>We all know that as a matter of fact the Revolution was, upon the whole, +successful in imposing its view upon Europe. We all know that from that +success as from a germ has proceeded, and is still proceeding, modern +society. But the nature, the cause and the extent of the military +success which alone made this possible, is widely ignored and still more +widely misunderstood. No other signal military effort which achieved its +object has in history ended in military disaster—yet this was the case +with the revolutionary wars. After twenty years of advance, during which +the ideas of the Revolution were sown throughout Western civilisation, +and had time to take root, the armies of the Revolution stumbled into +the vast trap or blunder of the Russian campaign; this was succeeded by +the decisive defeat of the democratic armies at Leipsic, and the superb +strategy of the campaign of 1814, the brilliant rally of what is called +the Hundred Days, only served to emphasise the completeness of the +apparent failure. For that masterly campaign was followed by Napoleon’s +first abdication, that brilliant rally ended in Waterloo and the ruin of +the French army. When we consider the spread of Grecian culture over<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> +the East by the parallel military triumph of Alexander, or the conquest +of Gaul by the Roman armies under Cæsar, we are met by political +phenomena and a political success no more striking than the success of +the Revolution. The Revolution did as much by the sword as ever did +Alexander or Cæsar, and as surely compelled one of the great +transformations of Europe. But the fact that the great story can be read +to a conclusion of defeat disturbs the mind of the student.</p> + +<p>Again, that element fatal to all accurate study of military history, the +imputation of civilian virtues and motives, enters the mind of the +reader with fatal facility when he studies the revolutionary wars.</p> + +<p>He is tempted to ascribe to the enthusiasm of the troops, nay, to the +political movement itself, a sort of miraculous power. He is apt to use +with regard to the revolutionary victories the word “inevitable,” which, +if ever it applies to the reasoned, willing and conscious action of men, +certainly applies least of all to men when they act as soldiers.</p> + +<p>There are three points which we must carefully bear in mind when we +consider the military history of the Revolution.</p> + +<p>First, that it succeeded: the Revolution, regarded as the political +motive of its armies, won.</p> + +<p>Secondly, that it succeeded through those military aptitudes and +conditions which happened to accompany, but by no means necessarily +accompanied, the strong convictions and the civic enthusiasm of the +time.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span></p> + +<p>Thirdly, that the element of chance, which every wise and prudent +reasoner will very largely admit into all military affairs, worked in +favour of the Revolution in the critical moments of the early wars.</p> + +<p>With these points fixed, and with a readiness to return to them when we +have appreciated the military story, it is well to begin our study by +telling that story briefly, and upon its most general lines. In so +doing, it will be necessary to cover here and there points which have +already been dealt with in this book, but that is inevitable where one +is writing of the military aspect of any movement, for it is impossible +to deal with that aspect save as a living part of the whole: so knit +into national life is the business of war.</p> + + +<h3><a name="V_1" id="V_1"></a>ONE</h3> + +<p>When the Revolution first approached action, the prospect of a war +between France and any other great Power of the time—England, Prussia, +the Empire, or let us say Russia, or even Spain—was such a prospect as +might have been entertained at any time during the past two or three +generations of men.</p> + +<p>For pretty well a hundred years men had been accustomed to the +consideration of dynastic quarrels supported by a certain type of army, +which in a moment I shall describe.</p> + +<p>I have called these quarrels dynastic; that is, they were mainly +quarrels between the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> ruling houses of Europe: were mainly motived by +the desire of each ruling house to acquire greater territory and +revenue, and were limited by the determination of all the ruling houses +to maintain certain ideas inviolate, as, for instance, the sacredness of +monarchy, the independence of individual States, etc. Though they were +in the main dynastic, yet in proportion as a dynasty might represent a +united nation, they were national also. The English oligarchy was in +this respect peculiar and more national than any European Government of +its time. It is also true to say that the Russian despotism had behind +it, in most of its military adventures and in all its spirit of +expansion, the subconscious agreement of the people.</p> + +<p>Still, however national, the wars of the time preceding the Revolution +moved within a fixed framework of ideas, as it were, which no commander +and no diplomatist dreamed of exceeding. A, the crowned head of a State, +would have some claims against B, the crowned head of another State, +with regard to certain territories. C, the crowned head or Government of +a third State, would remain neutral or ally himself with either of the +two; if he allied himself, then, as a rule, it was with the weaker +against the stronger, in order to guarantee himself against too great an +increase on the part of a rival. Or, again, a rebellion would break out +against the power of A in some part of his dominions; then would B, +somewhat reluctantly (as the almost unlimited right of an existing +executive<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> was still a strong dogma in men’s minds), tend to ally +himself with the rebels in order to diminish the power of A.</p> + +<p>Human affairs have always in them very strongly and permanently +inherent, the character of a sport: the interest (at any rate of males) +in the conduct of human life is always largely an interest of seeing +that certain rules are kept, and certain points won, according to those +rules. We must, therefore, beware of ridiculing the warfare of the +century preceding the Revolution under the epithet of “a game.” But it +is true of that warfare, and honourably true, that it attempted limited +things in a limited manner; it did not attempt any fundamental change in +society; it was not overtly—since the Thirty Years’ War at least—a +struggle of ideas; it was conducted on behalf of known and limited +interests for known and highly limited objects, and the instruments with +which it was conducted were instruments artificial and segregated from +the general life of nations.</p> + +<p>These instruments were what have been called the “professional” armies. +The term is very insufficient, and, in part, misleading. The gentry of +the various Powers, mixed with whom were certain adventurers not always +of gentle blood, were the officers that led these forces; and for the +major part of the gentry in most European countries, the military career +was the chief field of activity. The men whom they led were not a +peasantry nor a working class, still less a civic force<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> in which the +middle class would find itself engaged: they were the poorest and the +least settled, some would have said the dregs of European life. With the +exception here and there of a man—usually a very young man whom the +fabled romance of this hard but glorious trade had attracted—and with +the exception of certain bodies that followed in a mass and by order the +relics of a feudal lordship, the armies of the period immediately +preceding the Revolution were armies of very poor men, who had sold +themselves into a sort of servitude often exciting and even adventurous, +but not, when we examine it minutely, a career that a free man would +choose. The men were caught by economic necessity, by fraud, and in +other ways, and once caught were held. No better proof of this could be +found than the barbarous severity of the punishments attached to +desertion, or to minor forms of indiscipline. So held, they were used +for the purposes of the game, not only in what would make them +serviceable instruments of war, but also in what would make them +pleasing to their masters. Strict alignment, certain frills of parade +and appearance, all that is required in a theatre or in a pretentious +household, appear in the military regulations of the time.</p> + +<p>I must not in all this be supposed to be belittling that great period +between 1660 and 1789, during which the art of war was most thoroughly +thought out, the traditions of most of our great European armies fixed, +and the permanent military qualities which<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> we still inherit developed. +The men so caught as private soldiers could not but enjoy the game when +it was actively played, for men of European stock will always enjoy the +game of war; they took glory in its recital and in its memories; to be a +soldier, even under the servile conditions of the time, was a proper +subject for pride, and it is further to be remarked that the excesses of +cruelty discoverable in the establishment of their discipline were also +accompanied by very high and lasting examples of military virtue. The +behaviour of the English contingents at Fontenoy afford but one of many +examples of what I mean.</p> + +<p>Still, to understand the wars of the Revolution we must clearly +establish the contrast between the so-called professional armies which +preceded that movement and the armies which the Revolution invented, +used, and bequeathed to the modern world.</p> + +<p>So also, to revert to what was said above, we must recall the dynastic +and limited character of the wars in which the eighteenth century had +been engaged; at the outbreak of the Revolution no other wars were +contemplated by men.</p> + +<p>Had you spoken, for instance, at any moment in 1789, to a statesman, +whether of old experience or only introduced to political life by the +new movement, of the position of Great Britain, he would at once have +discussed that position in the terms of Great Britain’s recent defeat at +the hands of France in the affair of the American colonies. Had<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> you +discussed with him the position of Prussia he would at once have argued +it in connection with Prussia’s secular opposition to Austria and the +Empire. Had you asked him how he considered Spain, he would have spoken +of the situation of Spain as against France in the light of the fact +that Spain was a Bourbon monarchy allied in blood to the French throne. +And so forth. No true statesman imagined at the time, nor, indeed, for +many years, that a war of <i>ideas</i>, nor even, strictly speaking, of +<i>nations</i>, was possible. Even when such a war was actually in process of +waging, the diplomacy which attempted to establish a peace, the +intrigues whereby alliances were sought, or neutrality negotiated, were +dependent upon the older conception of things; and the historian is +afforded, as he regards this gigantic struggle, the ironic satisfaction +of seeing men fighting upon doctrines the most universal conceivable and +yet perpetually changing their conduct during the struggle according to +conceptions wholly particular, local and ephemeral, and soon to be +entirely swept away by time.</p> + +<p>Napoleon himself must needs marry an Austrian archduchess as part of +this old prejudice, and for years brains as excellent as Danton’s or +Talleyrand’s conjecture the possibility of treating now England, now +Prussia, as neutral to the vast attempt of the French to destroy +privilege in European society!</p> + +<p>One may say that for two years the connection of the revolutionary +movement with arms had no aspect save that of civil war.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> True, whenever +a considerable change is in progress in society the possibility of +foreign war in connection with it must always arise. Were some European +State, for instance, to make an experiment in Collectivism to-day, the +chance of foreign intervention would certainly be discussed by the +promoters of that experiment. But no serious danger of an armed struggle +between the French and any of their neighbours in connection with the +political experiment of the Revolution was imagined by the mass of +educated men in France itself nor without the boundaries of France +during those first two years. And, I repeat, the military aspect of +those years was confined to civil tumult. Nevertheless, that aspect is +not to be neglected. The way in which the French organised their civil +war (and there was always something of it present from the summer of +1789 onwards) profoundly affected the foreign war that was to follow: +for in their internal struggles great masses of Frenchmen became +habituated to the physical presence, millions to the discussion, of +arms.</p> + +<p>It is, as we have seen in another part of this book, a repeated and +conspicuous error to imagine that the first revolutionary outbreaks were +not met sufficiently sternly by royal troops. On the contrary, the royal +troops were used to the utmost and were defeated. The populace of the +large towns, and especially of Paris, proved itself capable of military +organisation and of military action. When to this capacity had been +added the institution of the militia called<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> the National Guard, there +were already the makings of a nation wholly military.</p> + +<p>Much in this exceptional and new position must be ascribed to the Gallic +character. It may be said that from the fall of the Roman Empire to the +present day that character has been permanently and of its own volition +steeped in the experience of organised fighting. Civil tumult has been +native to it, the risk of death in defence of political objects has been +equally familiar, and the whole trade of arms, its necessary +organisation, its fatigues and its limiting conditions, have been very +familiar to the population throughout all these centuries. But beyond +this the fact that the Revolution prepared men in the school of civil +tumult was of the first advantage for its later aptitude against foreign +Powers.</p> + +<p>It is always well in history to fix a definite starting-point for any +political development, and the starting-point of the revolutionary wars +may easily be fixed at the moment when Louis, his queen and the royal +children attempted to escape to the frontier and to the Army of the +Centre under the command of Bouillé. This happened, as we have seen, in +June 1791.</p> + +<p>Many factors combine to make that date the starting-point. In the first +place, until that moment no actual proof had been apparent in the eyes +of European monarchs of the captivity of their chief exemplar, the king +of France.</p> + +<p>The wild march upon Versailles, in the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> days of October 1789, had its +parallel in a hundred popular tumults with which Europe was familiar +enough for centuries. But the rapidly succeeding reforms of the year +1790, and even the great religious blunder of 1791, had received the +signature and the public assent of the Crown. The Court, though no +longer at Versailles, was splendid, the power of the King over the +Executive still far greater than that of any other organ in the State, +and indefinitely greater than that of any other individual in the State. +The talk of captivity, of insult and the rest, the outcries of the +emigrants and the perpetual complaint of the French royal family in its +private relations, seemed exaggerated, or at any rate nothing to act +upon, until there came the shock of the King’s attempted flight and +recapture. This clinched things; and it clinched them all the more +because more than one Court, and especially that of Austria, believed +for some days that the escape had been successful.</p> + +<p>Again, the flight and its failure put the army into a ridiculous +posture. Action against the Revolution was never likely, so long as the +discipline and steadiness of the French army were believed in abroad. +But the chief command had hopelessly failed upon that occasion, and it +was evident that the French-speaking troops could not easily be trusted +by the Executive Government or by their own commanders. Furthermore, the +failure of the flight leads the Queen, with her vivacity of spirit and +her rapid though<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> ill-formed plans, to turn for the first time to the +idea of military intervention. Her letters suggesting this (in the form +of a threat rather than a war, it is true) do not begin until after her +capture at Varennes.</p> + +<p>Finally, coincident with that disaster was the open mention of a +Republic, the open suggestion that the King should be deposed, and the +first definite and public challenge to the principles of monarchy which +the Revolution had thrown down before Europe.</p> + +<p>We are, therefore, not surprised to find that this origin of the +military movement was followed in two months by the Declaration of +Pillnitz.</p> + +<p>With the political nature of that Declaration one must deal elsewhere. +Its military character must here be observed.</p> + +<p>The Declaration of Pillnitz corresponded as nearly as possible to what +in the present day would be an order preparatory to mobilising a certain +proportion of the reserve. It cannot with justice be called equivalent +to an order <i>calling out</i> all the reserves, still less equivalent to an +order mobilising upon a war footing the forces of a modern nation, for +such an action is tantamount to a declaration of war (as, for instance, +was the action of the English Government before the South African +struggle), and Pillnitz was very far from that. But Pillnitz was +certainly as drastic a military proceeding as would be the public +intimation by a group of Powers that the reserves had been warned in +connection with their quarrel against another Power. It was, for +instance,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> quite as drastic as the action of Austria against Servia in +1908. And it was intended to be followed by such submission as is +expected to follow upon the threat of superior force.</p> + +<p>Such was the whole burden of Marie Antoinette’s letters to her brother +(who had called the meeting at Pillnitz), and such was the sense in +which the politicians of the Revolution understood it.</p> + +<p>All that autumn and winter the matter chiefly watched by foreign +diplomatists and the clearest of French thinkers was the condition of +the French forces and of their command. Narbonne’s appointment to the +War Office counted more than any political move, Dumouriez’ succession +to him was the event of the time. Plans of campaign were drawn up (and +promptly betrayed by Marie Antoinette to the enemy), manifold occasions +for actual hostilities were discovered, the Revolution challenged the +Emperor in the matter of the Alsatian princes, the Emperor challenged, +through Kaunitz, the Revolution in a letter directly interfering with +the internal affairs of France, and pretending to a right of <i>ingérence</i> +therein; and on the 20th of April, 1792, war was declared against the +Empire. Prussia thereupon informed the French Government that she made +common cause with the Emperor, and the revolutionary struggle had begun.</p> + +<p>The war discovered no serious features during its first four months: so +slow was the gathering and march of the Allies; but the panics into +which the revolutionary troops<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> fell in the first skirmishes, their lack +of discipline, and the apparent breakdown of the French military power, +made the success of the Invasion in Force, when it should come, seem +certain. The invading army did not cross the frontier until more than a +week after the fall of the palace. Longwy capitulated at once; a week +later, in the last days of August, the great frontier fortress of Verdun +was summoned. It capitulated almost immediately.</p> + + +<h3><a name="V_2" id="V_2"></a>TWO</h3> + +<p>On the 2nd of September Verdun was entered by the Prussians, and a +little outside the gates of the town, near a village bearing the name of +Regret, the allied camp was fixed. Rather more than a week later, on the +11th, the Allies marched against the line of the Argonne.</p> + +<p>The reader will remember that this moment, with the loss of the frontier +fortresses Longwy and Verdun, and the evidence of demoralisation which +that afforded, was also the moment of the September massacres and of the +horrors in Paris. Dumouriez and the mixed French force which he +commanded had been ordered by the Ministers of War to hold the line of +the Argonne against which the Allies were marching. And here it is well +to explain what was meant in a military sense by this word “line.”</p> + +<p>The Argonne is a long, nearly straight range of hills running from the +south northward, a good deal to the west of north.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span></p> + +<p>Their soil is clay, and though the height of the hills is only three +hundred feet above the plain, their escarpment or steep side is towards +the east, whence an invasion may be expected. They are densely wooded, +from five to eight miles broad, the supply of water in them is bad, in +many parts undrinkable; habitation with its provision for armies and +roads extremely rare. It is necessary to insist upon all these details +because the greater part of civilian readers find it difficult to +understand how formidable an obstacle so comparatively unimportant a +feature in the landscape may be to an army upon the march. It was quite +impossible for the guns, the wagons, and therefore the food and the +ammunition of the invading army, to pass through the forest over the +drenched clay land of that wet autumn save where proper roads existed. +These were only to be found wherever a sort of natural pass negotiated +the range.</p> + +<p>Three of these passes alone existed, and to this day there is very +little choice in the crossing of these hills. The accompanying sketch +will explain their disposition. Through the southernmost went the great +high road from the frontier and Verdun to Paris. At the middle one +(which is called the Gap of Grandpré) Dumouriez was waiting with his +incongruous army. The third and northern one was also held, but less +strongly. The obvious march for an unimpeded invader would have been +from Verdun along the high road, through the southern pass at “Les<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> +Islettes,” and so to Chalôns and on to Paris. But Dumouriez, marching +down rapidly from the north, had set an advanced guard to hold that pass +and was lying himself with the mass of the army on the pass to the north +of it at Grandpré. Against Grandpré the Prussians marched, and meanwhile +the Austrians were<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> attacking the further pass to the north. Both were +forced. Dumouriez fell back southward to St. Menehould. Meanwhile +Kellermann was coming up from Metz to join him, and all the while the +main pass at “Les Islettes,” through which the great road to Paris went, +continued to be held by the French.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 450px;"> +<img src="images/p158.png" width="450" height="500" alt="Sketch Map, showing the turning of the positions on the +Argonne and the Cannonade at Valmy, September 1792." title="" /> +<span class="caption">Sketch Map, showing the turning of the positions on the +Argonne and the Cannonade at Valmy, September 1792.</span> +<p class="right"><a href="images/p158-lg.png" name="fig001" id="fig001">Enlarge Map</a></p> +</div> + +<p>The Prussians and the Austrians joined forces in the plain known as the +Champagne Pouilleuse, which lies westward of Argonne. It will be seen +that as they marched south along this plain to meet Dumouriez and to +defeat him, their position was a peculiar one: they were nearer the +enemy’s capital than the enemy’s army was, and yet they had to fight +with their backs to that capital, and their enemy the French had to +fight with their faces towards it. Moreover, it must be remarked that +the communications of the Allied Army were now of a twisted, roundabout +sort, which made the conveyance of provisions and ammunition slow and +difficult—but they counted upon an immediate destruction of Dumouriez’ +force and after that a rapid march on the capital.</p> + +<p>On September 19 Kellermann came up from the south and joined hands with +Dumouriez near St. Menehould, and on the morning of the 20th his force +occupied a roll of land on which there was a windmill and immediately +behind which was the village of Valmy; from this village the ensuing +action was to take its name. It must here be insisted upon that both +armies had been subjected to the very worst weather for more than a +fortnight,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> but of the two the Prussian force had suffered from this +accident much more severely than the French. Dysentery had already +broken out, and the length and tortuousness of their communications were +greatly emphasised by the condition of the roads.</p> + +<p>On the morning of that day, the 20th of September, a mist impeded all +decisive movements. There was an encounter, half accidental, between an +advanced French battery and the enemy’s guns, but it was not until +mid-morning that the weather lifted enough to show each force its +opponent. Then there took place an action, or rather a cannonade, the +result of which is more difficult to explain, perhaps, than any other +considerable action of the revolutionary wars. For some hours the +Prussian artillery, later reinforced by the Austrian, cannonaded the +French position, having for its central mark the windmill of Valmy, +round which the French forces were grouped. At one moment this cannonade +took effect upon the limbers and ammunition wagons of the French; there +was an explosion which all eye-witnesses have remembered as the chief +feature of the firing, and which certainly threw into confusion for some +moments the ill-assorted troops under Kellermann’s command. At what hour +this took place the witnesses who have left us accounts differ to an +extraordinary extent. Some will have it at noon, others towards the +middle of the afternoon—so difficult is it to have any accurate account +of what happens in the heat of an action. At any rate, if not +coincidently<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> with this success, at some moment not far removed from it, +the Prussian charge was ordered, and it is here that the difficulties of +the historian chiefly appear. That charge was never carried home; +whether, as some believe, because it was discovered, after it was +ordered, to be impossible in the face of the accuracy and intensity of +the French fire, or whether, as is more probably the case, because the +drenched soil compelled the commanders to abandon the movement after it +had begun—whatever the cause may have been, the Prussian force, though +admirably disciplined and led, and though advancing in the most exact +order, failed to carry out its original purpose. It halted halfway up +the slope, and the action remained a mere cannonade without immediate +result apparent upon either side.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless that result ultimately turned out to be very great, and if +we consider its place in history, quite as important as might have been +the result of a decisive action. In the first place, the one day’s delay +which it involved was just more than the calculations of the Allies, +with their long impeded line of communications, had allowed for. In the +next place, a singular increase in determination and moral force was +infused into the disheartened and ill-matched troops of the French +commanders by this piece of resistance.</p> + +<p>We must remember that the French force upon the whole expected and +discounted a defeat, the private soldier especially had no confidence in +the result; and to find that at<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> the first action which had been so long +threatened and had now at last come, he could stand up to the enemy, +produced upon him an exaggerated effect which it would never have had +under other circumstances.</p> + +<p>Finally, we must recollect that whatever causes had forbidden the +Prussian charge forbade on the next day a general advance against the +French position. And all the time the sickness in the Prussian camp was +rapidly increasing. Even that short check of twenty-four hours made a +considerable difference. A further delay of but yet another day, during +which the Allied Army could not decide whether to attack at once or to +stand as they were, very greatly increased the list of inefficients from +illness.</p> + +<p>For a whole week of increasing anxiety and increasing inefficiency the +Allied Army hung thus, impotent, though they were between the French +forces and the capital. Dumouriez ably entertained this hesitation, with +all its accumulating dangers for the enemy, by prolonged negotiations, +until upon the 30th of September the Prussian and Austrian organisation +could stand the strain no longer, and its commanders determined upon +retreat. It was the genius of Danton, as we now know, that chiefly +organised the withdrawal of what might still have been a dangerous +invading force. It is principally due to him that no unwise Jingoism was +permitted to claim a trial of strength with the invader, that he was +allowed to retire with all his guns, his colours and his train. The +retreat was lengthy and unmolested,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> though watched by the French forces +that discreetly shepherded it but were kept tightly in hand from Paris. +It was more than three weeks later when the Allied Army, upon which +Europe and the French monarchy had counted for an immediate settlement +of the Revolution, re-crossed the frontier, and in this doubtful and +perhaps inexplicable fashion the first campaign of the European Powers +against the Revolution utterly failed.</p> + + +<h3><a name="V_3" id="V_3"></a>THREE</h3> + +<p>Following upon this success, Dumouriez pressed on to what had been, from +the first moment of his power at the head of the army, his personal +plan—to wit, the invasion of the Low Countries.</p> + +<p>To understand why this invasion failed and why Dumouriez thought it +might succeed, we must appreciate the military and political situation +of the Low Countries at the time. They then formed a very wealthy and +cherished portion of the Austrian dominions; they had latterly suffered +from deep disaffection culminating in an open revolution, which was due +to the Emperor of Austria’s narrow and intolerant contempt of religion. +From his first foolish policy of persecution and confiscation he had +indeed retreated, but the feeling of the people was still strongly +opposed to the Government at Vienna. It is remarkable, indeed, and in +part due to the pressure of a strongly Protestant and aristocratic +state, Holland, to the north of them,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> that the people of the Austrian +Netherlands retained at that time a peculiar attachment to the Catholic +religion. The Revolution was quite as anti-Catholic as the Austrian +Emperor, but of the persecution of the latter the Belgians (as we now +call them) knew something; that of the former they had not yet learnt to +dread. It was, therefore, Dumouriez’ calculation that, in invading this +province of the Austrian power, he would be fighting in friendly +territory. Again, it was separated from the political centre of the +empire; it was, therefore, more or less isolated politically, and even +for military purposes communication with it was not so easy, unless, +indeed, Austria could count on a complete co-operation with Prussia, +which Power had been for now so long her ruthless and persistent rival.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<img src="images/p164.png" width="500" height="279" alt="Sketch Map of towns occupied by French in 1792 and +evacuated in March 1793, with sites of battles of Jemappes and of +Neerwinden, and of Dumouriez' treason." title="" /> +<span class="caption">Sketch Map of towns occupied by French in 1792 and +evacuated in March 1793, with sites of battles of Jemappes and of +Neerwinden, and of Dumouriez’ treason.</span> +<p class="right"><a href="images/p164-lg.png" name="fig002" id="fig002">Enlarge Map</a></p> +</div> + +<p>Favourable, however, as the circumstances appeared for an invasion, two +factors telling heavily against the French had to be counted: the first +was the formation of their army, the second the spirit of rebellion +against any anti-Catholic Government which had given such trouble to +Joseph II.</p> + +<p>Of these two factors by far the most important was, of course, the +first. If the French forces had been homogeneous, in good spirit, and +well trained, they might have held what they won; as a fact, they were +most unhomogeneous, great portions of them were ill trained, and, worst +of all, there was no consistent theory of subordinate command. Men who +imagined that subordinate, that is,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> regimental, command in an army +could be erected from below, and that a fighting force could resemble a +somewhat lax and turbulent democracy, marched alongside of and were +actually incorporated with old soldiers who had spent their whole +careers under an unquestioned discipline, and under a subordinate +command which came to them they knew not whence, and as it were by fate. +The mere mixture of two such different classes of men in one force would +have been bad enough to deal with, but what was worse, the political +theories of the day fostered the military error of the new battalions +though the politicians dared not interfere with the valuable +organisation of the old.</p> + +<p>The invasion of the Low Countries began with a great, though somewhat +informal and unfruitful success, in the victory of Jemappes. It was the +first striking and dramatic decisive action which the French, always of +an eager appetite for such news, had been given since between forty and +fifty years. The success in America against the English, though +brilliantly won and solidly founded, had not presented occasions of this +character, and Fontenoy was the last national victory which Paris could +remember. Men elderly or old in this autumn of 1792 would have been boys +or very young men when Fontenoy was fought. The eager generation of the +Revolution, with its military appetites and aptitudes, as yet had hardly +expected victory, though victory was ardently desired by them and +peculiarly suitable to their temper.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span></p> + +<p>It may be imagined, therefore, what an effect the news of Jemappes had +upon the political world in Paris. The action was fought just below the +town of Mons, a few miles over the frontier, and consisted in a somewhat +ill-ordered but successful advance across the River Haine. Whether +because the Austrians, with an inferior force, attempted to hold too +long a line, or because the infantry and even the new French volunteer +battalions, as yet untried by fatigue, proved irresistible in the centre +of the movement, Jemappes was a victory so complete that the attempts of +apologists to belittle it only serve to enhance its character.</p> + +<p>Like many another great and apparently decisive action, however, it bore +no lasting fruit. Both the factors of which I have spoken above appeared +immediately after this success. Belgium was, indeed, over-run by the +French, but in their over-running of it with something like eighty +thousand men, they made no attempt to spare the traditions or to +conciliate the sympathies of the inhabitants. Hardly was Jemappes won +when Mons, the neighbouring fortified frontier town, was at once endowed +with the whole machinery of revolutionary government. Church property +was invaded and occasionally rifled, and the French paper money, the +assignats of which we have heard, poured in to disturb and in places to +ruin the excellent commercial system upon which Belgium then as now +reposed.</p> + +<p>Jemappes was fought upon the 6th of November, 1792. Brussels was entered +upon<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> the 14th, and throughout that winter the Low Countries lay +entirely in the hands of the French. The Commissioners from the +Convention, though endowing Belgium with republican institutions, +treated it as a conquered country, and before the breaking of spring, +the French Parliament voted its annexation to France. This annexation, +the determination of the politicians in Paris that the new Belgian +Government should be republican and anti-Catholic, the maltreatment of +the Church in the occupied country and the increasing ill discipline and +lack of cohesion in his army, left Dumouriez in a position which grew +more and more difficult as the new year, 1793, advanced. It must be +remembered that this moment exactly corresponded with the execution of +the King and the consequent declaration of war by or against France in +the case of one Power after another throughout Europe. Meanwhile, it was +decided, foolishly enough, to proceed from the difficult occupation of +Belgium to the still more difficult occupation of Holland, and the siege +of Maestricht was planned.</p> + +<p>The moment was utterly ill-suited for such a plan. Every Executive in +the civilised world was coalescing openly or secretly, directly or +indirectly, against the revolutionary Government. The first order to +retreat came upon the 8th of March, when the siege of Maestricht was +seen to be impossible, and when the great forces of the Allies were +gathered again to attempt what was to be the really serious attack upon +the Revolution:<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> something far more dangerous, something which much more +nearly achieved success, than the march of the comparatively small force +which had been checked at Valmy.</p> + +<p>For ten days the French retreat continued, when, upon the 18th of March, +Dumouriez risked battle at Neerwinden. His army was defeated.</p> + +<p>The defeat was not disastrous, the retreat was continued in fairly good +order, but a civilian population understands nothing besides the words +defeat and victory; it can appreciate a battle, not a campaign. The news +of the defeat, coming at a moment of crisis in the politics of Paris, +was decisive; it led to grave doubts of Dumouriez’ loyalty to the +revolutionary Government, it shattered his popularity with those who had +continued to believe in him, while the general himself could not but +believe that the material under his command was rapidly deteriorating. +Before the end of the month the army had abandoned all its conquests, +and Valenciennes, in French territory, was reached upon the 27th. The +dash upon Belgium had wholly failed.</p> + +<p>At this moment came one of those political acts which so considerably +disturb any purely military conspectus of the revolutionary wars. +Dumouriez, at the head of his army, which, though in retreat and +defeated, was still intact, determined upon what posterity has justly +called treason, but what to his own mind must have seemed no more than +statesmanship. He proposed an understanding with the enemy and a +combined march<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> upon Paris to restore the monarchical government, and +put an end to what seemed to him, as a soldier, a perfectly hopeless +situation. He certainly believed it impossible for the French army, in +the welter of 1793, to defeat the invader. He saw his own life in peril +merely because he was defeated. He had no toleration for the rising +enthusiasm or delirium of the political theory which had sent him out, +and, even before he had reached French territory, his negotiations with +Coburg, the Austrian commander, had begun. They lasted long. Dumouriez +agreed to put the frontier fortresses of the French into the hands of +the enemy as a guarantee and a pledge; and on the 5th of April all was +ready for the alliance of the two armed forces.</p> + +<p>But just as the treason of Dumouriez is, in the military sense, abnormal +and disturbing to any general conspectus of the campaign, so was the +action of his army.</p> + +<p>The doubtful point of a general command which is political in nature, +and may be unpopular with the rank and file, lies, of course, in the +attitude of the commanders of units, and these unanimously refused to +obey the orders of their chief. It was known that Dumouriez had been +summoned to the bar of the Convention, which body had sent commissioners +to apprehend him. He had arrested the commissioners, and had handed them +over as hostages and prisoners to Coburg. So far from Dumouriez upon the +critical day handing over his force to the enemy, or constituting it a +part of an allied army to march<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> upon the capital, he was compelled to +fly upon the 8th of April; all that disappeared with him, counting many +who later deserted back again to the French colours, was less than a +thousand men—and these foreign mercenaries.</p> + +<p>The consequence of this strange passage upon the political history of +the time we have already seen. Its consequence upon the military history +of it was indirect but profound. The French forces, such as they were, +were still intact, but no general officer could in future be trusted by +Paris, and the stimulus which nations in the critical moments of +invasion and of danger during foreign war seek in patriotism, in the +offering of a high wage to the men and of honours and fortunes to their +commanders, was now sought by the French in the singular, novel and +abnormal experiment of the Terror. Command upon the frontier throughout +1793 and the first part of 1794, during the critical fourteen months, +that is, which decided the fate of the Revolution, and which turned the +tide of arms in favour of the French, was a task accomplished under the +motive power of capital punishment. A blunder was taken as a proof of +treason, and there lay over the ordering of every general movement the +threat of the guillotine.</p> + +<p>What we have now to follow is somewhat over a year of a struggle thus +abnormally organised upon the French side, and finally successful +through the genius of a great organiser, once a soldier, now a +politician, Carnot. The French succeeded by the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> unshakable conviction +which permitted the political leaders to proceed to all extremity in +their determination to save the Revolution; by the peculiar physical +powers of endurance which their army displayed, and finally, of course, +by certain accidents—for accident will always be a determining factor +in war.</p> + +<p>The spring of 1793, the months of April and May, form the first crisis +of the revolutionary war. The attack about to be delivered is universal, +and seems absolutely certain to succeed. With the exception of the rush +at Jemappes, where less than thirty thousand Austrians were broken +through by a torrent superior in numbers (though even there obviously +ill-organised), no success had attended the revolutionary armies. Their +condition was, even to the eye of the layman, bad, and to the eye of the +expert hopeless. There was no unity apparent in direction, there were +vast lesions in the discipline of the ranks like great holes torn in +some rotten fabric. Even against the forces already mobilised against +it, it had proved powerless, and it might be taken for granted that by +an act more nearly resembling police work than a true campaign, the +Allies would reach Paris and something resembling the old order be soon +restored. What remains is to follow the process by which this +expectation was disappointed.</p> + +<p>The situation at this moment can best be understood by a glance at the +sketch map on p. 178. Two great French advances had been made in the +winter of 1792-93; the one a northern advance, which we have just<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> +detailed, the over-running of Belgium; the other an eastern advance +right up to the Rhine and to the town of Mayence. Both had failed. The +failure in Belgium, culminating in the treason of Dumouriez, has been +read. On the Rhine (where Mayence had been annexed by the French +Parliament just as Belgium had been) the active hostility of the +population and the gathering of the organised forces of the Allies had +the same effect as had been produced in the Low Countries.</p> + +<p>It was on March 21, 1793, that the Prussians crossed the Rhine at +Bacharach, and within that week the French commander, Custine, began to +fall back. On the first of April he was back again in French territory, +leaving the garrison of Mayence, somewhat over twenty thousand men, to +hold out as best it could; a fortnight later the Prussians had +surrounded the town and the siege had begun.</p> + +<p>On the north-eastern front, stretching from the Ardennes to the sea, a +similar state of things was developing. There, a barrier of fortresses +stood between the Allies and Paris, and a series of sieges corresponding +to the siege of Mayence in the east had to be undertaken. At much the +same time as the investment of Mayence, on April 9, the first step in +this military task was taken by the Allies moving in between the +fortress of Condé and the fortress of Valenciennes. Thenceforward it was +the business of the Austrians under Coburg, with the Allies that were to +reach him, to reduce the frontier fortresses<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> one by one, and when his +communications were thus secure, to march upon Paris.</p> + +<p>It is here necessary for the reader unacquainted with military history +to appreciate two points upon which not a little of contemporary +historical writing may mislead him. The first is that both in the Rhine +valley and on the Belgian frontier the forces of the Allies in their +numbers and their organisation were conceived to be overwhelming. The +second is that no competent commander on the spot would have thought of +leaving behind him the garrison of even one untaken fortress. It is +important to insist upon these points, because the political passions +roused by the Revolution are still so strong that men can hardly write +of it without prejudice and bias, and two errors continually present in +these descriptions of the military situation in the spring of 1793, are, +first, that the Allies were weakened by the Polish question, which was +then active, and secondly, that the delay of their commanders before the +French fortresses was unnecessary.</p> + +<p>Both these propositions are put forward with the object of explaining +the ultimate defeat of the enemies of the Revolution: both, however +great the authority behind them, are unhistorical and worthless. The +French success was a military success due to certain military factors +both of design and accident, which will appear in what follows. The +Allies played their part as all the art of war demanded it to be played; +they were ultimately defeated, not from the commission<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> of any such +gross and obvious error in policy or strategy as historians with too +little comprehension of military affairs sometimes pretend, but from the +military superiority of their opponents.</p> + +<p>It is true that the Polish question (that is the necessity the Austrian +and Prussian Governments were each under of watching that the other was +not lessened in importance by the approaching annexations of further +Polish territory with the consequent jealousy and mistrust that arose +from this between Austria and Prussia) was a very important feature of +the moment. But it is bad military history to pretend that this affected +the military situation on the Rhine or in the Netherlands.</p> + +<p>Every campaign is conditioned by its political object. The political +object in this case was to march upon and to occupy Paris. The political +object of a campaign once determined, the size and the organisation of +the enemy are calculated and a certain force is brought against it. No +much larger force is brought than is necessary: to act in such a fashion +would be in military art what paying two or three times the price of an +article would be in commerce. The forces of the Allies upon the Rhine +and in the Netherlands were, in the opinion of every authority of the +time, amply sufficient for their purpose; and more than sufficient: so +much more than sufficient that the attitude of that military opinion +which had to meet the attack—to wit, the professional military opinion +of the French republican soldiers, was that the situation<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> was +desperate, nor indeed was it attempted to be met save by a violent and, +as it were, irrational enthusiasm.</p> + +<p>The second point, the so-called “delay” involved in the sieges +undertaken by the Allies, proves, when it is put forward, an +insufficient acquaintance with contemporary conditions. Any fortress +with a considerable garrison left behind untaken would have meant the +destruction of the Austrian or Prussian communications, and their +destruction at a moment when the Austrian and Prussian forces were +actually advancing over a desperately hostile country. Moreover, when +acting against forces wholly inferior in discipline and organisation, an +untaken fortress is a refuge which one must take peculiar pains to +destroy. To throw himself into such a refuge will always stand before +the commander of those inferior forces as a last resource. It is a +refuge which he will certainly avail himself of ultimately, if it is +permitted to him. And when he has so availed himself of it, it means the +indefinite survival of an armed organisation in the rear of the +advancing invaders. We must conclude, if we are to understand this +critical campaign which changed the history of the world, that Coburg +did perfectly right in laying siege to one fortress after another before +he began what every one expected to be the necessarily successful +advance on Paris. The French despair, as one town after another +surrendered, is an amply sufficient proof of the excellence of his +judgment.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span></p> + +<p>We approach the military problem of 1793, therefore, with the following +two fields clear before us:—</p> + +<p>1. In the north-east an advance on Paris, the way to which is blocked by +a quadrilateral of fortresses: Mons, Maubeuge, Condé, and Valenciennes, +with the subsidiary stronghold of Lequesnoy in the neighbourhood of the +last. Mons has been in Austrian hands since Dumouriez’ retreat; Condé is +just cut off from Valenciennes by Coburg’s advance, but has not fallen; +Valenciennes and the neighbouring Lequesnoy are still intact, and so is +Maubeuge. All must be reduced before the advance on Paris can begin. +Behind these fortresses is a French army incapable as yet of attacking +Coburg’s command with any hope of success. Such is the position in the +last fortnight of April.</p> + +<p>2. Meanwhile, on the Rhine the French garrison in Mayence is besieged; +Custine, the French commander in that quarter, has fallen back on the +French town of Landau, and is drawing up what are known in history as +the Lines of Weissembourg. The accompanying sketch map explains their +importance. Reposing upon the two obstacles of the river on the right +and the mountains on the left, they fulfilled precisely the same +functions as a fortress; and those functions we have just described. +Until these lines were carried, the whole of Alsace may be regarded as a +fortress defended by the mountains and the river on two sides, and by +the Lines of Weissembourg on the third.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span></p> + +<p>A reader unacquainted with military history may ask why the obstruction +was not drawn upon the line of the Prussian advance on Paris. The answer +is that the presence of a force behind fortifications anywhere in the +neighbourhood of a line of communication is precisely equivalent to an +obstacle lying right upon those lines. For no commander can go forward +along the line of his advance and leave a large undestroyed force close +to one side of that line, and so situated that it can come out when he +has passed and cut off his communications; for it is by communications +that an army lives, especially when it is marching in hostile country.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<img src="images/p178.png" width="500" height="220" alt="Strategic situation in early summer of 1793. Mayence +besieged, Condé and Valenciennes about to be besieged. Conditions of the +double advance on Paris." title="" /> +<span class="caption">Strategic situation in early summer of 1793. Mayence +besieged, Condé and Valenciennes about to be besieged. Conditions of the +double advance on Paris.</span> +<p class="right"><a href="images/p178-lg.png" name="fig003" id="fig003">Enlarge Map</a></p> +</div> + +<p>Custine, therefore, behind his Lines of Weissembourg, and the besieged +garrison in Mayence, correspond to the barrier of fortresses on the +north-east and delayed the advance of the Prussians under Wurmser and +Brunswick from the Rhine, just as Condé, Valenciennes, and Maubeuge +prevented the advance of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> Coburg on the north-east. Such in general was +the situation upon the eastern frontier at the end of that month of +April, 1793.</p> + + +<h3><a name="V_4" id="V_4"></a>FOUR</h3> + +<p>Let us first follow the development of the northern position. It will be +remembered that all Europe was at war against the French. The Austrians +had for allies Dutch troops which joined them at this moment, and +certain English and Hanoverian troops under the Duke of York who also +joined them.</p> + +<p>At this moment, when Coburg found himself in increasing strength, a +tentative French attack upon him was delivered and failed. Dampierre, +who was in command of all this French “Army of the North,” was killed, +and Custine was sent to replace him. The Army of the North did not, as +perhaps it should have done, concentrate into one body to meet Coburg’s +threatened advance; it was perpetually attempting diversions which were +useless because its strength was insufficient. Now it feinted upon the +right towards Namur, now along the sea coast on the left; and these +diversions failed in their object. Before the end of the month, Coburg, +to give himself elbow room, as it were, for the sieges which he was +preparing, compelled the main French force to retreat to a position well +behind Valenciennes. It was immediately after this success of Coburg’s +that Custine arrived to take command on the Belgian frontier, his place +on the Rhine being taken by Houchard.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span></p> + +<p>Custine was a very able commander, but a most unlucky one. His plan was +the right one: to concentrate all the French forces (abandoning the +Rhine) and so form an army sufficient to cope with Coburg’s. The +Government would not meet him in this, and he devoted himself +immediately to the reorganisation of the Army of the North alone. The +month of June and half of July was taken up in that task.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, the Austrian siege work had begun, and Condé was the first +object of its attention. Upon July 10 Condé fell. Meanwhile Custine had +been recalled to Paris, and Valenciennes was invested. Custine was +succeeded by Kilmaine, a general of Irish extraction, who maintained his +position for but a short time, and was unable while he maintained it to +do anything. The forces of the Allies continually increased. The number +at Coburg’s disposal free from the business of besieging Valenciennes +was already larger than the force required for that purpose. And yet +another fifteen thousand Hessian troops marched in while the issue of +that siege was in doubt. This great advantage in numbers permitted him +to get rid of the main French force that was still present in front of +him, though not seriously annoying him.</p> + +<p>This force lay due south-west of Valenciennes, and about a day’s march +distant. He depended for the capture of it upon his English and +Hanoverian Allies under the Duke of York, but that general’s march +failed. The distance was too much for his troops in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> the hot summer +weather, and the French were able to retreat behind the line of the +Scarpe and save their army intact.</p> + +<p>The Duke of York’s talents have been patriotically exaggerated in many a +treatise. He always failed: and this was among the most signal of his +failures.</p> + +<p>Kilmaine had hardly escaped from York, drawn up his army behind the +Scarpe and put it into a position of safety when he in his turn was +deprived of the command, and Houchard was taken from the Rhine just as +Custine had been, and put at the head of the Army of the North. Before +the main French army had taken up this position of safety, Valenciennes +had fallen. It fell on the 28th of July, and its fall, inevitable though +it was and, as one may say, taken for granted by military opinion, was +much the heaviest blow yet delivered. Nothing of importance remained to +block the march of the Armies of the Allies, save Maubeuge.</p> + +<p>At about the same moment occurred three very important changes in the +general military situation, which the reader must note if he is to +understand what follows.</p> + +<p>The first was the sudden serious internal menace opposed to the +Republican Government; the second was the advent of Carnot to power; the +third was the English diversion upon Dunquerque.</p> + +<p>The serious internal menace which the Government of the Republic had to +face was the widespread rebellion which has been dealt with in the +earlier part of this book. The<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> action of the Paris Radicals against the +Girondins had raised whole districts in the provinces. Marseilles, which +had shown signs of disaffection since April, and had begun to raise a +local reactionary force, revolted. So did Bordeaux, Nîmes, and other +great southern towns. Lyons had risen at the end of May and had killed +the Jacobin mayor of the town in the period between the fall of Condé +and that of Valenciennes. The troop which Marseilles had raised against +the Republic was defeated in the field only the day before Valenciennes +fell, but the great seaport was still unoccupied by the forces of the +Government. The Norman march upon Paris had also failed between those +two dates, the fall of Condé and the fall of Valenciennes. The Norman +bark had proved worse than the Norman bite; but the force was so +neighbouring to the capital that it took a very large place in the +preoccupations of the time. The Vendean revolt, though its triumphant +advance was checked before Nantes a fortnight before the fall of Condé, +was still vigorous, and the terrible reprisals against it were hardly +begun. Worst of all, or at least, worst perhaps, after the revolt of +Lyons, was the defection of Toulon. Toulon rose two days before the fall +of Valenciennes, and was prepared to hand itself over (as at last it did +hand itself over) to occupation by the English fleet.</p> + +<p>The dates thus set in their order may somewhat confuse the reader, and I +will therefore summarise the general position of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> the internal danger +thus: A man in the French camp on the Scheldt, listening to the guns +before Valenciennes fifteen miles away, and hourly expecting their +silence as a signal that the city had surrendered, would have heard by +one post after another how Marseilles still held out against the +Government; how the counter-attack against the successful Vendeans had +but doubtfully begun (all July was full of disasters in that quarter); +how Lyons was furiously successful in her rebellion and had dared to put +to death the Republican mayor of the town; and that the great arsenal +and port at Toulon, the Portsmouth of France upon the Mediterranean, had +sickened of the Government and was about to admit the English fleet. His +only comfort would have been to hear that the Norman march on Paris had +failed—but he would still be under the impression of it and of the +murder of Marat by a Norman woman.</p> + +<p>There is the picture of that sudden internal struggle which coincides +with this moment of the revolutionary war, the moment of the fall of +Condé and of Valenciennes, and the exposure of the frontier.</p> + +<p>The second point, the advent of Carnot into the Committee of Public +Safety, which has already been touched upon in the political part of +this work, has so preponderating a military significance that we must +consider it here also.</p> + +<p>The old Committee of Public Safety, it will be remembered, reached the +end of its legal term on July 10. It was the Committee<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> which the wisdom +of Danton had controlled. The members elected to the new Committee did +not include Carnot, but the military genius of this man was already +public. He came of that strong middle class which is the pivot upon +which the history of modern Europe turns; a Burgundian with lineage, +intensely republican, he had been returned to the Convention and had +voted for the death of the King; a sapper before the Revolution, and one +thoroughly well grounded in his arm and in general reading of military +things, he had been sent by the Convention to the Army of the North on +commission, he had seen its weakness and had watched its experiments. +Upon his return he was not immediately selected for the post in which he +was to transform the revolutionary war. It was not until the 14th of +August that he was given a temporary place upon the Committee which his +talents very soon made permanent. He was given the place merely as a +stopgap to the odious and incompetent fanatic, Saint-André, who was for +the moment away on mission. But from the day of his admission his +superiority in military affairs was so incontestable that he was +virtually a dictator therein, and his first action after the general +lines of organisation had been laid down by him was to impose upon the +frontier armies the necessity of concentration. He introduced what +afterwards Napoleon inherited from him, the tactical venture of “all +upon one throw.”</p> + +<p>It must be remembered that Carnot’s<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> success did not lie in any +revolutionary discovery in connection with the art of war, but rather in +that vast capacity for varied detail which marks the organiser, and in +an intimate sympathy with the national character. He understood the +contempt for parade, the severity or brutality of discipline, the +consciousness of immense powers of endurance which are in the Frenchman +when he becomes a soldier;—and he made use of this understanding of +his.</p> + +<p>It must be further remembered that this powerful genius had behind him +in these first days of his activity the equally powerful genius of +Danton; for it was Danton and he who gave practical shape to that law of +conscription by which the French Revolution suddenly increased its armed +forces by nearly half a million of men, restored the Roman tradition, +and laid the foundation of the armed system on which Europe to-day +depends. With Carnot virtually commander-in-chief of all the armies, and +enabled to impose his decisions in particular upon that Army of the +North which he had studied so recently as a commissioner, the second +factor of the situation I am describing is comprehended.</p> + +<p>The third, as I have said, was the English diversion upon Dunquerque.</p> + +<p>The subsequent failure of the Allies has led to bitter criticism of this +movement. Had the Allies not failed, history would have treated it as +its contemporaries treated it. The forces of the Allies on the +north-eastern frontier were so great and their confidence<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> so +secure—especially after the fall of Valenciennes—that the English +proposal to withdraw their forces for the moment from Coburg’s and to +secure Dunquerque, was not received with any destructive criticism. +Eighteen battalions and fourteen squadrons of the Imperial forces were +actually lent to the Duke of York for this expedition. What is more, +even after that diversion failed, the plan was fixed to begin again when +the last of the other fortresses should have fallen: so little was the +English plan for the capture of the seaport disfavoured by the +commander-in-chief of the Allies.</p> + +<p>That diversion on Dunquerque turned out, however, to be an error of +capital importance. The attempt to capture the city utterly failed, and +the victory which accompanied its repulsion had upon the French that +indefinable but powerful moral effect which largely contributed to their +future successes.</p> + +<p>The accompanying sketch map will explain the position. Valenciennes and +Condé have fallen; Lequesnoy, the small fortress subsidiary to +Valenciennes, has not yet been attacked but comes next in the series, +when the moment was judged propitious for the detachment of the +Anglo-Hanoverian force with a certain number of Imperial Allies to march +to the sea.</p> + +<p>It must always be remembered by the reader of history that military +situations, like the situations upon a chess board, rather happen than +are designed; and the situation which developed at the end of September +upon the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> extreme north and west of the line which the French were +attempting to hold against the Allies was strategically of this nature. +When the Duke of York insisted upon a division of the forces of the +Allies and an attack upon Dunquerque, no living contemporary foresaw +disaster.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<img src="images/p187.png" width="500" height="287" alt="Showing condition of the frontier fortresses blocking the +road to Paris when the expedition to Dunquerque was decided upon. August +1793." title="" /> +<span class="caption">Showing condition of the frontier fortresses blocking the +road to Paris when the expedition to Dunquerque was decided upon. August +1793.</span> +<p class="right"><a href="images/p187-lg.png" name="fig004" id="fig004">Enlarge Map</a></p> +</div> + +<p>Coburg, indeed, would have preferred the English to remain with him, and +asked them to do so, but he felt in no sort of danger through their +temporary absence, nor, as a matter of fact, was he in any danger +through it.</p> + +<p>Again, though the positions which the Duke of York took up when he +arrived in front of Dunquerque were bad, neither his critics at home, +nor any of his own subordinates, nor any of the enemy, perceived fully +how bad they were. It was, as will presently be seen, a sort of drift, +bad luck combined with bad management, which led to this British +disaster, and (what was all-important for the conduct of the war) to the +first success in a general action which the French had to flatter and +encourage themselves with during all that fatal summer.</p> + +<p>The Duke of York separated his force from that of Coburg just before the +middle of August; besides the British, who were not quite 7,000 strong, +11,000 Austrians, over 10,000 Hanoverians and 7,000 Hessians were under +his command. The total force, therefore, was nearly 37,000 strong. No +one could imagine that, opposed by such troops as the French were able +to put into line,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> and marching against such wretched defences as those +of Dunquerque then were, the Duke’s army had not a perfectly easy task +before it; and the plan, which was to take Dunquerque and upon the +return to join the Austrian march on Paris, was reasonable and feasible.</p> + +<p>It is important that the reader should firmly seize this and not read +history backward from future events.</p> + +<p>Certain faults are to be observed in the first conduct of the march. It +began on the 15th of August, proceeding from Marchiennes to Menin, and +at the outset displayed that deplorable lack of marching power which the +Duke of York’s command had shown throughout the campaign.<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> From +Marchiennes to Tourcoing is a long day’s march: it took the Duke of York +four days; and, take the march altogether, nine days were spent in +covering less than forty miles. In the course of that march, the British +troops had an opportunity of learning to despise their adversary: they +found at Linselles, upon the flank of their advance, a number of +undisciplined boys who broke the moment the Guards were upon them, and +whose physical condition excited the ridicule of their assailants. The +army proceeded after this purposeless<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> and unfruitful skirmish to the +neighbourhood of the sea coast, and the siege of Dunquerque was +undertaken under conditions which will be clear to the reader from the +following sketch map.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<img src="images/p190.png" width="500" height="355" alt="Operations round Dunquerque. September 1793." title="" /> +<span class="caption">Operations round Dunquerque. September 1793.</span> +<p class="right"><a href="images/p190-lg.png" name="fig005" id="fig005">Enlarge Map</a></p> +</div> + +<p>The date of the 20th of August must first be fixed in the mind: on that +date the army which was to take Dunquerque was separated into its two +component parts. The first, under the Duke of York, was to attack the +town itself; the second, under the aged Austrian general, Freytag, was +to watch the movement of any approaching enemy and to cover the force +which was besieging the town. Two days later, the Duke of York was +leaving Furnes, which he had made his base for the advance, and Freytag +had with the greatest<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> ease brushed the French posts—mainly of +volunteers—from before him, and was beginning to take up the flanking +positions south and east of Bergues which covered the siege of +Dunquerque.</p> + +<p>Two days later again, on August 24, Freytag had occupied Wormhoudt and +Esquelbecque, capturing guns by the dozen, doing pretty well what he +would with the French outposts, and quite surrounding the town of +Bergues. Wilder was his headquarters. On the same day, the 24th, the +Duke of York had with the greatest ease driven in the advanced posts of +the French before Dunquerque, and shut up the enemy within the town, +while he formed his besieging force outside of it, entrenched in a +position which he had chosen beforehand, reposing upon the sea at his +right, his left on the village of Tetteghem. He was then about 3,000 +yards from the fortifications at Dunquerque.</p> + +<p>Such was the situation upon the dawn of the 25th, when everything was +ready for active operations. And here the reader must look upon the map +for what ultimately proved the ruin of the situation.</p> + +<p>Supposing Freytag round Bergues in the position which the map shows; the +Duke of York in front of Dunquerque as the map also shows him; the two +forces are in touch across the road and the belt of country which unites +Bergues and Dunquerque. The covering army and the besieging force which +it covers are each a wing of one combined<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> body; each communicates with +the other, each can support the other at the main point of effort, and +though between the one and the other eastward there stretches a line of +marshy country—the “meres” which the map indicates—yet a junction +between the two forces exists westward of these, and the two armies can +co-operate by the Bergues-Dunquerque road.</p> + +<p>A factor which the Duke of York may have neglected was the power of +flooding all that flat country round, the road which the French in +Dunquerque, being in possession of the sluices, possessed. They used it +at once: they drowned the low lands to the south of Dunquerque, upon the +very day when the last dispositions of the attacking force were +completed. But more important—and never yet explained—was the +Austrians’ abandonment of Coudequerque. By this error, the main road +itself, standing above the flood, was lost, and from being one strong +army the force of the Allies became two weak ones. Communication was no +longer possible between the Duke of York’s and Freytag’s territories, +and it was of this separation that the French, in spite of their +deplorable organisation and more deplorable personnel, took advantage.</p> + +<p>They took advantage of it slowly. Houchard gathered altogether forty +thousand men near Cassel, but it was ten days before they could be +concentrated. It must again be insisted upon and repeated that, large as +the number was—it was four times as great as Freytag’s<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> now isolated +force—Houchard’s command was made up of men quite two-thirds of whom +were hardly soldiers: volunteers both new and recent, ill-trained +conscripts and so forth. There was no basis of discipline, hardly any +power to enforce it; the men had behaved disgracefully in all the +affairs of outposts, they had been brushed away contemptuously by the +small Austrian force from every position they had held. With all his +numerical superiority the attempt which Houchard was about to make was +very hazardous: and Houchard was a hesitating and uncertain commander. +Furthermore, of the forty thousand men one quarter at least remained out +of action through the ineptitude and political terror of Dumesny, +Houchard’s lieutenant upon the right.</p> + +<p>It was upon the 6th of September that the French advance began along the +whole line; it was a mere pushing in of inferior numbers by superior +numbers, the superior numbers perpetually proving themselves inferior to +the Austrians in military value. Thus, the capture of old Freytag +himself in a night skirmish was at once avenged by the storming of the +village near which he had been caught, and he was re-taken. In actual +fighting and force for force, Houchard’s command found nothing to +encourage it during these first operations.</p> + +<p>The Austrians in falling back concentrated and were soon one compact +body: to attack and dislodge it was the object of the French advance, +but an object hardly to be attained.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span></p> + +<p>What happened was not only the unexpected success of this advance, but +the gaining by the French of the first decisive action in the long +series which was to terminate twenty years later at Leipsic.</p> + +<p>The army of Freytag fell back upon the village of Hondschoote and stood +there in full force upon the morning of Sunday, the 8th of September. +Houchard attacked it with a force greatly lessened but still double that +of the defenders. So conspicuous, however, was the superiority of the +Austrian regulars over the French raw troops and volunteers that during +this morning of the 8th the result was still doubtful. By the afternoon, +however, the work was done, and the enemy were in a retreat which might +easily have been turned into a rout. A glance at the map will show that +Houchard, had he possessed the initiative common to so many of his +contemporaries, might at once have driven the numerically inferior and +heavily defeated force (it had lost one-third of its men) to the right, +and proceeded himself to cut the communications of the Duke of York and +to destroy his army, which lay packed upon the waterless sand dunes +where the village of Malo-les-Bains now stands. Houchard hesitated; +Freytag escaped; the Duke of York, abandoning his siege-pieces to the +number of forty and much of his heavy baggage, retreated precipitately +through the night to Furnes, right across the front of the French army, +and escaped destruction.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span></p> + +<p>The Battle of Hoondschoote, therefore, as it is called, raised the siege +of Dunquerque. It was, as I have said, the first successful decisive +action which the Revolution could count since the moment of its extreme +danger and the opening of the general European war. But it was nothing +like what it might have been had Houchard been willing to risk a hardy +stroke. Houchard was therefore recalled, condemned to death, and +executed by the Committee of Public Safety, whose pitiless despotism was +alone capable of saving the nation. He remains the single example of a +general officer who has suffered death for military incompetence after +the gaining of a victory, and his execution is an excellent example of +the way in which the military temper of the Committee, and particularly +of Carnot, refused to consider any factor in the war save those that +make for military success.</p> + +<p>Carnot and the Committee had no patience with the illusions which a +civilian crowd possesses upon mere individual actions: what they saw was +the campaign as a whole, and they knew that Houchard had left the armies +opposite him intact.</p> + +<p>Perhaps his execution was made more certain by the continuance of bad +news from that more important point of the frontier—the direct line of +Austrian advance upon Paris. Here, already, Valenciennes had fallen two +months before, and Condé also. Lequesnoy, the third point of the barrier +line, capitulated on the 11th of September, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> the news of that +capitulation reached Paris immediately after the news of Hondschoote. No +fortress was now left between the Allies and the capital but Maubeuge. +Coburg marched upon it at once.</p> + +<p>Not only had he that immense superiority in the quality of his troops +which must be still insisted upon, but numerically also he was three to +one when, on the 28th of September, at dawn, he crossed the Sambre above +and below Maubeuge, and by noon of that day had contained the French +army in that neighbourhood within the lines of the fortress.</p> + +<p>The situation was critical in the extreme: Maubeuge was ill prepared to +stand siege; it was hardly provisioned; its garrison was of varied and, +on the whole, of bad quality. In mere victuals it could stand out for +but a few days, and, worst of all, it had behind it the continued +example of necessary and fatal surrenders which had marked the whole +summer. The orders of the Committee of Public Safety to its commander +were terse: “Your head shall answer for Maubeuge.” After the receipt of +that message no more came through the lines.</p> + +<p>The reader, if he be unaccustomed to military history, does well to note +that in every action and in every campaign there is some one factor of +position or of arms or of time which explains the result. Each has a +pivot or hinge, as it were, upon which the whole turns. It was now upon +Maubeuge that the revolutionary war thus depended.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> At risk of +oversimplifying a complex story, I would lay this down as the prime +condition for the understanding of the early revolutionary wars: had +Maubeuge fallen, the road to Paris lay open and the trick was +done<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a>—and here we must consider again the effect in the field of +Carnot’s genius.</p> + +<p>In the first place, he had provided numbers not on paper, but in +reality; the Committee, through a decree of the Assembly, had +despotically “requisitioned” men, animals, vehicles and supplies. The +levy was a reality. Mere numbers then raw, but increasing, had begun to +pour into the north-east. It was they that had told at Hoondschoote, it +was they that were to tell in front of Maubeuge.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span></p> + +<p>Secondly, as the Committee supplied the necessary initiative, Carnot +supplied the necessary personality of war. His own will and own brain +could come to one decision in one moment, and did so. It was he, as we +shall see, who won the critical action. He chose Jourdan, a man whose +quaint military career we must reluctantly leave aside in so brief a +study as this, but at any rate an amateur, and put him in Houchard’s +command over the Army of the Northern Frontier, and that command was +extended from right away beyond the Ardennes to the sea. He ordered (and +Jourdan obeyed) the concentration of men from all down that lengthy line +to the right and the left upon one point, Guise. To leave the rest of +the frontier weak was a grave risk only to be excused by very rapid +action and success: both these were to follow. The concentration was +effected in four days. Troops from the extreme north could not come in +time. The furthest called upon were beyond Arras, with sixty-five miles +of route between them and Guise. This division (which shall be typical +of many), not quite eight thousand strong, left on receiving orders in +the morning of the 3rd of October and entered Guise in the course of the +6th. The rate of marching and the synchrony of these movements of +imperfect troops should especially be noted by any one who would +understand how the Revolution succeeded.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<img src="images/p199.png" width="500" height="272" alt="The rapid eight days' concentration in front of Maubeuge. +October 1783." title="" /> +<span class="caption">The rapid eight days’ concentration in front of Maubeuge. +October 1783.</span> +<p class="right"><a href="images/p199-lg.png" name="fig006" id="fig006">Enlarge Map</a></p> +</div> + +<p>A second division of over thirteen thousand men followed along the +parallel road, with<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> a similar time table. From the other end of his +line, a detachment under Beauregard, just over four thousand men, was +called up from the extreme right. It will serve as a typical example +upon the eastern side of this lightning concentration. It had been +gathered near Carignan, a town full fourteen miles beyond Sedan. It +picked up reinforcements on the way and marched into Fourmies upon the +11th, after covering just seventy miles in the three and a half days. +With its arrival the concentration was complete, and not a moment too +soon, for the bombardment of Maubeuge was about to begin. From the 11th +to the 15th of October the army was advanced and drawn up in line, a +day’s march in front of Guise, with its centre at Avesnes and facing the +covering army of Coburg, which lay entrenched upon a long wooded crest +with the valley of the Sambre upon its right and the village of +Wattignies, on a sort of promontory of high land, upon its left.</p> + +<p>The Austrian position was reconnoitred upon the 14th. Upon the 15th the +general attack was delivered and badly repelled. When darkness fell upon +that day few in the army could have believed that Maubeuge was +succourable—and it was a question of hours.</p> + +<p>Carnot, however, sufficiently knew the virtues as the vices of his novel +troops, the troops of the great levy, stiffened with a proportion of +regulars, to attempt an extraordinary thing. He marched eight thousand<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> +from his left and centre, over to his right during the night, and in the +morning of the 16th his right, in front of the Austrian left at +Wattignies had, by this conversion, become far the strongest point of +the whole line.</p> + +<p>A dense mist had covered the end of this operation as the night had +covered its inception, and that mist endured until nearly midday. The +Austrians upon the heights had no hint of the conversion, and Wattignies +was only held by three regiments. If they expected a renewed attack at +all, they can only have expected it in the centre, or even upon the left +where the French had suffered most the day before.</p> + +<p>Initiative in war is essentially a calculation of risk, and with high +initiative the risk is high. What Carnot gambled upon (for Jourdan was +against the experiment) when he moved those young men through the night, +was the possibility of getting active work out of them after a day’s +furious action, the forced marches of the preceding week and on top of +it all a sleepless night of further marching. Most of the men who were +prepared to charge on the French right as the day broadened and the mist +lifted on that 16th of October, had been on foot for thirty hours. The +charge was delivered, and was successful. The unexpected numbers thus +concentrated under Wattignies carried that extreme position, held the +height, and arrived, therefore, on the flank of the whole Austrian line, +which, had not the effort of the aggressors exhausted them, would have +been rolled up<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> in its whole length. As it was, the Austrians retreated +unmolested and in good order across the Sambre. The siege of Maubeuge +was raised; and the next day the victorious French army entered the +fortress.</p> + +<p>Thus was successfully passed the turning-point of the revolutionary +wars.</p> + +<p>Two months later the other gate of the country was recovered. In the +moment when Maubeuge was relieved, the enemy had pierced the lines of +Wissembourg. It is possible that an immediate and decisive understanding +among the Allies might then have swept all Alsace; but such an +understanding was lacking. The disarrayed “Army of the Rhine” was got +into some sort of order, notably through the enthusiasm of Hoche and the +silent control of Pichegru. At the end of November the Prussians stood +on the defensive at Kaiserslautern. Hoche hammered at them for three +days without success. What really turned the scale was the floods of men +and material that the levy and the requisitioning were pouring in. Just +before Christmas the enemy evacuated Haguenau. Landau they still held; +but a decisive action fought upon Boxing Day, a true soldiers’ battle, +determined by the bayonet, settled the fate of the Allies on this point. +The French entered Wissembourg again, and Landau was relieved after a +siege of four months and a display of tenacity which had done not a +little to turn the tide of the war.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile the news had come in that the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> last of the serious internal +rebellions was crushed. Toulon had been re-captured, the English fleet +driven out; the town, the harbour and the arsenal had fallen into the +hands of the French largely through the science of a young major of +artillery (not captain: I have discussed the point elsewhere), +Bonaparte, and this had taken place a week before the relief of Landau. +The last confused horde of La Vendée had been driven from the walls of +Granville in Normandy, to which it had erred and drifted rather than +retreated. At Mans on the 13th of December it was cut to pieces, and at +Savenay on the 23rd, three days before the great victory in Alsace, it +was destroyed. A long peasant-and-bandit struggle, desperate yet hardly +to be called guerilla, continued through the next year behind the hedges +of Lower Brittany and of Vendée, but the danger to the State and to the +Revolution was over. The year 1793 ended, therefore, with the complete +relief of the whole territory of the Republic, save a narrow strip upon +the Belgian frontier, complete domination of it by its Cæsar, the +Committee of Public Safety; with two-thirds of a million of men under +arms, and the future of the great experiment apparently secure.</p> + +<p>The causes of the wonder have been discussed, and will be discussed +indefinitely. Primarily, they resided in the re-creation of a strong +central power; secondly, in the combination of vast numbers and of a +reckless spirit of sacrifice. The losses on the National side<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> were +perpetually and heavily superior to those of the Allies—in Alsace they +had been three to one; and we shall better understand the duel when we +appreciate that in the short eight years between the opening of the war +and the triumph of Napoleon at Marengo, there had fallen in killed and +wounded, on the French side, over seven hundred thousand men.</p> + + +<h3><a name="V_5" id="V_5"></a>FIVE</h3> + +<p>The story of 1794 is but the consequence of what we have just read. It +was the little belt or patch upon the Belgian frontier which was still +in the hands of the enemy that determined the nature of the campaign.</p> + +<p>It was not until spring that the issue was joined. The Emperor of +Austria reached Brussels on the 2nd day of April, and a fortnight later +reviewed his army. The French line drawn up in opposition to it suffered +small but continual reverses until the close of the month.</p> + +<p>On the 29th Clerfayt suffered a defeat which led to the fall, or rather +the escape, of the small garrison of Menin. Clerfayt was beaten again at +Courtray a fortnight later; but all these early engagements in the +campaign were of no decisive moment. Tourcoing was to be the first heavy +blow that should begin to settle matters, Fleurus was to clinch them.</p> + +<p>No battle can be less satisfactorily described<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> in a few lines than that +of Tourcoing, so different did it appear to either combatant, so +opposite are the plans of what was expected on either side, and of what +happened, so confused are the various accounts of contemporaries. The +accusations of treason which nearly always arise after a disaster, and +especially a disaster overtaking an allied force, are particularly +monstrous, and may be dismissed: in particular the childish legend which +pretends that the Austrians desired an English defeat.</p> + +<p>What the French say is that excellent forced marching and scientific +concentration permitted them to attack the enemy before the junction of +his various forces was effected. What the Allies say is (if they are +speaking for their centre) that it was shamefully abandoned and +unsupported by the two wings; if they are speaking for the wings, that +the centre had no business to advance, when it saw that the two wings +were not up in time to co-operate.</p> + +<p>One story goes that the Archduke Charles was incapacitated by a fit; +Lord Acton has lent his considerable authority to this amusing version. +At any rate, what happened was this:—</p> + +<p>The Allies lay along the river Scheldt on Friday, the 16th of May: +Tournay was their centre, with the Duke of York in command of the chief +force there; five or six miles north, down the river, was one extremity +of their line at a place called Warcoing: it was a body of Hanoverians. +The left, under the Archduke<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> Charles, was Austrian and had reached a +place a day’s march south of Tournay called St. Amand. Over against the +Allies lay a large French force also occupying a wide front of over +fifteen miles, the centre of which was Tourcoing, then a village. Its +left was in front of the fortress of Courtrai. Now, behind the French, +up country northward in the opposite direction from the line of the +Allies on the Scheldt was another force of the Allies under Clerfayt. +The plan was that the Allied right should advance on to Mouscron and +take it. The Allied centre should advance on to Tourcoing and Mouveaux +and take them, while the left should march across the upper waters of +the river Marque, forcing the bridges that crossed that marshy stream, +and come up alongside the centre. In other words, there was to be an +attack all along the French line from the south, and while it was +proceeding, Clerfayt, from the north of the French, was to cross the Lys +and attack also.</p> + +<p>On the day of the 17th what happened was this: The left of the Allies, +marching from St. Amand, came up half a day late; the right of the +Allies took Mouscron, but were beaten out of it by the French. The +centre of the Allies fulfilled their programme, reaching Tourcoing and +its neighbourhood by noon and holding their positions. It is to the +honour of English arms that this success was accomplished by a force a +third of which was British and the most notable bayonet work in which +was done by the Guards. Meanwhile,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> Clerfayt was late in moving and in +crossing the river Lys, which lay between him and his objective.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 496px;"> +<img src="images/p207.png" width="496" height="500" alt="Tourcoing. May 16 to 18, 1794. The breakdown of the attempt of the Allies to cut off the French near +Courtrai from Lille was due to their failure to synchronise They should +have been in line from A to B at noon of the 17th with Clerfayt at C." title="" /> +<span class="caption">Tourcoing. May 16 to 18, 1794.</span> +<p>The breakdown of the attempt of the Allies to cut off the French near +Courtrai from Lille was due to their failure to synchronise They should +have been in line from A to B at noon of the 17th with Clerfayt at C.</p> +<p class="right"><a href="images/p207-lg.png" name="fig007" id="fig007">Enlarge Map</a></p> +</div> + +<p>When night fell, therefore, on the first day of the action, a glance at +the map will show that instead of one solid line advancing against the +French from A to B, and the northern force in touch with it at C, the +Allied formation was an absurd projection in the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> middle, due to the +success of the mixed and half-British force under the Duke of York: a +success which had not been maintained on the two wings. A bulge of this +sort in an attacking line is on the face of it disastrous. The enemy +have only to be rapid in falling upon either flank of it and the bulge +can be burst in. The French were rapid, and burst in the bulge was. By +concentrating their forces against this one central part of the Allies +they fought three to one.</p> + +<p>That same capacity which at Wattignies had permitted them to scorn sleep +and to be indefatigable in marching, put them on the road before three +o’clock in the morning of Sunday, the 18th, and with the dawn they fell +upon the central force of the Allies, attacking it from all three sides.</p> + +<p>It is on this account that the battle is called the Battle of Tourcoing, +for Tourcoing was the most advanced point to which the centre of the +Allies had reached. The Germans, upon the Duke of York’s right at +Tourcoing, felt the first brunt of the attack. The Duke of York himself, +with his mixed, half-British force, came in for the blow immediately +afterwards, and while it was still early morning. The Germans at +Tourcoing began to fall back. The Duke of York’s force, to the left of +them, was left isolated: its commander ought not to have hung on so +long. But the defence was maintained with the utmost gallantry for the +short time during which it was still possible. The retreat began about +nine in the morning and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> was kept orderly for the first two miles, but +after that point it was a rout. The drivers of the British cannon fled, +and the guns, left without teams, blocked the precipitate flight of the +cavalry. Their disorder communicated itself at once to the Guards, and +to the line.</p> + +<p>Even in this desperate strait some sort of order was restored, notably +by the Guards Brigade, which were apparently the first to form, and a +movement that could still be called a retreat was pursued towards the +south. The Duke of York himself was chased from spinney to spinney and +escaped by a stroke of luck, finding a bridge across the last brook held +by a detachment of Hessians. In this way were the central columns, who +between them numbered not a third of the total force of the Allies, +destroyed.</p> + +<p>Clerfayt had first advanced—but far too late to save the centre—and +then retreated. The Archduke Charles, upon the left, was four hours late +in marching to the help of the Duke of York; the right wing of the +Allies was not even late: it spent the morning in an orderly artillery +duel with the French force opposed to it. By five in the afternoon +defeat was admitted and a general retreat of the Allies ordered.</p> + +<p>I have said that many reasons are given to account for the disaster of +Tourcoing, one of the very few in which a British force has been routed +upon the Continent; but I confess that if I were asked for an +explanation of my own, I would say that it was<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> simply due to the gross +lack of synchrony on the part of the Allies, and that this in its turn +was taken advantage of by the power both of vigil and of marching which +the French troops, still inferior in most military characteristics, had +developed and maintained, and which (a more important matter) their +commanders knew how to use.</p> + +<p>This heavy blow, delivered on the 18th of May, in spite of a successful +rally a week later, finally convinced the Emperor that the march on +Paris was impossible. Eleven days later, on the 29th, it was announced +in the camp of Tournay, upon which the Allied army had fallen back, that +the Emperor had determined to return to Vienna. The Allied army was +indeed still left upon that front, but the French continued to pour up +against it. It was again their numbers that brought about the next and +the final victory.</p> + +<p>Far off, upon the east of that same line, the army which is famous in +history and in song as that of the Sambre et Meuse was violently +attempting to cross the Sambre and to turn the line of the Allies. +Coburg reinforced his right opposite the French left, but numbers had +begun to bewilder him. The enthusiasm of Saint-Just, the science of +Carnot, decided victory at this eastern end of the line.</p> + +<p>Six times the passage of the Sambre had failed. Reinforcements continued +to reach the army, and the seventh attempt succeeded.</p> + +<p>Charleroi, which is the main fortress blocking<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> the passage of the +Sambre at this place, could be, and was, invested when once the river +was crossed by the French. It capitulated in a week. But the evacuation +of Charleroi was but just accomplished when Coburg, seventy thousand +strong, appeared in relief of the city.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<img src="images/p211.png" width="500" height="228" alt="Showing effect of Ypres, Charleroi and Fleurus in +wholly throwing back the Allies in June 1794. Ypres captured on June 19 by the French, they march on Oudenarde and +pass it on June 25 to 27. Meanwhile Charleroi has also surrendered to +the French, and when, immediately afterwards, the Austrians try to +relieve it, they are beaten at Fleurus and retire on Brussels. English at Tournai and all the Allied Forces at Condé, +Valenciennes, Landrecies, and Mons are imperilled and must +surrender or retire." title="" /> +<span class="caption">Showing effect of Ypres, Charleroi and Fleurus in +wholly throwing back the Allies in June 1794.</span> +<p> +Ypres captured on June 19 by the French, they march on Oudenarde and +pass it on June 25 to 27. Meanwhile Charleroi has also surrendered to +the French, and when, immediately afterwards, the Austrians try to +relieve it, they are beaten at Fleurus and retire on Brussels.</p> + +<p>Thus the English at Tournai and all the Allied Forces at Condé, +Valenciennes, Landrecies, and Mons are imperilled and must +surrender or retire.</p> +<p class="right"><a href="images/p211-lg.png" name="fig008" id="fig008">Enlarge Map</a></p> +</div> + +<p>The plateau above the town where the great struggle was decided, is +known as that of Fleurus, and it was upon the 26th of June that the +armies were there engaged. Never before had forces so equal permitted +the French any success. It had hitherto been the ceaseless +requisitioning of men to supply their insufficient training and command, +which had accomplished the salvation of the country. At Fleurus, though +there<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> was still some advantage on the French side, the numbers were +more nearly equal.</p> + +<p>The action was not determined for ten hours, and on the French centre +and left was nearly lost, when the Reserves’ and Marceau’s obstinacy in +front of Fleurus village itself at last decided it.</p> + +<p>The consequences of the victory were final. As the French right advanced +from Fleurus the French left advanced from Ypres, and the centre became +untenable for the Allies. The four French fortresses which the enemy +still garrisoned in that Belgian “belt” of which I have spoken, were +invested and re-captured. By the 10th of July the French were in +Brussels, the English were beaten back upon Holland, the Austrians +retreating upon the Rhine, and the continuous success of the +revolutionary armies was assured.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>While these things were proceeding upon land, however, there had +appeared a factor in the war which modern desire for comfort and, above +all, for commercial security has greatly exaggerated, but which the +student will do well to note in its due proportion. This factor was the +military weakness of France at sea.</p> + +<p>In mere numbers the struggle was entered upon with fleets in the ratio +of about two to one, while to the fleet of Great Britain, already twice +as large as its opponent, must be added the fleets of the Allies. But +numbers did not then, nor will they in the future, really decide the +issue of maritime war. It<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> was the supremacy of English gunnery which +turned the scale. This triumphant superiority was proved in the battle +of the 1st of June, 1794.</p> + +<p>The English fleet under Lord Howe attacked the French fleet which was +waiting to escort a convoy of grain into Brest; the forces came in +contact upon the 28th of May, and the action was a running one of three +days.</p> + +<p>Two examples must suffice to prove how determining was the superiority +of the British fire. The <i>Queen Charlotte</i>, in the final action, found +herself caught between the <i>Montagne</i> and the <i>Jacobin</i>. We have the +figures of the losses during the duel of these two flagships. The <i>Queen +Charlotte</i> lost forty-two men in the short and furious exchange, the +<i>Montagne</i> alone three hundred. Again, consider the total figures. The +number of the crews on both sides was nearly equal, but their losses +were as eleven to five. It cannot be too often repeated that the initial +advantage which the English fleet gained in the great war, which it +maintained and increased as that war proceeded, and which it made +absolute at Trafalgar, was an advantage mainly due to the guns.</p> + +<p>The reader must not expect in a sketch which ends with the fall of +Robespierre any treatise, however short, upon the effect of sea power in +the revolutionary wars. It has of late years been grossly exaggerated, +the reaction which will follow this exaggeration may as grossly belittle +it. It prevented the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> invasion of England, it permitted the exasperation +and wearing out of the French forces in the Peninsula. But it could not +have determined the fate of Napoleon. That was determined by his Russian +miscalculation and by his subsequent and consequent defeat at Leipsic.</p> + +<p>Upon the early success of the Revolution and the resulting establishment +of European democracy, with which alone these pages deal, sea power was +of no considerable effect.</p> + + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> Incidentally it should be noted how true it is that this +supreme military quality is a matter of organisation rather than of the +physical power of troops; in the Napoleonic wars the marching power of +the English troops was often proved exceptional, and perhaps the +greatest of all feats accomplished by a small body was that of the Light +Brigade marching to the succour of Wellington at Talavera.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> I must not, in fairness to the reader, neglect the great +mass of opinion, from Jomini to Mr. Fortescue’s classic work upon the +British Army, which lays it down that the Allies had but to mask the +frontier fortresses and to advance their cavalry rapidly along the Paris +road. Historical hypothesis can never be more than a matter of judgment, +but I confess that this view has always seemed to me to ignore—as +purely military historians and especially foreign ones might well +ignore—the social condition of “’93.” Cavalry is the weakest of all +arms with which to deal with sporadic, unorganised, but determined +resistance. To pass through the densely populated country of the Paris +road may be compared to the forcing of an open town, and cavalry can +never be relied upon for <i>that</i>. As for the army moving as a whole +without a perfect security in its communications, the matter need not +even be discussed; and it must further be remembered that, the moment +such an advance began, an immediate concentration from the north would +have fallen upon the ill-guarded lines of supply. It may be taken that +Coburg knew his business when he sat down before this, the last of the +fortresses.</p></div> +</div> + + +<hr /> +<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI<br /><br /> +<small>THE REVOLUTION AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH</small></h2> + + +<p><span class="sc">The</span> last and the most important of the aspects which the French +Revolution presents to a foreign, and in particular to an English +reader, is the antagonism which arose between it and the Church.</p> + +<p>As this is the most important so it is the most practical of the +historical problems which the Revolution sets the student to solve; for +the opposition of the Church’s organisation in France has at once been +the most profound which the Revolution has had to encounter, the most +active in its methods, and the only one which has increased in strength +as time proceeded. It is hardly too much to say that the Revolution +would, in France at least, have achieved its object and created a +homogeneous, centralised democracy, had not this great quarrel between +the Republic and the Church<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> arisen; and one may legitimately contrast +the ready pliancy of men to political suggestion and the easy story of +their institutions where men knew nothing of the Church, with the great +storms that arise and the fundamental quarrels that are challenged +wherever men are acquainted with the burning truths of Catholicism.</p> + +<p>Finally, the struggle between the Catholic Church and the Revolution is +not only the most important and the most practical, but also by an +unhappy coincidence the most difficult of comprehension of all the +matters presented to us by the great change.</p> + +<p>We have seen in this book that one department of revolutionary history, +the second in importance, perhaps, to the religious department, was also +difficult of comprehension—to wit, the military department. And we have +seen (or at least I have postulated) that the difficulty of following +the military fortunes of the Republic was due to the mass of detail, to +the technical character of the information to be acquired and to the +natural unfamiliarity of the general reader with the elements of +military science. In other words, an accurate knowledge of great numbers +of facts, the proper disposition of these facts in their order of +military importance, and the correlation of a great number of +disconnected actions and plans will alone permit us to grasp the +function of the armies in the development and establishment of the +modern State through the revolutionary wars.</p> + +<p>Now in this second and greater problem, the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> problem of the function +played by religion, it is an exactly opposite method which can alone be +of service.</p> + +<p>We must examine the field generally, and still more generally we must +forget details that here only bewilder, and see in the largest possible +outline what forces were really at issue, why their conflict occurred, +upon what points that conflict was vital. Any more particular plan will +land us, as it has landed so many thousands of controversialists, in +mere invective on one side or the other, till we come to see nothing but +a welter of treason on the part of priests, and of massacre upon the +part of democrats.</p> + +<p>Men would, did they try to unravel the skein by analysing the documents +of the Vatican or of the French archives, come apparently upon nothing +but a host of petty, base, and often personal calculations; or again, +did they attempt to take a local sample of the struggle and to follow it +in one department of thought, they would come upon nothing but a whirl +of conflict with no sort of clue to the motives that lay behind.</p> + +<p>The contrast between the military and the religious problem of the +French Revolution is like the contrast between the geological +composition and the topographical contours of a countryside. To +understand the first we must bore and dig, we must take numerous samples +of soil and subject them to analysis, we must make ourselves acquainted +with detail in its utmost recesses. But for the second, the more general +our standpoint, the wider<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> our gaze, and the more comprehensive our +judgment, the more accurately do we grasp the knowledge we have set out +to seek.</p> + +<p>We must, then, approach our business by asking at the outset the most +general question of all: “<i>Was there a necessary and fundamental quarrel +between the doctrines of the Revolution and those of the Catholic +Church?</i>”</p> + +<p>Those ill acquainted with either party, and therefore ill equipped for +reply, commonly reply with assurance in the affirmative. The French (and +still more the non-French) Republican who may happen, by the accident of +his life, to have missed the Catholic Church, to have had no intimacy +with any Catholic character, no reading of Catholic philosophy, and +perhaps even no chance view of so much as an external Catholic ceremony, +replies unhesitatingly that the Church is the necessary enemy of the +Revolution. Again, the <i>émigré</i>, the wealthy woman, the recluse, any one +of the many contemporary types to whom the democratic theory of the +Revolution came as a complete novelty, and to-day the wealthy families +in that tradition, reply as unhesitatingly that the Revolution is the +necessary enemy of the Church. The reply seems quite sufficient to the +Tory squire in England or Germany, who may happen to be a Catholic by +birth or by conversion; and it seems equally obvious to (let us say) a +democratic member of some Protestant Church in one of the new countries.</p> + +<p>Historically and logically, theologically also, those who affirm a +necessary antagonism<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> between the Republic and the Church are in error. +Those who are best fitted to approach the problem by their knowledge +both of what the Revolution attempted and of what Catholic philosophy +is, find it in proportion to their knowledge difficult or impossible to +answer that fundamental question in the affirmative. They cannot call +the Revolution a necessary enemy of the Church, nor the Church of +Democracy.</p> + +<p>What is more, minds at once of the most active and of the best +instructed sort are the very minds which find it difficult to explain +how any such quarrel can have arisen. French history itself is full of +the names of those for whom not so much a reconciliation between the +Revolution and the Church, as a statement that no real quarrel existed +between them, was the motive of politics; and almost in proportion to a +man’s knowledge of his fellows in Catholic societies, almost in that +proportion is the prime question I have asked answered by such a man in +the negative. A man who knows both the Faith and the Republic will tell +you that there is not and cannot be any necessary or fundamental reason +why conflict should have arisen between a European Democracy and the +Catholic Church.</p> + +<p>When we examine those who concern themselves with the deepest and most +abstract side of the quarrel, we find the same thing. It is impossible +for the theologian, or even for the practical ecclesiastical teacher, to +put his finger upon a political doctrine essential to the Revolution and +to say, “This doctrine<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> is opposed to Catholic dogma or to Catholic +morals.” Conversely, it is impossible for the Republican to put his +finger upon a matter of ecclesiastical discipline or religious dogma and +to say, “This Catholic point is at issue with my political theory of the +State.”</p> + +<p>Thousands of active men upon either side would have been only too +willing during the last hundred years to discover some such issue, and +it has proved undiscoverable. In a word, only those Democrats who know +little of the Catholic Church can say that of its nature it forbids +democracy; and only those Catholics who have a confused or imperfect +conception of democracy can say that of its nature it is antagonistic to +the Catholic Church.</p> + +<p>Much that is taught by the purely temporal theory of the one is +indifferent to the transcendental and supernatural philosophy of the +other. In some points, where there is contact (as in the conception of +the dignity of man and of the equality of men) there is agreement. To +sum up, the Republican cannot by his theory persecute the Church; the +Church cannot by her theory excommunicate the Republican.</p> + +<p>Why, then, it must next be asked, has there in practice arisen so +furious and so enormous a conflict, a conflict whose activity and whose +consequence are not narrowing but broadening to-day?</p> + +<p>It may be replied to this second question, which is only less general +than the first, in one of two manners.</p> + +<p>One may say that the actions of men are<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> divided not by theories but by +spiritual atmospheres, as it were. According to this view men act under +impulses not ideal but actual: impulses which affect great numbers and +yet in their texture correspond to the complex but united impulses of an +individual personality. Thus, though there be no conflict demonstrable +between the theology of the Catholic Church and the political theory of +the Revolution, yet there may be necessary and fundamental conflict +between the <i>Persons</i> we call the Revolution and the Church, and between +the vivifying principles by which either lives. That is one answer that +can be, and is, given.</p> + +<p>Or one may give a totally different answer and say, “There was no +quarrel between the theology of the Catholic Church and the political +theory of the Revolution; but the folly of this statesman, the ill +drafting of that law, the misconception of such and such an institution, +the coincidence of war breaking out at such and such a moment and +affecting men in such and such a fashion—all these material accidents +bred a misunderstanding between the two great forces, led into conflict +the human officers and the human organisations which directed them; and +conflict once established feeds upon, and grows from, its own +substance.”</p> + +<p>Now, if that first form of reply be given to the question we have posed, +though it is sufficient for the type of philosophy which uses it, though +it is certainly explanatory of all human quarrels, and though it in +particular<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> satisfies a particular modern school of thought, it is +evident that history, properly so called, cannot deal with it.</p> + +<p>You may say that the Revolution was the expression of a spirit far more +real than any theory, that this spirit is no more susceptible of +analysis or definition than is the personality of a single human +character, and that this reality was in conflict with another +reality—to wit, the Catholic Church. You may even (as some minds by no +means negligible have done) pass into the field of mysticism in the +matter, and assert that really personal forces, wills superior and +external to man, Demons and Angels, drove the Revolution against the +Catholic Church, and created The Republic to be an anti-Catholic force +capable of meeting and of defeating that Church, which (by its own +definition of itself) is not a theory, but the expression of a +Personality and a Will. To put it in old-fashioned terms, you may say +that the Revolution was the work of antichrist;—but with that kind of +reply, I repeat, history cannot deal.</p> + +<p>If it be true that, in spite of an absence of contradictory intellectual +theories, there is a fundamental spiritual contradiction between the +Revolution and the Catholic Church, then time will test the business; we +shall see in that case a perpetual extension of the quarrel until the +Revolution becomes principally a force for the extinction of +Catholicism, and the Catholic Church appears to the supporter of the +Revolution not as his principal, but as his only enemy. Such<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> a +development has not arisen in a hundred years; a process of time far +more lengthy will alone permit us to judge whether the supposed duello +is a real matter or a phantasm.</p> + +<p>The second type of answer, the answer which pretends to explain the +antagonism by a definite series of events, does concern the historian.</p> + +<p>Proceeding upon the lines of that second answer, he can bring his +science to bear and use the instruments of his trade; and he can show +(as I propose to show in what follows) how, although no quarrel can be +found between the theory of the Revolution and that of the Church, an +active quarrel did in fact spring up between the Revolution in action +and the authorities of Catholicism; a quarrel which a hundred years has +not appeased, but accentuated.</p> + +<hr class="short" /> + +<p>Behind the revolutionary quarrel lay the condition of the Church in the +French State since the settlement of the quarrel of the Reformation.</p> + +<p>With what that quarrel of the Reformation was, the reader is +sufficiently familiar. For, roughly speaking, a hundred years, from the +first years of the sixteenth century to the first years of the +seventeenth (from the youth of Henry VIII to the boyhood of Charles I in +England), a great attempt was made to change (as one party would have +said to amend, as the other would have said to denaturalise) the <i>whole +body</i> of Western Christendom. A <i>general</i> movement of attack upon the +inherited<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> form of the Church, and a general resistance to that attack, +was at work throughout European civilisation; and either antagonist +hoped for a universal success, the one of what he called “The +Reformation of religion,” the other of what he called “The Divine +Institution and visible unity of the Catholic Church.”</p> + +<p>At the end of such a period it became apparent that no such general +result had been, or could be, attained. All that part of the West which +had rejected the authority of the See of Rome began to appear as a +separate territorial region permanently divided from the rest; all that +part of Europe which had retained the Authority of the See of Rome began +to appear as another region of territory. The line of cleavage between +the two was beginning to define itself as a geographical line, and +nearly corresponded to the line which, centuries before, had divided the +Roman and civilised world from the Barbarians.</p> + +<p>The Province of Britain had an exceptional fate. Though Roman in origin +and of the ancient civilisation in its foundation, it fell upon the +non-Roman side of the new boundary; while Ireland, which the Roman +Empire had never organised or instructed, remained, alone of the +external parts of Europe, in communion with Rome. Italy, Spain, and in +the main southern or Romanised Germany, refused ultimately to abandon +their tradition of civilisation and of religion. But in Gaul it was +otherwise—and the action of Gaul during the Reformation must be seized +if its modern religious quarrels are to be apprehended.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> A very +considerable proportion of the French landed and mercantile classes, +that is of the wealthy men of the country, were in sympathy with the new +religious doctrines and the new social organisation which had now taken +root in England, Scotland, Holland, northern Germany and Scandinavia, +and which were destined in those countries to lead to the domination of +wealth. These French squires and traders were called the Huguenots.</p> + +<p>The succeeding hundred years, from 1615 to 1715, let us say, were a +settlement, not without bloodshed, of the unsatisfied quarrel of the +preceding century. All Englishmen know what happened in England; how the +last vestiges of Catholicism were crushed out and all the social and +political consequences of Protestantism established in the State.</p> + +<p>There was, even in that same seventeenth century, a separate, but +futile, attempt to destroy Catholicism in Ireland. In Germany a struggle +of the utmost violence had only led to a similar regional result. The +first third of that hundred years concluded in the Peace of Westphalia, +and left the Protestant and Catholic territorial divisions much what we +now know them.</p> + +<p>In France, however, the peculiar phenomenon remained of a body powerful +in numbers and (what was far more important) in wealth and social power, +scattered throughout the territory of the kingdom, organised and, by +this time, fixedly anti-Catholic, and therefore anti-national.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span></p> + +<p>The nation had recovered its traditional line and had insisted upon the +victory of a strong executive, and that executive Catholic. France, +therefore, in this period of settlement, became an absolute monarchy +whose chief possessed tremendous and immediate powers, and a monarchy +which incorporated with itself all the great elements of the national +tradition, <i>including the Church</i>.</p> + +<p>It is the name of Louis XIV, of course, which symbolises this great +time; his very long reign precisely corresponds to it. He was born +coincidently with that universal struggle for a religious settlement in +Europe, which I have described as characteristic of the time; he died +precisely at its close; and under him it seemed as though the +reconstructed power of Gaul and the defence of organised Catholicism +were to be synonymous.</p> + +<p>But there were two elements of disruption in that homogeneous body which +Louis XIV apparently commanded. The very fact that the Church had thus +become in France an unshakable national institution, chilled the vital +source of Catholicism. Not only did the hierarchy stand in a perpetual +suspicion of the Roman See, and toy with the conception of national +independence, but they, and all the official organisation of French +Catholicism, put the security of the national establishment and its +intimate attachment to the general political structure of the State, far +beyond the sanctity of Catholic dogma or the practice of Catholic +morals.</p> + +<p>That political structure—the French monarchy—seemed<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> to be of granite +and eternal. Had it indeed survived, the Church in Gaul would doubtless, +in spite of its attachment to so mundane a thing as the crown, have +still survived to enjoy one of those resurrections which have never +failed it in the past, and would have returned, by some creative +reaction, to its principle of life. But for the moment the consequence +of this fixed political establishment was that scepticism, and all those +other active forces of the mind which play upon religion in any Catholic +State, had full opportunity. The Church was, so to speak, not concerned +to defend itself but only its method of existence. It was as though a +garrison, forgetting the main defences of a place, had concentrated all +its efforts upon the security of one work which contained its supplies +of food.</p> + +<p>Wit, good verse, sincere enthusiasm, a lucid exposition of whatever in +the human mind perpetually rebels against transcendental affirmations, +were allowed every latitude and provoked no effective reply. But overt +acts of disrespect to ecclesiastical authority were punished with +rigour.</p> + +<p>While in the wealthy, the bureaucratic, and the governing classes, to +ridicule the Faith was an attitude taken for granted, seriously to +attack the privileges or position of its ministers was ungentlemanly, +and was not allowed. It did not shock the hierarchy that one of its +Apostolic members should be a witty atheist; that another should go +hunting upon Corpus Christi, nearly upset the Blessed<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> Sacrament in his +gallop, and forget what day it was when the accident occurred. The +bishops found nothing remarkable in seeing a large proportion of their +body to be loose livers, or in some of them openly presenting their +friends to their mistresses as might be done by any great lay noble +round them. That a diocese or any other spiritual charge should be +divorced from its titular chief, seemed to them as natural as does to us +the absence from his modern regiment of some titular foreign colonel. +Unquestioned also by the bishops were the poverty, the neglect, and the +uninstruction of the parish clergy; nay—and this is by far the +principal feature—the abandonment of religion by all but a very few of +the French millions, no more affected the ecclesiastical officials of +the time than does the starvation of our poor affect, let us say, one of +our professional politicians. It was a thing simply taken for granted.</p> + +<p>The reader must seize that moribund condition of the religious life of +France upon the eve of the Revolution, for it is at once imperfectly +grasped by the general run of historians, and is also the only fact +which thoroughly explains what followed. The swoon of the Faith in the +eighteenth century is the negative foundation upon which the strange +religious experience of the French was about to rise. France, in the +generation before the Revolution, was passing through a phase in which +the Catholic Faith was at a lower ebb than it had ever been since the +preaching and establishment of it in Gaul.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span></p> + +<p>This truth is veiled by more than one circumstance. Thus many official +acts, notably marriages and the registration of births, took place under +a Catholic form, and indeed Catholic forms had a monopoly of them. +Again, the State wore Catholic clothes, as it were: the public occasions +of pomp were full of religious ceremony. Few of the middle classes went +to Mass in the great towns, hardly any of the artisans; but the Churches +were “official.” Great sums of money—including official money—were at +the disposal of the Church; and the great ecclesiastics were men from +whom solid favours could be got. Again, the historic truth is masked by +the language and point of view of the great Catholic reaction which has +taken place in our own time.</p> + +<p>It is safe to say that where one adult of the educated classes concerned +himself seriously with the Catholic Faith and Practice in France before +the Revolution, there are five to-day. But in between lies the violent +episode of the persecution, and the Catholic reaction in our time +perpetually tends to contrast a supposed pre-revolutionary “Catholic” +society with the revolutionary fury. “Look,” say its champions, “at the +dreadful way in which the Revolution treated the Church.” And as they +say this the converse truth appears obvious and they seem to imply, +“Think how different it must have been before the Revolution persecuted +the Church!” The very violence of the modern reaction towards +Catholicism has exaggerated the revolutionary<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> persecution, and in doing +so has made men forget that apart from other evidence of the decline of +religion, it is obvious that persecution could never have arisen without +a strong and continuous historical backing. You could not have had a +Diocletian in the thirteenth century with the spirit of the Crusaders +just preceding him; you could not have had Henry VIII if the England of +the fifteenth century just preceding him had been an England devoted to +the monastic profession. And you could not have had the revolutionary +fury against the Catholic Church in France if the preceding generation +had been actively Catholic even in a considerable portion.</p> + +<p>As a fact, of course it was not: and in the popular indifference to or +hatred of the Church the principal factor was the strict brotherhood not +so much of Church and State as of Church and executive Government.</p> + +<p>But there was another factor. We were describing a little way back how +in France there had arisen, during the movement of the Reformation, a +wealthy, powerful and numerically large Huguenot body. In mere numbers +it dwindled, but it maintained throughout the seventeenth century a very +high position, both of privilege and (what was its characteristic) of +money-power; and even to-day, though their birth-rate is, of course, +lower than the average of the nation, the French Huguenots number close +upon a million, and are far wealthier, upon the average, than their +fellow citizens. It is their wealth which<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> dominates the trade of +certain districts, which exercises so great an effect upon the +universities, the publishing trade, and the press; and in general lends +them such weight in the affairs of the nation.</p> + +<p>Now the Huguenot had in France a special and permanent quarrel with the +monarchy, and therefore with the Catholic Church, which, precisely +because it was not of the vivid and intense kind which is associated +with popular and universal religions, was the more secretly ubiquitous. +His quarrel was that, having been highly privileged for nearly a +century, the member of “a State within a State,” and for more than a +generation free to hold assemblies separate from and often antagonistic +to the national Government, these privileges had been suddenly removed +from him by the Government of Louis XIV a century before the Revolution. +The quarrel was more political than religious; it was a sort of “Home +Rule” quarrel. For though the Huguenots were spread throughout France, +they had possessed special cities and territories wherein their spirit +and, to a certain extent, their private self-government, formed +<i>enclaves</i> of particularism within the State.</p> + +<p>They had held this position, as I have said, for close upon a hundred +years, and it was not until a date contemporary with the violent +settlement of the religious trouble in England by the expulsion of James +II that a similar settlement, less violent, achieved (as it was thought) +a similar religious unity in France. But that unity was not achieved. +The<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> Huguenots, though no longer permitted to exist as a State within a +State, remained, for the hundred years between the Revocation of the +Edict of Nantes and the outbreak of the Revolution, a powerful and +ever-watchful body. They stood upon the flank of the attack which +intellectual scepticism was making upon the Catholic Church, they were +prepared to take advantage of that scepticism’s first political victory, +and since the Revolution they have been the most powerful and, after the +Freemasons, with whom they are largely identified, the most strongly +organised, of the anti-clerical forces in the country.</p> + +<p>The Jews, whose action since the Revolution has been so remarkable in +this same business, were not, in the period immediately preceding it, of +any considerable influence, and their element in the coalition may be +neglected.</p> + +<p>Such, then, was the position when the Revolution was preparing. Within +memory of all men living, the Church had become more and more official, +the masses of the great towns had wholly lost touch with it; the +intelligence of the country was in the main drawn to the Deist or even +to the purely sceptical propaganda, the powerful Huguenot body was ready +prepared for an alliance with any foe of Catholicism, and in the eyes of +the impoverished town populace—notably in Paris, which had long +abandoned the practice of religion—the human organisation of the +Church, the hierarchy, the priesthood, and the few but very wealthy +religious orders which still lingered on in dwindling numbers, were but<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> +a portion of the privileged world which the populace hated and was +prepared to destroy.</p> + +<p>It is upon such a spirit and in such conditions of the national +religious life that the Revolution begins to work. In the National +Assembly you have the great body of the Commons which determines the +whole, touched only here and there with men in any way acquainted with +or devoted to Catholic practice, and those men for the most part +individual and eccentric, that is, uncatholic, almost in proportion to +the genuineness of their religious feeling. Among the nobility the +practice of religion was a social habit with some—as a mental attitude +the Faith was forgotten among all but a very few. Among the clergy a +very wealthy hierarchy, no one of them prepared to defend the Church +with philosophical argument, and almost unanimous in regarding itself as +a part of the old political machine, was dominant; while the +representatives of the lower clergy, strongly democratic in character, +were at first more occupied with the establishment of democracy than +with the impending attack upon the material and temporal organisation of +the Church.</p> + +<p>Now, that material and temporal organisation offered at the very +beginning of the debates an opportunity for attack which no other +department of the old <i>régime</i> could show.</p> + +<p>The immediate peril of the State was financial. The pretext and even to +some extent the motive for the calling of the States-General<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> was the +necessity for finding money. The old fiscal machinery had broken down, +and as always happens when a fiscal machine breaks down, the hardship it +involved, and the pressure upon individuals which it involved, appeared +to be universal. <i>There was no immediate and easily available fund of +wealth upon which the Executive could lay hands save the wealth of the +clergy.</i></p> + +<p>The feudal dues of the nobles, if abandoned, must fall rather to the +peasantry than to the State. Of the existing taxes few could be +increased without peril, and none with any prospect of a large +additional revenue. The charge for debt alone was one-half of the total +receipts of the State, the deficit was, in proportion to the revenue, +overwhelming. Face to face with that you had an institution not popular, +one whose public functions were followed by but a small proportion of +the population, one in which income was most unequally distributed, and +one whose feudal property yielded in dues an amount equal to more than a +quarter of the total revenue of the State. Add to this a system of +tithes which produced nearly as much again, and it will be apparent +under what a financial temptation the Assembly lay.</p> + +<p>It may be argued, of course, that the right of the Church to this +ecclesiastical property, whether in land or in tithes, was absolute, and +that the confiscation of the one or of the other form of revenue was +mere theft. But such was not the legal conception of the moment. The +wealth of the Church was not<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> even (and this is most remarkable) +defended as absolute property by the generality of those who enjoyed it. +The tone of the debates which suppressed the tithes, and later +confiscated the Church lands, was a tone of discussion upon legal +points, precedents, public utility, and so forth. There was not heard in +it, in any effective degree, the assertion of mere moral right; though +in that time the moral rights of property were among the first of +political doctrines.</p> + +<p>It was not, however, the confiscation of the Church lands and the +suppression of the tithe which founded the quarrel between the +Revolution and the clergy. No financial or economic change is ever more +than a preparation for, or a permissive condition of, a moral change. It +is never the cause of a moral change. Even the suppression of the +religious houses in the beginning of 1790 must not be taken as the point +of departure in the great quarrel. The religious orders in France were +at that moment too decayed in zeal and in numbers, too wealthy and much +too removed from the life of the nation, for this to be the case. The +true historical point of departure from which we must date the beginning +of this profound debate between the Revolution and Catholicism, is to be +found in the morning of the 30th of May, 1790, when a parliamentary +committee (the Ecclesiastical Committee) presented to the House its plan +for the reform of the Constitution of the Church in Gaul.</p> + +<p>The enormity of that act is now apparent<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> to the whole world. The +proposal, at the bidding of chance representatives not elected <i>ad hoc</i>, +to change the dioceses and the sees of Catholic France, the decision of +an ephemeral political body to limit to such and such ties (and very +feeble they were) the bond between the Church of France and the Holy +See, the suppression of the Cathedral Chapters, the seemingly farcical +proposal that bishops should be elected, nay, priests also thus chosen, +the submission of the hierarchy in the matter of residence and travel to +a civil authority which openly declared itself indifferent in matters of +religion,—all this bewilders the modern mind. How, we ask, could men so +learned, so enthusiastic, so laborious and so closely in touch with all +the realities of their time, make a blunder of that magnitude? Much +more, how did such a blunder escape the damnation of universal mockery +and immediate impotence? The answer is to be discovered in what has just +been laid down with so much insistence: the temporary eclipse of +religion in France before the Revolution broke out.</p> + +<p>The men who framed the Constitution of the Clergy, the men who voted it, +nay, even the men who argued against it, all had at the back of their +minds three conceptions which they were attempting to reconcile: of +those three conceptions one was wholly wrong, one was imperfect because +superficial, the third alone was true. And these three conceptions were, +first, that the Catholic Church was a moribund superstition, secondly, +that it possessed<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> in its organisation and tradition a power to be +reckoned with, and thirdly, that the State, its organs, and their +corporate inheritance of action, were so bound up with the Catholic +Church that it was impossible to effect any general political settlement +in which that body both external to France and internal, should be +neglected.</p> + +<p>Of these three conceptions, had the first been as true as the last, it +would have saved the Constitution of the Clergy and the reputation for +common-sense of those who framed it.</p> + +<p>It was certainly true that Catholicism had for so many centuries been +bound up in the framework of the State that the Parliament must +therefore do something with the Church in the general settlement of the +nation: it could not merely leave the Church on one side.</p> + +<p>It was also superficially true that the Church was a power to be +reckoned with politically, quite apart from the traditional union of +Church and State—but only superficially true. What the revolutionary +politicians feared was the intrigue of those who commanded the +organisation of the Catholic Church, men whom they knew for the most +part to be without religion, and the sincerity of all of whom they +naturally doubted. A less superficial and a more solid judgment of the +matter would have discovered that the real danger lay in the animosity +or intrigue against the Civil Constitution, not of the corrupt +hierarchy, but of the sincere though ill-instructed and dwindling +minority which was still loyally attached to the doctrines<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> and +discipline of the Church. But even this superficial judgment would not +have been fatal, had not the judgment of the National Assembly been +actually erroneous upon the first point—the vitality of the Faith.</p> + +<p>Had the Catholic Church been, as nearly all educated men then imagined, +a moribund superstition, had the phase of decline through which it was +passing been a phase comparable to that through which other religions +have passed in their last moments, had it been supported by ancient +families from mere tradition, clung to by remote peasants from mere +ignorance and isolation, abandoned (as it was) in the towns simply +because the towns had better opportunities of intellectual enlightenment +and of acquiring elementary knowledge in history and the sciences; had, +in a word, the imaginary picture which these men drew in their minds of +the Catholic Church and its fortunes been an exact one, then the Civil +Constitution of the Clergy would have been a statesmanlike act. It would +have permitted the hold of the Catholic Church upon such districts as it +still retained to vanish slowly and without shock. It proposed to keep +alive at a reasonable salary the ministers of a ritual which would +presumably have lost all vitality before the last of its pensioners was +dead; it would have prepared a bed, as it were, upon which the last of +Catholicism in Gaul could peacefully pass away. The action of the +politicians in framing the Constitution would have seemed more generous +with every passing decade<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> and their wisdom in avoiding offence to the +few who still remained faithful, would have been increasingly applauded.</p> + +<p>On the other hand, and from the point of view of the statesman, the +Civil Constitution of the Clergy bound strictly to the State and made +responsible to it those ancient functions, not yet dead, of the +episcopacy and all its train. It was a wise and a just consideration on +the part of the Assembly that religions retain their machinery long +after they are dead, and if that machinery has ever been a State +machinery it must remain subject to the control of the State: and +subject not only up to the moment when the living force which once +animated it is fled, but much longer; up, indeed, to the moment when the +surviving institutions of the dead religion break down and perish.</p> + +<p>So argued the National Assembly and its committee, and, I repeat, the +argument was just and statesmanlike, prudent and full of foresight, save +for one miscalculation. The Catholic Church was not dead, and was not +even dying. It was exhibiting many of the symptoms which in other +organisms and institutions correspond to the approach of death, but the +Catholic Church is an organism and an institution quite unlike any +other. It fructifies and expands immediately under the touch of a lethal +weapon; it has at its very roots the conception that material prosperity +is stifling to it, poverty and misfortune nutritious.</p> + +<p>The men of the National Assembly would<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> have acted more wisely had they +closely studied the story of Ireland (then but little known), or had +they even made themselves acquainted with the methods by which the +Catholic Church in Britain, after passing in the fifteenth century +through a phase somewhat similar to that under which it was sinking in +Gaul in the eighteenth, was stifled under Henry and Elizabeth.</p> + +<p>But the desire of the men of 1789 was not to kill the Church but to let +it die; they thought it dying. Their desire was only to make that death +decent and of no hurt to the nation, and to control the political action +of a hierarchy that had been wealthy and was bound up with the old +society that was crumbling upon every side.</p> + +<p>The Civil Constitution of the Clergy failed: it lit the civil war, it +dug the pit which divided Catholicism from the Revolution at the moment +of the foreign invasion, it segregated the loyal priest in such a +fashion that his order could not but appear to the populace as an order +of traitors, and it led, in the furnace of 1793, to the great +persecution from the memories of which the relations between the French +democracy and the Church have not recovered.</p> + +<p>It is important to trace the actual steps of the failure; for when we +appreciate what the dates were, how short the time which was left for +judgment or for revision, and how immediately disaster followed upon +error, we can understand what followed and we can understand it in no +other way.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span></p> + +<p>If we find an enduring quarrel between two families whose cause of +contention we cannot seize and whose mutual hostility we find +unreasonable, to learn that it proceeded from a cataclysm too rapid and +too violent for either to have exercised judgment upon it will enable us +to excuse or at least to comprehend the endurance of their antagonism. +Now, it was a cataclysm which fell upon the relations of the Church and +State immediately after the error which the Parliament had committed; a +cataclysm quite out of proportion to their intentions, as indeed are +most sudden disasters quite out of proportion to the forces that bring +them about.</p> + +<p>It was, as we have seen, in the summer of 1790—upon the 12th of +July—that the Civil Constitution of the Clergy was approved by the +Assembly. But it was not until the 26th of August that the King +consented to sign. Nor was there at the moment any attempt to give the +law effect. The protests of the bishops, for instance, came out quite at +leisure, in the month of October, and the active principle of the whole +of the Civil Constitution—to wit, the presentation of the Civic Oath +which the clergy were required to take, was not even debated until the +end of the year.</p> + +<p>This Civic Oath, which is sometimes used as a bugbear in the matter, was +no more than an engagement under the sanction of an oath that the bishop +or priest taking it would maintain the new <i>régime</i>—though that +<i>régime</i> included the constitution of the clergy; the oath involved<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> no +direct breach with Catholic doctrine or practice. It was, indeed, a +folly to impose it, and it was a folly based upon the ignorance of the +politicians (and of many of the bishops of the day) as to the nature of +the Catholic Church. But the oath was not, nor was it intended to be, a +measure of persecution. Many of the parish clergy took it, and most of +them probably took it in good faith: nor did it discredit the oath with +the public that it was refused by all save four of the acting bishops, +for the condition of the hierarchy in pre-revolutionary France was +notorious. The action of the bishops appeared in the public eye to be +purely political, and the ready acceptance of the oath by so many, +though a minority, of the lower clergy argued strongly in its favour.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, no Catholic priest or bishop or layman could take that +oath without landing himself in disloyalty to his religion; and that for +the same reason which led St. Thomas of Canterbury to make his curious +and fruitful stand against the reasonable and inevitable, as much as +against the unreasonable, governmental provisions of his time. The +Catholic Church is an institution of necessity autonomous. It cannot +admit the right of any other power exterior to its own organisation to +impose upon it a modification of its discipline, nor, above all, a new +conception of its hieratic organisation.</p> + +<p>The reader must carefully distinguish between the acceptation by the +Church of a detail of economic reform, the consent to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> suppress a +corporation at the request of the civil power, or even to forego certain +traditional political rights, and the admission of the general principle +of civil control. To that general principle the Assembly, in framing the +Constitution of the Clergy, was quite evidently committed. To admit such +a co-ordinate external and civil power, or rather to admit a <i>superior</i> +external power, is in theory to deny the principle of Catholicism, and +in practice to make of the Catholic Church what the other State +religions of Christendom have become.</p> + +<p>I have said that not until the end of the year 1790 was the debate +opened upon the proposition to compel the clergy to take the oath.</p> + +<p>It is a singular commentary upon the whole affair that compulsion should +have been the subject for debate at all. It should have followed, one +would have imagined, normally from the law. But so exceptional had been +the action of the Assembly and, as they now were beginning to find, so +perilous, that a special decree was necessary—and the King’s signature +to it—before this normal consequence of a measure which had been law +for months, could be acted upon.</p> + +<p>Here let the reader pause and consider with what that moment—the end of +1790—coincided.</p> + +<p>The assignats, paper-money issued upon the security of the confiscated +estates of the Church, had already depreciated 10 per cent. Those who +had first accepted them were paying<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> throughout France a penny in the +livre, or as we may put it, a penny farthing on the shilling, for what +must have seemed to most of them the obstinacy of one single +corporation—and that an unpopular one—against the decrees of the +National Assembly.</p> + +<p>It was now the moment when a definite reaction against the Revolution +was first taking shape, and when the populace was first beginning +uneasily to have suspicion of it; it was the moment when the Court was +beginning to negotiate for flight; it was the moment when (though the +populace did not know it) Mirabeau was advising the King with all his +might to seize upon the enforcement of the priests’ oath as an +opportunity for civil war.</p> + +<p>The whole air of that winter was charged with doubt and mystery: in the +minds of all who had enthusiastically followed the march of the +Revolution, the short days of that rigorous cold of 1790-91 contained +passages of despair, and a very brief period was to suffice for making +the clerical oath not only the test of democracy against reaction, but +the wedge that should split the nation in two.</p> + +<p>With the very opening of the new year, on the 4th of January, the +bishops and priests in the Assembly were summoned to take the oath to +the King, the Nation, and the Law; but that law included the Civil +Constitution of the Clergy, and they refused. Within three months +Mirabeau was dead, the flight of the King determined on, the suspicion +of Paris at white heat, the oath taken or refused<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> throughout France, +and the schismatic priests introduced into their parishes—it may be +imagined with what a clamour and with how many village quarrels! In that +same fortnight appeared the papal brief, long delayed, and known as the +Brief “<i>Caritas</i>,” denouncing the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. Six +weeks later, at the end of May, the papal representative at the French +Court was withdrawn, and in that act religious war declared.</p> + +<p>Throughout this quarrel, which was now exactly of a year’s duration, but +the acute phase of which had lasted only six months, every act of either +party to it necessarily tended to make the conflict more violent. Not +only was there no opportunity for conciliation, but in the very nature +of things the most moderate counsel had to range itself on one side or +the other, and every public act which touched in any way upon the sore +point, though it touched but indirectly, and with no desire on the part +of the actors to rouse the passions of the moment, immediately appeared +as a provocation upon one side or the other.</p> + +<p>It was inevitable that it should be so, with a population which had +abandoned the practice of religion, with the attachment of the clerical +organisation to the organisation of the old <i>régime</i>, with the strict +bond of discipline that united the priesthood of the Church in France +into one whole, and above all with the necessity under which the +Revolution was, at this stage, of finding a definite and tangible +enemy.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span></p> + +<p>This last point is of the very first importance. Public opinion was +exasperated and inflamed, for the King was known to be an opponent of +the democratic movement; yet he signed the bills and could not be +overtly attacked. The Queen was known to be a violent opponent of it; +but she did not actually govern. The Governments of Europe were known to +be opponents; but no diplomatic note had yet appeared of which public +opinion could make an object for attack.</p> + +<p>The resistance, therefore, offered by the clergy to the Civil +Constitution, had just that effect which a nucleus will have in the +crystallisation of some solution. It polarised the energies of the +Revolution, it provided a definite foil, a definite negative, a definite +counterpoint, a definite butt. Here was a simple issue. Men wearing a +special uniform, pursuing known functions, performing a known part in +society—to wit, the priests—were now for the most part the enemies of +the new democratic Constitution that was in preparation. They would not +take the oath of loyalty to it: they were everywhere in secret rebellion +against it and, where they were dispossessed of their cures, in open +rebellion. The clergy, therefore, that is the non-juring clergy (and the +conforming clergy were an experiment that soon became a fiction), were +after April 1791, in the eyes of all the democrats of the time, the +plainest and most tangible form of the opposition to democracy.</p> + +<p>To the way in which I have presented the problem a great deal more might +be added.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> The very fact that the democratic movement had come after a +period of unfaith, and was non-Catholic in its springs, would have +tended to produce that quarrel. So would the necessary attachment of the +Catholic to authority and the easy confusion between the principle of +authority and claims of a traditional monarchy. Again, the elements of +vanity, of material greed, and of a false finality which are to be +discovered in any purely democratic theory of the State, will between +them always bring this theory into some conflict with religion. The +centuries during which the throne and the altar had stood as twin +symbols, especially in France, the very terminology of religious +metaphor which had been forged during the centuries of monarchical +institutions in Europe, helped to found the great quarrel. But, I +repeat, the overt act without which the quarrel could never have become +the terribly great thing it did, the master blunder which destroyed the +unity of the revolutionary movement, was the Civil Constitution of the +Clergy.</p> + +<p>So much for the first year of the schism, May 1790 to May 1791. The +second year is but an intensification of the process apparent in the +first.</p> + +<p>It opens with the King’s flight in June 1791: that is, with the first +open act of enmity taken against the authority of the National +Parliament since, two years before, the National Parliament had declared +itself supreme. Already the Court had been generally identified with the +resistance of the clergy, and a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> particular example of this had appeared +in the opinion that the King’s attempted journey to St. Cloud in April +had been prompted by a desire to have communion at the hands of a +non-juring priest.<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> When, therefore, the King fled, though his flight +had nothing whatsoever to do with the clerical quarrel, it was +associated in men’s minds with the clerical quarrel through his attempt +to leave Paris in April and from a long association of the Court with +the clerical resistance. The outburst of anti-monarchical feeling which +followed the flight was at the same time an outburst of anti-clerical +feeling; but the clergy were everywhere and could be attacked +everywhere. The Declaration of Pillnitz, which the nation very rightly +interpreted as the beginning of an armed European advance against the +French democracy, was felt to be a threat not only in favour of the King +but in favour also of the rebellious ecclesiastics.</p> + +<p>And so forth. The uneasy approach of war throughout that autumn and +winter of 1791-92, the peculiar transformation of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> French +temperament which war or its approach invariably produces—a sort of +constructive exaltation and creative passion—began to turn a great part +of its energy or fury against the very persons of the orthodox priests.</p> + +<p>The new Parliament, the “Legislative” as it was called, had not been +sitting two months when it passed, upon November 29, 1791, the decree +that non-juring priests should be deprived of their stipend. And here +again we must note the curious lack of adjustment between law and fact +in all this clerical quarrel! For more than a year public money had been +paid to men who, under the law, should not during the whole of that year +have touched any salary! Yet, as in the case of the oath, special action +was necessary, and moreover the Parliament added to this tardy and +logical consequence of the law a declaration that those who had not so +taken the oath within eight days of their decree should be rendered +“suspect.”</p> + +<p>The word “suspect” is significant. The Parliament even now could not +act, at least it could not act without the King; and this word +“suspect,” which carried no material consequences with it, was one that +might cover a threat of things worse than regular and legal punishment. +It was like the mark that some power not authorised or legal makes upon +the door of those whom that power has singled out for massacre in some +city.</p> + +<p>Three weeks later Louis vetoed the decree<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> refusing stipends to +non-jurors, and the year 1791 ended with the whole matter in suspense +but with exasperation increasing to madness.</p> + +<p>The first three months of 1792 saw no change. The non-juring clergy were +still tolerated by the Executive in their illegal position, and, what is +more extraordinary, still received public money and were still for the +most part in possession of their cures; the conception that the clergy +were the prime, or at any rate the most obvious, enemies of the new +<i>régime</i> now hardened into a fixed opinion which the attempted +persecution of religion, as the one party called it, the obstinate and +anti-national rebellion of factious priests, as the other party called +it, was rapidly approaching real persecution and real rebellion.</p> + +<p>With April 1792 came the war, and all the passions of the war.</p> + +<p>The known hostility of the King to the Revolution was now become +something far worse: his known sympathy with an enemy under arms. To +force the King into the open was henceforward the main tactic of the +revolutionary body.</p> + +<p>Now for those whose object was forcing Louis XVI to open declarations of +hostility against the nation, his religion was an obvious instrument. In +no point could one come to closer grips with the King than on this +question of the Church, where already, in December 1791, he had +exercised his veto.</p> + +<p>On May 27, 1792, therefore, Guadet and Vergniaud, the Girondins, moved +that a priest<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> who had refused to take the oath should be subjected to +transportation upon the mere demand of any twenty taxpayers within that +assembly of parishes known as a “Canton.” It was almost exactly two +years since the Civil Constitution of the Clergy had first been reported +to the House by the Ecclesiastical Committee of the Constituent or +National Assembly.</p> + +<p>It must not be forgotten under what external conditions this violent +act, the first true act of persecution, was demanded. It was already a +month since, upon the 20th of April, the war had opened upon the Belgian +frontier by a disgraceful panic and the murder of General Dillon; almost +contemporaneous with that breakdown was the corresponding panic and +flight of the French troops in their advance to Mons. All Europe was +talking of the facile march upon Paris which could now be undertaken; +and in general this decree against the priests was but part of the +exasperated policy which was rising to meet the terror of the invasion.</p> + +<p>It was followed, of course, by the decree dismissing the Royal Guard, +and, rather more than a week later, by the demand for the formation of a +camp of volunteers under the walls of Paris. But with this we are not +here concerned. The King vetoed the decree against the non-juring +priests, and in the wild two months that followed the orthodox clergy +were, in the mind of the populace, and particularly the populace of +Paris, identified with the cause of the re-establishment of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> old +<i>régime</i> and the success of the invading foreign armies.</p> + +<p>With the crash of the 10th of August the persecution began: the true +persecution, which was to the growing bitterness of the previous two +years what a blow is to the opening words of a quarrel.</p> + +<p>The decree of the 27th of May was put into force within eleven days of +the fall of the Tuileries. True, it was not put into force in that +crudity which the Parliament had demanded: the non-juring priests were +given a fortnight to leave the kingdom, and if they failed to avail +themselves of the delay were to be transported.</p> + +<p>From this date to the end of the Terror, twenty-three months later, the +story of the relations between the Revolution and the Church, though +wild and terrible, is simple: it is a story of mere persecution +culminating in extremes of cruelty and in the supposed uprooting of +Christianity in France.</p> + +<p>The orthodox clergy were everywhere regarded by this time as the typical +enemies of the revolutionary movement; they themselves regarded the +revolutionary movement, by this time, as being principally an attempt to +destroy the Catholic Church.</p> + +<p>Within seven months of the fall of the monarchy, from the 18th of March, +1793, the priests, whether non-juring or schismatic, might, on the +denunciation of any six citizens, be subjected to transportation.</p> + +<p>There followed immediately a general attack upon religion. The attempted +closing<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> of all churches was, of course, a failure, but it was firmly +believed that such attachment as yet remained to the Catholic Church was +due only to the ignorance of the provincial districts which displayed +it, or to the self-seeking of those who fostered it. The attempt at mere +“de-christianisation,” as it was called, failed, but the months of +terror and cruelty, the vast number of martyrdoms (for they were no +less) and the incredible sufferings and indignities to which the priests +who attempted to remain in the country were subjected, burnt itself, as +it were, into the very fibre of the Catholic organisation in France, and +remained, in spite of political theory one way or the other, and in +spite of the national sympathies of the priesthood, the one great active +memory inherited from that time.</p> + +<p>Conversely, the picture of the priest, his habit and character, as the +fatal and necessary opponent of the revolutionary theory, became so +fixed in the mind of the Republican that two generations did nothing to +eliminate it, and that even in our time the older men, in spite of pure +theory, cannot rid themselves of an imagined connection between the +Catholic Church and an international conspiracy against democracy. Nor +does this non-rational but very real feeling lack support from the +utterances of those who, in opposing the political theory of the French +Revolution, consistently quote the Catholic Church as its necessary and +holy antagonist.</p> + +<p>The attempt to “de-christianise” France<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> failed, as I have said, +completely. Public worship was restored, and the Concordat of Napoleon +was believed to have settled the relations between Church and State in a +permanent fashion. We have lived to see it dissolved; but this +generation will not see, nor perhaps the generation succeeding it, the +issue of the struggle between two bodies of thought which are divided by +no process of reason, but profoundly divorced by the action of vivid and +tragic historical memories.</p> + + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> This opinion has entered into so many Protestant and +non-Catholic histories of the Revolution that it is worth criticising +once again in this little book. The King was perfectly free to receive +communion privately from the hands of orthodox priests, did so receive +it, and had received communion well within the canonical times. There +was little ecclesiastical reason for the attempted leaving of Paris for +St. Cloud on Monday the 18th April, 1791, save the <i>custom</i> (not the +religious duty) of communicating in public on Easter Sunday itself; it +was a political move.</p></div> +</div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span><br /></p> + +<hr /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="INDEX" id="INDEX"></a>INDEX</h2> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li><span class="sc">Alexander</span> the Great, <a href="#Page_144">144</a></li> +<li>Argonne, the, <a href="#Page_156">156</a></li> +<li>Arras, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a></li> +<li>Artois, Comte d’, <a href="#Page_105">105</a></li> +<li>Avignon, <a href="#Page_111">111</a></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li>Bacharach, <a href="#Page_173">173</a></li> +<li>Bailly, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li> +<li>Barentin, <a href="#Page_89">89</a></li> +<li>Barrère, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a></li> +<li>Bastille, the, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a></li> +<li>Beauregard, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li> +<li>Belgium, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a></li> +<li>Bergues, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li> +<li>Bordeaux, <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li> +<li>Bouillé, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a></li> +<li>Brissot, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li> +<li>Brunswick, Duke of, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a></li> +<li>Brussels, <a href="#Page_168">168</a></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li>Cæsar, <a href="#Page_144">144</a></li> +<li>Calonne, <a href="#Page_46">46</a></li> +<li>Cambon, <a href="#Page_125">125</a></li> +<li>Carignan, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li> +<li>Carlyle, Thomas, <a href="#Page_68">68</a></li> +<li>Carnot, <a href="#Page_72">72-74</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a></li> +<li>Cassel, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li> +<li>Chalôns, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li> +<li>Champ-de-Mars, Massacre of, <a href="#Page_109">109</a></li> +<li>Champfleury, <a href="#Page_77">77</a></li> +<li>Charleroi, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a></li> +<li>Charles I of England, <a href="#Page_222">222</a></li> +<li>Chollet, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li> +<li>Clerfayt, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li> +<li>Coblentz, <a href="#Page_115">115</a></li> +<li>Coburg, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a></li> +<li>Committee of Public Safety, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li> +<li>Condé, <a href="#Page_106">106</a></li> +<li>Condé, fortress of, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></li> +<li>Condorcet, <a href="#Page_71">71</a></li> +<li><i>Contrat Social</i>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a></li> +<li>Coudequerque, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li> +<li>Couthon, <a href="#Page_131">131</a></li> +<li>Custine, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li>Danton, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67-72</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a></li> +<li>Desmoulins, <a href="#Page_138">138</a></li> +<li>Dillon, General, <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li> +<li>Drouet, <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li> +<li>Dumouriez, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65-67</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a></li> +<li>Dunquerque, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li>England, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a></li> +<li>Elizabeth, Queen of England, <a href="#Page_239">239</a></li> +<li>Esquelbecque, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li>Fersen, Count Axel de, <a href="#Page_53">53</a></li> +<li>Fleurus, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li> +<li>Fontenay, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li> +<li>Fontenoy, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a></li> +<li>Fouché, <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li> +<li>Freemasonry, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li> +<li>Freytag, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a></li> +<li>Furnes, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li>George III of England, <a href="#Page_63">63</a></li> +<li>Gironde, <a href="#Page_110">110</a></li> +<li><i>Girondins, The</i>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a></li> +<li>Grandpré, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></li> +<li>Guadet, <a href="#Page_249">249</a></li> +<li>Guise, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li>Haguenau, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li> +<li>Haine, the River, <a href="#Page_167">167</a></li> +<li>Hébert, <a href="#Page_138">138</a></li> +<li>Henry VIII of England, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a></li> +<li>Hesse-Cassel, Landgrave of, <a href="#Page_113">113</a></li> +<li>Hoche, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li> +<li>Holland, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li> +<li>Hoondschoote, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li> +<li>Houchard, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a></li> +<li>Howe, Lord, <a href="#Page_213">213</a></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li>Ireland, <a href="#Page_239">239</a></li> +<li>Isnard, <a href="#Page_110">110</a></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li>James II of England, <a href="#Page_230">230</a></li> +<li>Jefferson, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li> +<li>Jemappes, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a></li> +<li>Joseph II of Austria, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li> +<li>Jourdan, <a href="#Page_198">198</a></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li>Kaiserslautern, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li> +<li>Kaunitz, <a href="#Page_155">155</a></li> +<li>Kellermann, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></li> +<li>Kilmaine, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li>La Fayette, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61-65</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a></li> +<li>Lamballe, Princess de, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a></li> +<li>Landau, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li> +<li>Lebas, <a href="#Page_141">141</a></li> +<li>Leipsic, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li> +<li>Lequesnoy, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></li> +<li>Linselles, <a href="#Page_189">189</a></li> +<li>Longwy, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a></li> +<li>Lorraine, <a href="#Page_118">118</a></li> +<li>Louis XIV of France, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_230">230</a></li> +<li>Louis XVI of France, <a href="#Page_vi">vi</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37-45</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li> +<li>Louis XVII of France, <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li> +<li>Louvre, the, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a></li> +<li>Luxembourg, <a href="#Page_118">118</a></li> +<li>Lyons, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li> +<li>Lys, the River, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li>Machecoul, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li> +<li>Maestricht, <a href="#Page_168">168</a></li> +<li>Malo-les-Bains, <a href="#Page_194">194</a></li> +<li>Marat, <a href="#Page_74">74-77</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li> +<li>Marcel, <a href="#Page_120">120</a></li> +<li>Marchionnes, <a href="#Page_189">189</a></li> +<li>Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, <a href="#Page_vi">vi</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45-53</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a></li> +<li>Marque, the River, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li> +<li>“Marseillaise,” the, <a href="#Page_116">116</a></li> +<li>Marseilles, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li> +<li>Maubeuge, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li> +<li>Mayence, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a></li> +<li>Merda, <a href="#Page_142">142</a></li> +<li>Metz, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li> +<li>Michelet, <a href="#Page_68">68</a></li> +<li>Mirabeau, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53-61</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a></li> +<li>Mons, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a></li> +<li>Montmédy, <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li> +<li>Mouveau, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li>Namur, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li> +<li>Nantes, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li> +<li>Napoleon I, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a></li> +<li>Narbonne, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a></li> +<li>Necker, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li> +<li>Neerwinden, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li>Orleans, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li> +<li>Orleans, Duke of, <a href="#Page_109">109</a></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li>Parthenay, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li> +<li>Pichegru, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li> +<li>Pillnitz, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a></li> +<li>Poland, <a href="#Page_31">31</a></li> +<li>Polignac, Madame de, <a href="#Page_53">53</a></li> +<li>Pollio, <a href="#Page_120">120</a></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li>Redange, <a href="#Page_118">118</a></li> +<li>Robespierre, <a href="#Page_77">77-83</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a></li> +<li>Robinet, Dr., <a href="#Page_120">120</a></li> +<li>Roland, <a href="#Page_110">110</a></li> +<li>Rousseau, Jean Jacques, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a></li> +<li>Russia, <a href="#Page_14">14</a></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li>St. Amand, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li> +<li>Saint-André, Jeanbon, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a></li> +<li>St. Cloud, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a></li> +<li>Saint-Just, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a></li> +<li>St. Menehould, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></li> +<li>Scheldt, the, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li> +<li>Sedan, <a href="#Page_114">114</a></li> +<li>Servia, <a href="#Page_155">155</a></li> +<li>Sièyes, <a href="#Page_87">87</a></li> +<li>Spain, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li>Talavera, <a href="#Page_189">189</a></li> +<li>Talleyrand, <a href="#Page_150">150</a></li> +<li>Terror, the, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a></li> +<li>Tetteghem, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li> +<li>Thouars, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li> +<li>Toulon, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li> +<li>Tourcoing, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li> +<li>Tournay, <a href="#Page_210">210</a></li> +<li>Trafalgar, <a href="#Page_213">213</a></li> +<li>Tuileries, the, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li>Valenciennes, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a></li> +<li>Valmy, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a></li> +<li>Varennes, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_154">154</a></li> +<li>Vendée, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li> +<li>Verdun, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a></li> +<li>Vergniaud, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a></li> +<li>Versailles, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a></li> +<li>Vienna, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li>Warcoing, <a href="#Page_205">205</a></li> +<li>Waterloo, <a href="#Page_143">143</a></li> +<li>Wattignies, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li> +<li>Wellington, Duke of, <a href="#Page_189">189</a></li> +<li>Westermann, <a href="#Page_131">131</a></li> +<li>Wilder, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li> +<li>Wissembourg, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li> +<li>Wormhoudt, <a href="#Page_191">191</a></li> +<li>Wurmser, <a href="#Page_178">178</a></li> +</ul> + +<ul class="IX"> +<li>York, Duke of, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li> +</ul> + +<hr class="full" /> + +<p class="center"><i>Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London and Bungay.</i></p> + +<hr class="full" /> + + + + + +<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FRENCH REVOLUTION ***</div> +<div style='text-align:left'> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will +be renamed. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..48eec7d --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #35215 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35215) diff --git a/old/35215-8.txt b/old/35215-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3ad413b --- /dev/null +++ b/old/35215-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6725 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The French Revolution, by Hilaire Belloc + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The French Revolution + +Author: Hilaire Belloc + +Release Date: February 8, 2011 [EBook #35215] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FRENCH REVOLUTION *** + + + + +Produced by Steven Gibbs, Richard J. Shiffer and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + THE FRENCH REVOLUTION + + BY + + HILAIRE BELLOC, M.A. + + + AUTHOR OF "DANTON," "ROBESPIERRE," "MARIE ANTOINETTE," "THE OLD ROAD," + "THE PATH TO ROME," "PARIS," "THE HILLS AND THE SEA," "THE HISTORIC + THAMES," ETC., ETC. + + + LONDON + + WILLIAMS AND NORGATE + + + RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED, + BRUNSWICK STREET, STAMFORD STREET, S.E., + AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK. + + + + +PREFACE + + +The object of these few pages is not to recount once more the history of +the Revolution: that can be followed in any one of a hundred text-books. +Their object is rather to lay, if that be possible, an explanation of it +before the English reader; so that he may understand both what it was +and how it proceeded, and also why certain problems hitherto unfamiliar +to Englishmen have risen out of it. + +First, therefore, it is necessary to set down, clearly without modern +accretion, that political theory which was a sort of religious creed, +supplying the motive force of the whole business; of the new Civil Code +as of the massacres; of the panics and capitulations as of the +victories; of the successful transformation of society as of the +conspicuous failures in detail which still menace the achievement of the +Revolution. + +This grasped, the way in which the main events followed each other, and +the reason of their interlocking and proceeding as they did must be put +forward--not, I repeat, in the shape of a chronicle, but in the shape of +a thesis. Thus the reader must know not only that the failure of the +royal family's flight was followed by war, but how and why it was +followed by war. He must not only appreciate the severity of the +government of the great Committee, but why that severity was present, +and of the conditions of war upon which it reposed. But in so explaining +the development of the movement it is necessary to select for +appreciation as the chief figures the characters of the time, since upon +their will and manner depended the fate of the whole. For instance, had +the Queen been French either in blood or in sympathy, had the King been +alert, had any one character retained the old religious motives, all +history would have been changed, and this human company must be seen if +its action and drama are to be comprehended. + +The reader interested in that capital event should further seize (and +but too rarely has an opportunity for seizing) its military aspect; and +this difficulty of his proceeds from two causes: the first, that +historians, even when they recognise the importance of the military side +of some past movement, are careless of the military aspect, and think +it sufficient to relate particular victories and general actions. The +military aspect of any period does not consist in these, but in the +campaigns of which actions, however decisive, are but incidental parts. +In other words, the reader must seize the movement and design of armies +if he is to seize a military period, and these are not commonly given +him. In the second place, the historian, however much alive to the +importance of military affairs, too rarely presents them as part of a +general position. He will make his story a story of war, or again, a +story of civilian development, and the reader will fail to see how the +two combine. + +Now, the Revolution, more than any other modern period, turns upon, and +is explained by, its military history. On this account has so +considerable a space been devoted to the explaining of that feature. + +The reader will note, again, that the quarrel between the Revolution and +the Catholic Church has also been dealt with at length. + +To emphasise this aspect of the revolutionary struggle may seem unusual +and perhaps deserves a word of apology. + +The reader is invited to consider the fact that the Revolution took +place in a country which had, in the first place, definitely determined +during the religious struggle of the sixteenth and seventeenth +centuries to remain in communion with Rome; and had, in the second +place, admitted a very large and important body of converts to the +doctrines of the Reformation. + +The determination of the French people, in the crisis of 1572-1610, to +remain Catholic under a strong central Government, was a capital point +in the future history of France. So was the presence of a wealthy, very +large, and highly cultivated body of dissentients in the midst of the +nation. The two phenomena hardly co-existed elsewhere in Europe. Between +them they lent to the political history of France a peculiar character +which the nineteenth century, even more than the Revolution itself, has +emphasised; and it is the opinion of the present writer that it is +impossible to understand the Revolution unless very high relief is given +to the religious problem. + +If a personal point may be noted, the fact that the writer of these +pages is himself a Catholic and in political sympathy strongly attached +to the political theory of the Revolution, should not be hidden from the +reader. Such personal conditions have perhaps enabled him to treat the +matter more thoroughly than it might have been treated by one who +rejected either Republicanism upon the one hand, or Catholicism upon the +other; but he believes that no personal and therefore exaggerated note +has been allowed to intrude upon his description of what is a definite +piece of objective history lying in the field of record rather than in +that of opinion. + +Some years ago the paramount importance of the quarrel between the +Church and the Revolution might still have been questioned by men who +had no personal experience of the struggle, and of its vast results. +To-day the increasing consequences and the contemporary violence of that +quarrel make its presentation an essential part of any study of the +period. + +The scheme thus outlined will show why I have given this sketch the +divisions in which it lies. + + H. BELLOC. + + _King's Land, + January 1911._ + + + + +CONTENTS + + PAGE + + PREFACE v + + I THE POLITICAL THEORY OF THE REVOLUTION 13 + + II ROUSSEAU 29 + + III THE CHARACTERS OF THE REVOLUTION: + King Louis XVI 37 + The Queen 45 + Mirabeau 53 + La Fayette 61 + Dumouriez 65 + Danton 67 + Carnot 72 + Marat 74 + Robespierre 77 + + IV THE PHASES OF THE REVOLUTION: + i. From May 1789 to 17th of July 1789 83 + ii. From the 17th of July 1789 to the 6th of October 1789 98 + iii. From October 1789 to June 1791 102 + iv. From June 1791 to September 1792 108 + v. From the Invasion of September 1792 to the Establishment + of the Committee of Public Safety, April 1793 118 + vi. From April 1793 to July 1794 126 + + V THE MILITARY ASPECT OF THE REVOLUTION 142 + One 145 + Two 156 + Three 163 + Four 179 + Five 204 + + VI THE REVOLUTION AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 214 + + INDEX 255 + + + + +THE FRENCH REVOLUTION + + + + +I + +THE POLITICAL THEORY OF THE REVOLUTION + + +The political theory upon which the Revolution proceeded has, especially +in this country, suffered ridicule as local, as ephemeral, and as +fallacious. It is universal, it is eternal, and it is true. + +It may be briefly stated thus: that a political community pretending to +sovereignty, that is, pretending to a moral right of defending its +existence against all other communities, derives the civil and temporal +authority of its laws not from its actual rulers, nor even from its +magistracy, but from itself. + +But the community cannot express authority unless it possesses +_corporate initiative_; that is, unless the mass of its component units +are able to combine for the purpose of a common expression, are +conscious of a common will, and have something in common which makes the +whole sovereign indeed. + +It may be that this power of corporate initiative and of corresponding +corporate expression is forbidden to men. In that case no such thing as +a sovereign community can be said to exist. In that case "patriotism," +"public opinion," "the genius of a people," are terms without meaning. +But the human race in all times and in all places has agreed that such +terms have meaning, and the conception that a community can so live, +order and be itself, is a human conception as consonant to the nature of +man as is his sense of right and wrong; it is much more intimately a +part of that nature than are the common accidents determining human +life, such as nourishment, generation or repose: nay, more intimate a +part of it than anything which attaches to the body. + +This theory of political morals, though subject to a limitless +degradation in practice, underlies the argument of every man who +pretends to regard the conduct of the State as a business affecting the +conscience of citizens. Upon it relies every protest against tyranny and +every denunciation of foreign aggression. + +He that is most enamoured of some set machinery for the government of +men, and who regards the sacramental function of an hereditary monarch +(as in Russia), the organic character of a native oligarchy (as in +England), the mechanical arrangement of election by majorities, or even +in a crisis the intense conviction and therefore the intense activity +and conclusive power of great crowds as salutary to the State, will +invariably, if any one of these engines fail him in the achievement of +what he desires for his country, fall back upon the doctrine of an +ultimately sovereign community. He will complain that though an +election has defeated his ideal, yet true national tradition and true +national sentiment were upon his side. If he defends the action of a +native oligarchy against the leaders of the populace, he does so by an +explanation (more or less explicit) that the oligarchy is more truly +national, that is more truly communal, than the engineered expression of +opinion of which the demagogues (as he will call them) have been the +mouthpieces. Even in blaming men for criticising or restraining an +hereditary monarch the adherent of that monarch will blame them upon the +ground that their action is anti-national, that is anti-communal; and, +in a word, no man pretending to sanity can challenge in matters temporal +and civil the ultimate authority of whatever is felt to be (though with +what difficulty is it not defined!) the general civic sense which builds +up a State. + +Those words "civil" and "temporal" must lead the reader to the next +consideration; which is, that the last authority of all does not reside +even in the community. + +It must be admitted by all those who have considered their own nature +and that of their fellow beings that the ultimate authority in any act +is God. Or if the name of God sound unusual in an English publication +to-day, then what now takes the place of it for many (an imperfect +phrase), "the moral sense." + +Thus if there be cast together in some abandoned place a community of a +few families so depraved or so necessitous that, against the teachings +of their own consciences, and well knowing that what they are doing is +what we call _wrong_, yet they will unanimously agree to do it, then +that agreement of theirs, though certainly no temporal or civil +authority can be quoted against it, is yet unjustifiable. Another +authority lies behind. Still more evidently would this be true if, of +say, twelve, seven decided (knowing the thing to be wrong) that the +wrong thing should be done, five stood out for the right--and yet the +majority possessed by the seven should be determined a sufficient +authority for the wrongful command. + +But it is to be noted that this axiom only applies where the authority +of the moral law (God, as the author of this book, with due deference to +his readers, would prefer to say) is recognised and yet flouted. If +those twelve families do sincerely believe such and such a general +action to be right, then not only is their authority when they carry it +into practice a civil and a temporal authority; it is an authority +absolute in all respects; and further, if, upon a division of opinion +among them not perhaps a bare majority, nay, perhaps not a majority at +all, but at any rate a determinant current of opinion--determinant in +intensity and in weight, that is, as well as in numbers--declares an +action to be right, then that determinant weight of opinion gives to its +resolve a political authority not only civil and temporal but absolute. +Beyond it and above it there is no appeal. + +In other words, men may justly condemn, and justly have in a thousand +circumstances condemned, the theory that a mere decision on the major +part of the community was necessarily right in morals. It is, for that +matter, self-evident that if one community decides in one fashion, +another, also sovereign, in the opposite fashion, both cannot be right. +Reasoning men have also protested, and justly, against the conception +that what a majority in numbers, or even (what is more compelling still) +a unanimity of decision in a community may order, may not only be wrong +but may be something which that community has no authority to order +since, though it possesses a civil and temporal authority, it acts +against that ultimate authority which is its own consciousness of right. +Men may and do justly protest against the doctrine that a community is +incapable of doing deliberate evil; it is as capable of such an action +as is an individual. But men nowhere do or can deny that the community +acting as it thinks right is ultimately sovereign: there is no +alternative to so plain a truth. + +Let us take it, then, as indubitable that where civil government is +concerned, the community is supreme, if only from the argument that no +organ within the community can prove its right to withstand the +corporate will when once that corporate will shall find expression. + +All arguments which are advanced against this prime axiom of political +ethics are, when they are analysed, found to repose upon a confusion of +thought. Thus a man will say, "This doctrine would lead my country to +abandon her suzerainty over that other nation, but were I to consent to +this, I should be weakening my country, to which I owe allegiance." The +doctrine compels him to no such muddlement. The community of which he is +a member is free to make its dispositions for safety, and is bound to +preserve its own life. It is for the oppressed to protest and to rebel. + +Similarly, men think that this doctrine in some way jars with the actual +lethargy and actual imbecility of men in their corporate action. It does +nothing of the kind. This lethargy, that imbecility, and all the other +things that limit the application of the doctrine, in no way touch its +right reason, any more than the fact that the speech of all men is +imperfect contradicts the principle that man has a moral right to +self-expression. That a dumb man cannot speak at all, but must write, +is, so far from a contradiction, a proof of the truth that speech is the +prime expression of man; and in the same way a community utterly without +the power of expressing its corporate will is no contradiction, but a +proof, of the general rule that such expression and the imposing of such +decisions are normal to mankind. The very oddity of the contrast between +the abnormal and the normal aids us in our decision, and when we see a +people conquered and not persuaded, yet making no attempt at rebellion, +or a people free from foreign oppression yet bewildered at the prospect +of self-government, the oddity of the phenomenon proves our rule. + +But though all this be true, there stands against the statement of our +political axiom not a contradiction added, but a criticism; and all men +with some knowledge of their fellows and of themselves at once perceive, +_first_, that the psychology of corporate action differs essentially +from the psychology of individual action, and _secondly_, that in +proportion to the number, the discussions, the lack of intimacy, and in +general the friction of the many, corporate action by a community, +corporate self-realisation and the imposition of a corporate will, +varies from the difficult to the impossible. + +On this no words need be wasted. All men who reason and who observe are +agreed that, in proportion to distance, numbers, and complexity, the +difficulty of self-expression within a community increases. We may get +in a lively people explosions of popular will violent, acute, and +certainly real; but rare. We may attempt with a people more lethargic to +obtain some reflection of popular will through the medium of a permanent +machinery of deputation which, less than any other, perhaps, permits a +great community to express itself truly. We may rely upon the national +sympathies of an aristocracy or of a king. But in any case we know that +large communities can only indirectly and imperfectly express themselves +where the permanent government of their whole interest is concerned. Our +attachment, which may be passionate, to the rights of the Common Will we +must satisfy either by demanding a loose federation of small, +self-governing states, or submitting the central government of large +ones to occasional insurrection and to violent corporate expressions of +opinion which shall readjust the relations between the governor and the +governed. + +All this is true: but such a criticism of the theory in political morals +which lay behind the Revolution, the theory that the community is +sovereign, is no contradiction. It only tells us that pure right cannot +act untrammelled in human affairs and that it acts in some conditions +more laboriously than in others: it gives not a jot of authority to any +alternative thesis.[1] + +Such is the general theory of the Revolution to which the command of +Jean Jacques Rousseau over the French tongue gave imperishable +expression in that book whose style and logical connection may be +compared to some exact and strong piece of engineering. He entitled it +the _Contrat Social_, and it became the formula of the Revolutionary +Creed. But though no man, perhaps, has put the prime truth of political +morals so well, that truth was as old as the world; it appears in the +passionate rhetoric of a hundred leaders and has stood at the head or +has been woven into the laws of free States without number. In the +English language the Declaration of Independence is perhaps its noblest +expression. And though this document was posterior to the great work of +Rousseau and (through the genius of Jefferson) was in some part +descended from it, its language, and still more the actions of those who +drafted and supported it, are sufficient to explain what I mean to +English readers. + +Now with this general theory there stand connected on the one hand +certain great principles without which it would have no meaning, and +also on the other hand a number of minor points concerning no more than +the machinery of politics. The first are vital to democracy. The second, +in spite of their great popularity at the time of the Revolution and of +the sanction which the Revolution gave them, nay, of their universality +since the Revolution, have in reality nothing to do with the +revolutionary theory itself. + +Of these two categories the type of the first is the doctrine of the +equality of man; the type of the second is the mere machinery called +"representative." + +The doctrine of the equality of the man is a transcendent doctrine: a +"dogma," as we call such doctrines in the field of transcendental +religion. It corresponds to no physical reality which we can grasp, it +is hardly to be adumbrated even by metaphors drawn from physical +objects. We may attempt to rationalise it by saying that what is common +to all men is not _more_ important but _infinitely more_ important than +the accidents by which men differ. We may compare human attributes to +tri-dimensional, and personal attributes to bi-dimensional measurements; +we may say that whatever man has of his nature is the standard of man, +and we may show that in all such things men are potentially equal. None +of these metaphors explains the matter; still less do any of them +satisfy the demand of those to whom the dogma may be incomprehensible. + +Its truth is to be arrived at (for these) in a negative manner. If men +are _not_ equal then no scheme of jurisprudence, no act of justice, no +movement of human indignation, no exaltation of fellowship, has any +meaning. The doctrine of the equality of man is one which, like many of +the great transcendental doctrines, may be proved by the results +consequent upon its absence. It is in man to believe it--and all lively +societies believe it. + +It is certainly not in man to prove the equality of men save, as I have +said, by negation; but it demands no considerable intellectual faculty +to perceive that, void of the doctrine of equality, the conception of +political freedom and of a community's moral right to self-government +disappear. Now to believe that doctrine positively, and to believe it +ardently, to go on crusade for that religious point, was indeed +characteristic of the French. It required the peculiar and inherited +religious temper of the French which had for so many hundred years +seized and defined point after point in the character of man, to grow +enamoured of this definition and to feel it not in the intellect, but as +it were in their bones. They became soldiers for it, and that enormous +march of theirs, overrunning Europe, which may not inaptly be compared +to their adventures in the twelfth century, when they engaged upon the +Crusades, was inspired by no one part of the doctrine of political +freedom more strongly than by this doctrine of equality. + +The scorn which was in those days universally felt for that pride which +associates itself with things not inherent to a man (notably and most +absurdly with capricious differences of wealth) never ran higher; and +the passionate sense of justice which springs from this profound and +fundamental social dogma of equality, as it moved France during the +Revolution to frenzy, so also moved it to creation. + +Those who ask how it was that a group of men sustaining all the weight +of civil conflict within and of universal war without, yet made time +enough in twenty years to frame the codes which govern modern Europe, to +lay down the foundations of universal education, of a strictly +impersonal scheme of administration, and even in detail to remodel the +material face of society--in a word, to make modern Europe--must be +content for their reply to learn that the Republican Energy had for its +flame and excitant this vision: a sense almost physical of the equality +of man. + +The minor points which wove themselves into the political practice of +democracy during the Revolution, which are not of its principles, and +which would not, were they abstracted, affect its essence, are of quite +another and less noble kind. I have taken as the chief of these the +machinery of deputation or of "representation." + +The representative system had been designed for a particular purpose +under the influence of the Church and especially of the monastic orders +(who invented it) in the Middle Ages. It had been practised as a useful +check upon the national monarchy in France, and as a useful form of +national expression in times of crisis or when national initiative was +peculiarly demanded. + +In Spain it became, as the Middle Ages proceeded, a very vital national +and local thing, varying from place to place. It is not surprising that +Spain (seeing that in her territory the first experiments in +representation were made) should have thus preserved it, popular and +alive. + +In England Representation, vigorous as everywhere else in the true +Middle Ages, narrowed and decayed at their close, until in the +seventeenth century it had become a mere scheme for aristocratic +government. + +In France for nearly two hundred years before the Revolution it had +fallen into disuse, but an active memory of it still remained; +especially a memory of its value in critical moments when a consultation +of the whole people was required, and when the corporate initiative of +the whole people must be set at work in order to save the State. + +It is no wonder, therefore, that the French, on the eve of the +Revolution, clamoured for a revival of representation, or, as the system +was called in the French tongue, "the States-General." But as a +permanent machine of government no one in Europe had the least idea how +the system might serve the ends of democracy. In England democracy was +not practised nor was representation connected with the conception of +it. The nation had forgotten democracy as completely as it had forgotten +the religion and the old ideals of the Middle Ages. + +In those parts of Christendom in which this ancient Christian +institution of a parliament had not narrowed to be the mask of an +oligarchy or dwindled to be a mere provincial custom, its use had +disappeared. The ancient function of Representation, when it had been +most lively and vigorous, that is, in the Middle Ages, was occasionally +to initiate a national policy in critical moments, but more generally to +grant taxes. What a democratic parliament might do, no one in 1789 could +conceive. + +There was indeed one great example of democratic representation in +existence: the example of the United States; but the conditions were +wholly different from those of Europe. No true central power yet existed +there; no ancient central institution, no Crown nor any Custom of the +City. The numbers over which American representative democracy then held +power were not to be compared to the twenty-five millions who inhabited +the French realm. And even so, most of what counted in their lives was +regulated by a system of highly local autonomy: for they were as +scattered as they were few, and the wisest and strongest and best were +dependent upon slaves. In Europe, I repeat, the experiment was untried; +and it is one of the chief faults of the French revolutionaries that, +having been compelled in the critical moment of the opening of the +Revolution to the use of election and representation, they envisaged the +permanent use of a similar machinery as a something sacred to and normal +in the democratic State. + +True, they could not foresee modern parliamentarism. Nothing could be +more alien to their conception of the State than the deplorable method +of government which parliamentarism everywhere tends to introduce +to-day. + +True, the French people during the revolutionary wars made short work of +parliamentary theory, and found it a more national thing to follow a +soldier (being by that time all soldiers themselves), and to incarnate +in a dictator the will of the nation. + +But though the French revolutionaries could not have foreseen what we +call "Parliamentarism" to-day, and though the society from which they +sprang made short work of the oligarchic pretensions of a parliament +when the realities of the national struggle had to be considered, yet +they did as a fact pay an almost absurd reverence to the machinery of +representation and election. + +They went so far as to introduce it into their attempted reform of the +Church; they introduced it everywhere into civil government, from the +smallest units to the highest. They even for a moment played with the +illusion in that most real of games which men can ever play at--the +business of arms: they allowed the election of officers. They were led +to do this by that common fallacy, more excusable in them than in us, +which confounds the individual will with the corporate. A representative +(they thought) could in some way be the permanent receptacle of his +electorate. They imagined that corporate initiative was always +sufficiently active, in no matter what divisions or subdivisions, to +react at once upon the delegate, to guide him as may be guided a driven +animal, or to command him as may be commanded a servant. + +It was in vain that Rousseau, the great exponent of the democratic +theory upon which France attempted to proceed, had warned posterity +against the possible results of the representative system: they fell +into the error, and it possesses many of their descendants to this day. + +Rousseau's searching mind perceived indeed no more than the general +truth that men who consent to a representative system are free only +while the representatives are not sitting. But (as is so often the case +with intuitions of genius) though he saw not the whole of the evil, he +had put his finger upon its central spot, and from that main and just +principle which he laid down--that under a merely representative system +men cannot be really free--flow all those evils which we now know to +attach to this method of government. What a rather clumsy epigram has +called "the audacity of elected persons" is part of this truth. The +evident spectacle of modern parliamentary nations driven against their +will into economic conditions which appal them, proceeds again from the +same truth; the conspicuous and hearty contempt into which parliamentary +institutions have everywhere fallen again proceeds from it, and there +proceeds from it that further derivative plague that the representatives +themselves have now everywhere become more servile than the electorate +and that in all parliamentary countries a few intriguers are the +unworthy depositories of power, and by their service of finance permit +the money-dealers to govern us all to-day. Rousseau, I say, the chief +prophet of the Revolution, had warned the French of this danger. It is a +capital example of his talent, for the experiment of democratic +representation had not yet, in his time, been tried. But much more is +that power of his by which he not only stamped and issued the gold of +democracy as it had never till then been minted. No one man makes a +people or their creed, but Rousseau more than any other man made vocal +the creed of a people, and it is advisable or necessary for the reader +of the Revolution to consider at the outset of his reading of what +nature was Rousseau's abundant influence upon the men who remodelled the +society of Europe between 1789 and 1794. + +Why did he dominate those five years, and how was it that he dominated +them increasingly? + +An explanation of Rousseau's power merits a particular digression, for +few who express themselves in the English tongue have cared to +understand it, and in the academies provincial men have been content to +deal with this great writer as though he were in some way inferior to +themselves. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] We need not waste any time upon those who talk about such and such a +form of government being good because "it works." The use of such +language connotes that the user of it is fatigued by the effort of +thought. For what is "working," _i.e._ successful action, in any sphere? +The attainment of certain ends in that sphere. What are those ends in a +State? If material well-being, then there is an end to talk of +patriotism, the nation, public opinion and the rest of it which, as we +all very well know, men always have regarded and always will regard as +the supreme matters of public interest. If the end is not material +well-being, but a sense of political freedom and of the power of the +citizen to react upon the State, then to say that an institution "works" +though apparently not democratic, is simply to say that under such and +such conditions that institution achieves the ends of democracy most +nearly. In other words, to contrast the good "working" of an institution +superficially undemocratic with democratic theory is meaningless. The +institution "works" in proportion as it satisfies that political sense +which perfect democracy would, were it attainable, completely satisfy. + + + + +II + +ROUSSEAU + + +In order to appreciate what Rousseau meant to the revolutionary +movement, it is necessary to consider the effect of style upon men. + +Men are influenced by the word. Spoken or written, the _word_ is the +organ of persuasion and, therefore, of moral government. + +Now, degraded as that term has become in our time, there is no proper +term to express the exact use of words save the term "style." + +What words we use, and in what order we put them, is the whole matter of +style; and a man desiring to influence his fellow men has therefore not +one, but two co-related instruments at his disposal. He cannot use one +without the other. The weakness of the one will ruin the other. These +two instruments are his idea and his style. + +However powerful, native, sympathetic to his hearers' mood or cogently +provable by reference to new things may be a man's idea, he cannot +persuade his fellow men to it if he have not words that express it. And +he will persuade them more and more in proportion as his words are well +chosen and in the right order, such order being determined by the genius +of the language whence they are drawn. + +Whether the idea of which Rousseau made himself the exponent in his +famous tract be true or false, need not further concern us in this +little book. We all know that the difficult attempt to realise political +freedom has attracted various communities of men at various times and +repelled others. What English readers rarely hear is that the triumph of +Rousseau depended not only on the first element in persuasion, which is +vision, but also upon the second of the two co-related instruments by +which a man may influence his fellows--to wit, style. It was his choice +of French words and the order in which he arranged them, that gave him +his enormous ascendancy over the generation which was young when he was +old. + +I have alluded to his famous tract, the _Contrat Social_, and here a +second point concerning it may be introduced. This book which gave a +text for the Revolution, the document to which its political theory +could refer, was by no means (as foreign observers have sometimes +imagined) the whole body of writing for which Rousseau was responsible. +To imagine that is to make the very common error of confusing a man with +his books. + +Rousseau wrote on many things: his character was of an exalted, nervous +and diseased sort. Its excessive sensibility degenerated with advancing +years into something not distinguishable from mania. He wrote upon +education, and the glory of his style carried conviction both where he +was right and where the short experience of a hundred years has proved +him to have been wholly wrong. He wrote upon love, and half the lessons +to be drawn from his writing will be condemned by the sane. He wrote +upon botany at vast length; he wrote also upon music--with what success +in either department I am incompetent to determine. He wrote upon human +inequality: and though the sentences were beautiful and the sentiment +just, the analysis was very insufficient and the historical conception +bad. He wrote upon a project for perpetual peace, which was rubbish; and +he wrote upon the government of Poland an essay which was a perfect +masterpiece. + +But when a great writer writes, each of his great writings has a life of +its own, and it was not any of these other writings of Rousseau, on +love or botany, which were the text of the Revolution. The text of the +Revolution was his _Contrat Social_. + +Now it is not too much to say that never in the history of political +theory has a political theory been put forward so lucidly, so +convincingly, so tersely or so accurately as in this short and wonderful +book. The modern publisher in this country would be ashamed to print it: +not for its views (which would now seem commonplace), nor for its +excellence, which would ensure it a failure, but for its brevity. It is +as short as a gospel, and would cover but a hundred pages of one of our +serious reviews. A modern publisher in this city would not know what +price to set upon such a work, and the modern reader in this country +would be puzzled to understand how a great thing could be got within so +narrow a compass. A debate in Parliament or the libretto of a long +pantomime is of greater volume. + +Nevertheless, if it be closely read the _Contrat Social_ will be +discovered to say all that can be said of the moral basis of democracy. +Our ignorance of the historical basis of the State is presumed in the +very opening lines of it. The logical priority of the family to the +State is the next statement. The ridiculous and shameful argument that +strength is the basis of authority--which has never had standing save +among the uninstructed or the superficial--is contemptuously dismissed +in a very simple proof which forms the third chapter, and that chapter +is not a page of a book in length. It is with the fifth chapter that the +powerful argument begins, and the logical precedence of _human +association_ to any particular form of government is the foundation +stone of that analysis. It is this indeed which gives its title to the +book: the moral authority of men in community arises from _conscious +association_; or, as an exact phraseology would have it, a "social +contract." All the business of democracy as based upon the only moral +authority in a State follows from this first principle, and is developed +in Rousseau's extraordinary achievement which, much more than any other +writing not religious, has affected the destiny of mankind. + +It is indeed astonishing to one who is well acquainted not only with the +matter, but with the manner of the _Contrat Social_, to remark what +criticisms have been passed upon it by those who either have not read +the work or, having read it, did so with an imperfect knowledge of the +meaning of French words. The two great counter arguments, the one +theoretic the other practical, which democracy has to meet, stand +luminously exposed in these pages, though in so short a treatise the +author might have been excused from considering them. The theoretical +argument against democracy is, of course, that man being prone to evil, +something external to him and indifferent to his passions must be put up +to govern him; the people will corrupt themselves, but a despot or an +oligarchy, when it has satisfied its corrupt desires, still has a wide +margin over which it may rule well because it is indifferent. You +cannot bribe the despot or the oligarch beyond the limit of his desires, +but a whole people can follow its own corrupt desires to the full, and +they will infect all government. + +The full practice of democracy, therefore, says Rousseau, is better +suited to angels than to men. + +As to the practical argument that men are not sufficiently conscious of +the State to practise democracy, save in small communities, that plea +also is recognised and stated better than any one else has stated it. +For there is not in this book an apology for democracy as a method of +government, but a statement of why and how democracy is right. + +The silly confusion which regards a representative method as essentially +democratic has never been more contemptuously dealt with, nor more +thoroughly, than in the few words in which the _Contrat Social_ +dismisses it for ever; though it was left to our own time to discover, +in the school of unpleasant experience, how right was Rousseau in this +particular condemnation. + +Exiguous as are the limits within which the great writer has finally +decided the theory of democracy, he finds space for side issues which +nowhere else but in this book had been orderly considered, and which, +when once one has heard them mentioned, one sees to be of the most +excellent wisdom: that the fundamental laws, or original and particular +bonds, of a new democracy must come from a source external to itself; +that to the nature of the people for whom one is legislating, however +democratic the form of the State, we must conform the particulars of +law; that a democracy cannot live without "tribunes"; that no utterly +inflexible law can be permitted in the State--and hence the necessity +for dictatorship in exceptional times; that no code can foresee future +details--and so forth. + +It would be a legitimate and entertaining task to challenge any man who +had not read the _Contrat Social_ (and this would include most academic +writers upon the treatise) to challenge any such one, I say, to put down +an argument against democratic theory which could not be found within +those few pages, or to suggest a limitation of it which Rousseau had not +touched on. + +If proof were needed of what particular merits this pamphlet displayed, +it would be sufficient to point out that in a time when the problem +represented by religion was least comprehended, when the practice of +religion was at its lowest, and when the meaning, almost, of religion +had left men's minds, Rousseau was capable of writing his final chapter. + +That the great religious revival of the nineteenth century should have +proved Rousseau's view of religion in the State to be insufficient is in +no way remarkable, for when Rousseau wrote, that revival was undreamt +of; what is remarkable is that he should have allowed as he did for the +religious sentiment, and above all, that he should have seen how +impossible it is for a selection of Christian dogma to be accepted as a +civic religion. + +It is further amazing that at such a time a man could be found who +should appreciate that for the State, to have unity, it must possess a +religion, and Rousseau's attempt to define that minimum or substratum of +religion without which unity could not exist in the State unfortunately +became the commonplace of the politicians, and particularly of the +English politicians who succeeded him. Who might not think, for +instance, that he was reading--though better expressed, of course, than +a politician could put it--some "Liberal" politician at Westminster, if +he were to come on such phrases as these with regard to what should be +taught in the schools of the country? + +"The doctrines taught by the State should be simple, few in number, +expressed with precision and without explanation or commentary. The +existence of a powerful God, beneficent, providential and good; the +future life; the happiness of the good and the punishment of evil; the +sanctity of the agreements which bind society together and of laws; +while as for negative doctrines, one is sufficient, and that one is the +wickedness of intolerance." + +Rousseau's hundred pages are the direct source of the theory of the +modern State; their lucidity and unmatched economy of diction; their +rigid analysis, their epigrammatic judgment and wisdom--these are the +reservoirs from whence modern democracy has flowed; what are now proved +to be the errors of democracy are errors against which the _Contrat +Social_ warned men; the moral apology of democracy is the moral apology +written by Rousseau; and if in this one point of religion he struck a +more confused and a less determined note than in the rest, it must be +remembered that in his time no other man understood what part religion +played in human affairs; for in his days the few who studied religion +and observed it could not connect it in any way with the political +nature of man, and of those who counted in the intellect of Europe, by +far the greater number thought political problems better solved if +religion (which they had lost) were treated as negligible. They were +wrong--and Rousseau, in his generalities upon the soul, was +insufficient; both were beneath the height of a final theory of man, but +Rousseau came much nearer to comprehension, even in this point of +religion, than did any of his contemporaries. + + + + +III + +THE CHARACTERS OF THE REVOLUTION + + +KING LOUIS XVI + +As might be expected, the character of King Louis XVI has suffered more +distortion at the hands of historians than has any other of the +revolutionary figures; and this because he combined with that personal +character of his a certain office to which were traditionally attached +certain points of view and methods of action which the historian takes +for granted when he deals with the character of the man. As any one +thinking of a judge of some standing upon the English bench cannot but +believe that he is possessed of some learning or some gravity, etc.; as +any one hearing of a famous soldier cannot but believe that he has +certain qualities associated with the business of soldiering, so +historians tend to confuse the personality and character of Louis XVI +with that of his office; they either by contrast exaggerate his unkingly +defects or by sympathy exaggerate his kingly opposition to reform. + +The student will do well to avoid this error and its source, and to +think of Louis as of a man who had been casually introduced, almost +without preparation, into the office which he held. In other words, the +student will do well, in his reading of the Revolution, to consider +Louis XVI simply as a man, and his character as a private character. For +this last of the long, unbroken line of Capetians possessed a character +essentially individual. It was of a type which, no matter what accidents +of fortune might have fallen upon its possessor, would have remained the +same. Nor was ever a man possessed of high office whom high office had +less moulded. + +Men thus impervious to their environment are commonly so from two +causes: either from an intense and vivid personal initiative which may +border upon madness, or from something thick and heavy in their moral +accoutrement which defends against external action the inner personal +temperament. The latter was the case with Louis. + +He was very slow of thought, and very slow of decision. His physical +movements were slow. The movement of his eyes was notably slow. He had a +way of falling asleep under the effort of fatigue at the most +incongruous moments. The things that amused him were of the largest and +most superficial kind. Horse-play, now and then a little touched with +eccentricity, and very plain but unexpected jokes. One may express him +from one aspect by saying that he was one of those men whom you could +never by any chance have hoped to convince of anything. The few things +which he accepted he accepted quite simply, and the process of reasoning +in the mouth of any who approached him was always too rapid for him to +follow. But it must not be imagined on this account that the moral +integument so described was wrapped about a void. On the contrary, it +enclosed a very definite character. Louis possessed a number of intimate +convictions upon which he was not to be shaken. He was profoundly +convinced of the existence and value of a certain corporate tradition in +the organism which he ruled: the French nation. He was national. In this +he differed from many a pedant, many a courtier, many an ecclesiastic, +and many a woman about him, especially his wife. + +He was, again, possessed of all the elements of the Catholic faith. + +It was, indeed, a singular thing for a man of his position at such a +time to hold intimately to religion, but Louis held to it. He confessed, +he communicated, he attended mass, he performed his ordinary +devotions--not by way of tradition or political duty, or State function, +to which religious performance was now reduced in the vast majority of +his wealthy contemporaries, but as an individual for whom these things +had a personal value. Had he, with precisely the same interior spirit, +woken in his bed some morning to find himself a country squire, and to +discover that all his past kingship had been a dream of the night, he +would have continued the practice of his religion as before. + +Now this is a sufficiently remarkable point, for the country squire, the +noble, the lawyer, the university professor of the generation +immediately preceding the Revolution had, as a rule, no conception of +the Catholic Church. With them the faith was dead, save in the case of a +very few who made it, if one may say so without disrespect, a mania, and +in their exaggerations were themselves the proofs of the depth of decay +into which the Church of Gaul had fallen. + +Louis XVI was possessed, then, of religion: it appeared in many of his +acts, in his hesitation to appoint not a few of the many atheist bishops +of the time, in his real agony of responsibility upon the Civil +Constitution of the clergy, and in nothing more than the peculiar +sobriety and solid ritual whereby he prepared for a tragic, sudden, and +ignominious death. + +It is next to be observed that though he was a man not yet in middle +age, and though he was quite devoid of ardour in any form, he had from +the first matured a great basis of courage. It is well to admit that +this quality in him was connected with those slow processes of thought +and action which hampered him, but it is not to be explained by them. No +man yet has become brave through mere stupidity. + +It was not only the accidents of the Revolution that proved this quality +in him: his physical habits proved it long before. He was a resolute and +capable rider of the horse: an aptitude in that exercise is impossible +to the coward. Again, in those by-products of courage which are +apparent, even where no physical danger threatens, he was conspicuous; +he had no hesitation in facing a number of men, and he had aptitude in a +mechanical trade--a business by no means unconnected with virility. + +Now in mentioning his virility, it is of prime importance for the +student to remember, though the matter can be touched upon but lightly, +that Louis, in this department of physical life, suffered from a +mechanical impediment which gravely distorted the first years of his +marriage, which undoubtedly wounded his self-respect, and which was +perhaps the only thing that caused him permanent anxiety. He was cured +by medical aid in the summer of the year 1777, but he was already three +years a king and seven years a husband before that relief came to him. +The tragedy affected his whole life, and, I repeat, must never be +forgotten when one considers either him or Marie Antoinette in their +intimate character, and in their effect as actors in the great drama. + +For the rest, the character of Louis betrayed certain ineptitudes (the +word ineptitude is far more accurate in this connection than the word +weakness), which ineptitudes were peculiarly fatal for the military +office which he held and for the belligerent crisis which he had to +meet. + +Few men are possessed of the eye, the subtle sympathy, the very rapid +power of decision, and the comprehension of human contrasts and +differences which build up the apt leader of an armed force great or +small. Most men are mediocre in the combination of these qualities. But +Louis was quite exceptionally hopeless where they were concerned. He +could never have seen the simplest position nor have appreciated the +military aspects of any character or of any body of men. He could ride, +but he could not ride at the head of a column. He was not merely bad at +this trade, he was nul. Drafted as a private into a conscript army, he +would never have been entrusted with the duties of a corporal. He would +have been impossible as a sergeant; and, possessed of commissioned rank, +ridicule would have compelled him to take his discharge. + +This lack did not only, or chiefly, betray itself in his inability to +meet personally the armed crisis of a revolution; it was not only, or +chiefly, apparent in his complete breakdown during the assault upon the +palace on the 10th of August: it was also, and much more, the disastrous +cause of his inability to oversee, or even to choose, military advisers. + +Those who propose in the early part of the Revolution to check the mob +in Paris, are excellent commanders: but Louis does not know it. Those +who succeed each other at the Ministry of War, or at the head of the +armies during the active part of the revolution are various in the +extreme: but they all seem one to him. Between a fop like Narbonne and a +subtle, trained cavalry man like Dumouriez, Louis made no distinction. +The military qualities of La Fayette (which were not to be despised) +meant no more to him than does music, good or bad, to a deaf man. From +the beginning to the end of the movement, the whole of the military +problem escaped him. + +Another hole in his character, which was of prime importance at such a +time, was his inability to grasp in a clear vision any general social +problem. Maps he could well comprehend, and he could well retain +statistics; but the landscape, as it were, of the Revolution his +protuberant and lethargic eyes completely missed. He was quite unable to +see where lay danger and where support, in what large masses such and +such forces were grouped, and the directions in which they were +advancing, or upon which they must retreat. In this matter he was, as +will be seen in a moment, the very opposite of Mirabeau, and it was on +account of this weakness, or rather this form of nullity, that all +Mirabeau's vision was wasted upon Louis. + +Finally, he had no working comprehension of Europe. He did not even +exaggerate the powers of the allies in the later phases of the +Revolution when they were marching upon France. He did not either +under-estimate or over-estimate the policy and naval force of Great +Britain, the military resources of his own subjects, the probable +sympathies of the Netherlands (anti-Austrian but Catholic), the decay of +Spain, the division and impotence of the Italian Peninsula. Louis saw +nothing of all these things. + +One may conclude the picture (for the purposes of such a short study as +this) by saying that only one coincidence could have led him through the +labyrinth of the time with success. That coincidence would have been the +presence at his side of a friend fully trusted from childhood, loved, as +religious as himself, and yet possessing precisely those qualities which +he himself lacked. Had Louis found to hand such a lieutenant, the +qualities I have mentioned would have been a sort of keel and ballast +which would have secured the monarchy, for he was not weak, he was not +impulsive, he was not even foolish: he was only wretchedly alone in his +incapacities. Certainly such a nature could trust and rely upon no one +who was not of this intimate kind, and he possessed no such intimate, +let alone an intimate who could command the qualities I have suggested. + +Being what he was, his character is among the half-dozen which +determined the Revolution to take the course which it did. + + +THE QUEEN + +Marie Antoinette presents to history a character which it is of the +highest interest to regard as a whole. It is the business of her +biographers to consider that character as a whole; but in her connection +with the Revolution there is but one aspect of it which is of +importance, and that is the attitude which such a character was bound to +take towards the French nation in the midst of which the Queen found +herself. + +It is the solution of the whole problem which the Queen's action sets +before us to apprehend the gulf that separated her not only from the +French temperament, but from a comprehension of all French society. Had +she been a woman lacking in energy or in decision, this alien character +in her would have been a small matter, and her ignorance of the French +in every form of their activity, or rather her inability to comprehend +them, would have been but a private failing productive only of certain +local and immediate consequences, and not in any way determining the +great lines of the revolutionary movement. + +As it was, her energy was not only abundant but steadfast; it grew more +secure in its action as it increased with her years, and the initiative +which gave that energy its course never vacillated, but was always +direct. She knew her own mind, and she attempted, often with a partial +success, to realise her convictions. There was no character in touch +with the Executive during the first years of the Revolution comparable +to hers for fixity of purpose and definition of view. + +It was due to this energy and singleness of aim that her +misunderstanding of the material with which she had to deal was of such +fatal importance. + +It was she who chose, before the outbreak of the Revolution, the +succession of those ministers both Liberal and Reactionary, whose unwise +plans upon either side precipitated violence. It was she who called and +then revoked, and later recalled to office the wealthy and +over-estimated Necker; she who substituted for him, and then so +inopportunely threw over Calonne, the most national of the precursors of +the Revolution, and ever after her most bitter enemy; it was she who +advised the more particularly irritating details of resistance after the +meeting of the first revolutionary Parliament; it was she who presided +over (and helped to warp) the plans for the flight of the royal family; +it was she who, after this flight had failed, framed a definite scheme +for the coercion of the French people by the Governments of Europe; it +was she who betrayed to foreign chanceries the French plan of campaign +when war had become inevitable; finally, it was she who inspired the +declaration of Brunswick which accompanied the invasion of French +territory, and she was in particular the author of the famous threat +therein contained to give over Paris to military execution, and to hold +all the popular authorities responsible with their lives for the +restoration of the pre-revolutionary state of affairs. + +As research proceeds, the capital effect of this woman's continual and +decided interference will be more and more apparent to historians. + +Now Marie Antoinette's conception of mankind in general was the +conception that you will find prevalent in such societies as that +domestic and warm centre which had nourished her childhood. The romantic +affection of a few equals, the personal loyalty of a handful of personal +servants, the vague histrionic content which permeates the poor at the +sight of great equipages and rich accoutrements, the cheers of a crowd +when such symbols accompanying monarchy are displayed in the +streets--all these were for Marie Antoinette the fundamental political +feelings of mankind. An absence of them she regarded with bewilderment, +an active opposition to them she hated as something at once +incomprehensible and positively evil. + +There was in all this illusion, of course, a great element of what the +English call middle class, and the French bourgeois. To be quite +ignorant of what servitors will say of their masters behind their backs; +not to appreciate that heroic devotion is the faculty of a few; never +to have imagined the discontents of men in general, and the creative +desire for self-expression which inspires men when they act politically; +not to know that men as a whole (and particularly the French people) are +not deceived by the accidents of wealth, nor attach any real inferiority +to poverty; to despise the common will of numbers or to doubt its +existence; to see society established in a hierarchy not of office but +of leisure: all this may seem to the democrat a very unnatural and +despicable mood. But it was not despicable, still less unnatural; in the +case of Marie Antoinette: it was the only experience and the only +conception of society which had ever been given her. She had always +believed, when she gazed upon a mass of the populace, that the +difference between the crowd and herself was a moral reality. The +contrast in external habits between the wealthy, the middle class, and +the poor--a contrast ultimately produced by differences in the +opportunity and leisure which wealth affords--she thought to be +fundamental. Just as children and certain domestic pet animals regard +such economic accidents in society as something real which +differentiates men, so did she;--but she happened to nourish this +illusion in the midst of a people, and within a day's walk of a capital, +where the misconception had less hold than in any other district of +Europe. + +Of the traits peculiar to the French she knew nothing, or, to put it +more strongly, she could not believe that they really existed. + +The extremes of cruelty into which this people could fall were +inconceivable to her, as were also the extremes of courage to which they +can rise under the same excitements as arouse them to an excess of +hatred. But that character in the French which she most utterly failed +to foresee or to comprehend, was their power of _corporate +organisation_. + +That a multitude could instruct and order themselves for a common +purpose, rapidly acquire and nominate the officers who should bring that +purpose to fruition, and in general pass in one moment from a mere +multitude to an incipient army--that was a faculty which the French had +and have to a peculiar degree, and which she (like so many of our own +contemporaries, and especially those of German blood) could not believe +to be real. This faculty in the French, when it took action and was +apparent in the physical struggles of the Revolution, seemed to her, to +the very end, a sort of nightmare; something which, by all the laws of +reality, _ought not_ to be happening, but somehow or other _was_ +happening in a manner evilly miraculous. It was her ignorance upon this +main point of all that caused her to rely so continually upon the use of +the regular forces, and of those forces in insufficient numbers. She +could not but believe that a few trained soldiery were necessarily the +masters of great civilian bodies; their uniforms were a powerful +argument with her, and mere civilian bodies, however numerous, were +always, in her conception, a dust of disparate and inchoate humanity. +She believed there was nothing to attack or resist in popular numbers +but the opinion, the fear, or the cupidity of the individual. In this +error of judgment concerning the French people she was not peculiar: it +is an error repeated over and over again by foreigners, and even by some +native commentators when they seek to account for some national movement +of the Gauls. The unlearning of it is the first lesson which those who +would either administrate or resist the French should learn. + +In the matter of religion (which the reader may see in these pages to be +of such moment in the revolutionary story), the queen was originally far +more indifferent than her husband, though she observed a certain measure +of personal practice. It was not until her heavy misfortunes came upon +her that any degree of personal devotion appeared in her daily life, +though it must be admitted that, by a sort of premonition of disaster, +she turned to religion in the months immediately preceding the outbreak +of the reform. + +It remains to describe the personal effect she had upon those who were +in her immediate presence. Most of the French aristocracy she repelled. +The same misfortune which made her unable to understand the French +temperament as a whole divorced her from that particular corner of it +which took the shape of French aristocratic tradition. She did not +understand its stiffness, its exactitude, its brilliancy or its +hardness: and she heartily disliked all four. + +On this account she produced on the great families of her court, and +especially upon the women of them, an effect of vulgarity. Had she +survived, and had her misfortunes not been of so tragic an intensity, +the legend she would have left in French society would certainly have +been one of off-handed carelessness, self-indulgence, and lack of +dignity which have for the French of that rank the savour that a loud +voice, a bad accent, an insufficient usage in the rules of daily +conduct, leave upon what is left of a corresponding rank in England +to-day. + +She was, on the other hand, easily deceived by the flattery of place +seekers, and the great power which she wielded in politics just before +the Revolution broke out made her, as it were, a sort of _butt_ of the +politicians. + +They haunted her presence, they depended upon her patronage, and, at the +same time, they secretly ridiculed her. Her carriage, which was designed +to impress onlookers and did have that effect upon most foreigners, +seemed to most of the French observers (of a rank which permitted them +to approach her familiarly) somewhat theatrical and sometimes actually +absurd. The earnestness which she displayed in several lines of conduct, +and notably in her determined animosity to certain characters (as that +of La Fayette, for instance), was of an open and violent sort which +seemed to them merely brutal and unintelligent; her luxury, moreover, +was noticed by the refined world of Versailles to be hardly ever of her +own choosing, but nearly always practised in imitation of others. + +In connection with that trait of luxury, the reader must appreciate at +the outset that it was grievously exaggerated by her contemporaries, and +has been still more exaggerated by posterity. She was not a very +frivolous, still less a dissipated, woman. She was woefully loose in +tongue, but she was certainly virtuous. + +She gambled, but as the times went, and the supposed unlimited fortune +of the Crown, her gambling was not often excessive; her expenditure upon +jewellery and dress would be thought most moderate to-day in the case of +any lady of our wealthier families. On the other hand, her whims were +continual and as continually changing, especially in the earlier part of +her life. + +Since that surrounding world of the Court which she misunderstood and +which had no sympathy with her was ready to find some handle against +her, that handle of dissipation was the easiest for them to seize; but +the accusation was not a just one. + +Had fortune made her the wife of a poor man in a lower class of society, +Marie Antoinette would have been a capable housewife: her abundant +energy would have found a proper channel, and she was in no way by +nature extravagant. + +She had a few very passionate and somewhat too sentimental friendships, +some of which were returned, others of which their objects exploited to +their own advantage. The two most famous were her friendship for the +Princess de Lamballe and for Madame de Polignac. These moved her not +infrequently to unwise acts of patronage which were immediately seized +by the popular voice and turned against her. They were among the few +weaknesses apparent in her general temper. They were certainly ill +balanced and ill judged. + +She indulged also in a number of small and unimportant flirtations which +might almost be called the routine of her rank and world; she had but +one great affection in her life for the other sex, and it was most +ardently returned. Its object was a Swedish noble of her own age, the +very opposite of the French in his temper, romantically chivalrous, +unpractical in the extreme, gentle, intensely reserved; his name Count +Axel de Fersen. The affair remained pure, but she loved him with her +whole heart, and in the last months of her tragedy this emotion must be +regarded as the chief concern of her soul. They saw each other but very +rarely, often they were separated for years; it was this, perhaps, which +lent both glamour and fidelity to the strange romance. + + +MIRABEAU + +Mirabeau, the chief of the "practical" men of the Revolution (as the +English language would render the most salient point in their political +attitude), needs a very particular examination. His influence upon the +early part of the Revolution was so considerable, the effect of his +death was so determinant and final, the speculation as to what _might_ +have happened had he survived is so fruitful, so entertaining, and so +common, and the positive effect of his attitude upon the development of +the Revolution after his death was so wide, that to misunderstand +Mirabeau is in a large measure to misunderstand the whole movement; and +Mirabeau has unfortunately been ill or superficially understood by many +among now three generations of historians; for a comprehension of this +character is not a matter for research nor for accumulated historic +detail, but rather a task for sympathy. + +Mirabeau was essentially an artist, with the powers and the frailties +which we properly associate with that term: that is, strong emotion +appealed to him both internally and externally. He loved to enjoy it +himself, he loved to create it in others. He studied, therefore, and was +a master of, the material by which such emotion may be created; he +himself yielded to strong emotion and sought it where it might be found. +It is foolish alike to belittle and to exaggerate this type of +temperament. Upon it or upon its admixture with other qualities is based +the music, the plastic art, and in a large measure the permanent +literature of the world. This aptitude for the enjoyment and for the +creation in others of emotion clothes intellectual work in a manner +which makes it permanent. This is what we mean when we say that _style_ +is necessary to a book; that a great civilisation may partly be judged +by its architecture; that, as Plato says, music may be moral or immoral, +and so forth. The artist, though he is not at the root of human affairs, +is a necessary and proper ally in their development. + +When I say that Mirabeau was an artist I mean that wherever his energies +might have found play he would there have desired to enjoy and to create +enjoyment through some definite medium. This medium was in part +literary, but much more largely oral expression. To be a _tribune_, that +is the voice of great numbers, to persuade, nay, to please by his very +accents and the very rhythm of his sentences, these things occupied the +man; but he also brought into his art that without which no great art +can exist: mere intellect. + +He believed in the main principles at least which underlay the +revolutionary movement, he understood them and he was prepared to +propagate them; but his power over men was not due to this conviction: +his power over men was wholly that of the artist, and had he by some +accident been engaged in maintaining the attack against democracy, he +would have been nearly as famous as he became under the title of its +defender. We must then always consider Mirabeau as an orator, though an +orator endowed with a fine and clear intelligence and with no small +measure of reasoned faith. + +Much else remains to be said of him. + +He was a gentleman; that is, he both enjoyed and suffered the +consequences which attach to hereditary wealth and to the atmosphere +that surrounds its expenditure. On this account, he being personally +insufficiently provided with wealth, he was for ever in debt, and +regarded the sums necessary to his station in life and to his large +opportunities as things due to him, so to speak, from society. We are +right when we say that he took bribes, but wrong if we imagine that +those bribes bound him as they would bind a man meaner in character or +less lucky in his birth. He stooped as gentlemen will to all manner of +low intrigues, to obtain "the necessary and the wherewith"; that is, +money for his _rle_. But there was a driving power behind him, bound up +with his whole character, which made it impossible for any such sums to +control his diction or to make of such a man a mere advocate. He was +never that dirtiest of political phenomena, the "party man." He would +never have been, had he been born a hundred years later and thrust into +the nastiness of modern parliamentary life, "a parliamentary hand." + +Mirabeau had behind him a certain personal history which we must read in +connection with his temperament. + +He had travelled widely, he knew Englishmen and Germans of the wealthier +classes well. The populace he knew ill even in his own country; abroad +he knew it not at all. He had suffered from his father's dislike of him, +from the consequence of his own unbridled passions, also not a little +from mere accidental misfortune. Capable of prolonged and faithful +attachment to some woman, the opportunity for that attachment had never +been afforded him until the last few months before his death. Capable of +paying loyal and industrious service to some political system, no +political system had chosen him for its servant. It is a fruitful matter +of speculation to consider what he might have done for the French +monarchy had Fate put him early at Court and given him some voice in the +affairs of the French Executive before the Revolution broke out. As it +was, the Revolution provided him with his opportunity merely because it +broke down old barriers and conventions and was destructive of the +framework of the State in which he lived. He was compelled to enter the +Revolution as something of a destroyer, for by no other avenue could he +be given his chance; but by nature he detested destruction. I mean +(since this phrase is somewhat vague) he detested that spirit which will +disendow a nation of certain permanent institutions serving definite +ends, without a clear scheme of how those institutions should be +replaced by others to serve similar ends. It was on this account that he +was most genuinely and sincerely a defender of the monarchy: a permanent +institution serving the definite ends of national unity and the +repression of tendencies to oligarchy in the State. + +Mirabeau had none of the revolutionary Vision. In mind he was +prematurely aged, for his mind had worked very rapidly over a very +varied field of experience. The pure doctrine of democracy which was a +religion to many of his contemporaries, with all the consequences of a +religion, he had never thought of accepting. But certain consequences of +the proposed reforms strongly appealed to him. He loved to be rid of +meaningless and dead barriers, privileges which no longer corresponded +to real social differences, old traditions in the management of trade +which no longer corresponded to the economic circumstances of his time, +and (this is the pivotal point) the fossils of an old religious creed +which, like nearly all of his rank, he simply took for granted to be +dead: for Mirabeau was utterly divorced from the Catholic Church. + +Much has been said and will be said in these pages concerning the +religious quarrel which, though men hardly knew it at the time, cut +right across the revolutionary effort, and was destined to form the +lasting line of cleavage in French life. There will be repeated again +and again what has already been written, that a reconciliation between +the Catholic Church and the reconstruction of democracy was, though men +did not know it, the chief temporal business of the time, and the reader +of these pages will be made well acquainted in them with the degradation +to which religion had fallen among the cultivated of that generation. +But in the case of Mirabeau this absence of religion must be +particularly insisted upon. It would no more have occurred to Mirabeau +that the Catholic Faith had a future than it could occur to (let us say) +an English politician of thirty years ago that the Irish might become a +wealthy community or that an English Government might within his own +lifetime find itself embarrassed for money. I use this parallel for the +sake of strengthening my contention, but it is indeed a weak parallel. +No contemporary parallel in our strange and rapidly changing times +corresponds to the fixed certitude which permeated the whole of the end +of the eighteenth century that the Catholic Faith was dead. Mirabeau had +perhaps never engaged in his life in intimate conversation a single man +who took the Catholic sacraments seriously, or suffered a moment's +anxiety upon the tenets of the creed. + +He knew, indeed, that certain women and a much smaller number of +insignificant men wrapped themselves up in old practices of an odd, +superstitious kind; he knew that great, dull areas of ignorant +peasantry, in proportion to their poverty and isolation, repeated by +rote the old formulae of the Faith. But of the Faith as a living thing +he could have no conception. + +He saw on the one hand a clerical institution, economic in character, +providing places and revenues for men of his own rank; he met those men +and never discovered them to have any religion at all. He saw on the +other hand a proposed society in which such a fossil, unjust and +meaningless, must relinquish its grip upon those large revenues. But of +the Faith as a social force, as a thing able to revive, he could have +no conception. It would have seemed to him a mere folly to suggest that +the future might contain the possibility of such a resurrection. The +dissolution of the religious orders, which was largely his work, the +civil constitution of the clergy which he presided over, were to him the +most natural acts in the world. They were the mere sweeping away of a +quantity of inorganic stuff which cumbered the modern State. He felt of +them as we might feel of the purchase of waste spaces in our cities, of +the confiscation of some bad landlords' property in them. The Church +served no kind of purpose, no one who counted believed in it, it was +defended only by people who enjoyed large revenues from the survival of +what had once been, but was now no longer, a living, social function. + +In everything of the Revolution which he understood Mirabeau was upon +the side of caution. He was not oblivious to the conception of popular +government, he was not even mistrustful of it, but he could not conceive +of it save as acting through the established strength of the wealthier +classes. Of military power he judged very largely through Prussian eyes. +And in long and enthusiastic passages he described the Prussian army as +invincible. Had he lived to see the military enthusiasm of the +Republicans he would utterly have distrusted it. He favoured in his +heart an aristocratic machinery of society--though not an aristocratic +theory of the State; he was quite determined to preserve as a living +but diminished national organ the traditional monarchy of France; he was +curious upon a number of details which were present and close to his +eyes: methods of voting, constitutional checks, commercial codes and the +rest of it. The little equilibriums of diplomacy interested him also, +and the watching of men immediately under his eye in the Parliament. + +It was in the Parliament that his whole activity lay, it was there that +he began to guide the Revolution, it was his absence from the Parliament +after his death that the Revolution most feels in the summer of 1791. + +This very brief sketch does not present Mirabeau to the reader. He can +only be properly presented in his speeches and in the more rhetorical of +his documents. It is probable as time proceeds that his reputation in +this department will grow. His constitutional ideas, based as they were +upon foreign institutions, and especially upon the English of that time, +were not applicable to his own people and are now nearly forgotten: he +was wrong upon English politics as he was wrong upon the German armies, +but he had art over men and his personality endures and increases with +time. + + +LA FAYETTE + +The character of La Fayette has suffered chiefly from his own aloofness +towards his contemporaries on the one hand, and from his rigid adherence +to principle upon the other. Both these causes are clearly connected. +The same quality in him which made him so tenacious of principle made +him contemptuous of the run of men about him. Fundamentally, he was +nearer the extreme Republicans than any other class, from the very fact +of his possessing a clear political creed and a determination to follow +it out to its logical consequence. But there was no chance of his +comprehending the concrete side of the movement or the men engaged upon +it, for his great wealth, inherited in very early life, had cut him off +from experience. His moral fault was undoubtedly ambition. It was an +ambition which worked in the void, as it were, and never measured itself +with other men's capacities or opportunities. He made no plans for +advancement, not because he would have despised the use of intrigue in +reason, but because he was incapable of working it. He was exceedingly +attached to popularity, when it came he thought it his due; unpopularity +in its turn seemed to him a proof of the vileness of those who despised +him. He made himself too much the measure of his world. + +Undoubtedly a very great part in the moulding of his character proceeded +from his experience in the United States of America. He was then at the +most impressionable and formative period of human life, little more than +a boy, or at least just entering early manhood. He had just married, he +had just come into the administration of his vast fortune. At such a +moment he took part in the victorious rebellion of the English colonies, +and it may be imagined how powerful was the effect of this youthful +vision upon the whole of the man's future life; because there was no +proletariat in the colonies, he never saw or comprehended the +dispossessed classes of Paris--for that matter he never saw or +comprehended the French peasantry upon his own lands; because a chance +and volunteer soldiery had, under the peculiar conditions of the +half-populated Atlantic seaboard in conjunction with the French fleet +and with the aid of French money and arms, got the better of the small +and heterogeneous forces of George III, he believed that a military +nation like the French, in the midst of powerful enemies, could make +something of an amateur civic force; because a certain type of ease in +social relations was the ideal of many, perhaps of most, of those with +whom he had served in America, he confused so simple and mundane an +ideal with the fierce crusading blast and the sacred passion for +equality which was stirring his own nation when his opportunity for +leadership came. + +It may be said of La Fayette with justice that he never upon a single +occasion did the right thing. It may also be said with justice that he +never did politically any major thing for which his own conscience would +later reproach him. It is noticeable that the Queen held him in +particular odium. He had been a wealthy young noble about the Court, the +friend of all her women friends, and his sympathy with the revolutionary +movement at its inception therefore seemed to her nothing better than +treason. There was also undoubtedly something in his manner which +grievously repelled her; that it was self-sufficient we cannot doubt, +and that it was often futile and therefore exasperating to women, events +are sufficient to show. But Marie Antoinette's violent personal +antagonism towards La Fayette was not common, though several ardent +spirits (Danton's, for instance) shared it. The mass of those who came +across La Fayette felt in connection with him a certain irritation or a +certain contempt or a certain rather small and distant respect; he +inspired no enthusiasms, and when he timidly attempted a rebellion +against the new Government after the fall of the monarchy, no one would +sacrifice himself or follow him. + +It may be affirmed of La Fayette that if he had not existed the +Revolution would have pursued much the same course as it did, with this +exception: that there would not have been formed a definitely middle +class armed guard to provoke friction in Paris: the National Guard would +have been more open to all ranks. + +In religion the man was anodyne, Catholic of course by baptism, but +distinctly Protestant in morals and in general tone, in dogma (until the +end of his life) freethinking, of course, like all his contemporaries. +He was personally courageous but foolishly despised the duel. One +anecdote out of many will help to fix his nature in the mind of the +reader. Mirabeau, casting about as usual for aid in his indebtedness, +sent urgently to him as to a fellow noble, a fellow politician and a +fellow supporter of the Crown, begging a loan of 2000. La Fayette +accorded him 1000. + + +DUMOURIEZ + +Dumouriez presents a character particularly difficult for the modern +Englishman to comprehend, so remote is it in circumstance and +fundamentals from those of our time. + +Of good birth, but born in a generation when social differences had +become a jest for intelligent and active men (and he was intelligent and +active), courageous, with a good knowledge of his trade of soldiering, +of rapid decision and excellent judgment where troops or _terrain_ were +concerned, he was all at sea in the comprehension of men, and he bore no +loyalty to the State. + +It is this last feature which will particularly surprise the English +reader, for it is the singular and permanent advantage of oligarchic +communities such as the British that they retain under any stress and +show throughout the whole commonwealth the sense of the State. To betray +the State, to act against its interests, to be imperfectly conscious of +its existence, are crimes or weaknesses unknown to the citizens of an +oligarchy, and a citizen of this country cannot easily conceive of them +to-day. In democracies and despotisms, on the other hand, to forget +one's duty to the State, to be almost oblivious of its corporate +existence, is a common weakness. There is here a compensation, and by +just so much as despotism and democracy permit rapid, effective and +all-compelling action on the part of the State, by just so much as they +permit sudden and sometimes miraculous enthusiasms which save or which +confirm a State, by that also do they lack the quiet and persistent +consciousness of the State which oligarchy fosters and determines. + +Dumouriez' excellence as a general can only be appreciated by those who +have looked closely into the constitution of the forces which he was to +command and the adversaries with whom he had to deal. It is the prime +quality of a great commander that his mind stands ready for any change +in circumstances or in the material to his hand, and even when we have +allowed for the element of luck which is so considerable in military +affairs, we must not forget that Dumouriez saved without disaster the +wretched and disorganised bands, inchoate and largely mutinous as to +their old units, worthless and amateur as to their new, which had to +meet, in and behind the Argonne, the model army of Prussia. + +We must not forget that his plan for the invasion of the Low Countries +was a just and sensible one, nor with what skill, after the inevitable +defeat and retreat of the spring of 1793, he saved his command intact. + +As a subordinate to an armed executive, to the Government of Napoleon, +for instance, the man would have been priceless. Nay, had circumstances +permitted him to retain supreme command of civil as of military power, +he would have made no bad dictator. His mere technical skill was so +considerable as to make the large sums paid him by the English +Government seem a good bargain even at our distance of time, and his +plans for the defence of England and for the attack on Napoleon are a +proof of the value at which he was estimated. + +But Dumouriez was quite unable to act under the special circumstances in +which he happened to be placed at the moment of his treason. A mere +ambition had carried him from intrigue to intrigue among the +politicians. He despised them as an active and capable soldier was +compelled to despise them; he was too old to share any of their +enthusiasms, even had his temperament permitted him to entertain any +vision, political or religious. He certainly never felt the least moral +bond attaching him to what was in his eyes the chance anarchy of the +last six months of French Government under which he served, and if he is +to be branded with the title of traitor, then we must brand with the +same title all that multitude of varied men who escaped from the country +in the Emigration, who left it in disgust, or even who remained in +France, but despaired of French fortunes, in the turmoil of 1793. + +It is perhaps a worthy excuse for Dumouriez' failure to point out that +he also was one of those whom the Court might have used had it known how +to use men; but the Court had no such knowledge. + + +DANTON + +The character of Danton has more widely impressed the world than that of +any other revolutionary leader, because it contained elements +permanently human, independent of the democratic theory of the time, and +necessary neither to the support of that theory nor to the criticism of +it. + +The character of Danton appeals to that sense in man which is interested +in action, and which in the field of letters takes the form of drama. +His vigour, his personal strength of mind and body, the individuality of +his outline, arrest equally the man who loves the Revolution, and the +man who hates it, and the man who is quite indifferent to its success or +failure. + +It is on this very account that historians, especially foreign +historians, have tended to misinterpret the man. Thus Carlyle, who has +great intuition in the matter, yet makes him out farmer-like--which he +certainly was not; Michelet, fascinated by his energy, presents him as +something uncouth, and in general those who would describe Danton stand +at a distance, as it were, where his loud voice and forcible gesture may +best be appreciated; but a man to be seen truly must be seen in +intimacy. + +Danton was essentially a compound of two powerful characters in man. He +was amative or constructive, and at the same time he not only possessed +but liked to exercise lucidity of thought. The combination is among the +strongest of all those that go to build up human personalities. + +That which was amative and constructive in him, his virility if you +will, brought him into close touch with reality; he knew and loved his +own country, for instance, and infinitely preferred its happy survival +to the full development of any political theory. He also knew and loved +his fellow countrymen in detail and as persons; he knew what made a +Frenchman weak and what made him strong. The vein of Huguenotry, though +he did not know it for what it was, he disliked in his compatriots. On +the other hand, the salt and freshness of the French was native to him +and he delighted in it; the freedom of their expression, the noise of +their rhetoric, and the military subsoil of them, were things to all of +which he immediately responded. He understood their sort of laughter, +nor was he shocked, as a man less national would have been, at their +peculiarly national vices, and in especial their lapses into rage. It is +this which must account for what all impartial judgment most blames in +him, which is, his indifference to the cruelties, his absorbed interest +in foreign and military affairs, at the moment of the Massacres of +September. + +This touch with reality made him understand in some fashion (though only +from without) the nature of the Germans. The foolish mania of their +rulers for mere territorial expansion unaccompanied by persuasion or the +spread of their ideas, he comprehended. The vast superiority of their +armies over the disorganised forces of the French in 1792 he clearly +seized: hence on the one hand his grasp of their foreign policy, and on +the other his able negotiation of the retreat after Valmy. He also +understood, however, and more profoundly, the rapid self-organisation of +which his own countrymen were capable, and it was upon this knowledge +that his determination to risk the continuance of the war reposed. It +should be remarked that both in his military and in his quasi-military +action he was himself endowed in a singular degree with that power of +immediate decision which is characteristic of his nation. + +His lucidity of thought permitted him to foresee the consequences of +many a revolutionary decision, and at the same time inclined him to a +strong sympathy with the democratic creed, with the doctrine of +equality, and especially with the remoulding of the national +institutions--particularly his own profession of the law--upon simple +lines. He was undoubtedly a sincere and a convinced revolutionary, and +one whose doctrine more permeated him than did that of many of his +contemporaries their less solid minds. He was not on that account +necessarily republican. Had some accident called his genius into play +earlier in the development of the struggle, he might well, like +Mirabeau, with whom he presents so curious a parallel, have thought it +better for the country to save the Monarchy. + +It must always be remembered that he was a man of wide culture and one +who had achieved an early and satisfactory professional success; he was +earning a sound income at the moment of his youthful marriage; he read +English largely and could speak it. His dress was not inexpensive, and +though somewhat disordered (as it often is with men of intense energy +and constant gesture) it never gave an impression of carelessness or +disarray. He had many and indifferent intellectual interests, and was +capable, therefore, of intelligent application in several fields. He +appreciated the rapid growth of physical science, and at the same time +the complexity of the old social conditions--too widely different from +contemporary truths. + +To religion he was, of course, like all men of that time, utterly +indifferent, but unlike many of them he seized the precise proportion of +its remaining effect upon certain districts and certain sections of the +countrysides. There has been a tendency latterly to exaggerate the part +which Freemasonry played in the launching of him; he was indeed a member +of a masonic lodge, as were, for that matter, all the men, conspicuous +or obscure, democratic or utterly reactionary, who appeared upon the +revolutionary stage: probably the king, certainly old aristocrats like +the father of Madame de Lamballe, and the whole host of the middle +class, from men like Bailly to men like Condorcet. But it is reading +history backwards, and imagining the features of our own time to have +been present a century ago, to make of Masonry the determining element +in his career. + +Danton failed and died from two combined causes: first his health gave +way, secondly he obtruded his sanity and civilian sense into the heated +fury and calculated martial law of the second year of the Republic. To +both that fury and that calculation he was an obstacle; his opposition +to the Terror lost him the support of the enthusiasts, but it was the +interference which such a judgment made in the plans of the soldiers, +and notably of Carnot, that determined his condemnation and death. He +also, like Mirabeau, will undoubtedly increase as the years proceed, +and, if only as a representative of the national temper, become more and +more the typical figure of the Revolution in action. + + +CARNOT + +Carnot, the predecessor of Napoleon, and the organising soldier of the +early revolutionary wars, owed his power to backbone. + +He had not only a good solidity of brain, but an astonishing power of +using it for hours and hours on end. This he owed perhaps to the +excellent physical stock of which he came, the eldest of a very large +family born to a notable lawyer in Burgundy. + +It was Carnot's pride to hold a commission in the learned arms which +were to transform at that moment the art of war: for as Bonaparte, his +successor, was a gunner, so he was a sapper. His practice of exact +knowledge in application, and the liberal education which his career +demanded, further strengthened the strong character he had inherited. +More important still, in his democratic views he was what none of the +older officers had been, convinced and sincere. He had not come within +the influence of the very wealthy or of the very powerful. He was +young, and he knew his own mind not only in matters of political faith +but in the general domain of philosophy, and in the particular one of +military science. + +It has been said of him that he invented the revolutionary method of +strategical concentration and tactical massing in the field. There is +some truth in this; but the method would not have been possible had he +not also invented, in company with Danton, and supported after Danton +left power, a universal system of conscription. + +Carnot understood, as only trained soldiers can, the value of numbers, +and _he depended with great sagacity upon the national temper_; thus at +Wattignies, which was a victory directly due to his genius, though it +was novel in him to have massed troops suddenly upon the right after a +check on the extreme left of the field, yet the novelty would have been +of no effect had he not comprehended that, with his young fellow +countrymen as troopers, he could depend upon a charge delivered after +thirty-six hours of vigil. + +He used not only the national but also the revolutionary temper in war. +One of the chief features, for instance, of the revolutionary armies +when they began to be successful, was the development of lines of +skirmishers who pushed out hardily before the main bodies and were the +first in the history of modern warfare to learn the use of cover. This +development was spontaneous: it was produced within and by each unit, +not by any general command. But Carnot recognised it at Hoondschoote +and used it ever after. + +The stoical inflexibility of his temper is the noblest among the many +noble characters of his soul. He never admitted the empire, and he +suffered exile, seeming thereby in the eyes of the vilest and most +intelligent of his contemporaries, Fouch, to be a mere fool. He was as +hard with himself as with others, wholly military in the framework of +his mind, and the chief controller of the Terror, which he used, as it +was intended to be used, for the military salvation of the republic. + + +MARAT + +Marat is easily judged. The complete sincerity of the enthusiast is not +difficult to appreciate when his enthusiasm is devoted to a simple human +ideal which has been, as it were, fundamental and common to the human +race. + +Equality within the State and the government of the State by its general +will: these primal dogmas, on the reversion to which the whole +Revolution turned, were Marat's creed. + +Those who would ridicule or condemn him because he held such a creed, +are manifestly incapable of discussing the matter at all. The ridicule +and condemnation under which Marat justly falls do not attach to the +patent moral truths he held, but to the manner in which he held them. He +did not only hold them isolated from other truths--it is the fault of +the fanatic so to hold any truth--but he held them as though no other +truths existed. And whenever he found his ideal to be in practice +working at a friction or stopped dead, his unnourished and acute +enthusiasms at once sought a scapegoat, discovered a responsible agent, +and suggested a violent outlet, for the delay. + +He was often right when he denounced a political intriguer: he often +would have sacrificed a victim not unjustly condemned, he often +discovered an agent partially responsible, and even the violent +solutions that he suggested were not always impracticable. But it was +the prime error of his tortured mind that beyond victims, and sudden +violent clutches at the success of democracy, there was nothing else he +could conceive. He was incapable of allowing for imperfections, for +stupidities, for the misapprehension of mind by mind, for the mere +action of time, and for all that renders human life infinitely complex +and infinitely adjustable. + +Humour, the reflection of such wisdom, he lacked;--"judgment" (as the +English idiom has it) he lacked still more--if a comparative term may be +attached to two such absolute vacuities. + +It must not be forgotten that so complete an absence of certain +necessary qualities in the building up of a mind are equivalent to +madness. Marat was not sane. His insanity was often generous, the creed +to which it was attached was obvious enough, and in the eyes of most of +us it is a creed to be accepted. But he worked with it as a madman who +is mad on collectivism, let us say, or the rights of property, might +work in our society, thinking of his one thesis, shrieking it and +foaming at the mouth upon it, losing all control when its acceptance was +not even opposed but merely delayed. He was valueless for the +accomplishment of the ends of the Revolution. His doctrine and his +adherence to it were so conspicuously simple and sincere that it is no +wonder the populace made him (for a few months) a sort of symbol of +their demand. + +For the rest, his face, like his character, was tortured; he carried +with him a disease of the skin that irritated perpetually his wholly +unbalanced temper. + +Some say (but one must always beware of so-called "Science" in the +reading of history) that a mixture of racial types produced in him a +perpetual physical disturbance: his face was certainly distorted and +ill-balanced--but physical suggestions of that sort are very +untrustworthy. + +Those who met him in the management of affairs thought him worthless +enough; a few who knew him intimately loved him dearly; more who came +across him continually were fatigued and irritated by his empty +violence. He was, among those young revolutionaries, almost an elderly +man; he was (this should never be forgotten) a distinguished scholar in +his own trade, that of medicine; and he effected less in the Revolution +than any man to whom a reputation of equal prominence happened to +attach. He must stand responsible for the massacres of September.[2] + + +ROBESPIERRE + +No character in the Revolution needs for its comprehension a wider +reading and a greater knowledge of the national character than +Robespierre's. + +Upon no character does the comprehension of the period more depend, and +none (for reasons I will give in a moment) has been more misunderstood, +not only in the popular legend but in the weighed decisions of competent +historians. + +So true is this that even time, which (in company with scholarship) +usually redresses such errors, has not yet permitted modern authors to +give a true picture of the man. + +The reason of so conspicuous a failure in the domain of history is this: +that side by side with the real Robespierre there existed in the minds +of all his contemporaries _save those who actually came across him in +the junctions of government_, a legendary Robespierre--a Robespierre +popularly imagined; and that this imaginary Robespierre, while it (or +he) has proved odious to posterity, seemed, while he lived, a +fascinating portrait to the man himself, and therefore he accepted it. +For Robespierre, though just, lacked humility. + +The problem is an exceedingly subtle as well as an exceedingly difficult +one. The historian, as he reads his authorities, has perpetually to +distinguish between what is strong and what is weak evidence, and to +recall himself, as he reads, to reality by a recollection of what +Robespierre himself was. If he does not do so he falls at once into the +legend; so powerful is that legend in the numbers that supported it, and +so strongly did Robespierre himself support it by his own attitude. The +legendary Robespierre may be described in a very few lines. + +Conceive a man sincerely convinced of the purest democratic theory, a +man who cared for nothing else but the realisation of that theory, and +who had never sacrificed his pursuit of its realisation in the State to +any personal advantage whatsoever. This man, trusted by the people and +at last idolised by them, becomes more and more powerful. He enters the +governing body (the Committee of Public Safety), he is the master both +within and without that body, and uses his mastery for establishing an +ideal democracy which shall recognise the existence of God and repose +upon civic virtue; and to establish this ideal he has recourse to +terror. He finds that human defections from his ideal are increasingly +numerous: he punishes them by death. The slaughter grows to be enormous; +the best of Democrats are involved in it; at last it can be tolerated no +longer, his immediate subordinates revolt against him in the Committee, +he is outlawed, fails to raise a popular rebellion in his favour in +Paris, is executed, and his system of terror falls to the ground. + +This picture, though purely legendary in tone, contains not only much +truth, but truth of precisely that sort which conspires to make credible +what is false in the whole. + +Robespierre was sincerely attached to the conception of an ideal +democracy; he was incorruptible in the pursuit of it--and to be a +politician and incorruptible amounts to something like what the Church +calls heroic virtue in a man. He _did_ enter the Committee of Public +Safety; he _did_ support the Terror, and when he was overthrown the +Terror _did_ come to an end. Where, then, does the legend differ from +the truth? + +In these capital points, which change it altogether: that Robespierre +was not the chief influence in the Committee of Public Safety, _i.e._ +the all powerful executive of the Republic; that he did not desire the +Terror, that he did not use it, that he even grew disgusted with it, and +that, in general, he was never the man who governed France. + +It need hardly be pointed out how such a truth destroys such a legend. +The whole nature of the twelve months between the summer of 1793 and the +summer of 1794 must vary according as we regard them as Robespierrean or +no: and they were not Robespierrean. + +What were they then, and why has the error that Robespierre was then +master, arisen? + +Those months, which may be roughly called the months of the Terror, +were, as we shall see later in this book, months of martial law; and the +Terror was simply martial law in action--a method of enforcing the +military defence of the country and of punishing all those who +interfered with it or were supposed by the Committee to interfere with +it. + +No one man in the Committee was the author of this system, but the one +most determined to use it and the one who had most occasion to use it, +was undoubtedly the military organiser, Carnot. Side by side with him +one man, such as Barrre, supported it because it kept up the Committee +of Public Safety which gave him all his political position. Another, +such as Saint-Just, supported it because he believed that the winning of +the war (in which he took an active part) would secure democracy +everywhere and for ever. Another, such as Jean Bon, supported it from +the old sectarian bitterness of the Huguenot. But of all men in the +Committee, Robespierre supported the Terror least, and was most +suspected by his colleagues--and increasingly suspected as time went +on--of desiring to interfere with the martial system of the Terror and +to modify it. + +Why, then, was Robespierre popularly identified with the Terror, and +why, when he was executed, did the Terror cease? + +Robespierre was identified with the Terror because he was identified +with the popular clamour of the time, with the extreme democratic +feeling of the time, and its extreme fear of a reaction. Robespierre +being the popular idol, had become also the symbol of a popular frenzy +which was supposed to be ruling the country. But that frenzy was not +ruling the country. What was ruling the country was the Committee of +Public Safety, in which Carnot's was the chief brain. Robespierre was +indeed the idol of the populace; he was in no way the agent of their +power or of any power. + +Why, when he fell, did the Terror cease if he were not its author? +Because the Terror was acting under a strain; it was with the utmost +difficulty that this absolute, intolerant and intolerable martial system +could be continued when once the fear of invasion was removed. For some +weeks before Robespierre fell the victories had begun to render it +unnecessary. When the Committee saw to it that Robespierre should be +outlawed by the Parliament, they knocked away, without knowing it, the +keystone of their own policy; it was _his_ popular position which made +_their_ policy possible. When he was destroyed they suddenly found that +the Terror could no longer be maintained. Men had borne with it because +of Robespierre, falsely imagining that Robespierre had desired it. +Robespierre gone, men would not bear with it any more. + +Now, finally, if Robespierre himself had always felt opposed to the +system of the Terror, why did he not take the lead in the popular +reaction against it? + +He had his opportunity given him by Danton in December 1793--seven +months before his own catastrophe. The Committee determined to put +Danton out of the way because Danton, in appealing for mercy, was +weakening the martial power of their government. Robespierre might have +saved Danton: he preferred to let him be sacrificed. The reason was that +Robespierre wrongly believed popularity to lie upon the side of the +Terror and against Danton; he was in no way a leader (save in rhetoric +and in rhetoric directed towards what men already desired), and his own +great weakness or vice was the love of popular acclaim. + +Later on, in the summer of 1794, when he actually began to move against +the Terror, he only did so privately. He so misread men that he still +believed the Terror to be popular, and dared not lose his popular name. +A man by nature as sincere as crystal, he was tempted to insincerity in +this major thing, during the last months of his life, and he yielded +completely to the temptation. For the sake of his memory it was +deplorable, and deplorable also for history. His weakness has been the +cause of an historical error as grave as any that can be discovered in +modern letters, and at the same time has wholly maligned him to +posterity. + +A factor in Robespierre's great public position which is often forgotten +is the great effect of his speeches. That men should still debate, after +so vast a change in taste, whether those speeches were eloquent or no, +is a sufficient proof of their effect. He spoke in an ordered and a +reasoned manner, which bored the fine spirits of the earlier +Parliaments, but well suited the violent convictions of the later +Revolution. His phraseology, his point of view, just jumped with that of +his audience. He could express what they felt, and express it in terms +which they knew to be exact, and which they believed to be grand. For +his manner was never excessive, and those excessive men who heard him in +an excessive mood, were proud to know that their violence could be +expressed with so much scholarship and moderated skill. + +By birth he was of the smaller gentry, though poor. It is an indication +of his character that he had thought of taking Orders, and that in early +youth literary vanity had affected him. He has left no monument; but +from the intensity of his faith and from his practice of it, his name, +though it will hardly increase, will certainly endure. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[2] There is but one trustworthy monograph on Marat. It will interest +the student as a proof of the enthusiasm which Marat can inspire. It is +by Champfleury. + + + + +IV + +THE PHASES OF THE REVOLUTION + + +I + +_From May 1789 to 17th of July 1789._ + +The first point which the reader must hold in the story of the +Revolution is the quarrel between its first Parliament and the Crown. + +Of what nature was that quarrel? + +It was not, as it has sometimes been represented, a simple issue between +privilege and a democratic demand for equality, or between traditional +organs of government and a democratic demand for self-government by the +nation. To imagine this is to read history backwards, and to see in the +untried conditions of 1789 the matured results which only appeared after +years of struggle. + +The prime issue lay between legality and illegality. + +The forms of French law and all the inherited method of French +administration demanded a certain form of authority; a centralised +government of unlimited power. The King was absolute. From him proceeded +in the simplest fashion whatever will was paramount in the State. He +could suspend a debtor's liabilities, imprison a man without trial, +release him without revision of his case, make war or peace, and in +minor details such as the discipline and administration of public +bodies, the power of the Crown was theoretically and legally equally +supreme. It was not exercised as the enormous power of modern government +is exercised, it did not perpetually enter into every detail of the life +of the poor in the way in which the power of a modern English Government +enters into it; it is in the very nature of such autocratic power that, +while unlimited in theory, it is compelled to an instinctive and +perpetual self-limitation lest it break down; and autocracy maybe +compared in this to aristocracy, or more properly speaking to oligarchy, +the government of a few: for where a few govern they know that their +government reposes upon public opinion or public tolerance; they are +very careful not to exceed certain limits the transgression of which +would weaken the moral foundation of their power; they welcome allies, +they recruit themselves perpetually from other classes in the community. + +In the same way an autocracy always has the desire to be popular. Its +strokes affect the great and the powerful, and are hardly ever aimed at +the mass of the community. The intellectual, the wealthy, the privileged +by birth, fortune or exceptional personal powers, are suspect to it. As +for the mass of men an Autocracy attempts to represent and, in a certain +sense, to obey them. + +Now the French autocracy (for it was no less) erred not in the will to +act thus popularly in the early part of the Revolution, but in the +_knowledge_ requisite for such action. + +The Parliament, shortly after it had met in May 1789, began to show, in +the Commons part of it, the working of that great theory which had +leavened all France for a generation. The Commons said, "We are the +people; at once the symbols of the people, the direct mandatory servants +of the people, and" (though this was a fiction) "we are of the people in +our birth and origin. We are therefore the true sovereign; and the +prince, the head of the Executive, is no more than an organ of +government, morally less in authority than ourselves, who are the true +source of government." This attitude, which was at the back of all men's +minds, and which was concentrated, of course, in the Commons, clashed +with legality. It could not express itself in the terms of law, it could +not act save in a fashion which should be, in the strictest sense of the +word, _revolutionary_. + +Now the Crown, on the whole national in sympathy, and comprehending this +new theory well (I mean by the Crown the general body of advisers round +the King, and the King himself), was offended at the illegality not of +the theory or of the pretence (for these were not illegal), but of the +action of the Commons. And this comparatively small source of friction +was the irritant upon which we must fix as the cause of what followed. +The Nobles, by 108 to 47, decided, the day after the opening of the +Parliament, to sit as a separate House. The Clergy, by a much smaller +majority, 133 to 114, came to the same decision, but carefully qualified +it as provisional. The Commons declared that the hall in which they met +should be regarded as the hall of the National Assembly, and later made +it their business (to quote the phrase of the motion) "to attempt to +unite in common all the deputies of the nation in that hall and never to +abandon the principle of voting individually" (that is, not by separate +Houses) "or the principle that the States-General formed one undivided +body." This attitude was qualified and compromised with to some extent +in the days that followed, but it held the field, and while the Commons +were insisting upon this attitude as a moral right, the Nobles countered +by a reaffirmation of the right of each House to a separate judgment +upon public matters. The Nobles were standing upon legal precedent: the +Commons had nothing in their favour but political theory; if the orders +sat all together and voted as individuals, the Commons, who were in +number equal to the two other Houses combined, would, with their noble +and clerical sympathisers, have a majority. + +Now the King and his advisers, notably Necker, who still had great +weight, were by no means "Impossiblists" in this struggle. They desired +an understanding, and through the last days of May and the first days of +June the attempt at an understanding was made. But the attempt dragged, +and as it seemed that nothing would come of it, on the 10th of June +Siyes moved that the Assembly should "verify its powers" (a French +phrase for admitting and registering the presence of each member as +acceptable to the whole body, and to the theory of its Constitution), +and that this should be done "in the case of each member" (meaning +members of all the three orders and _not_ of the Commons alone), +"whether the members of the two privileged Houses were present or +absent." The roll was called and completed upon the 15th. None of the +nobles attended the common roll-call, three of the parish clergy (they +were from the province of Poitou) did so, and thus admitted the right of +the Commons so to act. A dozen of their colleagues joined them later; +but that was all. + +So far there had been no action which could be precisely called illegal +or revolutionary. The Commons had affirmed a right based upon a +political theory which the vast majority of the nation admitted, and the +legal depositary of power, the King, had not yet reproved. One may draw +a parallel and compare the action of the Commons so far to some action +which a trade union, for instance, may take in England; some action the +legality of which is doubtful but upon which the courts have not yet +decided. + +It was upon the 17th of June, two days after the completion of the +roll-call by the Commons, that the first revolutionary act took place, +and the student of the Revolution will do well to put his finger upon +that date and to regard it not indeed as the moral origin of the +movement, but as the precise moment from which the Revolution, as a +Revolution, begins to act. For upon that day the Commons, though in fact +only joined by a handful of the Clerical House, and by none of the +nobility, _declared themselves to be the National Assembly_; that is, +asserted the fiction that Clergy, Nobles and Commons were all present +and voted together. To this declaration they added a definite act of +sovereignty which trespassed upon and contradicted the legal authority +of the Crown. True, the motion was only moved and passed +"provisionally," but the words used were final, for in this motion the +self-styled "National Assembly" declared that "provisionally" taxes and +dues might be raised upon the old authority but that only until the +National Assembly should disperse; "after which day"--and here we reach +the sacramental formula, as it were, of the crisis--"the National +Assembly _wills and decrees_ that all taxes and dues of whatever nature +which have not been specifically formally and freely granted by the said +Assembly shall cease in every province of the kingdom no matter how such +that province may be administered." (This is an allusion to the fact +that in some provinces there was a representative machinery, in others +nothing but the direct action of the Crown.) "The Assembly declares that +when it has _in concert with_ (not in obedience to) the King laid down +the principle of a national re-settlement, it will busy itself with the +examination and ordering of the public debt." Etc., etc. + +Such was the point of departure after which sovereignty was at issue +between the Crown and the States-General; the Crown a known institution +with its traditions stretching back to the Roman Empire, and the +National Assembly a wholly new organ according to its own claims, basing +its authority upon a political theory stretching back to the very +origins of human society. + +Two days later, on the 19th of June, the "National Assembly," still only +self-styled and possessing only the powers which it had ascribed to +itself beyond all forms of law, set to work, nominated its committees, +and assumed the sovereignty thus claimed. The Nobles protested (notably +the Bishops), and the King, on the advice of Barentin, keeper of the +Seals, determined upon immediate resistance. The excuse was taken that +the Royal Session, as it was called, in which the King would declare his +will, needed the preparation of the hall, and when the Commons presented +themselves at the door of that hall on the next day, the 20th, they +found it shut against them. They adjourned to a neighbouring tennis +court, and took a solemn corporate oath that they would not separate +without giving France a Constitution. They continued to meet, using a +church for that purpose, but on the 23rd the Royal Session was opened +and the King declared his will. + +The reader must especially note that even in this crisis the Crown did +not offer a complete resistance. There was an attempt at compromise. +Necker would have had a more or less complete surrender, the Queen and +her set would have preferred an act of authority which should have +annulled all that the Commons had done. What actually happened was a +permission by the Crown that the three Orders should meet as one body +for certain common interests, but should preserve the system of voting +as separate Houses in "all that might regard the ancient and +constitutional rights of the three Orders, the Constitution to be given +to future Parliaments, feudal property, and the rights and prerogatives +of the two senior Houses." As a mere numerical test, such a conclusion +would have destroyed the power of the Commons, since, as we have seen, +numbers were the weapon of the Commons, who were equal to the two other +Houses combined, and if all sat together would, with the Liberal +members of the clergy and the nobility, be supreme. But apart from this +numerical test, the act of sovereignty affirmed by the National Assembly +when it declared itself, and itself only, competent to vote taxes, was +annulled. Moreover, the royal declaration ended with a command that on +the next day the three Orders should meet separately. + +Now at this critical point the King was disobeyed. The current of the +time chose the revolutionary bed, and as it began to flow deepened and +confirmed its course with every passing day and event. Already the +majority of the clergy had joined the National Assembly when it had +affirmed its right to sit in spite of the check of the 20th of June. +There was a half-hour on that decisive day of the Royal Session, the +23rd of June, when armed force might have been used for the arrest and +dispersion of the Deputies. They declared themselves inviolable and +their arrest illegal, but there was, of course, no sanction for this +decree. As a fact, not a corporal's file was used against them. The next +day, the 24th, the majority of the clergy again joined the Commons in +their session (in flat defiance of the King's orders), and on the 25th, +forty-seven of the nobles followed their example. The King yielded, and +on the 27th, two days later, ordered the three Houses to meet together. + +The National Assembly was now legally constituted, and set out upon its +career. The Crown, the old centre of authority, had abandoned its +position, and had confirmed the Revolution, but in doing so it had acted +as it were in contradiction with itself. It had made technically legal +an illegality which destroyed its own old legal position, but it had +done so with ill-will, and it was evident that some counter-stroke would +be attempted to restore the full powers of the Crown. + +At this point the reader must appreciate what forces were face to face +in the coming struggle. So far, the illegal and revolutionary act of the +17th of June, the Royal Session which replied to that act upon the 23rd, +the King's decree which yielded to the Commons upon the 27th, had all of +them been but words. If it came to action, what physical forces were +opposed? + +On the side of the Crown was the organised armed force which it +commanded. For it must never be forgotten that the Crown was the +Executive, and remained the Executive right on to the capture of the +palace three years later, and the consummation of the Revolution on the +10th of August, 1792. On the side of the National Assembly was without +doubt the public opinion of the country (but that is not a force that +can be used under arms), and, what was much more to the point, the +municipal organisation of France. + +Space forbids a full description of the origins and strength of the +French municipal system; it is enough to point out that the whole of +Gallic civilisation, probably from a moment earlier than Csar's +invasion, and certainly from the moment when Roman rule was paramount +in Gaul, was a _municipal_ one. It is so still. The countrysides take +their names mainly from their chief towns. The towns were the seats of +the bishops, whose hierarchy had preserved whatever could be preserved +of the ancient world. In the towns were the colleges, the guilds, the +discussion and the corporations which built up the life of the nation. +The chief of these towns was Paris. The old systems of municipal +government, corrupt and varied as they were, could still give the towns +a power of corporate expression. And even where that might be lacking it +was certain that some engine would be found for expressing municipal +action in a crisis of the sort through which France was now passing. In +Paris, for instance, it was seen when the time came for physical force +that the College of Electors, who had chosen the representatives for +that city, were willing to act at once and spontaneously as a municipal +body which should express the initiative of the people. It was the +towns, and especially Paris, prompt at spontaneous organisation, ready +to arm, and when armed competent to frame a fighting force, which was +the physical power behind the Assembly. + +What of the physical power behind the King? His power was, as we have +said, the Regular Armed forces of the country: the army. But it is +characteristic of the moment that only a part of that armed force could +be trusted. For an army is never a mere weapon: it consists of living +men; and though it will act against the general opinion of its members +and will obey orders long after civilians would have broken with the +ties of technical and legal authority, yet there is for armies also a +breaking point in those ties, and the Crown, I repeat, could not use as +a whole the French-speaking and French-born soldiery. Luckily for it, a +very great proportion of the French army at that moment consisted of +foreign mercenaries. + +Since the position was virtually one of war, we must consider what was +the strategical object of this force. Its object was Paris, the chief of +the towns; and round Paris, in the early days of July, the mercenary +regiments were gathered from all quarters. That military concentration +once effected, the gates of the city held, especially upon the north and +upon the west, by encamped regiments and by a particularly large force +of cavalry (ever the arm chosen for the repression of civilians), the +Crown was ready to act. + +On the 11th of July, Necker, who stood for Liberal opinions, was +dismissed. A new ministry was formed, and the counter-revolution begun. +What followed was the immediate rising of Paris. + +The news of Necker's dismissal reached the masses of the capital (only +an hour's ride from Versailles) on the afternoon of the 12th, Sunday. +Crowds began to gather; an ineffectual cavalry charge in one of the +outer open spaces of the city only inflamed the popular enthusiasm, for +the soldiers who charged were German mercenary soldiers under the +command of a noble. Public forces were at once organised, arms were +commandeered from the armourers' shops, the Electoral College, which had +chosen the members of the Assembly for Paris, took command at the Guild +Hall, but the capital point of the insurrection--what made it +possible--was the seizure of a great stock of arms and ammunition, +including cannon, in the depot at the Invalides. + +With such resources the crowd attacked, at the other end of the city, a +fortress and arsenal which had long stood in the popular eye as the +symbol of absolute monarchy, the Bastille. With the absurdly +insufficient garrison of the Bastille, its apparent impregnability to +anything the mob might attempt, the supposed but doubtful treason of its +governor in firing upon those whom he had admitted to parley, we are not +here concerned. The Bastille was rushed, after very considerable efforts +and an appreciable loss in killed and wounded. By the evening of that +day, Tuesday, the 14th of July, 1789, Paris had become a formidable +instrument of war. The next news was the complete capitulation of the +King. + +He came on the morrow to the National Assembly, promising to send away +the troops; he promised to recall Necker, a municipal organisation was +granted to the city, with Bailly for its first mayor, and--a point of +capital importance--an armed militia dependent upon that municipality +was legally formed, with La Fayette at its head. On the 17th Louis +entered Paris to consummate his capitulation, went to the Guild Hall, +appeared in the tricoloured cockade, and the popular battle was won. + +It behoves us here to consider the military aspect of this definitive +act from which the sanction of the Revolution, the physical power behind +it, dates. + +Paris numbered somewhat under a million souls: perhaps no more than +600,000: the number fluctuated with the season. The foreign mercenary +troops who were mainly employed in the repression of the popular feeling +therein, were not sufficient to impose anything like a siege. They could +at the various gates have stopped the provisioning of the city, but then +at any one of those separate points, any one of their detachments upon a +long perimeter more than a day's march in circumference would certainly +have been attacked and almost as certainly overwhelmed by masses of +partially armed civilians. + +Could the streets have been cleared while the ferment was rising? It is +very doubtful. They were narrow and tortuous in the extreme, the area to +be dealt with was enormous, the tradition of barricades not forgotten, +and the spontaneous action of that excellent fighting material which a +Paris mob contains, had been quite as rapid as anything that could have +been effected by military orders. + +The one great fault was the neglect to cover the Invalides, but even had +the Invalides not been looted, the stock of arms and powder in the city +would have been sufficient to have organised a desperate and prolonged +resistance. The local auxiliary force (of slight military value, it is +true), the "French Guards," as they were called, were wholly with the +people. And in general, the Crown must be acquitted of any considerable +blunder on the military side of this struggle. It certainly did not fail +from lack of will. + +The truth is (if we consider merely the military aspect of this military +event) that in dealing with large bodies of men who are (a) not +previously disarmed, (b) under conditions where they cannot be +dispersed, and (c) capable by a national tradition or character of some +sort of rapid, spontaneous organisation, the issue will always be +doubtful, and the uncertain factor (which is the tenacity, decision and +common will of the civilians, to which soldiers are to be opposed) is +one that varies within the very widest limits. + +In massing the troops originally, the Crown and its advisers estimated +that uncertain factor at far too low a point. Even contemporary educated +opinion, which was in sympathy with Paris, put it too low. That factor +was, as a fact, so high that no armed force of the size and quality +which the Crown then disposed of, could achieve its object or hold down +the capital. + +As for the absurd conception that any body of men in uniform, however +small, could always have the better of civilian resistance, however +large and well organised, it is not worthy of a moment's consideration +by those who interest themselves in the realities of military history. +It is worthy only of the academies. + +So ends the first phase of the Revolution. It had lasted from the +opening of the States-General in May to the middle of July 1789. + + +II + +_From the 17th of July 1789 to the 6th of Oct. 1789._ + +We have seen the military conditions under which the attempt at an armed +counter-revolution failed. There follows a short phase of less than +three months, whose character can be quickly described. + +It was that moment of the Revolution in which ideas had the freest play, +in which least had been done to test their application, and most scope +remained for pure enthusiasm. That is why we find in the midst of that +short phase the spontaneous abandonment of the feudal rights by the +nobility. And that is why the violent uprisings all over France +continued. It is the period in which the Declaration of the Rights of +Man and of the Citizen, a document which may fittingly stand side by +side with the Declaration of Independence (for together they form the +noblest monuments of our modern origins), was promulgated. In the same +period were the elements of the future Constitution rapidly debated and +laid down, and notably that national policy of a _Single Chamber_ which +the modern French have imprudently abandoned. In that same period, +however, appeared, and towards the close of it, another form of +resistance on the part of the Crown and of those who advised the Crown. +The King hesitated to accept the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and +similarly hesitated to promulgate the Decree of the 4th of August in +which the nobility had abandoned their feudal dues. It would be foolish +to exaggerate the military aspect of what followed. Louis did call in +troops, but only in numbers sufficient for personal defence, and we can +hardly believe that he intended anything more than to police the +surroundings of his throne. But the brigade (for it was no more, nor was +it of full strength) which he summoned was sufficient to kindle +suspicion; and the determinedly false position of the Queen (who all her +life was haunted by the idea that the regular soldiers, especially if +they were well dressed and held themselves rigidly, were a sort of +talisman) provoked an explosion. A feast was given in which the officers +of the Regiment of Flanders, which had just reached Versailles, were +entertained by the officers of the Guard. It was made the occasion for a +good deal of drunkenness and a violent Royalist manifestation, at which +the Queen was present, which she approved, and which some thought she +had designed. + +The failure of the harvest to relieve the scarcity of bread in Paris, +the permanent state of alarm in which Paris had remained, and of +suspicion for the safety of the Parliament which it continually +entertained since the early part of the summer, needed no more to +provoke an outbreak. It is an error to imagine that that outbreak was +engineered or that such a movement could have been factitious. Great +masses of women (in whom the movement originated), and after them a +whole flood of the populace, marched upon Versailles. + +There was no direct attack upon the palace, though the palace feared +such an attack at any moment. The troops present were sufficient to +prevent violence. + +La Fayette followed in the night at the head of his new Parisian militia +force. + +Too much reliance was placed upon the military character of this force; +the palace was invaded in the early morning, an attempt to assassinate +the Queen on the part of the mob failed, though two of the Guards were +killed. And after scenes whose violence and apparent anarchy only masked +the common determination of the populace, the royal family were +compelled to abandon Versailles and to take up their place in the +Tuileries; the Parliament followed them to Paris, and neither King nor +Parliament returned again to the suburban palace. + +This recapture of the King by Paris is much more significant than a mere +impulse of the mob. The King in Paris, the unison of his person with the +capital city, had been the very sacrament of French life for century +upon century. It was precisely a hundred years since Paris had been +abandoned by Louis XIV for Versailles. The significance of that error +may be understood by the citizens of an aristocratic country if they +will imagine the abandonment of their countrysides by the squires, or, +again, the future historian of our modern industrial civilisation may +understand it when he describes how the wealthy manufacturers abandoned +the cities in which their wealth was made, to dwell outside and apart +from the living interests of their people. + +With the return of the royal family to Paris, and with the presence of +the Assembly within the heart of the national life, one prime factor +appears, which is this: that while the National Assembly proceeds step +by step to what it imagines to be a complete attainment of democracy +(though how partial will soon be seen), the resistance of the Crown is +transformed into a resistance of the mere Court. The attack on the +Revolution becomes a personal thing. The King is still wholly the chief +of the Executive; he can give what commands he wills to the armed force; +he controls receipts and payments; he is for all active purposes the +Government. But he is no longer considering that prime function of his, +nor even using it to restore his old power. He acts henceforward as an +individual, and an individual in danger. The Queen, whose view of the +Revolution and its dangers had always been a purely personal one, is the +directing will in the court-group from this moment, October 1789, +onwards; and the chief preoccupation of that group for eighteen months +is personal safety. Surrounded by the pomp of the Tuileries and amid all +the external appearances of a power still greater than that of any other +monarch in Europe, Louis and his wife and their very few immediate and +devoted friends and followers thought of the palace as a prison, and +never considered their position save as one intolerable. + + +III + +_From October 1789 to June 1791._ + +It is this which must explain all that followed in the succeeding phase, +which lasted from these early days of October 1789 to the last week of +June 1791. Throughout that period of twenty-one months the King is +letting the Revolution take its course, with the fixed idea of thwarting +it at last by flying from it, and perhaps conquering it by foreign aid. +But even this policy is not consecutively followed. The increasing +repugnance of the Court and of the King himself to the revolutionary +development forbids a consecutive and purely hypocritical acceptation of +the National Assembly's decrees. + +Deliberate and calculated intrigue might yet have saved the monarchy and +the persons of the royal family. Oddly enough, an ally in the struggle, +an excellent intriguer, a saviour of the monarchical institution and a +true defender of the royal persons was at hand: it was at hand in the +person of Mirabeau. + +This man had more and more dominated the Assembly; he had been +conspicuous from its first opening days; he had been its very voice in +the resistance to the King at Versailles; it was he who had replied to +the Master of Ceremonies on June 23, that the Commons would not +disperse; it was he who had moved that the persons of the Commons were +privileged against arrest. He was of a family noble in station and +conspicuous before the people by the wealth and eccentricities of its +head, Mirabeau's father. He himself was not unknown even before the +Revolution broke out, for his violence, his amours, his intelligence and +his debts. He was a few years older than the King and Queen: his +personality repelled them; none the less his desire to serve them was +sincere; and it was his plan, while retaining the great hold over the +National Assembly which his rhetoric and his use of men furnished him, +to give to the Court and in particular to the Queen, whom he very +greatly and almost reverently admired, such secret advice as might save +them. This advice, as we shall see in a moment, tended more and more to +be an advice for civil war. But Mirabeau's death at the close of the +phase we are now entering (on April 2, 1791), and the increasing fears +of the King and Queen, between them prevented any statesmanship at all; +they prevented even the statesmanship of intrigue; and the period +became, on the side of the Revolution, a rapid and uncontrolled +development of its democratic theory (limited by the hesitation of the +middle class), and on the side of the Court an increasing demand for +mere physical security and flight, coupled with an increasing +determination to return, and to restore as a popular monarchy the scheme +of the past. + +The eighteen months that intervened between the fixing of the Assembly +and the royal family in Paris, and the death of Mirabeau, are remarkable +for the following points, which must all be considered abreast, as it +were, if we are to understand their combined effects. + +1. This was the period in which the constructive work of the National +Assembly was done, and in which the whole face of the nation was +changed. The advising bodies of lawyers called "Parliaments" were +abolished (eleven months after the King had come to Paris), the Modern +Departments were organised in the place of the old provinces, the old +national and provincial militia was destroyed; but (as it is very +important to remember) _the old regular army was left untouched_. A new +judicature and new rules of procedure were established. A new code +sketched out in the place of "Common Law" muddle. In a word, it was the +period during which most of those things which we regard as +characteristic of the revolutionary work were either brought to their +theoretic conclusion or given at least their main lines. + +2. Among these constructive acts, but so important that it must be +regarded separately, was the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which +will be dealt with at length further in this book; it was the principal +work (and the principal error) of that year and a half. + +3. The general spirit of the Revolution, more difficult to define than +its theory but easy to appreciate as one follows the development of the +movement, increased regularly and enormously in intensity during the +period. The power of the King, who was still at the head of the +Executive, acted more and more as an irritant against public opinion, +and-- + +4. That public opinion began to express itself in a centralised and +national fashion, of which the great federation of the 14th of July +1790, in Paris, on the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille, was the +nucleus and also the symbol. This federation consisted in delegates from +the National Guard throughout the country, and it was of this capital +importance: that it introduced into the revolutionary movement a feature +of soldiery which made even the regular troops for the most part +sympathetic with the enthusiasm of the time. + +5. These eighteen months were, again, filled with the movement of the +"Emigration." That movement was, of course, the departure of many of the +more prominent of the privileged orders and of a crowd of humbler +nobles, as also of a few ecclesiastics, from France. The King's brothers +(one fled at the beginning of the emigration, the younger, the Comte +d'Artois; the other, the elder, at its close, and coincidently with the +flight of the King) must especially be noted in this connection; they +formed in company with the more notable of the other emigrants a regular +political body, which intrigued continually beyond the frontiers, in +Germany and Italy, against the Revolution. And-- + +6. It was therefore during these months that the ultimate origins of the +large European war must be found. The armed body of the emigrants under +Cond formed an organised corps upon the Rhine, and though there was not +yet the semblance of an armed movement in Europe besides theirs against +the French, yet by the _migrs_, as they were called, were sown the +seeds the harvest of which was to be the war of 1792. + +I have said that during these months in which most of the constructive +work of the Revolution was done, in which the seeds of the great war +were sown, and in which the absolute position of the Crown as the head +of the Executive was increasingly irritating to the public opinion of +the French, and especially of the capital, Mirabeau was the one man who +might have preserved the continuity of national institutions by the +preservation of the monarchy. He received money from the Court and in +return gave it advice. The advice was the advice of genius, but it was +listened to less and less in proportion as it was more and more +practical. Mirabeau also favoured the abandonment of Paris by the King, +but he would have had the King leave Paris openly and with an armed +force, withdraw to a neighbouring and loyal centre such as Compigne, +and thence depend upon the fortunes of civil war. + +Meanwhile the Queen was determined upon a very different and much more +personal plan, into which no conception of statesmanship entered. She +was determined to save the persons of her children, herself and her +husband. Plans of flight were made, postponed and re-postponed. It was +already agreed at the Court that not Mirabeau's plan should be followed, +but this plan of mere evasion. The army which Bouill commanded upon the +frontier was to send small detachments along the great road from Paris +to the east; the first of these were to meet the royal fugitives a +little beyond Chalns and to escort their carriage eastward; each armed +detachment in the chain, as the flight proceeded, was to fall in for its +defence, until, once the town of Varennes was reached, the King and +Queen should be in touch with the main body of the army. + +What was then intended to follow remains obscure. It is fairly certain +that the King did not intend to pass the frontier but to take refuge at +Montmdy. The conflict that would have inevitably broken out could +hardly have been confined to a civil war: foreign armies and the German +mercenaries in the French service were presumably to be organised, in +case the flight succeeded, for a march upon Paris and the complete +restoration of the old state of affairs. + +Had Mirabeau lived this rash and unstatesmanlike plan might yet have +been avoided; it so happened that he died upon April 2, 1791, and soon +after we enter the third phase of the Revolution, which is that leading +directly to the great war, and to the fall of the monarchy. + +Shortly after Mirabeau's death a tumult, which excessively frightened +the royal family, prevented the King and Queen from leaving the palace +and passing Easter at St. Cloud, in the suburbs. Though further +postponements of their flight followed, the evasion actually took place +in the night of the 20th to 21st of June. It very nearly succeeded, but +by a series of small accidents, the last of which, the famous ride of +Drouet to intercept the fugitives, is among the best-known episodes in +history, the King and Queen and their children were discovered and +arrested at Varennes, within a few hundred yards of safety, and were +brought back to Paris, surrounded by enormous and hostile crowds. With +the failure of this attempt at flight in the end of June 1791, ends the +third phase of the Revolution. + + +IV + +_From June 1791 to September 1792._ + +To understand the capital effect both of this flight and of its failure, +we must once more insist upon the supreme position of the monarchy in +the traditions and instinct of French polity. The unwisdom of the flight +it would be difficult to exaggerate: it is impossible to exaggerate the +moral revolution caused by its failure. It was regarded as virtually an +abdication. The strong body of provincial, silent, and moderate opinion, +which still centred on the King and regarded it as his function to lead +and to govern, was bewildered, and in the main divorced, in the future, +from the Crown. + +It is an excellent proof of what the monarchy had for so long been to +France, that even in such a crisis barely the name of "a republic" was +mentioned, and that only in the intellectual circles in Paris. All the +constitutional and standing forces of society conspired to preserve the +monarchy at the expense of no matter what fictions. The middle class +Militia Guard under La Fayette repressed, in what is known as the +Massacre of the Champ-de-Mars, the beginnings of a popular movement. The +more Radical leaders (among whom was Danton) fled abroad or hid. The +Duke of Orleans utterly failed to take advantage of the moment, or to +get himself proclaimed regent: the monarchical tradition was too strong. + +Immediately after the second anniversary of the taking of the Bastille, +in July, the decrees of Parliament created the fiction that the King was +not responsible for the flight, that he "had been carried off," and in +the following September, though until then suspended from executive +power, the King, on taking the oath to the Constitution, was once more +at the head of all the forces of the nation. + +But all this patching and reparation of the faade of constitutional +monarchy (a fiction whose tawdriness is more offensive to the French +temper than its falsehood) had come too late. Already the Queen had +written to her brother, the Emperor of Austria, suggesting the +mobilisation of a considerable force, and its encampment on the +frontier, to overawe the revolutionary movement. Her action coincided +within a few days with the end of that great Parliament, which had been +chosen on the most democratic suffrage, and which had transformed the +whole of society and laid the basis of the revolutionary Constitution. +With the meeting of the National Assembly's successor on the 1st of +October, 1791, war was already possible; that possibility was to be +transformed very soon into probability, and at last into actuality. + +In the new Parliament the weight, not of numbers but of leadership, fell +to a group of enthusiastic and eloquent men who, from the fact that +certain of their principal members came from the Gironde, were called +_The Girondins_. They represented the purest and the most enthusiastic +ideal of democracy, less national, perhaps, than that advocated by men +more extreme than they, but of a sort which, from that time to this, has +been able to rouse the enthusiasm of historians. + +Vergniaud and Isnard were their great orators, Brissot was their +intellectual intriguer, and the wife of Roland, one of their members, +was, as it were, the soul of the whole group. It was the fact that these +men desired war which made war certain, once the temper of this new +second Assembly should be felt. + +The extremists over against them, to whom I have alluded (known as "the +Mountain"), were especially Parisian in character. Robespierre, who had +been first an obscure, and later a sectarian orator of the National +Assembly, though not sitting in this second Parliament, was perhaps the +most prominent figure in that group, for he was the public orator of +Paris; and indeed the Mountain was Paris; Paris, whether inside or +outside the Parliament; Paris acting as the responsible brain of France. +Later, it was the Mountain (that had first opposed the war) which was to +ensure the success of the French arms by a rigidity and despotism in +action such as the purer and less practical minds of the Girondins +abhorred. + +On the 3rd of December, 1791 (to quote a fundamental date in the rapid +progress towards the war which was to transform the Revolution), the +King--writing in a manner which betrays dictation by his wife--begged +the King of Prussia (as _she_ had begged the Emperor) to mobilise an +armed force, and with it to back a Congress that should have for its +object the prevention of the spread of the Revolution. That letter was +typical of the moment. From both sides tension was rapidly proceeding to +the breaking point. Nor was the tension merely upon generalities. The +Revolution had broken a European treaty in the annexation of the Papal +State of Avignon, and it had broken European conventions when it had +abolished in Alsace feudal rights that were possessed by the princes of +the empire. It was as though some State to-day, attempting Collectivism, +should confiscate, along with other property, securities lying in its +banks, but held by the nationals of a foreign State. + +On the revolutionary side also there was a definite point at issue, +which was the permission accorded within the empire for the emigrants to +meet in arms and to threaten the French frontier. + +But these precise and legal points were not the true causes of the war. +The true causes of the war were the desire of the unreformed European +Governments (notably those of Prussia and Austria) that the Revolution +should, in their own interests, be checked, and the conviction that +their armed forces were easily capable of effecting the destruction of +the new French _rgime_. + +The Court of Vienna refused to accept a just indemnity that was offered +the princes of the empire in Alsace for the loss of their old feudal +rights; Leopold, the emperor, who was one of the same generation as the +French King and Queen, died upon the 1st of March, 1792, and was +succeeded by a son only twenty-four years of age and easily persuaded to +war. + +On the French side, with the exception of the Mountain and notably of +Robespierre, there was a curious coalition of opinion demanding war. + +The Court and the reactionaries were sufficiently certain of the victory +of the Allies to find their salvation in war. + +The revolutionary party, that is, the mass of public opinion and the +"patriots," as they called themselves, the Girondins, also, and +especially, desired war as a sort of crusade for the Revolution; they +suffered grievous illusions, as enthusiasts always must, and believed +the French armed forces capable of sustaining the shock. The plans had +already been drawn up for the campaign (and promptly betrayed to the +enemy by the Queen); Dumouriez, an excellent soldier, had from the +middle of March 1792 been the chief person in the ministry, and the +director of foreign affairs, and a month later, on the 20th of April, +war was declared against Austria, or, to be accurate, against "the King +of Hungary and Bohemia." + +Such was still the official title of Marie Antoinette's nephew, who, +though now succeeded to the empire, had not yet been crowned emperor. It +was hoped to confine the war to this monarch, and, indeed, the German +princes of the empire did not join him (the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel +was an exception). But the one German power that counted most, the +kingdom of Prussia, which Dumouriez had especially hoped to keep +neutral, joined forces with Austria. The royal letters had done their +work. + +At this critical moment the French armed forces and the French +strongholds were at their worst. The discipline of the army was +deplorable. The regular soldiers of the old _rgime_ had lost from six +to nine thousand officers by emigration, and mixed no better than water +and oil with the revolutionary volunteers who had been drafted (to the +number of over two hundred battalions) into the ranks of the army; +moreover, these volunteer battalions were for the most part ill +provided, far below their establishment, some only existed on paper; +none were trained as soldiers should be trained. In a more orderly time, +when the decrees of the Government corresponded with reality, four +hundred thousand men would have held the frontier; such a number was in +the estimates. As it was, from the Swiss mountains to the English +Channel, the French could count on no more than _one-fifth_ of that +number. Eighty thousand alone were under arms. The full Prussian army +was, alone, apart from its allies, close upon treble the size of this +disorganised and insufficient force. + +Panics at once ludicrous and tragic opened the campaign upon the French +side. The King took advantage of them to dismiss his Girondin Ministry +and to form a reactionary Government. The Parliament replied by measures +useless to the conduct of war, and designed only to exasperate the +Crown, which was betraying the nation. It ordered the dismissal of the +royal Guard, the formation of a camp of revolutionary Federals outside +Paris, the transportation of the orthodox priests; in pursuit of the +Court's determination to resist the Assembly and to await the victorious +allies, Louis vetoed the last two decrees. La Fayette, who was now in +command of the army of the centre, with his headquarters at Sedan, right +upon the route of the invasion, declared for the King. + +Had the armies of Austria and Prussia moved with rapidity at this +moment, the Revolution was at an end. As it was, their mobilisation was +slow, and their march, though accurate, leisurely. It gave time for the +populace of Paris to demonstrate against the palace and the royal family +on the 20th of June. It was not until the first days of August that the +main force of the combined monarchs, under the generalship-in-chief of +the Duke of Brunswick (who had the reputation of being the best general +of his time), set out for the march on Paris. It was not until the 23rd +of August that the invaders took the first French frontier town, Longwy. + +Meanwhile two very important things had lent to the French, in spite of +the wretched insufficiency of their armed force, an intensity of feeling +which did something to supply that insufficiency. In the first place, +the third anniversary of the Fall of the Bastille, the 14th of July, had +called to Paris deputations from all the provinces, many of them armed; +this gave the national feeling unity. In the second place, Brunswick had +issued from Coblentz, which was his base, upon the 25th of that same +month of July, a manifesto which was known in Paris three days later, +and which (though certain modern historians have questioned this) +undoubtedly set revolutionary opinion ablaze. + +This manifesto demanded, in the name of the Allied Army, a complete +restoration of the old _rgime_, professed to treat the French and their +new authorities as rebels subject to military execution, and contained a +clause of peculiar gravity, which excited an immediate and exasperated +response from Paris. The authorship of this clause lay with Marie +Antoinette, and it threatened, if there were any attack upon the palace, +to give the capital over to military execution and total subversion. + +Two days later the Federals from Marseilles, a middle-class body of +excellent citizens, though merely amateurs at soldiering and small in +numbers, marched into the city. Their marching song has become famous +under the title of the "Marseillaise." They had accomplished the +astonishing feat of traversing France, drawing cannon with them, at the +rate of eighteen miles a day, in the height of a torrid summer, for +close upon a month on end. There is no parallel to such an effort in the +history of war, nor did contemporary opinion exaggerate when it saw in +the battalion of Marseilles the centre of the coming fight. + +The shock between the palace and the populace was joined in the morning +of the 10th of August. The palace was held by about six thousand men,[3] +of whom some twelve hundred were regulars of the Swiss Guard. The palace +(the Tuileries) was, or should have been, impregnable. The popular +attack, we may be certain, would have been beaten back had the +connection between the Tuileries and the Louvre on the south been +properly cut. The flooring had indeed been removed at this point for +some distance, but either the gap was not wide enough or the post was +insufficiently guarded; the populace and the Federals, badly beaten in +their main attack upon the long front of the palace, succeeded in +turning its flank where it joined on to the Louvre; they thus enfiladed +the suites of rooms and utterly put an end to the resistance of its +garrison. + +Meanwhile the King and Queen, the Dauphin and his little sister, with +others of the royal household, had taken refuge during the fighting in +the hall of the Parliament. + +After the victory of the populace their fate was debated and decided +upon; they were imprisoned in the Tower of the Temple, a medival +fortress still standing in the north-east of Paris, and though monarchy +was not yet formally abolished, the most extreme spirits which the +Revolution then contained, and the most vigorous, stepped into the place +of the old Executive, with Danton at their head. With them appeared in +the seat of Government the spirit of military action, its contempt for +forms and its rapid decision. The known accomplices of the supporters of +the Court's resistance and alliance with the invaders were arrested by +the hundred. The enrolment of volunteers, already enthusiastic +throughout France, was supported with the new vigour of official aid; +and the Revolution left at once all its old moorings to enter an extreme +phase. At the same moment the frontier was crossed and the national soil +invaded on the 19th of August. + +It is possible that the delay of the Prussians until that moment had +been calculated, for the position in France was complicated and their +decision to fight had been tardily arrived at. It was the news of the +fall of the palace that seems to have decided them. The place, like the +date, of this grave event, deserves to be more famous than it is. +Brunswick touched what was then French soil, in that little triangle +where now German and French Lorraine and Luxembourg meet. The village is +called Redange: thence did the privileged of Europe set out to reach +Paris and to destroy democracy. The first task occupied them for full +twenty-two years, upon the latter they are still engaged. + +What forces the French could there bring against Brunswick were +contemptuously brushed aside. Four days later he had, as we have seen, +taken the frontier stronghold of Longwy; within a week he was in front +of Verdun. + +Verdun had no chance of resistance, no garrison to call a garrison, and +no opportunity for defence. The news that it must fall reached Paris on +the morning of a fatal date, the 2nd of September; after its fall there +would lie nothing between it and the capital; and from that moment the +whole nature of the Revolution is wholly transformed by the +psychological effect of war. + + +V + +_From the invasion of September 1792 to the establishment of the +Committee of Public Safety, April 1793._ + +The fifth phase of the French Revolution may be said to date from these +first days of September 1792, when the news of the successful invasion +was maddening Paris, and when the revolutionary Executive, established +upon the ruins of the old dead monarchy and in its image, was firmly in +the saddle, up to the establishment of the yet more monarchical +"Committee of Public Safety," seven months later. And these seven months +may be characterised as follows:-- + +They were a period during which it was attempted to carry on the +revolutionary war against the Governments of Europe upon democratic +principles. The attempt failed. In the place of discipline and +comprehension and foresight the rising and intense enthusiasm of the +moment was depended upon for victory. The pure ideal of the Girondin +faction, with the model republic which it hoped to establish, proved +wholly insufficient for the conduct of a war; and to save the nation +from foreign conquest and the great democratic experiment of the +Revolution from disaster, it was necessary that the military and +disciplined side of the French, with all the tyranny that accompanies +that aspect of their national genius, should undertake the completion of +the adventure. + +This period opens with what are called the Massacres of September. I +have said upon a former page that "the known accomplices and supporters +of the Court's alliance with the invaders were arrested by the hundred," +upon the fall of the palace and the establishment of a revolutionary +Executive with Danton at its head. + +These prisoners, massed in the jails of the city, were massacred to the +number of eleven hundred by a small but organised band of assassins +during the days when the news of the fall of Verdun was expected and +reached the capital. Such a crime appalled the public conscience of +Europe and of the French people. It must never be confused with the +judicial and military acts of the Terror, nor with the reprisals +undertaken against rebellion, nor with the gross excesses of mob +violence; for though votes in favour of the immediate execution of those +who had sided with the enemies of the country were passed in certain +primary assemblies, the act itself was the mechanical, deliberate and +voluntary choice of a few determined men. It had, therefore, a character +of its own, and that character made it stand out for its contemporaries +as it should stand out for us: it was murder. + +The prisoners were unarmed--nay, though treasonable, they had not +actually taken arms; their destruction was inspired, in most of those +who ordered it, by mere hatred. Those who ordered it were a small +committee acting spontaneously, and Marat was their chief.[4] + +It was under the impression of these massacres that the Deputies of the +new or third Assembly of the Revolution, known to history as _The +Convention_, met in Paris. + +This Parliament was to be at first the actual, later the nominal +governing power in France during the three critical years that followed; +years which were the military salvation of the Revolution, and which +therefore permitted the establishment of the democratic experiment in +modern Europe. + +It was on the 20th of September that the Convention met for its first +sitting, which was held in the palace of the Tuileries. During the hours +of that day, while it was electing its officials, choosing its Speaker +and the rest, the French Army upon the frontier, to its own astonishment +and to that of its enemy, managed to hold in check at the cannonade of +_Valmy_ the allied invaders. + +Upon the morrow the new Assembly met in the riding school (the Mange), +where the two former Assemblies had also sat. It was about to separate +after that day's sitting when one of the members proposed the abolition +of Royalty; the Convention voted the reform unanimously and dispersed. + +On the third day, the 22nd of September, it was decreed that the public +documents should henceforward bear the date "First Year of the +Republic"; but there was no solemnity on the occasion; the idea of "No +King" was novel and untried; there was as yet no enthusiasm for any save +the monarchic form of government. It was not until the title "Republic" +began to connote in men's minds political liberty, and had become also +the flag, as it were, for the victorious national defence, that the +Republican name acquired in our Europe, and from France, that strong and +almost religious force which it has since retained. + +The check given to the invaders at Valmy (again to the astonishment of +both soldiers and statesmen!) determined the campaign. Sickness and the +difficulty of communications made the further advance of the invaders +impossible. They negotiated for and obtained an unmolested retreat, and +a few weeks later they had re-crossed the frontier. + +Meanwhile, in Paris the great quarrel had begun between the Municipal +and the National Government, which, because Paris was more decided, more +revolutionary, and, above all, more military in temper than the +Parliament, was destined to terminate in the victory of the capital. The +Girondins still stood in the Assembly for an ideal republic; a republic +enjoying to the utmost limit individual liberty in its citizens and the +autonomy of local government in every city and parish; but opposed to +this ideal, and far more national, was that of the revolutionary +extremists, called in the Convention "the Mountain," who had the support +of the Municipal Government of Paris (known as "the Commune"), and were +capable of French victories in the field. These stood for the old French +and soldierly conception of a strong central Government, wherewith to +carry on the life-and-death struggle into which the Revolution had now +entered: therefore they conquered. + +All that autumn the quarrel between France and Europe remained doubtful, +for though the armies of the Republic under Dumouriez won the battle of +Jemappes, swept across the north-eastern frontier and occupied Belgium, +while to the south another French army swept right up to the Rhine, +Dumouriez himself knew well enough that a campaign undertaken merely +upon enthusiasm, and with troops so mixed in character and many of them +so undisciplined, would end fatally. But until the advent of the new +year public opinion was not instructed upon these lines, and the +revolutionary war seemed to have passed suddenly from the defence of the +national territory to a crusade against the kings and the aristocratic +Governments of Europe. Enthusiasm, and enthusiasm alone, was the force +of the moment. Violent decrees such as the Declaration of Fraternity +(which decreed an alliance with all people struggling to be free) and +the opening of the Scheldt (a direct violation of treaty rights to which +England, among other nations, was a partner) were characteristic of the +moment; chief act of all, the King was put upon his trial at the bar of +the Parliament. + +It was upon the 4th of January, 1793 (the King had already made his will +upon Christmas Day), that the chief orator of the Girondins moved that +the sentence should be referred to the people for ratification. The fear +of civil war more than anything else forbade this just suggestion to +pass. Upon the 15th of January the question was put to the Parliament, +"whether the King had been guilty of conspiring against public liberty +and of attempting the general safety of the State." Many were absent and +many abstained: none replied in the negative; the condemnation of Louis +was therefore technically almost a unanimous one. + +The voting on these grave issues was what the French call "nominal": +that is, each member was called upon "by name" to give his vote--and an +expression of opinion as well if he so chose. A second attempt to appeal +to the people was rejected by 424 to 283. On the third question, which +was the decisive one of the penalty, 721 only could be found to vote, +and of these a bare majority of 53 declared for death as against the +minority, of whom some voted for the death penalty "conditionally"--that +is, not at all--or voted against it. A respite was lost by a majority of +70; and on the 21st of January, 1793, at about ten in the morning, Louis +XVI was guillotined. + +Then followed war with England, with Holland, and with Spain; and almost +at that moment began the inevitable reflux of the military tide. For the +French eruption up to the Rhine in the Low Countries and the Palatinate, +had no permanent military basis upon which to depend. Dumouriez began to +retreat a month after the King's execution, and on the 18th of March +suffered a decisive defeat at Neerwinden. It was this retreat, followed +by that disaster, which decided the fate of the Girondin attempt to +found a republic ideally, individually, and locally free. Already, +before the battle of Neerwinden was fought, Danton, no longer a +minister, but still the most powerful orator in the Convention, proposed +a special court for trying cases of treason--a court which was later +called "the Revolutionary Tribunal." The news of Neerwinden prepared the +way for a stronger measure and some exceptional form of government; a +special Parliamentary committee already formed for the control of +ministers was strengthened when, on the 5th of April, after some +negotiation and doubt, Dumouriez, despairing of the armies of the +Republic, thought to ally his forces with the invaders and to restore +order. His soldiers refused to follow him; his treason was apparent; +upon the morrow the Convention nominated that first "Committee of Public +Safety" which, with its successor of the same name, was henceforward the +true despotic and military centre of revolutionary government. It was +granted secrecy in deliberation, the virtual though not the theoretic +control of the Ministry, sums of money for secret expenditure, and, in a +word, all the machinery necessary to a military executive. Rousseau's +_Dictator_ had appeared, the great mind which had given the _Contrat +Social_ to be the gospel of the Revolution had also foreseen one of the +necessary organs of democracy in its hardest trial; his theory had been +proved necessary and true in fact. Nine members formed this first +Committee: Barre, who may be called the clerk of it, Danton its genius, +and Cambon its financier, were the leading names. + +With the establishment of this truly national and traditional thing, +whose form alone was novel, but whose power and method were native to +all the military tradition of Gaul, the Revolution was saved. We have +now chiefly to follow the way in which the Committee governed and in +which it directed affairs in the great crisis of the war. This sixth +phase lasts for nearly sixteen months, from the beginning of April 1793 +to the 28th of July 1794, and it is convenient to divide those sixteen +months into two divisions. + + +VI + +_From April 1793 to July 1794._ + +The first division of this period, which ends in the height of the +summer of 1793, is the gradual consolidation of the Committee as a new +organ of government and the peril of destruction which it runs, in +common with the nation it governs at the hands of allied Europe. + +The second period includes part of August and all the rest of 1793, and +the first seven months of 1794, during which time the Committee is +successful in its military effort, the nation is saved, and in a manner +curiously dramatic and curiously inconsequential, the martial _rgime_ +of the Terror abruptly ceases. + +The first step in the consolidation of the power of the Committee was +their letting loose of the Commune of Paris and the populace it governed +against the Girondins. + +Looked at merely from the point of view of internal politics (upon +which most historians have concentrated) the attack of the populace of +Paris and their Commune against the Parliament seems to be no more than +the end of the long quarrel between the Girondins with their ideal +federal republic, and the capital with its instinct for strong +centralised government. But in the light of the military situation, of +which the Committee of Public Safety were vividly aware, and which it +was their business to control, a very different tale may be told. + +When the defeats began the Parliament had voted a levy of three hundred +thousand men. It was a mere vote which came to very little: not enough +in numbers and still less in moral, for the type of troops recruited +under a system of money forfeit and purchased substitutes was wholly +beneath the task of the great war. + +This law of conscription had been passed upon the 24th of February. The +date for its first application was, in many villages, fixed for the 10th +of March. All that country which borders the estuary of the Loire, to +the north and to the south, a country whose geographical and political +peculiarities need not here detain us, but which is still curiously +individual, began to resist. The decree was unpopular everywhere, of +course, as military service is everywhere unpopular with a settled +population. But here it had no ally, for the Revolution and all its +works were grossly unpopular as well. The error of the Civil +Constitution of the Clergy was a powerful factor in this revolt. The +piety and the orthodoxy of this district were and are exceptional. Some +such resistance in some such quarter was perhaps expected: what was not +expected was its military success. + +Four days before the defeat of Neerwinden itself, and four days after +the decree of conscription in the villages, a horde of peasantry had +taken possession of the town of Chollet in the southern part of this +district, Vende. Three days before the Committee of Public Safety was +formed the insurgents had defeated regular forces at Machecoul, and had +tortured and put to death their prisoners. The month of April, when the +Committee of Public Safety was first finding its seat in the saddle, saw +the complete success of the rebels. The forces sent against them were +worthless, for all military effort had been concentrated upon the +frontier. Most of them were not even what we should call militia. A +small force of regulars was to have moved from Orleans, but, before they +could attack, Thouars, Parthenay, and Fontenay fell into the power of +the rebels. These posts afforded an advanced triangle right into the +regularly administered territory of the Republic: the great town of +Nantes was outflanked. Even in such a moment the Girondins still clung +to their ideal: an individually free and locally autonomous republic. It +is little wonder that the temper of Paris refused to support them, or +their influence over the Parliament, and we can easily understand how +the new Committee supported Paris in its revolt. + +That revolt took place on the 31st of May. The forces under the command +of the capital did not march, but a deputation of the sections of Paris +demanded the arrest of the leading Girondins. The body of the debating +hall was invaded by the mob. The Committee of Public Safety pretended to +compromise between Paris and the Parliament, but a document, recently +analysed, sufficiently proves that their sympathy was with the Parisian +attack. They proposed, indeed, to put the armed force of Paris at the +disposition of the Assembly: that is, in their own hands. + +That day nothing of moment was done, but the Parliament had proved of no +strength in the face of the capital. On the frontier the advance of the +invaders had begun. The great barrier fortress of Valenciennes relied +for its defence upon the neighbouring camp of Famars. The garrison of +that camp had been compelled to evacuate it by the advance of the Allied +Army upon the 23rd of May, and though some days were to be spent before +the heavy artillery of the Austrians could be emplaced, Valenciennes was +henceforward at the mercy of its besiegers. There was news that La +Vende was not the only rebellion. Lyons had risen three days before. +There had been heavy fighting. The Royalists and the Girondins had +combined and had carried the town hall and established an +insurrectionary and unelected Municipal Government. Such news, coming +immediately after the 31st of May, roused the capital to action. This +time the Parisian forces actually marched against the Parliament. The +demand for the suspension of the twenty-two named Girondin deputies was +made under arms. Much has been written, and by the best historians, to +make of this successful day a mere conquest by the Commune of Paris over +the Parliament. Though Barre and Danton both protested in public, it +was in reality their politics that conquered with Paris. To the +twenty-two names that the forces of Paris had listed, seven were added. +The great Girondins, Brissot, Vergniaud and the rest, were not indeed +imprisoned, they were considered "under arrest in their houses." But the +moral authority of the Convention as an administrative machine, not as a +legislative one, was broken on this day, the 2nd of June, 1793. Paris +had ostensibly conquered, but the master who was stronger than ever and +whom Paris had served, was the Committee of Public Safety. + +This first Committee of Public Safety endured to the 10th of July. In +the midst of such a war and of such an internal struggle the Convention +had voted (upon the initiative of the Committee of Public Safety) the +famous Constitution of '93, that prime document of democracy which, as +though to mock its own ideal, has remained no more than a written thing +from then until now. Therein will be found universal suffrage, therein +the yearly Parliament, therein the referendum, therein the elected +Executive--a thing no Parliament would ever give us to-day. The +Constitution was passed but three weeks after the successful +insurrection of Paris. A fortnight later still, on the 10th of July, the +first of the Committees of Public Safety was followed by its successor. + +All this while the Vendeans were advancing. Nantes, indeed, had held out +against the rebels, but as we shall see in a moment, the Republican +troops had not yet made themselves good. The rebellion of Lyons was +fortifying itself, and a week later was to execute the Radical Chalier. +Marseilles was rising. On the 10th of July the Convention summoned to +its bar Westermann, the friend of Danton, who had just suffered defeat +at the hands of the western rebels. + +It is well to note at this point one of those small individual factors +which determine the fate of States. Danton, the master of all that first +movement towards centralisation, the man who had made the 10th of +August, who had negotiated with the Prussians after Valmy, who had +determined upon and formed a central government against the Girondin +anarchy--had broken down. His health was gone. He was a giant in body, +but for the moment he had tired himself out. + +The renewing of his Committee was proposed: he was thrust out from the +new choice. Barre remained to link the old Committee with the new. A +violent sectarian Calvinist pastor, Jeanbon Saint-Andr, among the +bravest and most warped of the Revolutionaries; Couthon, a friend of +Robespierre; Saint-Just, a still more intimate friend (a young, +handsome, enormously courageous and decisive man), entered, with others +to the number of nine, the new Committee. Seventeen days later, on the +27th of July, Robespierre replaced one of the minor members thus chosen. +He had precisely a year to live, and it is the moment for fixing before +the reader's mind the nature of his career. + +Robespierre was at this moment the chief figure in the eyes of the +crowd, and was soon to be the chief revolutionary figure in the eyes of +Europe: that is the first point. The second is of equal importance, and +is far less generally recognised. He was not, and was never destined to +be, the chief force in the revolutionary Government. + +As to the first point, Robespierre had attained this position from the +following combination of circumstances: first, alone of the +revolutionary personalities, he had been continually before the public +eye from the beginning; he had been a member of the first Parliament of +all and had spoken in that Parliament in the first month of its +sessions. Though then obscure in Versailles, he was already well known +in his province and native town of Arras. + +Secondly, this position of his in the public eye was maintained without +a break, and his position and reputation had increased by accumulation +month after month for the whole four years. No one else was left in the +political arena of whom this could be said. All the old reactionaries +had gone, all the moderate men had gone; the figures of 1793 were all +new figures--except Robespierre; and he owed this continued and steady +increase of fame to:-- + +Thirdly, his conspicuous and vivid sincerity. He was more wholly +possessed of the democratic faith of the _Contrat Social_ than any other +man of his time: he had never swerved from an article of it. There is no +better engine for enduring fame than the expression of real convictions. +Moreover-- + +Fourthly, his speeches exactly echoed the opinions of his audience, and +echoed them with a lucidity which his audience could not have commanded. +Whether he possessed true eloquence or no is a matter still debated by +those who are scholars in French letters. But it is certain that he had +in his own time all the effects of a great orator, though his manner was +precise and cold. + +Fifthly, he was possessed of a consistent body of doctrine: that is, he +was not only convinced of the general democratic creed which his +contemporaries held, and he not only held it unswervingly and +uncorruptedly, but he could supplement it with a system of morals and +even something which was the adumbration of religion. + +Sixthly, he had, as such characters always can, but not often do, gather +round themselves, a group of intensely devoted personal admirers and +supporters, chief of whom was the young and splendidly courageous +Saint-Just. + +It was the combination of all these things, I say, which made +Robespierre the chief personality in the public eye when he entered the +Committee of Public Safety on the 27th of July, 1793. + +Now let it be noted that, unlike his follower Saint-Just, and +exceedingly unlike Danton, Robespierre possessed none of those military +qualities without which it is impossible to be responsible for +government over a military nation--especially if that nation be in the +act of war: and such a war! The Committee of Public Safety was the Csar +of revolutionary France. Robespierre as a member of that Csar was +hopeless. His popularity was an advantage to his colleagues in the +Committee, but his conception of action upon the frontiers was vague, +personal, and futile. His ambition for leadership, if it existed, was +subordinate to his ambition to be the saviour of his people and of their +democratic experiment, and he had no comprehension of those functions of +leadership by which it can co-ordinate detail and impose a plan of +action. Robespierre, therefore, in every crisis of the last year we are +about to study, yielded to his colleagues, never impressed them and +never led them, and yet (it was the irony of his fate) was imagined by +his fellow countrymen and by the warring Governments of Europe to be the +master of them all. + +The first weeks after his appearance in the Committee of Public Safety +were the critical weeks of the whole revolutionary movement. The +despotic action of Paris (which I have concluded to be secretly +supported by the Committee)[5] had provoked insurrection upon all sides +in the provinces. Normandy had protested, and on the 13th of July a +Norman girl stabbed Marat to death. Lyons, as we have seen, had been +some weeks in revolt; Marseilles had rebelled in the first week of June, +Bordeaux and the whole department of the Gironde had of course risen, +for their men were at stake. Later Toulon, the great naval depot of +France, revolted: a reactionary municipal provincial Government was +formed in that port, the little boy imprisoned in the Temple, heir to +the kingdom, was proclaimed under the title of Louis XVII, and before +the end of August the English and Spanish fleets had been admitted into +the harbour and an excellent foreign garrison was defending the town +against the national Government. + +Meanwhile the Allies upon the Belgian frontier were doing what they +could, taking fortress after fortress, and while Mayence was falling on +the Rhine, Valenciennes and Cond were capitulating on the north-eastern +border, and a portion of the Allied Army was marching to besiege +Dunquerque. The insurrection in Vende, which had broken out in the +early part of the year, though checked by the resistance of Nantes, was +still successful in the field. + +It was in the month of August that a successful effort was made. Carnot, +who soon proved the military genius of the Revolution, entered the +Committee of Public Safety. On the 23rd of the month a true levy, very +different from the futile and insufficiently applied attempt of the +spring, was forced upon the nation by a vote in Parliament. It was a +levy of men, vehicles, animals and provision, and soon furnished +something not far short of half a million soldiers. With September the +tide turned, the first victory in this crisis of the struggle, +Hoondschoote, relieved Dunquerque in the early days of September. By +mid-October a second and decisive victory, that of Wattignies, relieved +Maubeuge. Lyons had been taken, Normandy was pacified long before; by +the end of the year Toulon was reoccupied, and at the same time the last +cohesive force of the Vendeans destroyed. + +But meanwhile the crisis had had a double effect, moral and material. +The moral effect had been a sort of national madness in which the most +extreme measures were proposed and many of them carried through with +what one may call a creative audacity. The calendar itself was changed, +the week itself abolished, the months re-named and re-adjusted. Such an +act sufficiently symbolises the mental attitude of the Revolutionaries. +They were determined upon a new earth. + +There went with this the last and most violent attack upon what was +believed to be the last remnants of Catholicism in the country, a +hideous persecution of the priesthood, in which an uncounted number of +priests died under the rigours of transportation or of violence. The +reprisals against the rebels varied from severity of the most awful kind +to cruelty that was clearly insane, and of which the worst examples took +place at Arras and at Nantes. + +In all this turmoil the governing centre of the country, the Committee +of Public Safety, not only kept its head but used the enormous forces of +the storm for the purposes of achieving military success, under that +system known as "the Terror," which was for them no more than martial +law, and an engine of their despotic control. Of the two thousand and +more that passed before the revolutionary tribunal and were executed in +Paris, the large majority were those whom the Committee of Public Safety +judged to be obstacles to their military policy; and most were men or +women who had broken some specific part of the martial code which the +Government had laid down. Some were generals who had failed or were +suspected of treason; and some, among the most conspicuous, were +politicians who had attempted to check so absolute a method of +conducting the war. + +Of these the greatest was Danton. Before the end of 1793 he began to +protest against the system of the Terror; he believed, perhaps, that the +country was now safe in the military sense and needed such rigours no +more. But the Committee disagreed, and were evidence available we should +perceive that Carnot in particular determined that such opposition must +cease. Danton and his colleagues--including Desmoulins, the journalist +of the Revolution and the chief publicist who promoted the days of July +1789--were executed in the first week of April 1794. + +Parallel to this action on the part of the Committee was their sudden +attack upon men of the other extreme: the men whose violence, excessive +even for that time, threatened to provoke reaction. Hbert was the chief +of these, the spokesman of the Commune of Paris; and he also perished. + +Meanwhile the Committee had permitted other persecutions and other +deaths, notably that of the Queen. A sane policy would have demanded +that she should be kept a hostage: she was sacrificed to the desire for +vengeance, and her head fell on the same day on which the decisive +battle of Wattignies was won. Later the King's sister, Madame Elisabeth, +was sacrificed to the same passions, and with her must be counted a +certain proportion of the victims whose destruction could be no part of +the Committee's scheme, and proceeded purely from the motives of an +ancient hatred, though in the case of many of these who were of +aristocratic birth or of influence through their wealth, it is not easy +to determine how far the possibility of their intrigue with the +foreigner may not have led them to the scaffold. + +In the last four months of the period we are considering in this book, +through April, that is, after the execution of Danton, through May and +June and almost to the end of July, Robespierre appears with a +particular prominence. Fads or doctrines of his own are admitted upon +the Statute Book of the Revolution, notably his religious dogmas of a +personal God and of the immortality of the soul. Nay, a public solemnity +is arranged in honour of such matters, and he is the high priest +therein. The intensity of the idolatry he received was never greater; +the numbers that shared it were, perhaps, diminishing. It is certain +that he did not appreciate how far the supports of his great popularity +were failing. It is certain that he saw only the increasing enthusiasm +of his immediate followers. The Committee still used him as their +tool--notably for an increase of the Terror in June, but it is possible +that for the first time in all these months he began to attempt some +sort of authority within the Committee: we know, for instance, that he +quarrelled with Carnot, who was easily the strongest man therein. + +In the past they had permitted him to indulge a private policy where it +did not interfere with the general military plan. He was largely +responsible, not through his own judgment but from his desire to voice +opinion, for the trial and execution of the Queen. He had temporised +when Danton was beginning his campaign against the Terror at the end of +1793, and it is an ineffaceable blot upon his memory and his justly +earned reputation for integrity and sincerity, that he first permitted +and then helped towards Danton's execution. We may presume from the few +indications we have that he protested against it in the secret counsels +of the Committee, but he had yielded, and what is more, since Saint-Just +desired to be Danton's accuser he had furnished Saint-Just with notes +against Danton. Though it was the Committee who were morally responsible +for the extreme extension of the Terror which proceeded during those +last few months, Robespierre had the unwisdom to act as their +instrument, to draft their last decrees, and, believing the Terror to be +popular, to support it in public. It was this that ruined him. The +extreme Terrorists, those who were not yet satiated with vengeance, and +who hated and feared a popular idol, determined to overthrow him. + +The mass of those who might be the next victims and who, knowing nothing +of the secret councils of the Committee, imagined Robespierre to be what +he posed as being, the master of the Committee, were eager for his +removal. In his fictitious character as the supposed chief power in the +State, all the growing nausea against the Terror was directed against +his person. + +Coincidently with such forces, the Committee, whom, relying upon his +public position, he had begun to interfere with, and probably to check +in their military action (he certainly had attempted unsuccessfully to +save certain lives against the decision of his colleagues), determined +to be rid of him. The crisis came in the fourth week of July: or as the +revolutionary calendar then went, in the second week of Thermidor. He +was howled down in the Parliament, an active and clever conspiracy had +organised all the latent forces of opposition to him; he still so +trusted in his popularity that the scene bewildered him, and he was +still so beloved and so ardently followed, that when at that same +sitting he was outlawed, his brother sacrificed himself to follow him. +Saint-Just was included in the sentence, and his strict friend Lebas +voluntarily accepted the same doom. + +What followed was at first a confusion of authority; put under arrest, +the governor of the prison to which Robespierre was dispatched refused +to receive him. He and his sympathisers met in the Htel de Ville after +the fall of darkness, and an attempt was made to provoke an +insurrection. There are many and confused accounts of what immediately +followed at midnight, but two things are certain: the populace refused +to rise for Robespierre, and the Parliament, with the Committee at its +back, organised an armed force which easily had the better of the +incipient rebellion at the Htel de Ville. It is probable that +Robespierre's signature was needed to the proclamation of insurrection: +it is certain that he did not complete it, and presumable that he would +not act against all his own theories of popular sovereignty and the +general will. As he sat there with the paper before him and his +signature still unfinished, the armed force of the Parliament burst into +the room, a lad of the name of Merda aimed a pistol from the door at +Robespierre, and shot him in the jaw. (The evidence in favour of this +version is conclusive.) Of his companions, some fled and were captured, +some killed themselves, most were arrested. The next day, the 10th +Thermidor, or 28th of July, 1794, at half-past seven in the evening, +Robespierre, with twenty-one others, was guillotined. + +The irony of history would have it that the fall of this man, which was +chiefly due to his interference with the system of the Terror, broke all +the moral force upon which the Terror itself had resided; for men had +imagined that the Terror was his work, and that, he gone, no excuse was +left for it. A reaction began which makes of this date the true term in +that ascending series of revolutionary effort which had by then +discussed every aspect of democracy, succeeded in the military defence +of that experiment, and laid down, though so far in words only, the +basis of the modern State. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[3] The reader should be warned that these numbers are hotly disputed. +The latest authority will allow no more than 4000. After a full +consultation of the evidence I can reduce the garrison to no less than +6000. + +[4] The legend that Danton was connected with the massacres is based on +insufficient historical foundation. There are several second or third +hand stories in support of it, but the chief positive evidence brought +forward in this connection is the stamped paper of the Minister of +Justice which, it has been amply proved by Dr. Robinet, was taken by a +subordinate and without Danton's knowledge or complicity. To the much +stupider story that the Federals of Marseilles took part in the +massacres, the modern student need pay no attention; it has been +destroyed piecemeal and on indefeasible documentary evidence in the +monograph of Pollio and Marcel. + +[5] On p. 403 of my monograph on Danton (Nisbet & Co., 1899) the reader +will find an unpublished report of the Committee of Public Safety, drawn +up immediately before the destruction of the Girondins on the 31st of +May. It forms, in my view, conclusive evidence, read in the light of +their other actions, of the Committee's determination to side with +Paris. + + + + +V + +THE MILITARY ASPECT OF THE REVOLUTION + + +The Revolution would never have achieved its object: on the contrary, it +would have led to no less than a violent reaction against those +principles which were maturing before it broke out, and which it carried +to triumph, had not the armies of revolutionary France proved successful +in the field; but the grasping of this mere historic fact, I mean the +success of the revolutionary armies, is unfortunately no simple matter. + +We all know that as a matter of fact the Revolution was, upon the whole, +successful in imposing its view upon Europe. We all know that from that +success as from a germ has proceeded, and is still proceeding, modern +society. But the nature, the cause and the extent of the military +success which alone made this possible, is widely ignored and still more +widely misunderstood. No other signal military effort which achieved its +object has in history ended in military disaster--yet this was the case +with the revolutionary wars. After twenty years of advance, during which +the ideas of the Revolution were sown throughout Western civilisation, +and had time to take root, the armies of the Revolution stumbled into +the vast trap or blunder of the Russian campaign; this was succeeded by +the decisive defeat of the democratic armies at Leipsic, and the superb +strategy of the campaign of 1814, the brilliant rally of what is called +the Hundred Days, only served to emphasise the completeness of the +apparent failure. For that masterly campaign was followed by Napoleon's +first abdication, that brilliant rally ended in Waterloo and the ruin of +the French army. When we consider the spread of Grecian culture over +the East by the parallel military triumph of Alexander, or the conquest +of Gaul by the Roman armies under Csar, we are met by political +phenomena and a political success no more striking than the success of +the Revolution. The Revolution did as much by the sword as ever did +Alexander or Csar, and as surely compelled one of the great +transformations of Europe. But the fact that the great story can be read +to a conclusion of defeat disturbs the mind of the student. + +Again, that element fatal to all accurate study of military history, the +imputation of civilian virtues and motives, enters the mind of the +reader with fatal facility when he studies the revolutionary wars. + +He is tempted to ascribe to the enthusiasm of the troops, nay, to the +political movement itself, a sort of miraculous power. He is apt to use +with regard to the revolutionary victories the word "inevitable," which, +if ever it applies to the reasoned, willing and conscious action of men, +certainly applies least of all to men when they act as soldiers. + +There are three points which we must carefully bear in mind when we +consider the military history of the Revolution. + +First, that it succeeded: the Revolution, regarded as the political +motive of its armies, won. + +Secondly, that it succeeded through those military aptitudes and +conditions which happened to accompany, but by no means necessarily +accompanied, the strong convictions and the civic enthusiasm of the +time. + +Thirdly, that the element of chance, which every wise and prudent +reasoner will very largely admit into all military affairs, worked in +favour of the Revolution in the critical moments of the early wars. + +With these points fixed, and with a readiness to return to them when we +have appreciated the military story, it is well to begin our study by +telling that story briefly, and upon its most general lines. In so +doing, it will be necessary to cover here and there points which have +already been dealt with in this book, but that is inevitable where one +is writing of the military aspect of any movement, for it is impossible +to deal with that aspect save as a living part of the whole: so knit +into national life is the business of war. + + +ONE + +When the Revolution first approached action, the prospect of a war +between France and any other great Power of the time--England, Prussia, +the Empire, or let us say Russia, or even Spain--was such a prospect as +might have been entertained at any time during the past two or three +generations of men. + +For pretty well a hundred years men had been accustomed to the +consideration of dynastic quarrels supported by a certain type of army, +which in a moment I shall describe. + +I have called these quarrels dynastic; that is, they were mainly +quarrels between the ruling houses of Europe: were mainly motived by +the desire of each ruling house to acquire greater territory and +revenue, and were limited by the determination of all the ruling houses +to maintain certain ideas inviolate, as, for instance, the sacredness of +monarchy, the independence of individual States, etc. Though they were +in the main dynastic, yet in proportion as a dynasty might represent a +united nation, they were national also. The English oligarchy was in +this respect peculiar and more national than any European Government of +its time. It is also true to say that the Russian despotism had behind +it, in most of its military adventures and in all its spirit of +expansion, the subconscious agreement of the people. + +Still, however national, the wars of the time preceding the Revolution +moved within a fixed framework of ideas, as it were, which no commander +and no diplomatist dreamed of exceeding. A, the crowned head of a State, +would have some claims against B, the crowned head of another State, +with regard to certain territories. C, the crowned head or Government of +a third State, would remain neutral or ally himself with either of the +two; if he allied himself, then, as a rule, it was with the weaker +against the stronger, in order to guarantee himself against too great an +increase on the part of a rival. Or, again, a rebellion would break out +against the power of A in some part of his dominions; then would B, +somewhat reluctantly (as the almost unlimited right of an existing +executive was still a strong dogma in men's minds), tend to ally +himself with the rebels in order to diminish the power of A. + +Human affairs have always in them very strongly and permanently +inherent, the character of a sport: the interest (at any rate of males) +in the conduct of human life is always largely an interest of seeing +that certain rules are kept, and certain points won, according to those +rules. We must, therefore, beware of ridiculing the warfare of the +century preceding the Revolution under the epithet of "a game." But it +is true of that warfare, and honourably true, that it attempted limited +things in a limited manner; it did not attempt any fundamental change in +society; it was not overtly--since the Thirty Years' War at least--a +struggle of ideas; it was conducted on behalf of known and limited +interests for known and highly limited objects, and the instruments with +which it was conducted were instruments artificial and segregated from +the general life of nations. + +These instruments were what have been called the "professional" armies. +The term is very insufficient, and, in part, misleading. The gentry of +the various Powers, mixed with whom were certain adventurers not always +of gentle blood, were the officers that led these forces; and for the +major part of the gentry in most European countries, the military career +was the chief field of activity. The men whom they led were not a +peasantry nor a working class, still less a civic force in which the +middle class would find itself engaged: they were the poorest and the +least settled, some would have said the dregs of European life. With the +exception here and there of a man--usually a very young man whom the +fabled romance of this hard but glorious trade had attracted--and with +the exception of certain bodies that followed in a mass and by order the +relics of a feudal lordship, the armies of the period immediately +preceding the Revolution were armies of very poor men, who had sold +themselves into a sort of servitude often exciting and even adventurous, +but not, when we examine it minutely, a career that a free man would +choose. The men were caught by economic necessity, by fraud, and in +other ways, and once caught were held. No better proof of this could be +found than the barbarous severity of the punishments attached to +desertion, or to minor forms of indiscipline. So held, they were used +for the purposes of the game, not only in what would make them +serviceable instruments of war, but also in what would make them +pleasing to their masters. Strict alignment, certain frills of parade +and appearance, all that is required in a theatre or in a pretentious +household, appear in the military regulations of the time. + +I must not in all this be supposed to be belittling that great period +between 1660 and 1789, during which the art of war was most thoroughly +thought out, the traditions of most of our great European armies fixed, +and the permanent military qualities which we still inherit developed. +The men so caught as private soldiers could not but enjoy the game when +it was actively played, for men of European stock will always enjoy the +game of war; they took glory in its recital and in its memories; to be a +soldier, even under the servile conditions of the time, was a proper +subject for pride, and it is further to be remarked that the excesses of +cruelty discoverable in the establishment of their discipline were also +accompanied by very high and lasting examples of military virtue. The +behaviour of the English contingents at Fontenoy afford but one of many +examples of what I mean. + +Still, to understand the wars of the Revolution we must clearly +establish the contrast between the so-called professional armies which +preceded that movement and the armies which the Revolution invented, +used, and bequeathed to the modern world. + +So also, to revert to what was said above, we must recall the dynastic +and limited character of the wars in which the eighteenth century had +been engaged; at the outbreak of the Revolution no other wars were +contemplated by men. + +Had you spoken, for instance, at any moment in 1789, to a statesman, +whether of old experience or only introduced to political life by the +new movement, of the position of Great Britain, he would at once have +discussed that position in the terms of Great Britain's recent defeat at +the hands of France in the affair of the American colonies. Had you +discussed with him the position of Prussia he would at once have argued +it in connection with Prussia's secular opposition to Austria and the +Empire. Had you asked him how he considered Spain, he would have spoken +of the situation of Spain as against France in the light of the fact +that Spain was a Bourbon monarchy allied in blood to the French throne. +And so forth. No true statesman imagined at the time, nor, indeed, for +many years, that a war of _ideas_, nor even, strictly speaking, of +_nations_, was possible. Even when such a war was actually in process of +waging, the diplomacy which attempted to establish a peace, the +intrigues whereby alliances were sought, or neutrality negotiated, were +dependent upon the older conception of things; and the historian is +afforded, as he regards this gigantic struggle, the ironic satisfaction +of seeing men fighting upon doctrines the most universal conceivable and +yet perpetually changing their conduct during the struggle according to +conceptions wholly particular, local and ephemeral, and soon to be +entirely swept away by time. + +Napoleon himself must needs marry an Austrian archduchess as part of +this old prejudice, and for years brains as excellent as Danton's or +Talleyrand's conjecture the possibility of treating now England, now +Prussia, as neutral to the vast attempt of the French to destroy +privilege in European society! + +One may say that for two years the connection of the revolutionary +movement with arms had no aspect save that of civil war. True, whenever +a considerable change is in progress in society the possibility of +foreign war in connection with it must always arise. Were some European +State, for instance, to make an experiment in Collectivism to-day, the +chance of foreign intervention would certainly be discussed by the +promoters of that experiment. But no serious danger of an armed struggle +between the French and any of their neighbours in connection with the +political experiment of the Revolution was imagined by the mass of +educated men in France itself nor without the boundaries of France +during those first two years. And, I repeat, the military aspect of +those years was confined to civil tumult. Nevertheless, that aspect is +not to be neglected. The way in which the French organised their civil +war (and there was always something of it present from the summer of +1789 onwards) profoundly affected the foreign war that was to follow: +for in their internal struggles great masses of Frenchmen became +habituated to the physical presence, millions to the discussion, of +arms. + +It is, as we have seen in another part of this book, a repeated and +conspicuous error to imagine that the first revolutionary outbreaks were +not met sufficiently sternly by royal troops. On the contrary, the royal +troops were used to the utmost and were defeated. The populace of the +large towns, and especially of Paris, proved itself capable of military +organisation and of military action. When to this capacity had been +added the institution of the militia called the National Guard, there +were already the makings of a nation wholly military. + +Much in this exceptional and new position must be ascribed to the Gallic +character. It may be said that from the fall of the Roman Empire to the +present day that character has been permanently and of its own volition +steeped in the experience of organised fighting. Civil tumult has been +native to it, the risk of death in defence of political objects has been +equally familiar, and the whole trade of arms, its necessary +organisation, its fatigues and its limiting conditions, have been very +familiar to the population throughout all these centuries. But beyond +this the fact that the Revolution prepared men in the school of civil +tumult was of the first advantage for its later aptitude against foreign +Powers. + +It is always well in history to fix a definite starting-point for any +political development, and the starting-point of the revolutionary wars +may easily be fixed at the moment when Louis, his queen and the royal +children attempted to escape to the frontier and to the Army of the +Centre under the command of Bouill. This happened, as we have seen, in +June 1791. + +Many factors combine to make that date the starting-point. In the first +place, until that moment no actual proof had been apparent in the eyes +of European monarchs of the captivity of their chief exemplar, the king +of France. + +The wild march upon Versailles, in the days of October 1789, had its +parallel in a hundred popular tumults with which Europe was familiar +enough for centuries. But the rapidly succeeding reforms of the year +1790, and even the great religious blunder of 1791, had received the +signature and the public assent of the Crown. The Court, though no +longer at Versailles, was splendid, the power of the King over the +Executive still far greater than that of any other organ in the State, +and indefinitely greater than that of any other individual in the State. +The talk of captivity, of insult and the rest, the outcries of the +emigrants and the perpetual complaint of the French royal family in its +private relations, seemed exaggerated, or at any rate nothing to act +upon, until there came the shock of the King's attempted flight and +recapture. This clinched things; and it clinched them all the more +because more than one Court, and especially that of Austria, believed +for some days that the escape had been successful. + +Again, the flight and its failure put the army into a ridiculous +posture. Action against the Revolution was never likely, so long as the +discipline and steadiness of the French army were believed in abroad. +But the chief command had hopelessly failed upon that occasion, and it +was evident that the French-speaking troops could not easily be trusted +by the Executive Government or by their own commanders. Furthermore, the +failure of the flight leads the Queen, with her vivacity of spirit and +her rapid though ill-formed plans, to turn for the first time to the +idea of military intervention. Her letters suggesting this (in the form +of a threat rather than a war, it is true) do not begin until after her +capture at Varennes. + +Finally, coincident with that disaster was the open mention of a +Republic, the open suggestion that the King should be deposed, and the +first definite and public challenge to the principles of monarchy which +the Revolution had thrown down before Europe. + +We are, therefore, not surprised to find that this origin of the +military movement was followed in two months by the Declaration of +Pillnitz. + +With the political nature of that Declaration one must deal elsewhere. +Its military character must here be observed. + +The Declaration of Pillnitz corresponded as nearly as possible to what +in the present day would be an order preparatory to mobilising a certain +proportion of the reserve. It cannot with justice be called equivalent +to an order _calling out_ all the reserves, still less equivalent to an +order mobilising upon a war footing the forces of a modern nation, for +such an action is tantamount to a declaration of war (as, for instance, +was the action of the English Government before the South African +struggle), and Pillnitz was very far from that. But Pillnitz was +certainly as drastic a military proceeding as would be the public +intimation by a group of Powers that the reserves had been warned in +connection with their quarrel against another Power. It was, for +instance, quite as drastic as the action of Austria against Servia in +1908. And it was intended to be followed by such submission as is +expected to follow upon the threat of superior force. + +Such was the whole burden of Marie Antoinette's letters to her brother +(who had called the meeting at Pillnitz), and such was the sense in +which the politicians of the Revolution understood it. + +All that autumn and winter the matter chiefly watched by foreign +diplomatists and the clearest of French thinkers was the condition of +the French forces and of their command. Narbonne's appointment to the +War Office counted more than any political move, Dumouriez' succession +to him was the event of the time. Plans of campaign were drawn up (and +promptly betrayed by Marie Antoinette to the enemy), manifold occasions +for actual hostilities were discovered, the Revolution challenged the +Emperor in the matter of the Alsatian princes, the Emperor challenged, +through Kaunitz, the Revolution in a letter directly interfering with +the internal affairs of France, and pretending to a right of _ingrence_ +therein; and on the 20th of April, 1792, war was declared against the +Empire. Prussia thereupon informed the French Government that she made +common cause with the Emperor, and the revolutionary struggle had begun. + +The war discovered no serious features during its first four months: so +slow was the gathering and march of the Allies; but the panics into +which the revolutionary troops fell in the first skirmishes, their lack +of discipline, and the apparent breakdown of the French military power, +made the success of the Invasion in Force, when it should come, seem +certain. The invading army did not cross the frontier until more than a +week after the fall of the palace. Longwy capitulated at once; a week +later, in the last days of August, the great frontier fortress of Verdun +was summoned. It capitulated almost immediately. + + +TWO + +On the 2nd of September Verdun was entered by the Prussians, and a +little outside the gates of the town, near a village bearing the name of +Regret, the allied camp was fixed. Rather more than a week later, on the +11th, the Allies marched against the line of the Argonne. + +The reader will remember that this moment, with the loss of the frontier +fortresses Longwy and Verdun, and the evidence of demoralisation which +that afforded, was also the moment of the September massacres and of the +horrors in Paris. Dumouriez and the mixed French force which he +commanded had been ordered by the Ministers of War to hold the line of +the Argonne against which the Allies were marching. And here it is well +to explain what was meant in a military sense by this word "line." + +The Argonne is a long, nearly straight range of hills running from the +south northward, a good deal to the west of north. + +Their soil is clay, and though the height of the hills is only three +hundred feet above the plain, their escarpment or steep side is towards +the east, whence an invasion may be expected. They are densely wooded, +from five to eight miles broad, the supply of water in them is bad, in +many parts undrinkable; habitation with its provision for armies and +roads extremely rare. It is necessary to insist upon all these details +because the greater part of civilian readers find it difficult to +understand how formidable an obstacle so comparatively unimportant a +feature in the landscape may be to an army upon the march. It was quite +impossible for the guns, the wagons, and therefore the food and the +ammunition of the invading army, to pass through the forest over the +drenched clay land of that wet autumn save where proper roads existed. +These were only to be found wherever a sort of natural pass negotiated +the range. + +Three of these passes alone existed, and to this day there is very +little choice in the crossing of these hills. The accompanying sketch +will explain their disposition. Through the southernmost went the great +high road from the frontier and Verdun to Paris. At the middle one +(which is called the Gap of Grandpr) Dumouriez was waiting with his +incongruous army. The third and northern one was also held, but less +strongly. The obvious march for an unimpeded invader would have been +from Verdun along the high road, through the southern pass at "Les +Islettes," and so to Chalns and on to Paris. But Dumouriez, marching +down rapidly from the north, had set an advanced guard to hold that pass +and was lying himself with the mass of the army on the pass to the north +of it at Grandpr. Against Grandpr the Prussians marched, and meanwhile +the Austrians were attacking the further pass to the north. Both were +forced. Dumouriez fell back southward to St. Menehould. Meanwhile +Kellermann was coming up from Metz to join him, and all the while the +main pass at "Les Islettes," through which the great road to Paris went, +continued to be held by the French. + +[Illustration: Sketch Map, showing the turning of the positions on the +Argonne and the Cannonade at Valmy, September 1792.] + +The Prussians and the Austrians joined forces in the plain known as the +Champagne Pouilleuse, which lies westward of Argonne. It will be seen +that as they marched south along this plain to meet Dumouriez and to +defeat him, their position was a peculiar one: they were nearer the +enemy's capital than the enemy's army was, and yet they had to fight +with their backs to that capital, and their enemy the French had to +fight with their faces towards it. Moreover, it must be remarked that +the communications of the Allied Army were now of a twisted, roundabout +sort, which made the conveyance of provisions and ammunition slow and +difficult--but they counted upon an immediate destruction of Dumouriez' +force and after that a rapid march on the capital. + +On September 19 Kellermann came up from the south and joined hands with +Dumouriez near St. Menehould, and on the morning of the 20th his force +occupied a roll of land on which there was a windmill and immediately +behind which was the village of Valmy; from this village the ensuing +action was to take its name. It must here be insisted upon that both +armies had been subjected to the very worst weather for more than a +fortnight, but of the two the Prussian force had suffered from this +accident much more severely than the French. Dysentery had already +broken out, and the length and tortuousness of their communications were +greatly emphasised by the condition of the roads. + +On the morning of that day, the 20th of September, a mist impeded all +decisive movements. There was an encounter, half accidental, between an +advanced French battery and the enemy's guns, but it was not until +mid-morning that the weather lifted enough to show each force its +opponent. Then there took place an action, or rather a cannonade, the +result of which is more difficult to explain, perhaps, than any other +considerable action of the revolutionary wars. For some hours the +Prussian artillery, later reinforced by the Austrian, cannonaded the +French position, having for its central mark the windmill of Valmy, +round which the French forces were grouped. At one moment this cannonade +took effect upon the limbers and ammunition wagons of the French; there +was an explosion which all eye-witnesses have remembered as the chief +feature of the firing, and which certainly threw into confusion for some +moments the ill-assorted troops under Kellermann's command. At what hour +this took place the witnesses who have left us accounts differ to an +extraordinary extent. Some will have it at noon, others towards the +middle of the afternoon--so difficult is it to have any accurate account +of what happens in the heat of an action. At any rate, if not +coincidently with this success, at some moment not far removed from it, +the Prussian charge was ordered, and it is here that the difficulties of +the historian chiefly appear. That charge was never carried home; +whether, as some believe, because it was discovered, after it was +ordered, to be impossible in the face of the accuracy and intensity of +the French fire, or whether, as is more probably the case, because the +drenched soil compelled the commanders to abandon the movement after it +had begun--whatever the cause may have been, the Prussian force, though +admirably disciplined and led, and though advancing in the most exact +order, failed to carry out its original purpose. It halted halfway up +the slope, and the action remained a mere cannonade without immediate +result apparent upon either side. + +Nevertheless that result ultimately turned out to be very great, and if +we consider its place in history, quite as important as might have been +the result of a decisive action. In the first place, the one day's delay +which it involved was just more than the calculations of the Allies, +with their long impeded line of communications, had allowed for. In the +next place, a singular increase in determination and moral force was +infused into the disheartened and ill-matched troops of the French +commanders by this piece of resistance. + +We must remember that the French force upon the whole expected and +discounted a defeat, the private soldier especially had no confidence in +the result; and to find that at the first action which had been so long +threatened and had now at last come, he could stand up to the enemy, +produced upon him an exaggerated effect which it would never have had +under other circumstances. + +Finally, we must recollect that whatever causes had forbidden the +Prussian charge forbade on the next day a general advance against the +French position. And all the time the sickness in the Prussian camp was +rapidly increasing. Even that short check of twenty-four hours made a +considerable difference. A further delay of but yet another day, during +which the Allied Army could not decide whether to attack at once or to +stand as they were, very greatly increased the list of inefficients from +illness. + +For a whole week of increasing anxiety and increasing inefficiency the +Allied Army hung thus, impotent, though they were between the French +forces and the capital. Dumouriez ably entertained this hesitation, with +all its accumulating dangers for the enemy, by prolonged negotiations, +until upon the 30th of September the Prussian and Austrian organisation +could stand the strain no longer, and its commanders determined upon +retreat. It was the genius of Danton, as we now know, that chiefly +organised the withdrawal of what might still have been a dangerous +invading force. It is principally due to him that no unwise Jingoism was +permitted to claim a trial of strength with the invader, that he was +allowed to retire with all his guns, his colours and his train. The +retreat was lengthy and unmolested, though watched by the French forces +that discreetly shepherded it but were kept tightly in hand from Paris. +It was more than three weeks later when the Allied Army, upon which +Europe and the French monarchy had counted for an immediate settlement +of the Revolution, re-crossed the frontier, and in this doubtful and +perhaps inexplicable fashion the first campaign of the European Powers +against the Revolution utterly failed. + + +THREE + +Following upon this success, Dumouriez pressed on to what had been, from +the first moment of his power at the head of the army, his personal +plan--to wit, the invasion of the Low Countries. + +To understand why this invasion failed and why Dumouriez thought it +might succeed, we must appreciate the military and political situation +of the Low Countries at the time. They then formed a very wealthy and +cherished portion of the Austrian dominions; they had latterly suffered +from deep disaffection culminating in an open revolution, which was due +to the Emperor of Austria's narrow and intolerant contempt of religion. +From his first foolish policy of persecution and confiscation he had +indeed retreated, but the feeling of the people was still strongly +opposed to the Government at Vienna. It is remarkable, indeed, and in +part due to the pressure of a strongly Protestant and aristocratic +state, Holland, to the north of them, that the people of the Austrian +Netherlands retained at that time a peculiar attachment to the Catholic +religion. The Revolution was quite as anti-Catholic as the Austrian +Emperor, but of the persecution of the latter the Belgians (as we now +call them) knew something; that of the former they had not yet learnt to +dread. It was, therefore, Dumouriez' calculation that, in invading this +province of the Austrian power, he would be fighting in friendly +territory. Again, it was separated from the political centre of the +empire; it was, therefore, more or less isolated politically, and even +for military purposes communication with it was not so easy, unless, +indeed, Austria could count on a complete co-operation with Prussia, +which Power had been for now so long her ruthless and persistent rival. + +[Illustration: Sketch Map of towns occupied by French in 1792 and +evacuated in March 1793, with sites of battles of Jemappes and of +Neerwinden, and of Dumouriez' treason.] + +Favourable, however, as the circumstances appeared for an invasion, two +factors telling heavily against the French had to be counted: the first +was the formation of their army, the second the spirit of rebellion +against any anti-Catholic Government which had given such trouble to +Joseph II. + +Of these two factors by far the most important was, of course, the +first. If the French forces had been homogeneous, in good spirit, and +well trained, they might have held what they won; as a fact, they were +most unhomogeneous, great portions of them were ill trained, and, worst +of all, there was no consistent theory of subordinate command. Men who +imagined that subordinate, that is, regimental, command in an army +could be erected from below, and that a fighting force could resemble a +somewhat lax and turbulent democracy, marched alongside of and were +actually incorporated with old soldiers who had spent their whole +careers under an unquestioned discipline, and under a subordinate +command which came to them they knew not whence, and as it were by fate. +The mere mixture of two such different classes of men in one force would +have been bad enough to deal with, but what was worse, the political +theories of the day fostered the military error of the new battalions +though the politicians dared not interfere with the valuable +organisation of the old. + +The invasion of the Low Countries began with a great, though somewhat +informal and unfruitful success, in the victory of Jemappes. It was the +first striking and dramatic decisive action which the French, always of +an eager appetite for such news, had been given since between forty and +fifty years. The success in America against the English, though +brilliantly won and solidly founded, had not presented occasions of this +character, and Fontenoy was the last national victory which Paris could +remember. Men elderly or old in this autumn of 1792 would have been boys +or very young men when Fontenoy was fought. The eager generation of the +Revolution, with its military appetites and aptitudes, as yet had hardly +expected victory, though victory was ardently desired by them and +peculiarly suitable to their temper. + +It may be imagined, therefore, what an effect the news of Jemappes had +upon the political world in Paris. The action was fought just below the +town of Mons, a few miles over the frontier, and consisted in a somewhat +ill-ordered but successful advance across the River Haine. Whether +because the Austrians, with an inferior force, attempted to hold too +long a line, or because the infantry and even the new French volunteer +battalions, as yet untried by fatigue, proved irresistible in the centre +of the movement, Jemappes was a victory so complete that the attempts of +apologists to belittle it only serve to enhance its character. + +Like many another great and apparently decisive action, however, it bore +no lasting fruit. Both the factors of which I have spoken above appeared +immediately after this success. Belgium was, indeed, over-run by the +French, but in their over-running of it with something like eighty +thousand men, they made no attempt to spare the traditions or to +conciliate the sympathies of the inhabitants. Hardly was Jemappes won +when Mons, the neighbouring fortified frontier town, was at once endowed +with the whole machinery of revolutionary government. Church property +was invaded and occasionally rifled, and the French paper money, the +assignats of which we have heard, poured in to disturb and in places to +ruin the excellent commercial system upon which Belgium then as now +reposed. + +Jemappes was fought upon the 6th of November, 1702. Brussels was entered +upon the 14th, and throughout that winter the Low Countries lay +entirely in the hands of the French. The Commissioners from the +Convention, though endowing Belgium with republican institutions, +treated it as a conquered country, and before the breaking of spring, +the French Parliament voted its annexation to France. This annexation, +the determination of the politicians in Paris that the new Belgian +Government should be republican and anti-Catholic, the maltreatment of +the Church in the occupied country and the increasing ill discipline and +lack of cohesion in his army, left Dumouriez in a position which grew +more and more difficult as the new year, 1793, advanced. It must be +remembered that this moment exactly corresponded with the execution of +the King and the consequent declaration of war by or against France in +the case of one Power after another throughout Europe. Meanwhile, it was +decided, foolishly enough, to proceed from the difficult occupation of +Belgium to the still more difficult occupation of Holland, and the siege +of Maestricht was planned. + +The moment was utterly ill-suited for such a plan. Every Executive in +the civilised world was coalescing openly or secretly, directly or +indirectly, against the revolutionary Government. The first order to +retreat came upon the 8th of March, when the siege of Maestricht was +seen to be impossible, and when the great forces of the Allies were +gathered again to attempt what was to be the really serious attack upon +the Revolution: something far more dangerous, something which much more +nearly achieved success, than the march of the comparatively small force +which had been checked at Valmy. + +For ten days the French retreat continued, when, upon the 18th of March, +Dumouriez risked battle at Neerwinden. His army was defeated. + +The defeat was not disastrous, the retreat was continued in fairly good +order, but a civilian population understands nothing besides the words +defeat and victory; it can appreciate a battle, not a campaign. The news +of the defeat, coming at a moment of crisis in the politics of Paris, +was decisive; it led to grave doubts of Dumouriez' loyalty to the +revolutionary Government, it shattered his popularity with those who had +continued to believe in him, while the general himself could not but +believe that the material under his command was rapidly deteriorating. +Before the end of the month the army had abandoned all its conquests, +and Valenciennes, in French territory, was reached upon the 27th. The +dash upon Belgium had wholly failed. + +At this moment came one of those political acts which so considerably +disturb any purely military conspectus of the revolutionary wars. +Dumouriez, at the head of his army, which, though in retreat and +defeated, was still intact, determined upon what posterity has justly +called treason, but what to his own mind must have seemed no more than +statesmanship. He proposed an understanding with the enemy and a +combined march upon Paris to restore the monarchical government, and +put an end to what seemed to him, as a soldier, a perfectly hopeless +situation. He certainly believed it impossible for the French army, in +the welter of 1793, to defeat the invader. He saw his own life in peril +merely because he was defeated. He had no toleration for the rising +enthusiasm or delirium of the political theory which had sent him out, +and, even before he had reached French territory, his negotiations with +Coburg, the Austrian commander, had begun. They lasted long. Dumouriez +agreed to put the frontier fortresses of the French into the hands of +the enemy as a guarantee and a pledge; and on the 5th of April all was +ready for the alliance of the two armed forces. + +But just as the treason of Dumouriez is, in the military sense, abnormal +and disturbing to any general conspectus of the campaign, so was the +action of his army. + +The doubtful point of a general command which is political in nature, +and may be unpopular with the rank and file, lies, of course, in the +attitude of the commanders of units, and these unanimously refused to +obey the orders of their chief. It was known that Dumouriez had been +summoned to the bar of the Convention, which body had sent commissioners +to apprehend him. He had arrested the commissioners, and had handed them +over as hostages and prisoners to Coburg. So far from Dumouriez upon the +critical day handing over his force to the enemy, or constituting it a +part of an allied army to march upon the capital, he was compelled to +fly upon the 8th of April; all that disappeared with him, counting many +who later deserted back again to the French colours, was less than a +thousand men--and these foreign mercenaries. + +The consequence of this strange passage upon the political history of +the time we have already seen. Its consequence upon the military history +of it was indirect but profound. The French forces, such as they were, +were still intact, but no general officer could in future be trusted by +Paris, and the stimulus which nations in the critical moments of +invasion and of danger during foreign war seek in patriotism, in the +offering of a high wage to the men and of honours and fortunes to their +commanders, was now sought by the French in the singular, novel and +abnormal experiment of the Terror. Command upon the frontier throughout +1793 and the first part of 1794, during the critical fourteen months, +that is, which decided the fate of the Revolution, and which turned the +tide of arms in favour of the French, was a task accomplished under the +motive power of capital punishment. A blunder was taken as a proof of +treason, and there lay over the ordering of every general movement the +threat of the guillotine. + +What we have now to follow is somewhat over a year of a struggle thus +abnormally organised upon the French side, and finally successful +through the genius of a great organiser, once a soldier, now a +politician, Carnot. The French succeeded by the unshakable conviction +which permitted the political leaders to proceed to all extremity in +their determination to save the Revolution; by the peculiar physical +powers of endurance which their army displayed, and finally, of course, +by certain accidents--for accident will always be a determining factor +in war. + +The spring of 1793, the months of April and May, form the first crisis +of the revolutionary war. The attack about to be delivered is universal, +and seems absolutely certain to succeed. With the exception of the rush +at Jemappes, where less than thirty thousand Austrians were broken +through by a torrent superior in numbers (though even there obviously +ill-organised), no success had attended the revolutionary armies. Their +condition was, even to the eye of the layman, bad, and to the eye of the +expert hopeless. There was no unity apparent in direction, there were +vast lesions in the discipline of the ranks like great holes torn in +some rotten fabric. Even against the forces already mobilised against +it, it had proved powerless, and it might be taken for granted that by +an act more nearly resembling police work than a true campaign, the +Allies would reach Paris and something resembling the old order be soon +restored. What remains is to follow the process by which this +expectation was disappointed. + +The situation at this moment can best be understood by a glance at the +sketch map on p. 178. Two great French advances had been made in the +winter of 1792-93; the one a northern advance, which we have just +detailed, the over-running of Belgium; the other an eastern advance +right up to the Rhine and to the town of Mayence. Both had failed. The +failure in Belgium, culminating in the treason of Dumouriez, has been +read. On the Rhine (where Mayence had been annexed by the French +Parliament just as Belgium had been) the active hostility of the +population and the gathering of the organised forces of the Allies had +the same effect as had been produced in the Low Countries. + +It was on March 21, 1793, that the Prussians crossed the Rhine at +Bacharach, and within that week the French commander, Custine, began to +fall back. On the first of April he was back again in French territory, +leaving the garrison of Mayence, somewhat over twenty thousand men, to +hold out as best it could; a fortnight later the Prussians had +surrounded the town and the siege had begun. + +On the north-eastern front, stretching from the Ardennes to the sea, a +similar state of things was developing. There, a barrier of fortresses +stood between the Allies and Paris, and a series of sieges corresponding +to the siege of Mayence in the east had to be undertaken. At much the +same time as the investment of Mayence, on April 9, the first step in +this military task was taken by the Allies moving in between the +fortress of Cond and the fortress of Valenciennes. Thenceforward it was +the business of the Austrians under Coburg, with the Allies that were to +reach him, to reduce the frontier fortresses one by one, and when his +communications were thus secure, to march upon Paris. + +It is here necessary for the reader unacquainted with military history +to appreciate two points upon which not a little of contemporary +historical writing may mislead him. The first is that both in the Rhine +valley and on the Belgian frontier the forces of the Allies in their +numbers and their organisation were conceived to be overwhelming. The +second is that no competent commander on the spot would have thought of +leaving behind him the garrison of even one untaken fortress. It is +important to insist upon these points, because the political passions +roused by the Revolution are still so strong that men can hardly write +of it without prejudice and bias, and two errors continually present in +these descriptions of the military situation in the spring of 1793, are, +first, that the Allies were weakened by the Polish question, which was +then active, and secondly, that the delay of their commanders before the +French fortresses was unnecessary. + +Both these propositions are put forward with the object of explaining +the ultimate defeat of the enemies of the Revolution: both, however +great the authority behind them, are unhistorical and worthless. The +French success was a military success due to certain military factors +both of design and accident, which will appear in what follows. The +Allies played their part as all the art of war demanded it to be played; +they were ultimately defeated, not from the commission of any such +gross and obvious error in policy or strategy as historians with too +little comprehension of military affairs sometimes pretend, but from the +military superiority of their opponents. + +It is true that the Polish question (that is the necessity the Austrian +and Prussian Governments were each under of watching that the other was +not lessened in importance by the approaching annexations of further +Polish territory with the consequent jealousy and mistrust that arose +from this between Austria and Prussia) was a very important feature of +the moment. But it is bad military history to pretend that this affected +the military situation on the Rhine or in the Netherlands. + +Every campaign is conditioned by its political object. The political +object in this case was to march upon and to occupy Paris. The political +object of a campaign once determined, the size and the organisation of +the enemy are calculated and a certain force is brought against it. No +much larger force is brought than is necessary: to act in such a fashion +would be in military art what paying two or three times the price of an +article would be in commerce. The forces of the Allies upon the Rhine +and in the Netherlands were, in the opinion of every authority of the +time, amply sufficient for their purpose; and more than sufficient: so +much more than sufficient that the attitude of that military opinion +which had to meet the attack--to wit, the professional military opinion +of the French republican soldiers, was that the situation was +desperate, nor indeed was it attempted to be met save by a violent and, +as it were, irrational enthusiasm. + +The second point, the so-called "delay" involved in the sieges +undertaken by the Allies, proves, when it is put forward, an +insufficient acquaintance with contemporary conditions. Any fortress +with a considerable garrison left behind untaken would have meant the +destruction of the Austrian or Prussian communications, and their +destruction at a moment when the Austrian and Prussian forces were +actually advancing over a desperately hostile country. Moreover, when +acting against forces wholly inferior in discipline and organisation, an +untaken fortress is a refuge which one must take peculiar pains to +destroy. To throw himself into such a refuge will always stand before +the commander of those inferior forces as a last resource. It is a +refuge which he will certainly avail himself of ultimately, if it is +permitted to him. And when he has so availed himself of it, it means the +indefinite survival of an armed organisation in the rear of the +advancing invaders. We must conclude, if we are to understand this +critical campaign which changed the history of the world, that Coburg +did perfectly right in laying siege to one fortress after another before +he began what every one expected to be the necessarily successful +advance on Paris. The French despair, as one town after another +surrendered, is an amply sufficient proof of the excellence of his +judgment. + +We approach the military problem of 1793, therefore, with the following +two fields clear before us:-- + +1. In the north-east an advance on Paris, the way to which is blocked by +a quadrilateral of fortresses: Mons, Maubeuge, Cond, and Valenciennes, +with the subsidiary stronghold of Lequesnoy in the neighbourhood of the +last. Mons has been in Austrian hands since Dumouriez' retreat; Cond is +just cut off from Valenciennes by Coburg's advance, but has not fallen; +Valenciennes and the neighbouring Lequesnoy are still intact, and so is +Maubeuge. All must be reduced before the advance on Paris can begin. +Behind these fortresses is a French army incapable as yet of attacking +Coburg's command with any hope of success. Such is the position in the +last fortnight of April. + +2. Meanwhile, on the Rhine the French garrison in Mayence is besieged; +Custine, the French commander in that quarter, has fallen back on the +French town of Landau, and is drawing up what are known in history as +the Lines of Weissembourg. The accompanying sketch map explains their +importance. Reposing upon the two obstacles of the river on the right +and the mountains on the left, they fulfilled precisely the same +functions as a fortress; and those functions we have just described. +Until these lines were carried, the whole of Alsace may be regarded as a +fortress defended by the mountains and the river on two sides, and by +the Lines of Weissembourg on the third. + +A reader unacquainted with military history may ask why the obstruction +was not drawn upon the line of the Prussian advance on Paris. The answer +is that the presence of a force behind fortifications anywhere in the +neighbourhood of a line of communication is precisely equivalent to an +obstacle lying right upon those lines. For no commander can go forward +along the line of his advance and leave a large undestroyed force close +to one side of that line, and so situated that it can come out when he +has passed and cut off his communications; for it is by communications +that an army lives, especially when it is marching in hostile country. + +[Illustration: Strategic situation in early summer of 1793. Mayence +besieged, Cond and Valenciennes about to be besieged. Conditions of the +double advance on Paris.] + +Custine, therefore, behind his Lines of Weissembourg, and the besieged +garrison in Mayence, correspond to the barrier of fortresses on the +north-east and delayed the advance of the Prussians under Wurmser and +Brunswick from the Rhine, just as Cond, Valenciennes, and Maubeuge +prevented the advance of Coburg on the north-east. Such in general was +the situation upon the eastern frontier at the end of that month of +April, 1793. + + +FOUR + +Let us first follow the development of the northern position. It will be +remembered that all Europe was at war against the French. The Austrians +had for allies Dutch troops which joined them at this moment, and +certain English and Hanoverian troops under the Duke of York who also +joined them. + +At this moment, when Coburg found himself in increasing strength, a +tentative French attack upon him was delivered and failed. Dampierre, +who was in command of all this French "Army of the North," was killed, +and Custine was sent to replace him. The Army of the North did not, as +perhaps it should have done, concentrate into one body to meet Coburg's +threatened advance; it was perpetually attempting diversions which were +useless because its strength was insufficient. Now it feinted upon the +right towards Namur, now along the sea coast on the left; and these +diversions failed in their object. Before the end of the month, Coburg, +to give himself elbow room, as it were, for the sieges which he was +preparing, compelled the main French force to retreat to a position well +behind Valenciennes. It was immediately after this success of Coburg's +that Custine arrived to take command on the Belgian frontier, his place +on the Rhine being taken by Houchard. + +Custine was a very able commander, but a most unlucky one. His plan was +the right one: to concentrate all the French forces (abandoning the +Rhine) and so form an army sufficient to cope with Coburg's. The +Government would not meet him in this, and he devoted himself +immediately to the reorganisation of the Army of the North alone. The +month of June and half of July was taken up in that task. + +Meanwhile, the Austrian siege work had begun, and Cond was the first +object of its attention. Upon July 10 Cond fell. Meanwhile Custine had +been recalled to Paris, and Valenciennes was invested. Custine was +succeeded by Kilmaine, a general of Irish extraction, who maintained his +position for but a short time, and was unable while he maintained it to +do anything. The forces of the Allies continually increased. The number +at Coburg's disposal free from the business of besieging Valenciennes +was already larger than the force required for that purpose. And yet +another fifteen thousand Hessian troops marched in while the issue of +that siege was in doubt. This great advantage in numbers permitted him +to get rid of the main French force that was still present in front of +him, though not seriously annoying him. + +This force lay due south-west of Valenciennes, and about a day's march +distant. He depended for the capture of it upon his English and +Hanoverian Allies under the Duke of York, but that general's march +failed. The distance was too much for his troops in the hot summer +weather, and the French were able to retreat behind the line of the +Scarpe and save their army intact. + +The Duke of York's talents have been patriotically exaggerated in many a +treatise. He always failed: and this was among the most signal of his +failures. + +Kilmaine had hardly escaped from York, drawn up his army behind the +Scarpe and put it into a position of safety when he in his turn was +deprived of the command, and Houchard was taken from the Rhine just as +Custine had been, and put at the head of the Army of the North. Before +the main French army had taken up this position of safety, Valenciennes +had fallen. It fell on the 28th of July, and its fall, inevitable though +it was and, as one may say, taken for granted by military opinion, was +much the heaviest blow yet delivered. Nothing of importance remained to +block the march of the Armies of the Allies, save Maubeuge. + +At about the same moment occurred three very important changes in the +general military situation, which the reader must note if he is to +understand what follows. + +The first was the sudden serious internal menace opposed to the +Republican Government; the second was the advent of Carnot to power; the +third was the English diversion upon Dunquerque. + +The serious internal menace which the Government of the Republic had to +face was the widespread rebellion which has been dealt with in the +earlier part of this book. The action of the Paris Radicals against the +Girondins had raised whole districts in the provinces. Marseilles, which +had shown signs of disaffection since April, and had begun to raise a +local reactionary force, revolted. So did Bordeaux, Nmes, and other +great southern towns. Lyons had risen at the end of May and had killed +the Jacobin mayor of the town in the period between the fall of Cond +and that of Valenciennes. The troop which Marseilles had raised against +the Republic was defeated in the field only the day before Valenciennes +fell, but the great seaport was still unoccupied by the forces of the +Government. The Norman march upon Paris had also failed between those +two dates, the fall of Cond and the fall of Valenciennes. The Norman +bark had proved worse than the Norman bite; but the force was so +neighbouring to the capital that it took a very large place in the +preoccupations of the time. The Vendean revolt, though its triumphant +advance was checked before Nantes a fortnight before the fall of Cond, +was still vigorous, and the terrible reprisals against it were hardly +begun. Worst of all, or at least, worst perhaps, after the revolt of +Lyons, was the defection of Toulon. Toulon rose two days before the fall +of Valenciennes, and was prepared to hand itself over (as at last it did +hand itself over) to occupation by the English fleet. + +The dates thus set in their order may somewhat confuse the reader, and I +will therefore summarise the general position of the internal danger +thus: A man in the French camp on the Scheldt, listening to the guns +before Valenciennes fifteen miles away, and hourly expecting their +silence as a signal that the city had surrendered, would have heard by +one post after another how Marseilles still held out against the +Government; how the counter-attack against the successful Vendeans had +but doubtfully begun (all July was full of disasters in that quarter); +how Lyons was furiously successful in her rebellion and had dared to put +to death the Republican mayor of the town; and that the great arsenal +and port at Toulon, the Portsmouth of France upon the Mediterranean, had +sickened of the Government and was about to admit the English fleet. His +only comfort would have been to hear that the Norman march on Paris had +failed--but he would still be under the impression of it and of the +murder of Marat by a Norman woman. + +There is the picture of that sudden internal struggle which coincides +with this moment of the revolutionary war, the moment of the fall of +Cond and of Valenciennes, and the exposure of the frontier. + +The second point, the advent of Carnot into the Committee of Public +Safety, which has already been touched upon in the political part of +this work, has so preponderating a military significance that we must +consider it here also. + +The old Committee of Public Safety, it will be remembered, reached the +end of its legal term on July 10. It was the Committee which the wisdom +of Danton had controlled. The members elected to the new Committee did +not include Carnot, but the military genius of this man was already +public. He came of that strong middle class which is the pivot upon +which the history of modern Europe turns; a Burgundian with lineage, +intensely republican, he had been returned to the Convention and had +voted for the death of the King; a sapper before the Revolution, and one +thoroughly well grounded in his arm and in general reading of military +things, he had been sent by the Convention to the Army of the North on +commission, he had seen its weakness and had watched its experiments. +Upon his return he was not immediately selected for the post in which he +was to transform the revolutionary war. It was not until the 14th of +August that he was given a temporary place upon the Committee which his +talents very soon made permanent. He was given the place merely as a +stopgap to the odious and incompetent fanatic, Saint-Andr, who was for +the moment away on mission. But from the day of his admission his +superiority in military affairs was so incontestable that he was +virtually a dictator therein, and his first action after the general +lines of organisation had been laid down by him was to impose upon the +frontier armies the necessity of concentration. He introduced what +afterwards Napoleon inherited from him, the tactical venture of "all +upon one throw." + +It must be remembered that Carnot's success did not lie in any +revolutionary discovery in connection with the art of war, but rather in +that vast capacity for varied detail which marks the organiser, and in +an intimate sympathy with the national character. He understood the +contempt for parade, the severity or brutality of discipline, the +consciousness of immense powers of endurance which are in the Frenchman +when he becomes a soldier;--and he made use of this understanding of +his. + +It must be further remembered that this powerful genius had behind him +in these first days of his activity the equally powerful genius of +Danton; for it was Danton and he who gave practical shape to that law of +conscription by which the French Revolution suddenly increased its armed +forces by nearly half a million of men, restored the Roman tradition, +and laid the foundation of the armed system on which Europe to-day +depends. With Carnot virtually commander-in-chief of all the armies, and +enabled to impose his decisions in particular upon that Army of the +North which he had studied so recently as a commissioner, the second +factor of the situation I am describing is comprehended. + +The third, as I have said, was the English diversion upon Dunquerque. + +The subsequent failure of the Allies has led to bitter criticism of this +movement. Had the Allies not failed, history would have treated it as +its contemporaries treated it. The forces of the Allies on the +north-eastern frontier were so great and their confidence so +secure--especially after the fall of Valenciennes--that the English +proposal to withdraw their forces for the moment from Coburg's and to +secure Dunquerque, was not received with any destructive criticism. +Eighteen battalions and fourteen squadrons of the Imperial forces were +actually lent to the Duke of York for this expedition. What is more, +even after that diversion failed, the plan was fixed to begin again when +the last of the other fortresses should have fallen: so little was the +English plan for the capture of the seaport disfavoured by the +commander-in-chief of the Allies. + +That diversion on Dunquerque turned out, however, to be an error of +capital importance. The attempt to capture the city utterly failed, and +the victory which accompanied its repulsion had upon the French that +indefinable but powerful moral effect which largely contributed to their +future successes. + +The accompanying sketch map will explain the position. Valenciennes and +Cond have fallen; Lequesnoy, the small fortress subsidiary to +Valenciennes, has not yet been attacked but comes next in the series, +when the moment was judged propitious for the detachment of the +Anglo-Hanoverian force with a certain number of Imperial Allies to march +to the sea. + +It must always be remembered by the reader of history that military +situations, like the situations upon a chess board, rather happen than +are designed; and the situation which developed at the end of September +upon the extreme north and west of the line which the French were +attempting to hold against the Allies was strategically of this nature. +When the Duke of York insisted upon a division of the forces of the +Allies and an attack upon Dunquerque, no living contemporary foresaw +disaster. + +[Illustration: Showing condition of the frontier fortresses blocking the +road to Paris when the expedition to Dunquerque was decided upon. August +1793.] + +Coburg, indeed, would have preferred the English to remain with him, and +asked them to do so, but he felt in no sort of danger through their +temporary absence, nor, as a matter of fact, was he in any danger +through it. + +Again, though the positions which the Duke of York took up when he +arrived in front of Dunquerque were bad, neither his critics at home, +nor any of his own subordinates, nor any of the enemy, perceived fully +how bad they were. It was, as will presently be seen, a sort of drift, +bad luck combined with bad management, which led to this British +disaster, and (what was all-important for the conduct of the war) to the +first success in a general action which the French had to flatter and +encourage themselves with during all that fatal summer. + +The Duke of York separated his force from that of Coburg just before the +middle of August; besides the British, who were not quite 7,000 strong, +11,000 Austrians, over 10,000 Hanoverians and 7,000 Hessians were under +his command. The total force, therefore, was nearly 37,000 strong. No +one could imagine that, opposed by such troops as the French were able +to put into line, and marching against such wretched defences as those +of Dunquerque then were, the Duke's army had not a perfectly easy task +before it; and the plan, which was to take Dunquerque and upon the +return to join the Austrian march on Paris, was reasonable and feasible. + +It is important that the reader should firmly seize this and not read +history backward from future events. + +Certain faults are to be observed in the first conduct of the march. It +began on the 15th of August, proceeding from Marchiennes to Menin, and +at the outset displayed that deplorable lack of marching power which the +Duke of York's command had shown throughout the campaign.[6] From +Marchiennes to Tourcoing is a long day's march: it took the Duke of York +four days; and, take the march altogether, nine days were spent in +covering less than forty miles. In the course of that march, the British +troops had an opportunity of learning to despise their adversary: they +found at Linselles, upon the flank of their advance, a number of +undisciplined boys who broke the moment the Guards were upon them, and +whose physical condition excited the ridicule of their assailants. The +army proceeded after this purposeless and unfruitful skirmish to the +neighbourhood of the sea coast, and the siege of Dunquerque was +undertaken under conditions which will be clear to the reader from the +following sketch map. + +[Illustration: Operations round Dunquerque. September 1793.] + +The date of the 20th of August must first be fixed in the mind: on that +date the army which was to take Dunquerque was separated into its two +component parts. The first, under the Duke of York, was to attack the +town itself; the second, under the aged Austrian general, Freytag, was +to watch the movement of any approaching enemy and to cover the force +which was besieging the town. Two days later, the Duke of York was +leaving Furnes, which he had made his base for the advance, and Freytag +had with the greatest ease brushed the French posts--mainly of +volunteers--from before him, and was beginning to take up the flanking +positions south and east of Bergues which covered the siege of +Dunquerque. + +Two days later again, on August 24, Freytag had occupied Wormhoudt and +Esquelbecque, capturing guns by the dozen, doing pretty well what he +would with the French outposts, and quite surrounding the town of +Bergues. Wilder was his headquarters. On the same day, the 24th, the +Duke of York had with the greatest ease driven in the advanced posts of +the French before Dunquerque, and shut up the enemy within the town, +while he formed his besieging force outside of it, entrenched in a +position which he had chosen beforehand, reposing upon the sea at his +right, his left on the village of Tetteghem. He was then about 3,000 +yards from the fortifications at Dunquerque. + +Such was the situation upon the dawn of the 25th, when everything was +ready for active operations. And here the reader must look upon the map +for what ultimately proved the ruin of the situation. + +Supposing Freytag round Bergues in the position which the map shows; the +Duke of York in front of Dunquerque as the map also shows him; the two +forces are in touch across the road and the belt of country which unites +Bergues and Dunquerque. The covering army and the besieging force which +it covers are each a wing of one combined body; each communicates with +the other, each can support the other at the main point of effort, and +though between the one and the other eastward there stretches a line of +marshy country--the "meres" which the map indicates--yet a junction +between the two forces exists westward of these, and the two armies can +co-operate by the Bergues-Dunquerque road. + +A factor which the Duke of York may have neglected was the power of +flooding all that flat country round, the road which the French in +Dunquerque, being in possession of the sluices, possessed. They used it +at once: they drowned the low lands to the south of Dunquerque, upon the +very day when the last dispositions of the attacking force were +completed. But more important--and never yet explained--was the +Austrians' abandonment of Coudequerque. By this error, the main road +itself, standing above the flood, was lost, and from being one strong +army the force of the Allies became two weak ones. Communication was no +longer possible between the Duke of York's and Freytag's territories, +and it was of this separation that the French, in spite of their +deplorable organisation and more deplorable personnel, took advantage. + +They took advantage of it slowly. Houchard gathered altogether forty +thousand men near Cassel, but it was ten days before they could be +concentrated. It must again be insisted upon and repeated that, large as +the number was--it was four times as great as Freytag's now isolated +force--Houchard's command was made up of men quite two-thirds of whom +were hardly soldiers: volunteers both new and recent, ill-trained +conscripts and so forth. There was no basis of discipline, hardly any +power to enforce it; the men had behaved disgracefully in all the +affairs of outposts, they had been brushed away contemptuously by the +small Austrian force from every position they had held. With all his +numerical superiority the attempt which Houchard was about to make was +very hazardous: and Houchard was a hesitating and uncertain commander. +Furthermore, of the forty thousand men one quarter at least remained out +of action through the ineptitude and political terror of Dumesny, +Houchard's lieutenant upon the right. + +It was upon the 6th of September that the French advance began along the +whole line; it was a mere pushing in of inferior numbers by superior +numbers, the superior numbers perpetually proving themselves inferior to +the Austrians in military value. Thus, the capture of old Freytag +himself in a night skirmish was at once avenged by the storming of the +village near which he had been caught, and he was re-taken. In actual +fighting and force for force, Houchard's command found nothing to +encourage it during these first operations. + +The Austrians in falling back concentrated and were soon one compact +body: to attack and dislodge it was the object of the French advance, +but an object hardly to be attained. + +What happened was not only the unexpected success of this advance, but +the gaining by the French of the first decisive action in the long +series which was to terminate twenty years later at Leipsic. + +The army of Freytag fell back upon the village of Hondschoote and stood +there in full force upon the morning of Sunday, the 8th of September. +Houchard attacked it with a force greatly lessened but still double that +of the defenders. So conspicuous, however, was the superiority of the +Austrian regulars over the French raw troops and volunteers that during +this morning of the 8th the result was still doubtful. By the afternoon, +however, the work was done, and the enemy were in a retreat which might +easily have been turned into a rout. A glance at the map will show that +Houchard, had he possessed the initiative common to so many of his +contemporaries, might at once have driven the numerically inferior and +heavily defeated force (it had lost one-third of its men) to the right, +and proceeded himself to cut the communications of the Duke of York and +to destroy his army, which lay packed upon the waterless sand dunes +where the village of Malo-les-Bains now stands. Houchard hesitated; +Freytag escaped; the Duke of York, abandoning his siege-pieces to the +number of forty and much of his heavy baggage, retreated precipitately +through the night to Furnes, right across the front of the French army, +and escaped destruction. + +The Battle of Hoondschoote, therefore, as it is called, raised the siege +of Dunquerque. It was, as I have said, the first successful decisive +action which the Revolution could count since the moment of its extreme +danger and the opening of the general European war. But it was nothing +like what it might have been had Houchard been willing to risk a hardy +stroke. Houchard was therefore recalled, condemned to death, and +executed by the Committee of Public Safety, whose pitiless despotism was +alone capable of saving the nation. He remains the single example of a +general officer who has suffered death for military incompetence after +the gaining of a victory, and his execution is an excellent example of +the way in which the military temper of the Committee, and particularly +of Carnot, refused to consider any factor in the war save those that +make for military success. + +Carnot and the Committee had no patience with the illusions which a +civilian crowd possesses upon mere individual actions: what they saw was +the campaign as a whole, and they knew that Houchard had left the armies +opposite him intact. + +Perhaps his execution was made more certain by the continuance of bad +news from that more important point of the frontier--the direct line of +Austrian advance upon Paris. Here, already, Valenciennes had fallen two +months before, and Cond also. Lequesnoy, the third point of the barrier +line, capitulated on the 11th of September, and the news of that +capitulation reached Paris immediately after the news of Hondschoote. No +fortress was now left between the Allies and the capital but Maubeuge. +Coburg marched upon it at once. + +Not only had he that immense superiority in the quality of his troops +which must be still insisted upon, but numerically also he was three to +one when, on the 28th of September, at dawn, he crossed the Sambre above +and below Maubeuge, and by noon of that day had contained the French +army in that neighbourhood within the lines of the fortress. + +The situation was critical in the extreme: Maubeuge was ill prepared to +stand siege; it was hardly provisioned; its garrison was of varied and, +on the whole, of bad quality. In mere victuals it could stand out for +but a few days, and, worst of all, it had behind it the continued +example of necessary and fatal surrenders which had marked the whole +summer. The orders of the Committee of Public Safety to its commander +were terse: "Your head shall answer for Maubeuge." After the receipt of +that message no more came through the lines. + +The reader, if he be unaccustomed to military history, does well to note +that in every action and in every campaign there is some one factor of +position or of arms or of time which explains the result. Each has a +pivot or hinge, as it were, upon which the whole turns. It was now upon +Maubeuge that the revolutionary war thus depended. At risk of +oversimplifying a complex story, I would lay this down as the prime +condition for the understanding of the early revolutionary wars: had +Maubeuge fallen, the road to Paris lay open and the trick was +done[7]--and here we must consider again the effect in the field of +Carnot's genius. + +In the first place, he had provided numbers not on paper, but in +reality; the Committee, through a decree of the Assembly, had +despotically "requisitioned" men, animals, vehicles and supplies. The +levy was a reality. Mere numbers then raw, but increasing, had begun to +pour into the north-east. It was they that had told at Hoondschoote, it +was they that were to tell in front of Maubeuge. + +Secondly, as the Committee supplied the necessary initiative, Carnot +supplied the necessary personality of war. His own will and own brain +could come to one decision in one moment, and did so. It was he, as we +shall see, who won the critical action. He chose Jourdan, a man whose +quaint military career we must reluctantly leave aside in so brief a +study as this, but at any rate an amateur, and put him in Houchard's +command over the Army of the Northern Frontier, and that command was +extended from right away beyond the Ardennes to the sea. He ordered (and +Jourdan obeyed) the concentration of men from all down that lengthy line +to the right and the left upon one point, Guise. To leave the rest of +the frontier weak was a grave risk only to be excused by very rapid +action and success: both these were to follow. The concentration was +effected in four days. Troops from the extreme north could not come in +time. The furthest called upon were beyond Arras, with sixty-five miles +of route between them and Guise. This division (which shall be typical +of many), not quite eight thousand strong, left on receiving orders in +the morning of the 3rd of October and entered Guise in the course of the +6th. The rate of marching and the synchrony of these movements of +imperfect troops should especially be noted by any one who would +understand how the Revolution succeeded. + +[Illustration: The rapid eight days' concentration in front of Maubeuge. +October 1783.] + +A second division of over thirteen thousand men followed along the +parallel road, with a similar time table. From the other end of his +line, a detachment under Beauregard, just over four thousand men, was +called up from the extreme right. It will serve as a typical example +upon the eastern side of this lightning concentration. It had been +gathered near Carignan, a town full fourteen miles beyond Sedan. It +picked up reinforcements on the way and marched into Fourmies upon the +11th, after covering just seventy miles in the three and a half days. +With its arrival the concentration was complete, and not a moment too +soon, for the bombardment of Maubeuge was about to begin. From the 11th +to the 15th of October the army was advanced and drawn up in line, a +day's march in front of Guise, with its centre at Avesnes and facing the +covering army of Coburg, which lay entrenched upon a long wooded crest +with the valley of the Sambre upon its right and the village of +Wattignies, on a sort of promontory of high land, upon its left. + +The Austrian position was reconnoitred upon the 14th. Upon the 15th the +general attack was delivered and badly repelled. When darkness fell upon +that day few in the army could have believed that Maubeuge was +succourable--and it was a question of hours. + +Carnot, however, sufficiently knew the virtues as the vices of his novel +troops, the troops of the great levy, stiffened with a proportion of +regulars, to attempt an extraordinary thing. He marched eight thousand +from his left and centre, over to his right during the night, and in the +morning of the 16th his right, in front of the Austrian left at +Wattignies had, by this conversion, become far the strongest point of +the whole line. + +A dense mist had covered the end of this operation as the night had +covered its inception, and that mist endured until nearly midday. The +Austrians upon the heights had no hint of the conversion, and Wattignies +was only held by three regiments. If they expected a renewed attack at +all, they can only have expected it in the centre, or even upon the left +where the French had suffered most the day before. + +Initiative in war is essentially a calculation of risk, and with high +initiative the risk is high. What Carnot gambled upon (for Jourdan was +against the experiment) when he moved those young men through the night, +was the possibility of getting active work out of them after a day's +furious action, the forced marches of the preceding week and on top of +it all a sleepless night of further marching. Most of the men who were +prepared to charge on the French right as the day broadened and the mist +lifted on that 16th of October, had been on foot for thirty hours. The +charge was delivered, and was successful. The unexpected numbers thus +concentrated under Wattignies carried that extreme position, held the +height, and arrived, therefore, on the flank of the whole Austrian line, +which, had not the effort of the aggressors exhausted them, would have +been rolled up in its whole length. As it was, the Austrians retreated +unmolested and in good order across the Sambre. The siege of Maubeuge +was raised; and the next day the victorious French army entered the +fortress. + +Thus was successfully passed the turning-point of the revolutionary +wars. + +Two months later the other gate of the country was recovered. In the +moment when Maubeuge was relieved, the enemy had pierced the lines of +Wissembourg. It is possible that an immediate and decisive understanding +among the Allies might then have swept all Alsace; but such an +understanding was lacking. The disarrayed "Army of the Rhine" was got +into some sort of order, notably through the enthusiasm of Hoche and the +silent control of Pichegru. At the end of November the Prussians stood +on the defensive at Kaiserslautern. Hoche hammered at them for three +days without success. What really turned the scale was the floods of men +and material that the levy and the requisitioning were pouring in. Just +before Christmas the enemy evacuated Haguenau. Landau they still held; +but a decisive action fought upon Boxing Day, a true soldiers' battle, +determined by the bayonet, settled the fate of the Allies on this point. +The French entered Wissembourg again, and Landau was relieved after a +siege of four months and a display of tenacity which had done not a +little to turn the tide of the war. + +Meanwhile the news had come in that the last of the serious internal +rebellions was crushed. Toulon had been re-captured, the English fleet +driven out; the town, the harbour and the arsenal had fallen into the +hands of the French largely through the science of a young major of +artillery (not captain: I have discussed the point elsewhere), +Bonaparte, and this had taken place a week before the relief of Landau. +The last confused horde of La Vende had been driven from the walls of +Granville in Normandy, to which it had erred and drifted rather than +retreated. At Mans on the 13th of December it was cut to pieces, and at +Savenay on the 23rd, three days before the great victory in Alsace, it +was destroyed. A long peasant-and-bandit struggle, desperate yet hardly +to be called guerilla, continued through the next year behind the hedges +of Lower Brittany and of Vende, but the danger to the State and to the +Revolution was over. The year 1793 ended, therefore, with the complete +relief of the whole territory of the Republic, save a narrow strip upon +the Belgian frontier, complete domination of it by its Csar, the +Committee of Public Safety; with two-thirds of a million of men under +arms, and the future of the great experiment apparently secure. + +The causes of the wonder have been discussed, and will be discussed +indefinitely. Primarily, they resided in the re-creation of a strong +central power; secondly, in the combination of vast numbers and of a +reckless spirit of sacrifice. The losses on the National side were +perpetually and heavily superior to those of the Allies--in Alsace they +had been three to one; and we shall better understand the duel when we +appreciate that in the short eight years between the opening of the war +and the triumph of Napoleon at Marengo, there had fallen in killed and +wounded, on the French side, over seven hundred thousand men. + + +FIVE + +The story of 1794 is but the consequence of what we have just read. It +was the little belt or patch upon the Belgian frontier which was still +in the hands of the enemy that determined the nature of the campaign. + +It was not until spring that the issue was joined. The Emperor of +Austria reached Brussels on the 2nd day of April, and a fortnight later +reviewed his army. The French line drawn up in opposition to it suffered +small but continual reverses until the close of the month. + +On the 29th Clerfayt suffered a defeat which led to the fall, or rather +the escape, of the small garrison of Menin. Clerfayt was beaten again at +Courtray a fortnight later; but all these early engagements in the +campaign were of no decisive moment. Tourcoing was to be the first heavy +blow that should begin to settle matters, Fleurus was to clinch them. + +No battle can be less satisfactorily described in a few lines than that +of Tourcoing, so different did it appear to either combatant, so +opposite are the plans of what was expected on either side, and of what +happened, so confused are the various accounts of contemporaries. The +accusations of treason which nearly always arise after a disaster, and +especially a disaster overtaking an allied force, are particularly +monstrous, and may be dismissed: in particular the childish legend which +pretends that the Austrians desired an English defeat. + +What the French say is that excellent forced marching and scientific +concentration permitted them to attack the enemy before the junction of +his various forces was effected. What the Allies say is (if they are +speaking for their centre) that it was shamefully abandoned and +unsupported by the two wings; if they are speaking for the wings, that +the centre had no business to advance, when it saw that the two wings +were not up in time to co-operate. + +One story goes that the Archduke Charles was incapacitated by a fit; +Lord Acton has lent his considerable authority to this amusing version. +At any rate, what happened was this:-- + +The Allies lay along the river Scheldt on Friday, the 16th of May: +Tournay was their centre, with the Duke of York in command of the chief +force there; five or six miles north, down the river, was one extremity +of their line at a place called Warcoing: it was a body of Hanoverians. +The left, under the Archduke Charles, was Austrian and had reached a +place a day's march south of Tournay called St. Amand. Over against the +Allies lay a large French force also occupying a wide front of over +fifteen miles, the centre of which was Tourcoing, then a village. Its +left was in front of the fortress of Courtrai. Now, behind the French, +up country northward in the opposite direction from the line of the +Allies on the Scheldt was another force of the Allies under Clerfayt. +The plan was that the Allied right should advance on to Mouscron and +take it. The Allied centre should advance on to Tourcoing and Mouveaux +and take them, while the left should march across the upper waters of +the river Marque, forcing the bridges that crossed that marshy stream, +and come up alongside the centre. In other words, there was to be an +attack all along the French line from the south, and while it was +proceeding, Clerfayt, from the north of the French, was to cross the Lys +and attack also. + +On the day of the 17th what happened was this: The left of the Allies, +marching from St. Amand, came up half a day late; the right of the +Allies took Mouscron, but were beaten out of it by the French. The +centre of the Allies fulfilled their programme, reaching Tourcoing and +its neighbourhood by noon and holding their positions. It is to the +honour of English arms that this success was accomplished by a force a +third of which was British and the most notable bayonet work in which +was done by the Guards. Meanwhile, Clerfayt was late in moving and in +crossing the river Lys, which lay between him and his objective. + +[Illustration: Tourcoing. May 16 to 18, 1794. + +The breakdown of the attempt of the Allies to cut off the French near +Courtrai from Lille was due to their failure to synchronise They should +have been in line from A to B at noon of the 17th with Clerfayt at C.] + +When night fell, therefore, on the first day of the action, a glance at +the map will show that instead of one solid line advancing against the +French from A to B, and the northern force in touch with it at C, the +Allied formation was an absurd projection in the middle, due to the +success of the mixed and half-British force under the Duke of York: a +success which had not been maintained on the two wings. A bulge of this +sort in an attacking line is on the face of it disastrous. The enemy +have only to be rapid in falling upon either flank of it and the bulge +can be burst in. The French were rapid, and burst in the bulge was. By +concentrating their forces against this one central part of the Allies +they fought three to one. + +That same capacity which at Wattignies had permitted them to scorn sleep +and to be indefatigable in marching, put them on the road before three +o'clock in the morning of Sunday, the 18th, and with the dawn they fell +upon the central force of the Allies, attacking it from all three sides. + +It is on this account that the battle is called the Battle of Tourcoing, +for Tourcoing was the most advanced point to which the centre of the +Allies had reached. The Germans, upon the Duke of York's right at +Tourcoing, felt the first brunt of the attack. The Duke of York himself, +with his mixed, half-British force, came in for the blow immediately +afterwards, and while it was still early morning. The Germans at +Tourcoing began to fall back. The Duke of York's force, to the left of +them, was left isolated: its commander ought not to have hung on so +long. But the defence was maintained with the utmost gallantry for the +short time during which it was still possible. The retreat began about +nine in the morning and was kept orderly for the first two miles, but +after that point it was a rout. The drivers of the British cannon fled, +and the guns, left without teams, blocked the precipitate flight of the +cavalry. Their disorder communicated itself at once to the Guards, and +to the line. + +Even in this desperate strait some sort of order was restored, notably +by the Guards Brigade, which were apparently the first to form, and a +movement that could still be called a retreat was pursued towards the +south. The Duke of York himself was chased from spinney to spinney and +escaped by a stroke of luck, finding a bridge across the last brook held +by a detachment of Hessians. In this way were the central columns, who +between them numbered not a third of the total force of the Allies, +destroyed. + +Clerfayt had first advanced--but far too late to save the centre--and +then retreated. The Archduke Charles, upon the left, was four hours late +in marching to the help of the Duke of York; the right wing of the +Allies was not even late: it spent the morning in an orderly artillery +duel with the French force opposed to it. By five in the afternoon +defeat was admitted and a general retreat of the Allies ordered. + +I have said that many reasons are given to account for the disaster of +Tourcoing, one of the very few in which a British force has been routed +upon the Continent; but I confess that if I were asked for an +explanation of my own, I would say that it was simply due to the gross +lack of synchrony on the part of the Allies, and that this in its turn +was taken advantage of by the power both of vigil and of marching which +the French troops, still inferior in most military characteristics, had +developed and maintained, and which (a more important matter) their +commanders knew how to use. + +This heavy blow, delivered on the 18th of May, in spite of a successful +rally a week later, finally convinced the Emperor that the march on +Paris was impossible. Eleven days later, on the 29th, it was announced +in the camp of Tournay, upon which the Allied army had fallen back, that +the Emperor had determined to return to Vienna. The Allied army was +indeed still left upon that front, but the French continued to pour up +against it. It was again their numbers that brought about the next and +the final victory. + +Far off, upon the east of that same line, the army which is famous in +history and in song as that of the Sambre et Meuse was violently +attempting to cross the Sambre and to turn the line of the Allies. +Coburg reinforced his right opposite the French left, but numbers had +begun to bewilder him. The enthusiasm of Saint-Just, the science of +Carnot, decided victory at this eastern end of the line. + +Six times the passage of the Sambre had failed. Reinforcements continued +to reach the army, and the seventh attempt succeeded. + +Charleroi, which is the main fortress blocking the passage of the +Sambre at this place, could be, and was, invested when once the river +was crossed by the French. It capitulated in a week. But the evacuation +of Charleroi was but just accomplished when Coburg, seventy thousand +strong, appeared in relief of the city. + +[Illustration: Showing effect of _Ypres_, _Charleroi_ and _Fleurus_ in +wholly throwing back the Allies in June 1794. + +_Ypres_ captured on June 19 by the French, they march on Oudenarde and +pass it on June 25 to 27. Meanwhile _Charleroi_ has also surrendered to +the French, and when, immediately afterwards, the Austrians try to +relieve it, they are beaten at _Fleurus_ and retire on Brussels. + +Thus the English at _Tournai_ and all the Allied Forces at _Cond_, +_Valenciennes_, _Landrecies_, and _Mons_ are imperilled and must +surrender or retire.] + +The plateau above the town where the great struggle was decided, is +known as that of Fleurus, and it was upon the 26th of June that the +armies were there engaged. Never before had forces so equal permitted +the French any success. It had hitherto been the ceaseless +requisitioning of men to supply their insufficient training and command, +which had accomplished the salvation of the country. At Fleurus, though +there was still some advantage on the French side, the numbers were +more nearly equal. + +The action was not determined for ten hours, and on the French centre +and left was nearly lost, when the Reserves' and Marceau's obstinacy in +front of Fleurus village itself at last decided it. + +The consequences of the victory were final. As the French right advanced +from Fleurus the French left advanced from Ypres, and the centre became +untenable for the Allies. The four French fortresses which the enemy +still garrisoned in that Belgian "belt" of which I have spoken, were +invested and re-captured. By the 10th of July the French were in +Brussels, the English were beaten back upon Holland, the Austrians +retreating upon the Rhine, and the continuous success of the +revolutionary armies was assured. + + * * * * * + +While these things were proceeding upon land, however, there had +appeared a factor in the war which modern desire for comfort and, above +all, for commercial security has greatly exaggerated, but which the +student will do well to note in its due proportion. This factor was the +military weakness of France at sea. + +In mere numbers the struggle was entered upon with fleets in the ratio +of about two to one, while to the fleet of Great Britain, already twice +as large as its opponent, must be added the fleets of the Allies. But +numbers did not then, nor will they in the future, really decide the +issue of maritime war. It was the supremacy of English gunnery which +turned the scale. This triumphant superiority was proved in the battle +of the 1st of June, 1794. + +The English fleet under Lord Howe attacked the French fleet which was +waiting to escort a convoy of grain into Brest; the forces came in +contact upon the 28th of May, and the action was a running one of three +days. + +Two examples must suffice to prove how determining was the superiority +of the British fire. The _Queen Charlotte_, in the final action, found +herself caught between the _Montagne_ and the _Jacobin_. We have the +figures of the losses during the duel of these two flagships. The _Queen +Charlotte_ lost forty-two men in the short and furious exchange, the +_Montagne_ alone three hundred. Again, consider the total figures. The +number of the crews on both sides was nearly equal, but their losses +were as eleven to five. It cannot be too often repeated that the initial +advantage which the English fleet gained in the great war, which it +maintained and increased as that war proceeded, and which it made +absolute at Trafalgar, was an advantage mainly due to the guns. + +The reader must not expect in a sketch which ends with the fall of +Robespierre any treatise, however short, upon the effect of sea power in +the revolutionary wars. It has of late years been grossly exaggerated, +the reaction which will follow this exaggeration may as grossly belittle +it. It prevented the invasion of England, it permitted the exasperation +and wearing out of the French forces in the Peninsula. But it could not +have determined the fate of Napoleon. That was determined by his Russian +miscalculation and by his subsequent and consequent defeat at Leipsic. + +Upon the early success of the Revolution and the resulting establishment +of European democracy, with which alone these pages deal, sea power was +of no considerable effect. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[6] Incidentally it should be noted how true it is that this supreme +military quality is a matter of organisation rather than of the physical +power of troops; in the Napoleonic wars the marching power of the +English troops was often proved exceptional, and perhaps the greatest of +all feats accomplished by a small body was that of the Light Brigade +marching to the succour of Wellington at Talavera. + +[7] I must not, in fairness to the reader, neglect the great mass of +opinion, from Jomini to Mr. Fortescue's classic work upon the British +Army, which lays it down that the Allies had but to mask the frontier +fortresses and to advance their cavalry rapidly along the Paris road. +Historical hypothesis can never be more than a matter of judgment, but I +confess that this view has always seemed to me to ignore--as purely +military historians and especially foreign ones might well ignore--the +social condition of "'93." Cavalry is the weakest of all arms with which +to deal with sporadic, unorganised, but determined resistance. To pass +through the densely populated country of the Paris road may be compared +to the forcing of an open town, and cavalry can never be relied upon for +_that_. As for the army moving as a whole without a perfect security in +its communications, the matter need not even be discussed; and it must +further be remembered that, the moment such an advance began, an +immediate concentration from the north would have fallen upon the +ill-guarded lines of supply. It may be taken that Coburg knew his +business when he sat down before this, the last of the fortresses. + + + + +VI + +THE REVOLUTION AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH + + +The last and the most important of the aspects which the French +Revolution presents to a foreign, and in particular to an English +reader, is the antagonism which arose between it and the Church. + +As this is the most important so it is the most practical of the +historical problems which the Revolution sets the student to solve; for +the opposition of the Church's organisation in France has at once been +the most profound which the Revolution has had to encounter, the most +active in its methods, and the only one which has increased in strength +as time proceeded. It is hardly too much to say that the Revolution +would, in France at least, have achieved its object and created a +homogeneous, centralised democracy, had not this great quarrel between +the Republic and the Church arisen; and one may legitimately contrast +the ready pliancy of men to political suggestion and the easy story of +their institutions where men knew nothing of the Church, with the great +storms that arise and the fundamental quarrels that are challenged +wherever men are acquainted with the burning truths of Catholicism. + +Finally, the struggle between the Catholic Church and the Revolution is +not only the most important and the most practical, but also by an +unhappy coincidence the most difficult of comprehension of all the +matters presented to us by the great change. + +We have seen in this book that one department of revolutionary history, +the second in importance, perhaps, to the religious department, was also +difficult of comprehension--to wit, the military department. And we have +seen (or at least I have postulated) that the difficulty of following +the military fortunes of the Republic was due to the mass of detail, to +the technical character of the information to be acquired and to the +natural unfamiliarity of the general reader with the elements of +military science. In other words, an accurate knowledge of great numbers +of facts, the proper disposition of these facts in their order of +military importance, and the correlation of a great number of +disconnected actions and plans will alone permit us to grasp the +function of the armies in the development and establishment of the +modern State through the revolutionary wars. + +Now in this second and greater problem, the problem of the function +played by religion, it is an exactly opposite method which can alone be +of service. + +We must examine the field generally, and still more generally we must +forget details that here only bewilder, and see in the largest possible +outline what forces were really at issue, why their conflict occurred, +upon what points that conflict was vital. Any more particular plan will +land us, as it has landed so many thousands of controversialists, in +mere invective on one side or the other, till we come to see nothing but +a welter of treason on the part of priests, and of massacre upon the +part of democrats. + +Men would, did they try to unravel the skein by analysing the documents +of the Vatican or of the French archives, come apparently upon nothing +but a host of petty, base, and often personal calculations; or again, +did they attempt to take a local sample of the struggle and to follow it +in one department of thought, they would come upon nothing but a whirl +of conflict with no sort of clue to the motives that lay behind. + +The contrast between the military and the religious problem of the +French Revolution is like the contrast between the geological +composition and the topographical contours of a countryside. To +understand the first we must bore and dig, we must take numerous samples +of soil and subject them to analysis, we must make ourselves acquainted +with detail in its utmost recesses. But for the second, the more general +our standpoint, the wider our gaze, and the more comprehensive our +judgment, the more accurately do we grasp the knowledge we have set out +to seek. + +We must, then, approach our business by asking at the outset the most +general question of all: "_Was there a necessary and fundamental quarrel +between the doctrines of the Revolution and those of the Catholic +Church?_" + +Those ill acquainted with either party, and therefore ill equipped for +reply, commonly reply with assurance in the affirmative. The French (and +still more the non-French) Republican who may happen, by the accident of +his life, to have missed the Catholic Church, to have had no intimacy +with any Catholic character, no reading of Catholic philosophy, and +perhaps even no chance view of so much as an external Catholic ceremony, +replies unhesitatingly that the Church is the necessary enemy of the +Revolution. Again, the _migr_, the wealthy woman, the recluse, any one +of the many contemporary types to whom the democratic theory of the +Revolution came as a complete novelty, and to-day the wealthy families +in that tradition, reply as unhesitatingly that the Revolution is the +necessary enemy of the Church. The reply seems quite sufficient to the +Tory squire in England or Germany, who may happen to be a Catholic by +birth or by conversion; and it seems equally obvious to (let us say) a +democratic member of some Protestant Church in one of the new countries. + +Historically and logically, theologically also, those who affirm a +necessary antagonism between the Republic and the Church are in error. +Those who are best fitted to approach the problem by their knowledge +both of what the Revolution attempted and of what Catholic philosophy +is, find it in proportion to their knowledge difficult or impossible to +answer that fundamental question in the affirmative. They cannot call +the Revolution a necessary enemy of the Church, nor the Church of +Democracy. + +What is more, minds at once of the most active and of the best +instructed sort are the very minds which find it difficult to explain +how any such quarrel can have arisen. French history itself is full of +the names of those for whom not so much a reconciliation between the +Revolution and the Church, as a statement that no real quarrel existed +between them, was the motive of politics; and almost in proportion to a +man's knowledge of his fellows in Catholic societies, almost in that +proportion is the prime question I have asked answered by such a man in +the negative. A man who knows both the Faith and the Republic will tell +you that there is not and cannot be any necessary or fundamental reason +why conflict should have arisen between a European Democracy and the +Catholic Church. + +When we examine those who concern themselves with the deepest and most +abstract side of the quarrel, we find the same thing. It is impossible +for the theologian, or even for the practical ecclesiastical teacher, to +put his finger upon a political doctrine essential to the Revolution and +to say, "This doctrine is opposed to Catholic dogma or to Catholic +morals." Conversely, it is impossible for the Republican to put his +finger upon a matter of ecclesiastical discipline or religious dogma and +to say, "This Catholic point is at issue with my political theory of the +State." + +Thousands of active men upon either side would have been only too +willing during the last hundred years to discover some such issue, and +it has proved undiscoverable. In a word, only those Democrats who know +little of the Catholic Church can say that of its nature it forbids +democracy; and only those Catholics who have a confused or imperfect +conception of democracy can say that of its nature it is antagonistic to +the Catholic Church. + +Much that is taught by the purely temporal theory of the one is +indifferent to the transcendental and supernatural philosophy of the +other. In some points, where there is contact (as in the conception of +the dignity of man and of the equality of men) there is agreement. To +sum up, the Republican cannot by his theory persecute the Church; the +Church cannot by her theory excommunicate the Republican. + +Why, then, it must next be asked, has there in practice arisen so +furious and so enormous a conflict, a conflict whose activity and whose +consequence are not narrowing but broadening to-day? + +It may be replied to this second question, which is only less general +than the first, in one of two manners. + +One may say that the actions of men are divided not by theories but by +spiritual atmospheres, as it were. According to this view men act under +impulses not ideal but actual: impulses which affect great numbers and +yet in their texture correspond to the complex but united impulses of an +individual personality. Thus, though there be no conflict demonstrable +between the theology of the Catholic Church and the political theory of +the Revolution, yet there may be necessary and fundamental conflict +between the _Persons_ we call the Revolution and the Church, and between +the vivifying principles by which either lives. That is one answer that +can be, and is, given. + +Or one may give a totally different answer and say, "There was no +quarrel between the theology of the Catholic Church and the political +theory of the Revolution; but the folly of this statesman, the ill +drafting of that law, the misconception of such and such an institution, +the coincidence of war breaking out at such and such a moment and +affecting men in such and such a fashion--all these material accidents +bred a misunderstanding between the two great forces, led into conflict +the human officers and the human organisations which directed them; and +conflict once established feeds upon, and grows from, its own +substance." + +Now, if that first form of reply be given to the question we have posed, +though it is sufficient for the type of philosophy which uses it, though +it is certainly explanatory of all human quarrels, and though it in +particular satisfies a particular modern school of thought, it is +evident that history, properly so called, cannot deal with it. + +You may say that the Revolution was the expression of a spirit far more +real than any theory, that this spirit is no more susceptible of +analysis or definition than is the personality of a single human +character, and that this reality was in conflict with another +reality--to wit, the Catholic Church. You may even (as some minds by no +means negligible have done) pass into the field of mysticism in the +matter, and assert that really personal forces, wills superior and +external to man, Demons and Angels, drove the Revolution against the +Catholic Church, and created The Republic to be an anti-Catholic force +capable of meeting and of defeating that Church, which (by its own +definition of itself) is not a theory, but the expression of a +Personality and a Will. To put it in old-fashioned terms, you may say +that the Revolution was the work of antichrist;--but with that kind of +reply, I repeat, history cannot deal. + +If it be true that, in spite of an absence of contradictory intellectual +theories, there is a fundamental spiritual contradiction between the +Revolution and the Catholic Church, then time will test the business; we +shall see in that case a perpetual extension of the quarrel until the +Revolution becomes principally a force for the extinction of +Catholicism, and the Catholic Church appears to the supporter of the +Revolution not as his principal, but as his only enemy. Such a +development has not arisen in a hundred years; a process of time far +more lengthy will alone permit us to judge whether the supposed duello +is a real matter or a phantasm. + +The second type of answer, the answer which pretends to explain the +antagonism by a definite series of events, does concern the historian. + +Proceeding upon the lines of that second answer, he can bring his +science to bear and use the instruments of his trade; and he can show +(as I propose to show in what follows) how, although no quarrel can be +found between the theory of the Revolution and that of the Church, an +active quarrel did in fact spring up between the Revolution in action +and the authorities of Catholicism; a quarrel which a hundred years has +not appeased, but accentuated. + + * * * * * + +Behind the revolutionary quarrel lay the condition of the Church in the +French State since the settlement of the quarrel of the Reformation. + +With what that quarrel of the Reformation was, the reader is +sufficiently familiar. For, roughly speaking, a hundred years, from the +first years of the sixteenth century to the first years of the +seventeenth (from the youth of Henry VIII to the boyhood of Charles I in +England), a great attempt was made to change (as one party would have +said to amend, as the other would have said to denaturalise) the _whole +body_ of Western Christendom. A _general_ movement of attack upon the +inherited form of the Church, and a general resistance to that attack, +was at work throughout European civilisation; and either antagonist +hoped for a universal success, the one of what he called "The +Reformation of religion," the other of what he called "The Divine +Institution and visible unity of the Catholic Church." + +At the end of such a period it became apparent that no such general +result had been, or could be, attained. All that part of the West which +had rejected the authority of the See of Rome began to appear as a +separate territorial region permanently divided from the rest; all that +part of Europe which had retained the Authority of the See of Rome began +to appear as another region of territory. The line of cleavage between +the two was beginning to define itself as a geographical line, and +nearly corresponded to the line which, centuries before, had divided the +Roman and civilised world from the Barbarians. + +The Province of Britain had an exceptional fate. Though Roman in origin +and of the ancient civilisation in its foundation, it fell upon the +non-Roman side of the new boundary; while Ireland, which the Roman +Empire had never organised or instructed, remained, alone of the +external parts of Europe, in communion with Rome. Italy, Spain, and in +the main southern or Romanised Germany, refused ultimately to abandon +their tradition of civilisation and of religion. But in Gaul it was +otherwise--and the action of Gaul during the Reformation must be seized +if its modern religious quarrels are to be apprehended. A very +considerable proportion of the French landed and mercantile classes, +that is of the wealthy men of the country, were in sympathy with the new +religious doctrines and the new social organisation which had now taken +root in England, Scotland, Holland, northern Germany and Scandinavia, +and which were destined in those countries to lead to the domination of +wealth. These French squires and traders were called the Huguenots. + +The succeeding hundred years, from 1615 to 1715, let us say, were a +settlement, not without bloodshed, of the unsatisfied quarrel of the +preceding century. All Englishmen know what happened in England; how the +last vestiges of Catholicism were crushed out and all the social and +political consequences of Protestantism established in the State. + +There was, even in that same seventeenth century, a separate, but +futile, attempt to destroy Catholicism in Ireland. In Germany a struggle +of the utmost violence had only led to a similar regional result. The +first third of that hundred years concluded in the Peace of Westphalia, +and left the Protestant and Catholic territorial divisions much what we +now know them. + +In France, however, the peculiar phenomenon remained of a body powerful +in numbers and (what was far more important) in wealth and social power, +scattered throughout the territory of the kingdom, organised and, by +this time, fixedly anti-Catholic, and therefore anti-national. + +The nation had recovered its traditional line and had insisted upon the +victory of a strong executive, and that executive Catholic. France, +therefore, in this period of settlement, became an absolute monarchy +whose chief possessed tremendous and immediate powers, and a monarchy +which incorporated with itself all the great elements of the national +tradition, _including the Church_. + +It is the name of Louis XIV, of course, which symbolises this great +time; his very long reign precisely corresponds to it. He was born +coincidently with that universal struggle for a religious settlement in +Europe, which I have described as characteristic of the time; he died +precisely at its close; and under him it seemed as though the +reconstructed power of Gaul and the defence of organised Catholicism +were to be synonymous. + +But there were two elements of disruption in that homogeneous body which +Louis XIV apparently commanded. The very fact that the Church had thus +become in France an unshakable national institution, chilled the vital +source of Catholicism. Not only did the hierarchy stand in a perpetual +suspicion of the Roman See, and toy with the conception of national +independence, but they, and all the official organisation of French +Catholicism, put the security of the national establishment and its +intimate attachment to the general political structure of the State, far +beyond the sanctity of Catholic dogma or the practice of Catholic +morals. + +That political structure--the French monarchy--seemed to be of granite +and eternal. Had it indeed survived, the Church in Gaul would doubtless, +in spite of its attachment to so mundane a thing as the crown, have +still survived to enjoy one of those resurrections which have never +failed it in the past, and would have returned, by some creative +reaction, to its principle of life. But for the moment the consequence +of this fixed political establishment was that scepticism, and all those +other active forces of the mind which play upon religion in any Catholic +State, had full opportunity. The Church was, so to speak, not concerned +to defend itself but only its method of existence. It was as though a +garrison, forgetting the main defences of a place, had concentrated all +its efforts upon the security of one work which contained its supplies +of food. + +Wit, good verse, sincere enthusiasm, a lucid exposition of whatever in +the human mind perpetually rebels against transcendental affirmations, +were allowed every latitude and provoked no effective reply. But overt +acts of disrespect to ecclesiastical authority were punished with +rigour. + +While in the wealthy, the bureaucratic, and the governing classes, to +ridicule the Faith was an attitude taken for granted, seriously to +attack the privileges or position of its ministers was ungentlemanly, +and was not allowed. It did not shock the hierarchy that one of its +Apostolic members should be a witty atheist; that another should go +hunting upon Corpus Christi, nearly upset the Blessed Sacrament in his +gallop, and forget what day it was when the accident occurred. The +bishops found nothing remarkable in seeing a large proportion of their +body to be loose livers, or in some of them openly presenting their +friends to their mistresses as might be done by any great lay noble +round them. That a diocese or any other spiritual charge should be +divorced from its titular chief, seemed to them as natural as does to us +the absence from his modern regiment of some titular foreign colonel. +Unquestioned also by the bishops were the poverty, the neglect, and the +uninstruction of the parish clergy; nay--and this is by far the +principal feature--the abandonment of religion by all but a very few of +the French millions, no more affected the ecclesiastical officials of +the time than does the starvation of our poor affect, let us say, one of +our professional politicians. It was a thing simply taken for granted. + +The reader must seize that moribund condition of the religious life of +France upon the eve of the Revolution, for it is at once imperfectly +grasped by the general run of historians, and is also the only fact +which thoroughly explains what followed. The swoon of the Faith in the +eighteenth century is the negative foundation upon which the strange +religious experience of the French was about to rise. France, in the +generation before the Revolution, was passing through a phase in which +the Catholic Faith was at a lower ebb than it had ever been since the +preaching and establishment of it in Gaul. + +This truth is veiled by more than one circumstance. Thus many official +acts, notably marriages and the registration of births, took place under +a Catholic form, and indeed Catholic forms had a monopoly of them. +Again, the State wore Catholic clothes, as it were: the public occasions +of pomp were full of religious ceremony. Few of the middle classes went +to Mass in the great towns, hardly any of the artisans; but the Churches +were "official." Great sums of money--including official money--were at +the disposal of the Church; and the great ecclesiastics were men from +whom solid favours could be got. Again, the historic truth is masked by +the language and point of view of the great Catholic reaction which has +taken place in our own time. + +It is safe to say that where one adult of the educated classes concerned +himself seriously with the Catholic Faith and Practice in France before +the Revolution, there are five to-day. But in between lies the violent +episode of the persecution, and the Catholic reaction in our time +perpetually tends to contrast a supposed pre-revolutionary "Catholic" +society with the revolutionary fury. "Look," say its champions, "at the +dreadful way in which the Revolution treated the Church." And as they +say this the converse truth appears obvious and they seem to imply, +"Think how different it must have been before the Revolution persecuted +the Church!" The very violence of the modern reaction towards +Catholicism has exaggerated the revolutionary persecution, and in doing +so has made men forget that apart from other evidence of the decline of +religion, it is obvious that persecution could never have arisen without +a strong and continuous historical backing. You could not have had a +Diocletian in the thirteenth century with the spirit of the Crusaders +just preceding him; you could not have had Henry VIII if the England of +the fifteenth century just preceding him had been an England devoted to +the monastic profession. And you could not have had the revolutionary +fury against the Catholic Church in France if the preceding generation +had been actively Catholic even in a considerable portion. + +As a fact, of course it was not: and in the popular indifference to or +hatred of the Church the principal factor was the strict brotherhood not +so much of Church and State as of Church and executive Government. + +But there was another factor. We were describing a little way back how +in France there had arisen, during the movement of the Reformation, a +wealthy, powerful and numerically large Huguenot body. In mere numbers +it dwindled, but it maintained throughout the seventeenth century a very +high position, both of privilege and (what was its characteristic) of +money-power; and even to-day, though their birth-rate is, of course, +lower than the average of the nation, the French Huguenots number close +upon a million, and are far wealthier, upon the average, than their +fellow citizens. It is their wealth which dominates the trade of +certain districts, which exercises so great an effect upon the +universities, the publishing trade, and the press; and in general lends +them such weight in the affairs of the nation. + +Now the Huguenot had in France a special and permanent quarrel with the +monarchy, and therefore with the Catholic Church, which, precisely +because it was not of the vivid and intense kind which is associated +with popular and universal religions, was the more secretly ubiquitous. +His quarrel was that, having been highly privileged for nearly a +century, the member of "a State within a State," and for more than a +generation free to hold assemblies separate from and often antagonistic +to the national Government, these privileges had been suddenly removed +from him by the Government of Louis XIV a century before the Revolution. +The quarrel was more political than religious; it was a sort of "Home +Rule" quarrel. For though the Huguenots were spread throughout France, +they had possessed special cities and territories wherein their spirit +and, to a certain extent, their private self-government, formed +_enclaves_ of particularism within the State. + +They had held this position, as I have said, for close upon a hundred +years, and it was not until a date contemporary with the violent +settlement of the religious trouble in England by the expulsion of James +II that a similar settlement, less violent, achieved (as it was thought) +a similar religious unity in France. But that unity was not achieved. +The Huguenots, though no longer permitted to exist as a State within a +State, remained, for the hundred years between the Revocation of the +Edict of Nantes and the outbreak of the Revolution, a powerful and +ever-watchful body. They stood upon the flank of the attack which +intellectual scepticism was making upon the Catholic Church, they were +prepared to take advantage of that scepticism's first political victory, +and since the Revolution they have been the most powerful and, after the +Freemasons, with whom they are largely identified, the most strongly +organised, of the anti-clerical forces in the country. + +The Jews, whose action since the Revolution has been so remarkable in +this same business, were not, in the period immediately preceding it, of +any considerable influence, and their element in the coalition may be +neglected. + +Such, then, was the position when the Revolution was preparing. Within +memory of all men living, the Church had become more and more official, +the masses of the great towns had wholly lost touch with it; the +intelligence of the country was in the main drawn to the Deist or even +to the purely sceptical propaganda, the powerful Huguenot body was ready +prepared for an alliance with any foe of Catholicism, and in the eyes of +the impoverished town populace--notably in Paris, which had long +abandoned the practice of religion--the human organisation of the +Church, the hierarchy, the priesthood, and the few but very wealthy +religious orders which still lingered on in dwindling numbers, were but +a portion of the privileged world which the populace hated and was +prepared to destroy. + +It is upon such a spirit and in such conditions of the national +religious life that the Revolution begins to work. In the National +Assembly you have the great body of the Commons which determines the +whole, touched only here and there with men in any way acquainted with +or devoted to Catholic practice, and those men for the most part +individual and eccentric, that is, uncatholic, almost in proportion to +the genuineness of their religious feeling. Among the nobility the +practice of religion was a social habit with some--as a mental attitude +the Faith was forgotten among all but a very few. Among the clergy a +very wealthy hierarchy, no one of them prepared to defend the Church +with philosophical argument, and almost unanimous in regarding itself as +a part of the old political machine, was dominant; while the +representatives of the lower clergy, strongly democratic in character, +were at first more occupied with the establishment of democracy than +with the impending attack upon the material and temporal organisation of +the Church. + +Now, that material and temporal organisation offered at the very +beginning of the debates an opportunity for attack which no other +department of the old _rgime_ could show. + +The immediate peril of the State was financial. The pretext and even to +some extent the motive for the calling of the States-General was the +necessity for finding money. The old fiscal machinery had broken down, +and as always happens when a fiscal machine breaks down, the hardship it +involved, and the pressure upon individuals which it involved, appeared +to be universal. _There was no immediate and easily available fund of +wealth upon which the Executive could lay hands save the wealth of the +clergy._ + +The feudal dues of the nobles, if abandoned, must fall rather to the +peasantry than to the State. Of the existing taxes few could be +increased without peril, and none with any prospect of a large +additional revenue. The charge for debt alone was one-half of the total +receipts of the State, the deficit was, in proportion to the revenue, +overwhelming. Face to face with that you had an institution not popular, +one whose public functions were followed by but a small proportion of +the population, one in which income was most unequally distributed, and +one whose feudal property yielded in dues an amount equal to more than a +quarter of the total revenue of the State. Add to this a system of +tithes which produced nearly as much again, and it will be apparent +under what a financial temptation the Assembly lay. + +It may be argued, of course, that the right of the Church to this +ecclesiastical property, whether in land or in tithes, was absolute, and +that the confiscation of the one or of the other form of revenue was +mere theft. But such was not the legal conception of the moment. The +wealth of the Church was not even (and this is most remarkable) +defended as absolute property by the generality of those who enjoyed it. +The tone of the debates which suppressed the tithes, and later +confiscated the Church lands, was a tone of discussion upon legal +points, precedents, public utility, and so forth. There was not heard in +it, in any effective degree, the assertion of mere moral right; though +in that time the moral rights of property were among the first of +political doctrines. + +It was not, however, the confiscation of the Church lands and the +suppression of the tithe which founded the quarrel between the +Revolution and the clergy. No financial or economic change is ever more +than a preparation for, or a permissive condition of, a moral change. It +is never the cause of a moral change. Even the suppression of the +religious houses in the beginning of 1790 must not be taken as the point +of departure in the great quarrel. The religious orders in France were +at that moment too decayed in zeal and in numbers, too wealthy and much +too removed from the life of the nation, for this to be the case. The +true historical point of departure from which we must date the beginning +of this profound debate between the Revolution and Catholicism, is to be +found in the morning of the 30th of May, 1790, when a parliamentary +committee (the Ecclesiastical Committee) presented to the House its plan +for the reform of the Constitution of the Church in Gaul. + +The enormity of that act is now apparent to the whole world. The +proposal, at the bidding of chance representatives not elected _ad hoc_, +to change the dioceses and the sees of Catholic France, the decision of +an ephemeral political body to limit to such and such ties (and very +feeble they were) the bond between the Church of France and the Holy +See, the suppression of the Cathedral Chapters, the seemingly farcical +proposal that bishops should be elected, nay, priests also thus chosen, +the submission of the hierarchy in the matter of residence and travel to +a civil authority which openly declared itself indifferent in matters of +religion,--all this bewilders the modern mind. How, we ask, could men so +learned, so enthusiastic, so laborious and so closely in touch with all +the realities of their time, make a blunder of that magnitude? Much +more, how did such a blunder escape the damnation of universal mockery +and immediate impotence? The answer is to be discovered in what has just +been laid down with so much insistence: the temporary eclipse of +religion in France before the Revolution broke out. + +The men who framed the Constitution of the Clergy, the men who voted it, +nay, even the men who argued against it, all had at the back of their +minds three conceptions which they were attempting to reconcile: of +those three conceptions one was wholly wrong, one was imperfect because +superficial, the third alone was true. And these three conceptions were, +first, that the Catholic Church was a moribund superstition, secondly, +that it possessed in its organisation and tradition a power to be +reckoned with, and thirdly, that the State, its organs, and their +corporate inheritance of action, were so bound up with the Catholic +Church that it was impossible to effect any general political settlement +in which that body both external to France and internal, should be +neglected. + +Of these three conceptions, had the first been as true as the last, it +would have saved the Constitution of the Clergy and the reputation for +common-sense of those who framed it. + +It was certainly true that Catholicism had for so many centuries been +bound up in the framework of the State that the Parliament must +therefore do something with the Church in the general settlement of the +nation: it could not merely leave the Church on one side. + +It was also superficially true that the Church was a power to be +reckoned with politically, quite apart from the traditional union of +Church and State--but only superficially true. What the revolutionary +politicians feared was the intrigue of those who commanded the +organisation of the Catholic Church, men whom they knew for the most +part to be without religion, and the sincerity of all of whom they +naturally doubted. A less superficial and a more solid judgment of the +matter would have discovered that the real danger lay in the animosity +or intrigue against the Civil Constitution, not of the corrupt +hierarchy, but of the sincere though ill-instructed and dwindling +minority which was still loyally attached to the doctrines and +discipline of the Church. But even this superficial judgment would not +have been fatal, had not the judgment of the National Assembly been +actually erroneous upon the first point--the vitality of the Faith. + +Had the Catholic Church been, as nearly all educated men then imagined, +a moribund superstition, had the phase of decline through which it was +passing been a phase comparable to that through which other religions +have passed in their last moments, had it been supported by ancient +families from mere tradition, clung to by remote peasants from mere +ignorance and isolation, abandoned (as it was) in the towns simply +because the towns had better opportunities of intellectual enlightenment +and of acquiring elementary knowledge in history and the sciences; had, +in a word, the imaginary picture which these men drew in their minds of +the Catholic Church and its fortunes been an exact one, then the Civil +Constitution of the Clergy would have been a statesmanlike act. It would +have permitted the hold of the Catholic Church upon such districts as it +still retained to vanish slowly and without shock. It proposed to keep +alive at a reasonable salary the ministers of a ritual which would +presumably have lost all vitality before the last of its pensioners was +dead; it would have prepared a bed, as it were, upon which the last of +Catholicism in Gaul could peacefully pass away. The action of the +politicians in framing the Constitution would have seemed more generous +with every passing decade and their wisdom in avoiding offence to the +few who still remained faithful, would have been increasingly applauded. + +On the other hand, and from the point of view of the statesman, the +Civil Constitution of the Clergy bound strictly to the State and made +responsible to it those ancient functions, not yet dead, of the +episcopacy and all its train. It was a wise and a just consideration on +the part of the Assembly that religions retain their machinery long +after they are dead, and if that machinery has ever been a State +machinery it must remain subject to the control of the State: and +subject not only up to the moment when the living force which once +animated it is fled, but much longer; up, indeed, to the moment when the +surviving institutions of the dead religion break down and perish. + +So argued the National Assembly and its committee, and, I repeat, the +argument was just and statesmanlike, prudent and full of foresight, save +for one miscalculation. The Catholic Church was not dead, and was not +even dying. It was exhibiting many of the symptoms which in other +organisms and institutions correspond to the approach of death, but the +Catholic Church is an organism and an institution quite unlike any +other. It fructifies and expands immediately under the touch of a lethal +weapon; it has at its very roots the conception that material prosperity +is stifling to it, poverty and misfortune nutritious. + +The men of the National Assembly would have acted more wisely had they +closely studied the story of Ireland (then but little known), or had +they even made themselves acquainted with the methods by which the +Catholic Church in Britain, after passing in the fifteenth century +through a phase somewhat similar to that under which it was sinking in +Gaul in the eighteenth, was stifled under Henry and Elizabeth. + +But the desire of the men of 1789 was not to kill the Church but to let +it die; they thought it dying. Their desire was only to make that death +decent and of no hurt to the nation, and to control the political action +of a hierarchy that had been wealthy and was bound up with the old +society that was crumbling upon every side. + +The Civil Constitution of the Clergy failed: it lit the civil war, it +dug the pit which divided Catholicism from the Revolution at the moment +of the foreign invasion, it segregated the loyal priest in such a +fashion that his order could not but appear to the populace as an order +of traitors, and it led, in the furnace of 1793, to the great +persecution from the memories of which the relations between the French +democracy and the Church have not recovered. + +It is important to trace the actual steps of the failure; for when we +appreciate what the dates were, how short the time which was left for +judgment or for revision, and how immediately disaster followed upon +error, we can understand what followed and we can understand it in no +other way. + +If we find an enduring quarrel between two families whose cause of +contention we cannot seize and whose mutual hostility we find +unreasonable, to learn that it proceeded from a cataclysm too rapid and +too violent for either to have exercised judgment upon it will enable us +to excuse or at least to comprehend the endurance of their antagonism. +Now, it was a cataclysm which fell upon the relations of the Church and +State immediately after the error which the Parliament had committed; a +cataclysm quite out of proportion to their intentions, as indeed are +most sudden disasters quite out of proportion to the forces that bring +them about. + +It was, as we have seen, in the summer of 1790--upon the 12th of +July--that the Civil Constitution of the Clergy was approved by the +Assembly. But it was not until the 26th of August that the King +consented to sign. Nor was there at the moment any attempt to give the +law effect. The protests of the bishops, for instance, came out quite at +leisure, in the month of October, and the active principle of the whole +of the Civil Constitution--to wit, the presentation of the Civic Oath +which the clergy were required to take, was not even debated until the +end of the year. + +This Civic Oath, which is sometimes used as a bugbear in the matter, was +no more than an engagement under the sanction of an oath that the bishop +or priest taking it would maintain the new _rgime_--though that +_rgime_ included the constitution of the clergy; the oath involved no +direct breach with Catholic doctrine or practice. It was, indeed, a +folly to impose it, and it was a folly based upon the ignorance of the +politicians (and of many of the bishops of the day) as to the nature of +the Catholic Church. But the oath was not, nor was it intended to be, a +measure of persecution. Many of the parish clergy took it, and most of +them probably took it in good faith: nor did it discredit the oath with +the public that it was refused by all save four of the acting bishops, +for the condition of the hierarchy in pre-revolutionary France was +notorious. The action of the bishops appeared in the public eye to be +purely political, and the ready acceptance of the oath by so many, +though a minority, of the lower clergy argued strongly in its favour. + +Nevertheless, no Catholic priest or bishop or layman could take that +oath without landing himself in disloyalty to his religion; and that for +the same reason which led St. Thomas of Canterbury to make his curious +and fruitful stand against the reasonable and inevitable, as much as +against the unreasonable, governmental provisions of his time. The +Catholic Church is an institution of necessity autonomous. It cannot +admit the right of any other power exterior to its own organisation to +impose upon it a modification of its discipline, nor, above all, a new +conception of its hieratic organisation. + +The reader must carefully distinguish between the acceptation by the +Church of a detail of economic reform, the consent to suppress a +corporation at the request of the civil power, or even to forego certain +traditional political rights, and the admission of the general principle +of civil control. To that general principle the Assembly, in framing the +Constitution of the Clergy, was quite evidently committed. To admit such +a co-ordinate external and civil power, or rather to admit a _superior_ +external power, is in theory to deny the principle of Catholicism, and +in practice to make of the Catholic Church what the other State +religions of Christendom have become. + +I have said that not until the end of the year 1790 was the debate +opened upon the proposition to compel the clergy to take the oath. + +It is a singular commentary upon the whole affair that compulsion should +have been the subject for debate at all. It should have followed, one +would have imagined, normally from the law. But so exceptional had been +the action of the Assembly and, as they now were beginning to find, so +perilous, that a special decree was necessary--and the King's signature +to it--before this normal consequence of a measure which had been law +for months, could be acted upon. + +Here let the reader pause and consider with what that moment--the end of +1790--coincided. + +The assignats, paper-money issued upon the security of the confiscated +estates of the Church, had already depreciated 10 per cent. Those who +had first accepted them were paying throughout France a penny in the +livre, or as we may put it, a penny farthing on the shilling, for what +must have seemed to most of them the obstinacy of one single +corporation--and that an unpopular one--against the decrees of the +National Assembly. + +It was now the moment when a definite reaction against the Revolution +was first taking shape, and when the populace was first beginning +uneasily to have suspicion of it; it was the moment when the Court was +beginning to negotiate for flight; it was the moment when (though the +populace did not know it) Mirabeau was advising the King with all his +might to seize upon the enforcement of the priests' oath as an +opportunity for civil war. + +The whole air of that winter was charged with doubt and mystery: in the +minds of all who had enthusiastically followed the march of the +Revolution, the short days of that rigorous cold of 1790-91 contained +passages of despair, and a very brief period was to suffice for making +the clerical oath not only the test of democracy against reaction, but +the wedge that should split the nation in two. + +With the very opening of the new year, on the 4th of January, the +bishops and priests in the Assembly were summoned to take the oath to +the King, the Nation, and the Law; but that law included the Civil +Constitution of the Clergy, and they refused. Within three months +Mirabeau was dead, the flight of the King determined on, the suspicion +of Paris at white heat, the oath taken or refused throughout France, +and the schismatic priests introduced into their parishes--it may be +imagined with what a clamour and with how many village quarrels! In that +same fortnight appeared the papal brief, long delayed, and known as the +Brief "_Caritas_," denouncing the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. Six +weeks later, at the end of May, the papal representative at the French +Court was withdrawn, and in that act religious war declared. + +Throughout this quarrel, which was now exactly of a year's duration, but +the acute phase of which had lasted only six months, every act of either +party to it necessarily tended to make the conflict more violent. Not +only was there no opportunity for conciliation, but in the very nature +of things the most moderate counsel had to range itself on one side or +the other, and every public act which touched in any way upon the sore +point, though it touched but indirectly, and with no desire on the part +of the actors to rouse the passions of the moment, immediately appeared +as a provocation upon one side or the other. + +It was inevitable that it should be so, with a population which had +abandoned the practice of religion, with the attachment of the clerical +organisation to the organisation of the old _rgime_, with the strict +bond of discipline that united the priesthood of the Church in France +into one whole, and above all with the necessity under which the +Revolution was, at this stage, of finding a definite and tangible +enemy. + +This last point is of the very first importance. Public opinion was +exasperated and inflamed, for the King was known to be an opponent of +the democratic movement; yet he signed the bills and could not be +overtly attacked. The Queen was known to be a violent opponent of it; +but she did not actually govern. The Governments of Europe were known to +be opponents; but no diplomatic note had yet appeared of which public +opinion could make an object for attack. + +The resistance, therefore, offered by the clergy to the Civil +Constitution, had just that effect which a nucleus will have in the +crystallisation of some solution. It polarised the energies of the +Revolution, it provided a definite foil, a definite negative, a definite +counterpoint, a definite butt. Here was a simple issue. Men wearing a +special uniform, pursuing known functions, performing a known part in +society--to wit, the priests--were now for the most part the enemies of +the new democratic Constitution that was in preparation. They would not +take the oath of loyalty to it: they were everywhere in secret rebellion +against it and, where they were dispossessed of their cures, in open +rebellion. The clergy, therefore, that is the non-juring clergy (and the +conforming clergy were an experiment that soon became a fiction), were +after April 1791, in the eyes of all the democrats of the time, the +plainest and most tangible form of the opposition to democracy. + +To the way in which I have presented the problem a great deal more might +be added. The very fact that the democratic movement had come after a +period of unfaith, and was non-Catholic in its springs, would have +tended to produce that quarrel. So would the necessary attachment of the +Catholic to authority and the easy confusion between the principle of +authority and claims of a traditional monarchy. Again, the elements of +vanity, of material greed, and of a false finality which are to be +discovered in any purely democratic theory of the State, will between +them always bring this theory into some conflict with religion. The +centuries during which the throne and the altar had stood as twin +symbols, especially in France, the very terminology of religious +metaphor which had been forged during the centuries of monarchical +institutions in Europe, helped to found the great quarrel. But, I +repeat, the overt act without which the quarrel could never have become +the terribly great thing it did, the master blunder which destroyed the +unity of the revolutionary movement, was the Civil Constitution of the +Clergy. + +So much for the first year of the schism, May 1790 to May 1791. The +second year is but an intensification of the process apparent in the +first. + +It opens with the King's flight in June 1791: that is, with the first +open act of enmity taken against the authority of the National +Parliament since, two years before, the National Parliament had declared +itself supreme. Already the Court had been generally identified with the +resistance of the clergy, and a particular example of this had appeared +in the opinion that the King's attempted journey to St. Cloud in April +had been prompted by a desire to have communion at the hands of a +non-juring priest.[8] When, therefore, the King fled, though his flight +had nothing whatsoever to do with the clerical quarrel, it was +associated in men's minds with the clerical quarrel through his attempt +to leave Paris in April and from a long association of the Court with +the clerical resistance. The outburst of anti-monarchical feeling which +followed the flight was at the same time an outburst of anti-clerical +feeling; but the clergy were everywhere and could be attacked +everywhere. The Declaration of Pillnitz, which the nation very rightly +interpreted as the beginning of an armed European advance against the +French democracy, was felt to be a threat not only in favour of the King +but in favour also of the rebellious ecclesiastics. + +And so forth. The uneasy approach of war throughout that autumn and +winter of 1791-92, the peculiar transformation of the French +temperament which war or its approach invariably produces--a sort of +constructive exaltation and creative passion--began to turn a great part +of its energy or fury against the very persons of the orthodox priests. + +The new Parliament, the "Legislative" as it was called, had not been +sitting two months when it passed, upon November 29, 1791, the decree +that non-juring priests should be deprived of their stipend. And here +again we must note the curious lack of adjustment between law and fact +in all this clerical quarrel! For more than a year public money had been +paid to men who, under the law, should not during the whole of that year +have touched any salary! Yet, as in the case of the oath, special action +was necessary, and moreover the Parliament added to this tardy and +logical consequence of the law a declaration that those who had not so +taken the oath within eight days of their decree should be rendered +"suspect." + +The word "suspect" is significant. The Parliament even now could not +act, at least it could not act without the King; and this word +"suspect," which carried no material consequences with it, was one that +might cover a threat of things worse than regular and legal punishment. +It was like the mark that some power not authorised or legal makes upon +the door of those whom that power has singled out for massacre in some +city. + +Three weeks later Louis vetoed the decree refusing stipends to +non-jurors, and the year 1791 ended with the whole matter in suspense +but with exasperation increasing to madness. + +The first three months of 1792 saw no change. The non-juring clergy were +still tolerated by the Executive in their illegal position, and, what is +more extraordinary, still received public money and were still for the +most part in possession of their cures; the conception that the clergy +were the prime, or at any rate the most obvious, enemies of the new +_rgime_ now hardened into a fixed opinion which the attempted +persecution of religion, as the one party called it, the obstinate and +anti-national rebellion of factious priests, as the other party called +it, was rapidly approaching real persecution and real rebellion. + +With April 1792 came the war, and all the passions of the war. + +The known hostility of the King to the Revolution was now become +something far worse: his known sympathy with an enemy under arms. To +force the King into the open was henceforward the main tactic of the +revolutionary body. + +Now for those whose object was forcing Louis XVI to open declarations of +hostility against the nation, his religion was an obvious instrument. In +no point could one come to closer grips with the King than on this +question of the Church, where already, in December 1791, he had +exercised his veto. + +On May 27, 1792, therefore, Guadet and Vergniaud, the Girondins, moved +that a priest who had refused to take the oath should be subjected to +transportation upon the mere demand of any twenty taxpayers within that +assembly of parishes known as a "Canton." It was almost exactly two +years since the Civil Constitution of the Clergy had first been reported +to the House by the Ecclesiastical Committee of the Constituent or +National Assembly. + +It must not be forgotten under what external conditions this violent +act, the first true act of persecution, was demanded. It was already a +month since, upon the 20th of April, the war had opened upon the Belgian +frontier by a disgraceful panic and the murder of General Dillon; almost +contemporaneous with that breakdown was the corresponding panic and +flight of the French troops in their advance to Mons. All Europe was +talking of the facile march upon Paris which could now be undertaken; +and in general this decree against the priests was but part of the +exasperated policy which was rising to meet the terror of the invasion. + +It was followed, of course, by the decree dismissing the Royal Guard, +and, rather more than a week later, by the demand for the formation of a +camp of volunteers under the walls of Paris. But with this we are not +here concerned. The King vetoed the decree against the non-juring +priests, and in the wild two months that followed the orthodox clergy +were, in the mind of the populace, and particularly the populace of +Paris, identified with the cause of the re-establishment of the old +_rgime_ and the success of the invading foreign armies. + +With the crash of the 10th of August the persecution began: the true +persecution, which was to the growing bitterness of the previous two +years what a blow is to the opening words of a quarrel. + +The decree of the 27th of May was put into force within eleven days of +the fall of the Tuileries. True, it was not put into force in that +crudity which the Parliament had demanded: the non-juring priests were +given a fortnight to leave the kingdom, and if they failed to avail +themselves of the delay were to be transported. + +From this date to the end of the Terror, twenty-three months later, the +story of the relations between the Revolution and the Church, though +wild and terrible, is simple: it is a story of mere persecution +culminating in extremes of cruelty and in the supposed uprooting of +Christianity in France. + +The orthodox clergy were everywhere regarded by this time as the typical +enemies of the revolutionary movement; they themselves regarded the +revolutionary movement, by this time, as being principally an attempt to +destroy the Catholic Church. + +Within seven months of the fall of the monarchy, from the 18th of March, +1793, the priests, whether non-juring or schismatic, might, on the +denunciation of any six citizens, be subjected to transportation. + +There followed immediately a general attack upon religion. The attempted +closing of all churches was, of course, a failure, but it was firmly +believed that such attachment as yet remained to the Catholic Church was +due only to the ignorance of the provincial districts which displayed +it, or to the self-seeking of those who fostered it. The attempt at mere +"de-christianisation," as it was called, failed, but the months of +terror and cruelty, the vast number of martyrdoms (for they were no +less) and the incredible sufferings and indignities to which the priests +who attempted to remain in the country were subjected, burnt itself, as +it were, into the very fibre of the Catholic organisation in France, and +remained, in spite of political theory one way or the other, and in +spite of the national sympathies of the priesthood, the one great active +memory inherited from that time. + +Conversely, the picture of the priest, his habit and character, as the +fatal and necessary opponent of the revolutionary theory, became so +fixed in the mind of the Republican that two generations did nothing to +eliminate it, and that even in our time the older men, in spite of pure +theory, cannot rid themselves of an imagined connection between the +Catholic Church and an international conspiracy against democracy. Nor +does this non-rational but very real feeling lack support from the +utterances of those who, in opposing the political theory of the French +Revolution, consistently quote the Catholic Church as its necessary and +holy antagonist. + +The attempt to "de-christianise" France failed, as I have said, +completely. Public worship was restored, and the Concordat of Napoleon +was believed to have settled the relations between Church and State in a +permanent fashion. We have lived to see it dissolved; but this +generation will not see, nor perhaps the generation succeeding it, the +issue of the struggle between two bodies of thought which are divided by +no process of reason, but profoundly divorced by the action of vivid and +tragic historical memories. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[8] This opinion has entered into so many Protestant and non-Catholic +histories of the Revolution that it is worth criticising once again in +this little book. The King was perfectly free to receive communion +privately from the hands of orthodox priests, did so receive it, and had +received communion well within the canonical times. There was little +ecclesiastical reason for the attempted leaving of Paris for St. Cloud +on Monday the 18th April, 1791, save the _custom_ (not the religious +duty) of communicating in public on Easter Sunday itself; it was a +political move. + + + + +INDEX + + + Alexander the Great, 144 + Argonne, the, 156 + Arras, 132, 137 + Artois, Comte d', 105 + Avignon, 111 + + Bacharach, 173 + Bailly, 71, 95 + Barentin, 89 + Barrre, 80, 125, 130, 131 + Bastille, the, 95, 105, 109, 115 + Beauregard, 200 + Belgium, 123, 167, 169, 173 + Bergues, 191 + Bordeaux, 135 + Bouill, 107, 152 + Brissot, 110, 130 + Brunswick, Duke of, 115, 118, 178 + Brussels, 168 + + Csar, 144 + Calonne, 46 + Cambon, 125 + Carignan, 200 + Carlyle, Thomas, 68 + Carnot, 72-74, 80, 81, 136, 139, 171, 184, 186, 195, 197, 198, 200, + 201 + Cassel, 192 + Chalns, 107, 158 + Champ-de-Mars, Massacre of, 109 + Champfleury, 77 + Charleroi, 210, 211 + Charles I of England, 222 + Chollet, 128 + Clerfayt, 206, 207, 209 + Coblentz, 115 + Coburg, 170, 173, 176, 177, 179, 186, 188, 196, 210 + Committee of Public Safety, 78, 79, 80, 81, 119, 125, 126, 128, 129, + 131, 134, 136, 137, 140, 183, 195, 196, 203 + Cond, 106 + Cond, fortress of, 135, 173, 177, 178, 180, 182, 183, 186, 195 + Condorcet, 71 + _Contrat Social_, 21, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37, 125, 133 + Coudequerque, 192 + Couthon, 131 + Custine, 177, 178, 179, 180 + + Danton, 64, 67-72, 73, 81, 82, 109, 117, 119, 120, 125, 130, 131, 135, + 137, 138, 139, 150, 162, 184, 185 + Desmoulins, 138 + Dillon, General, 250 + Drouet, 108 + Dumouriez, 43, 65-67, 113, 123, 124, 125, 155, 157, 158, 159, 162, + 163, 165, 168, 169, 170, 173 + Dunquerque, 135, 136, 181, 185, 186, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 195 + + England, 14, 124, 145 + Elizabeth, Queen of England, 239 + Esquelbecque, 191 + + Fersen, Count Axel de, 53 + Fleurus, 211, 212 + Fontenay, 128 + Fontenoy, 149, 166 + Fouch, 74 + Freemasonry, 71, 231 + Freytag, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194 + Furnes, 190, 194 + + George III of England, 63 + Gironde, 110 + _Girondins, The_, 110, 112, 119, 122, 123, 129, 249 + Grandpr, 158 + Guadet, 249 + Guise, 198, 200 + + Haguenau, 202 + Haine, the River, 167 + Hbert, 138 + Henry VIII of England, 222, 229, 239 + Hesse-Cassel, Landgrave of, 113 + Hoche, 202 + Holland, 124, 163 + Hoondschoote, 74, 136, 195, 196, 197 + Houchard, 179, 181, 192, 193, 194, 195, 198 + Howe, Lord, 213 + + Ireland, 239 + Isnard, 110 + + James II of England, 230 + Jefferson, 21 + Jemappes, 123, 166, 167 + Joseph II of Austria, 112, 163, 165 + Jourdan, 198 + + Kaiserslautern, 202 + Kaunitz, 155 + Kellermann, 159, 160 + Kilmaine, 180, 181 + + La Fayette, 43, 51, 61-65, 95, 100, 109, 114 + Lamballe, Princess de, 53, 71 + Landau, 177, 202, 203 + Lebas, 141 + Leipsic, 143, 214 + Lequesnoy, 177, 186, 195 + Linselles, 189 + Longwy, 115, 118, 156 + Lorraine, 118 + Louis XIV of France, 100, 225, 230 + Louis XVI of France, vi, 37-45, 71, 84, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, + 93, 95, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 107, 108, 109, 111, 114, + 117, 123, 124, 152, 153, 243, 245, 246, 247, 248, 249, 250 + Louis XVII of France, 135 + Louvre, the, 116, 117 + Luxembourg, 118 + Lyons, 129, 136, 182, 183 + Lys, the River, 206, 207 + + Machecoul, 128 + Maestricht, 168 + Malo-les-Bains, 194 + Marat, 74-77, 120, 135, 183 + Marcel, 120 + Marchionnes, 189 + Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, vi, 45-53, 63, 64, 90, 99, 100, + 101, 102, 103, 106, 107, 108, 109, 113, 116, 117, 138, 139, 152, + 153, 155, 245 + Marque, the River, 206 + "Marseillaise," the, 116 + Marseilles, 116, 131, 135, 182 + Maubeuge, 136, 177, 178, 181, 196, 197, 202 + Mayence, 135, 173, 177, 178 + Merda, 142 + Metz, 159 + Michelet, 68 + Mirabeau, 44, 53-61, 64, 70, 72, 102, 103, 104, 106, 107, 243 + Mons, 167, 177, 250 + Montmdy, 107 + Mouveau, 206 + + Namur, 179 + Nantes, 128, 131, 136, 137, 182 + Napoleon I, 66, 67, 72, 143, 150, 205, 214, 253 + Narbonne, 43, 155 + Necker, 46, 90, 94, 95 + Neerwinden, 124, 125, 128, 169 + + Orleans, 128 + Orleans, Duke of, 109 + + Parthenay, 128 + Pichegru, 202 + Pillnitz, 154, 247 + Poland, 31 + Polignac, Madame de, 53 + Pollio, 120 + + Redange, 118 + Robespierre, 77-83, 111, 112, 132, 133, 134, 140, 141, 142, 213 + Robinet, Dr., 120 + Roland, 110 + Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 20, 21, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, + 36, 37, 125 + Russia, 14 + + St. Amand, 206 + Saint-Andr, Jeanbon, 80, 131, 185 + St. Cloud, 108, 247 + Saint-Just, 80, 131, 133, 140, 141, 210 + St. Menehould, 159 + Scheldt, the, 123, 183, 205, 206 + Sedan, 114 + Servia, 155 + Siyes, 87 + Spain, 24, 44, 124, 150 + + Talavera, 189 + Talleyrand, 150 + Terror, the, 79, 80, 81, 82, 120, 137, 139, 140, 142, 251 + Tetteghem, 191 + Thouars, 128 + Toulon, 135, 136, 182, 183, 203 + Tourcoing, 189, 206, 208, 209 + Tournay, 210 + Trafalgar, 213 + Tuileries, the, 100, 101, 116, 121, 251 + + Valenciennes, 129, 135, 169, 173, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, + 186, 195 + Valmy, 121, 122, 131, 158, 159, 160, 169 + Varennes, 107, 108, 154 + Vende, 128, 135, 203 + Verdun, 118, 120, 156, 157 + Vergniaud, 110, 130, 249 + Versailles, 52, 94, 99, 100, 102, 152, 153 + Vienna, 163, 210 + + Warcoing, 205 + Waterloo, 143 + Wattignies, 73, 136, 201, 208 + Wellington, Duke of, 189 + Westermann, 131 + Wilder, 191 + Wissembourg, 202 + Wormhoudt, 191 + Wurmser, 178 + + York, Duke of, 179, 181, 186, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 194, 205, 208, + 209 + + * * * * * + +_Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London and Bungay._ + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The French Revolution, by Hilaire Belloc + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FRENCH REVOLUTION *** + +***** This file should be named 35215-8.txt or 35215-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/5/2/1/35215/ + +Produced by Steven Gibbs, Richard J. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The French Revolution + +Author: Hilaire Belloc + +Release Date: February 8, 2011 [EBook #35215] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FRENCH REVOLUTION *** + + + + +Produced by Steven Gibbs, Richard J. Shiffer and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + THE FRENCH REVOLUTION + + BY + + HILAIRE BELLOC, M.A. + + + AUTHOR OF "DANTON," "ROBESPIERRE," "MARIE ANTOINETTE," "THE OLD ROAD," + "THE PATH TO ROME," "PARIS," "THE HILLS AND THE SEA," "THE HISTORIC + THAMES," ETC., ETC. + + + LONDON + + WILLIAMS AND NORGATE + + + RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED, + BRUNSWICK STREET, STAMFORD STREET, S.E., + AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK. + + + + +PREFACE + + +The object of these few pages is not to recount once more the history of +the Revolution: that can be followed in any one of a hundred text-books. +Their object is rather to lay, if that be possible, an explanation of it +before the English reader; so that he may understand both what it was +and how it proceeded, and also why certain problems hitherto unfamiliar +to Englishmen have risen out of it. + +First, therefore, it is necessary to set down, clearly without modern +accretion, that political theory which was a sort of religious creed, +supplying the motive force of the whole business; of the new Civil Code +as of the massacres; of the panics and capitulations as of the +victories; of the successful transformation of society as of the +conspicuous failures in detail which still menace the achievement of the +Revolution. + +This grasped, the way in which the main events followed each other, and +the reason of their interlocking and proceeding as they did must be put +forward--not, I repeat, in the shape of a chronicle, but in the shape of +a thesis. Thus the reader must know not only that the failure of the +royal family's flight was followed by war, but how and why it was +followed by war. He must not only appreciate the severity of the +government of the great Committee, but why that severity was present, +and of the conditions of war upon which it reposed. But in so explaining +the development of the movement it is necessary to select for +appreciation as the chief figures the characters of the time, since upon +their will and manner depended the fate of the whole. For instance, had +the Queen been French either in blood or in sympathy, had the King been +alert, had any one character retained the old religious motives, all +history would have been changed, and this human company must be seen if +its action and drama are to be comprehended. + +The reader interested in that capital event should further seize (and +but too rarely has an opportunity for seizing) its military aspect; and +this difficulty of his proceeds from two causes: the first, that +historians, even when they recognise the importance of the military side +of some past movement, are careless of the military aspect, and think +it sufficient to relate particular victories and general actions. The +military aspect of any period does not consist in these, but in the +campaigns of which actions, however decisive, are but incidental parts. +In other words, the reader must seize the movement and design of armies +if he is to seize a military period, and these are not commonly given +him. In the second place, the historian, however much alive to the +importance of military affairs, too rarely presents them as part of a +general position. He will make his story a story of war, or again, a +story of civilian development, and the reader will fail to see how the +two combine. + +Now, the Revolution, more than any other modern period, turns upon, and +is explained by, its military history. On this account has so +considerable a space been devoted to the explaining of that feature. + +The reader will note, again, that the quarrel between the Revolution and +the Catholic Church has also been dealt with at length. + +To emphasise this aspect of the revolutionary struggle may seem unusual +and perhaps deserves a word of apology. + +The reader is invited to consider the fact that the Revolution took +place in a country which had, in the first place, definitely determined +during the religious struggle of the sixteenth and seventeenth +centuries to remain in communion with Rome; and had, in the second +place, admitted a very large and important body of converts to the +doctrines of the Reformation. + +The determination of the French people, in the crisis of 1572-1610, to +remain Catholic under a strong central Government, was a capital point +in the future history of France. So was the presence of a wealthy, very +large, and highly cultivated body of dissentients in the midst of the +nation. The two phenomena hardly co-existed elsewhere in Europe. Between +them they lent to the political history of France a peculiar character +which the nineteenth century, even more than the Revolution itself, has +emphasised; and it is the opinion of the present writer that it is +impossible to understand the Revolution unless very high relief is given +to the religious problem. + +If a personal point may be noted, the fact that the writer of these +pages is himself a Catholic and in political sympathy strongly attached +to the political theory of the Revolution, should not be hidden from the +reader. Such personal conditions have perhaps enabled him to treat the +matter more thoroughly than it might have been treated by one who +rejected either Republicanism upon the one hand, or Catholicism upon the +other; but he believes that no personal and therefore exaggerated note +has been allowed to intrude upon his description of what is a definite +piece of objective history lying in the field of record rather than in +that of opinion. + +Some years ago the paramount importance of the quarrel between the +Church and the Revolution might still have been questioned by men who +had no personal experience of the struggle, and of its vast results. +To-day the increasing consequences and the contemporary violence of that +quarrel make its presentation an essential part of any study of the +period. + +The scheme thus outlined will show why I have given this sketch the +divisions in which it lies. + + H. BELLOC. + + _King's Land, + January 1911._ + + + + +CONTENTS + + PAGE + + PREFACE v + + I THE POLITICAL THEORY OF THE REVOLUTION 13 + + II ROUSSEAU 29 + + III THE CHARACTERS OF THE REVOLUTION: + King Louis XVI 37 + The Queen 45 + Mirabeau 53 + La Fayette 61 + Dumouriez 65 + Danton 67 + Carnot 72 + Marat 74 + Robespierre 77 + + IV THE PHASES OF THE REVOLUTION: + i. From May 1789 to 17th of July 1789 83 + ii. From the 17th of July 1789 to the 6th of October 1789 98 + iii. From October 1789 to June 1791 102 + iv. From June 1791 to September 1792 108 + v. From the Invasion of September 1792 to the Establishment + of the Committee of Public Safety, April 1793 118 + vi. From April 1793 to July 1794 126 + + V THE MILITARY ASPECT OF THE REVOLUTION 142 + One 145 + Two 156 + Three 163 + Four 179 + Five 204 + + VI THE REVOLUTION AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 214 + + INDEX 255 + + + + +THE FRENCH REVOLUTION + + + + +I + +THE POLITICAL THEORY OF THE REVOLUTION + + +The political theory upon which the Revolution proceeded has, especially +in this country, suffered ridicule as local, as ephemeral, and as +fallacious. It is universal, it is eternal, and it is true. + +It may be briefly stated thus: that a political community pretending to +sovereignty, that is, pretending to a moral right of defending its +existence against all other communities, derives the civil and temporal +authority of its laws not from its actual rulers, nor even from its +magistracy, but from itself. + +But the community cannot express authority unless it possesses +_corporate initiative_; that is, unless the mass of its component units +are able to combine for the purpose of a common expression, are +conscious of a common will, and have something in common which makes the +whole sovereign indeed. + +It may be that this power of corporate initiative and of corresponding +corporate expression is forbidden to men. In that case no such thing as +a sovereign community can be said to exist. In that case "patriotism," +"public opinion," "the genius of a people," are terms without meaning. +But the human race in all times and in all places has agreed that such +terms have meaning, and the conception that a community can so live, +order and be itself, is a human conception as consonant to the nature of +man as is his sense of right and wrong; it is much more intimately a +part of that nature than are the common accidents determining human +life, such as nourishment, generation or repose: nay, more intimate a +part of it than anything which attaches to the body. + +This theory of political morals, though subject to a limitless +degradation in practice, underlies the argument of every man who +pretends to regard the conduct of the State as a business affecting the +conscience of citizens. Upon it relies every protest against tyranny and +every denunciation of foreign aggression. + +He that is most enamoured of some set machinery for the government of +men, and who regards the sacramental function of an hereditary monarch +(as in Russia), the organic character of a native oligarchy (as in +England), the mechanical arrangement of election by majorities, or even +in a crisis the intense conviction and therefore the intense activity +and conclusive power of great crowds as salutary to the State, will +invariably, if any one of these engines fail him in the achievement of +what he desires for his country, fall back upon the doctrine of an +ultimately sovereign community. He will complain that though an +election has defeated his ideal, yet true national tradition and true +national sentiment were upon his side. If he defends the action of a +native oligarchy against the leaders of the populace, he does so by an +explanation (more or less explicit) that the oligarchy is more truly +national, that is more truly communal, than the engineered expression of +opinion of which the demagogues (as he will call them) have been the +mouthpieces. Even in blaming men for criticising or restraining an +hereditary monarch the adherent of that monarch will blame them upon the +ground that their action is anti-national, that is anti-communal; and, +in a word, no man pretending to sanity can challenge in matters temporal +and civil the ultimate authority of whatever is felt to be (though with +what difficulty is it not defined!) the general civic sense which builds +up a State. + +Those words "civil" and "temporal" must lead the reader to the next +consideration; which is, that the last authority of all does not reside +even in the community. + +It must be admitted by all those who have considered their own nature +and that of their fellow beings that the ultimate authority in any act +is God. Or if the name of God sound unusual in an English publication +to-day, then what now takes the place of it for many (an imperfect +phrase), "the moral sense." + +Thus if there be cast together in some abandoned place a community of a +few families so depraved or so necessitous that, against the teachings +of their own consciences, and well knowing that what they are doing is +what we call _wrong_, yet they will unanimously agree to do it, then +that agreement of theirs, though certainly no temporal or civil +authority can be quoted against it, is yet unjustifiable. Another +authority lies behind. Still more evidently would this be true if, of +say, twelve, seven decided (knowing the thing to be wrong) that the +wrong thing should be done, five stood out for the right--and yet the +majority possessed by the seven should be determined a sufficient +authority for the wrongful command. + +But it is to be noted that this axiom only applies where the authority +of the moral law (God, as the author of this book, with due deference to +his readers, would prefer to say) is recognised and yet flouted. If +those twelve families do sincerely believe such and such a general +action to be right, then not only is their authority when they carry it +into practice a civil and a temporal authority; it is an authority +absolute in all respects; and further, if, upon a division of opinion +among them not perhaps a bare majority, nay, perhaps not a majority at +all, but at any rate a determinant current of opinion--determinant in +intensity and in weight, that is, as well as in numbers--declares an +action to be right, then that determinant weight of opinion gives to its +resolve a political authority not only civil and temporal but absolute. +Beyond it and above it there is no appeal. + +In other words, men may justly condemn, and justly have in a thousand +circumstances condemned, the theory that a mere decision on the major +part of the community was necessarily right in morals. It is, for that +matter, self-evident that if one community decides in one fashion, +another, also sovereign, in the opposite fashion, both cannot be right. +Reasoning men have also protested, and justly, against the conception +that what a majority in numbers, or even (what is more compelling still) +a unanimity of decision in a community may order, may not only be wrong +but may be something which that community has no authority to order +since, though it possesses a civil and temporal authority, it acts +against that ultimate authority which is its own consciousness of right. +Men may and do justly protest against the doctrine that a community is +incapable of doing deliberate evil; it is as capable of such an action +as is an individual. But men nowhere do or can deny that the community +acting as it thinks right is ultimately sovereign: there is no +alternative to so plain a truth. + +Let us take it, then, as indubitable that where civil government is +concerned, the community is supreme, if only from the argument that no +organ within the community can prove its right to withstand the +corporate will when once that corporate will shall find expression. + +All arguments which are advanced against this prime axiom of political +ethics are, when they are analysed, found to repose upon a confusion of +thought. Thus a man will say, "This doctrine would lead my country to +abandon her suzerainty over that other nation, but were I to consent to +this, I should be weakening my country, to which I owe allegiance." The +doctrine compels him to no such muddlement. The community of which he is +a member is free to make its dispositions for safety, and is bound to +preserve its own life. It is for the oppressed to protest and to rebel. + +Similarly, men think that this doctrine in some way jars with the actual +lethargy and actual imbecility of men in their corporate action. It does +nothing of the kind. This lethargy, that imbecility, and all the other +things that limit the application of the doctrine, in no way touch its +right reason, any more than the fact that the speech of all men is +imperfect contradicts the principle that man has a moral right to +self-expression. That a dumb man cannot speak at all, but must write, +is, so far from a contradiction, a proof of the truth that speech is the +prime expression of man; and in the same way a community utterly without +the power of expressing its corporate will is no contradiction, but a +proof, of the general rule that such expression and the imposing of such +decisions are normal to mankind. The very oddity of the contrast between +the abnormal and the normal aids us in our decision, and when we see a +people conquered and not persuaded, yet making no attempt at rebellion, +or a people free from foreign oppression yet bewildered at the prospect +of self-government, the oddity of the phenomenon proves our rule. + +But though all this be true, there stands against the statement of our +political axiom not a contradiction added, but a criticism; and all men +with some knowledge of their fellows and of themselves at once perceive, +_first_, that the psychology of corporate action differs essentially +from the psychology of individual action, and _secondly_, that in +proportion to the number, the discussions, the lack of intimacy, and in +general the friction of the many, corporate action by a community, +corporate self-realisation and the imposition of a corporate will, +varies from the difficult to the impossible. + +On this no words need be wasted. All men who reason and who observe are +agreed that, in proportion to distance, numbers, and complexity, the +difficulty of self-expression within a community increases. We may get +in a lively people explosions of popular will violent, acute, and +certainly real; but rare. We may attempt with a people more lethargic to +obtain some reflection of popular will through the medium of a permanent +machinery of deputation which, less than any other, perhaps, permits a +great community to express itself truly. We may rely upon the national +sympathies of an aristocracy or of a king. But in any case we know that +large communities can only indirectly and imperfectly express themselves +where the permanent government of their whole interest is concerned. Our +attachment, which may be passionate, to the rights of the Common Will we +must satisfy either by demanding a loose federation of small, +self-governing states, or submitting the central government of large +ones to occasional insurrection and to violent corporate expressions of +opinion which shall readjust the relations between the governor and the +governed. + +All this is true: but such a criticism of the theory in political morals +which lay behind the Revolution, the theory that the community is +sovereign, is no contradiction. It only tells us that pure right cannot +act untrammelled in human affairs and that it acts in some conditions +more laboriously than in others: it gives not a jot of authority to any +alternative thesis.[1] + +Such is the general theory of the Revolution to which the command of +Jean Jacques Rousseau over the French tongue gave imperishable +expression in that book whose style and logical connection may be +compared to some exact and strong piece of engineering. He entitled it +the _Contrat Social_, and it became the formula of the Revolutionary +Creed. But though no man, perhaps, has put the prime truth of political +morals so well, that truth was as old as the world; it appears in the +passionate rhetoric of a hundred leaders and has stood at the head or +has been woven into the laws of free States without number. In the +English language the Declaration of Independence is perhaps its noblest +expression. And though this document was posterior to the great work of +Rousseau and (through the genius of Jefferson) was in some part +descended from it, its language, and still more the actions of those who +drafted and supported it, are sufficient to explain what I mean to +English readers. + +Now with this general theory there stand connected on the one hand +certain great principles without which it would have no meaning, and +also on the other hand a number of minor points concerning no more than +the machinery of politics. The first are vital to democracy. The second, +in spite of their great popularity at the time of the Revolution and of +the sanction which the Revolution gave them, nay, of their universality +since the Revolution, have in reality nothing to do with the +revolutionary theory itself. + +Of these two categories the type of the first is the doctrine of the +equality of man; the type of the second is the mere machinery called +"representative." + +The doctrine of the equality of the man is a transcendent doctrine: a +"dogma," as we call such doctrines in the field of transcendental +religion. It corresponds to no physical reality which we can grasp, it +is hardly to be adumbrated even by metaphors drawn from physical +objects. We may attempt to rationalise it by saying that what is common +to all men is not _more_ important but _infinitely more_ important than +the accidents by which men differ. We may compare human attributes to +tri-dimensional, and personal attributes to bi-dimensional measurements; +we may say that whatever man has of his nature is the standard of man, +and we may show that in all such things men are potentially equal. None +of these metaphors explains the matter; still less do any of them +satisfy the demand of those to whom the dogma may be incomprehensible. + +Its truth is to be arrived at (for these) in a negative manner. If men +are _not_ equal then no scheme of jurisprudence, no act of justice, no +movement of human indignation, no exaltation of fellowship, has any +meaning. The doctrine of the equality of man is one which, like many of +the great transcendental doctrines, may be proved by the results +consequent upon its absence. It is in man to believe it--and all lively +societies believe it. + +It is certainly not in man to prove the equality of men save, as I have +said, by negation; but it demands no considerable intellectual faculty +to perceive that, void of the doctrine of equality, the conception of +political freedom and of a community's moral right to self-government +disappear. Now to believe that doctrine positively, and to believe it +ardently, to go on crusade for that religious point, was indeed +characteristic of the French. It required the peculiar and inherited +religious temper of the French which had for so many hundred years +seized and defined point after point in the character of man, to grow +enamoured of this definition and to feel it not in the intellect, but as +it were in their bones. They became soldiers for it, and that enormous +march of theirs, overrunning Europe, which may not inaptly be compared +to their adventures in the twelfth century, when they engaged upon the +Crusades, was inspired by no one part of the doctrine of political +freedom more strongly than by this doctrine of equality. + +The scorn which was in those days universally felt for that pride which +associates itself with things not inherent to a man (notably and most +absurdly with capricious differences of wealth) never ran higher; and +the passionate sense of justice which springs from this profound and +fundamental social dogma of equality, as it moved France during the +Revolution to frenzy, so also moved it to creation. + +Those who ask how it was that a group of men sustaining all the weight +of civil conflict within and of universal war without, yet made time +enough in twenty years to frame the codes which govern modern Europe, to +lay down the foundations of universal education, of a strictly +impersonal scheme of administration, and even in detail to remodel the +material face of society--in a word, to make modern Europe--must be +content for their reply to learn that the Republican Energy had for its +flame and excitant this vision: a sense almost physical of the equality +of man. + +The minor points which wove themselves into the political practice of +democracy during the Revolution, which are not of its principles, and +which would not, were they abstracted, affect its essence, are of quite +another and less noble kind. I have taken as the chief of these the +machinery of deputation or of "representation." + +The representative system had been designed for a particular purpose +under the influence of the Church and especially of the monastic orders +(who invented it) in the Middle Ages. It had been practised as a useful +check upon the national monarchy in France, and as a useful form of +national expression in times of crisis or when national initiative was +peculiarly demanded. + +In Spain it became, as the Middle Ages proceeded, a very vital national +and local thing, varying from place to place. It is not surprising that +Spain (seeing that in her territory the first experiments in +representation were made) should have thus preserved it, popular and +alive. + +In England Representation, vigorous as everywhere else in the true +Middle Ages, narrowed and decayed at their close, until in the +seventeenth century it had become a mere scheme for aristocratic +government. + +In France for nearly two hundred years before the Revolution it had +fallen into disuse, but an active memory of it still remained; +especially a memory of its value in critical moments when a consultation +of the whole people was required, and when the corporate initiative of +the whole people must be set at work in order to save the State. + +It is no wonder, therefore, that the French, on the eve of the +Revolution, clamoured for a revival of representation, or, as the system +was called in the French tongue, "the States-General." But as a +permanent machine of government no one in Europe had the least idea how +the system might serve the ends of democracy. In England democracy was +not practised nor was representation connected with the conception of +it. The nation had forgotten democracy as completely as it had forgotten +the religion and the old ideals of the Middle Ages. + +In those parts of Christendom in which this ancient Christian +institution of a parliament had not narrowed to be the mask of an +oligarchy or dwindled to be a mere provincial custom, its use had +disappeared. The ancient function of Representation, when it had been +most lively and vigorous, that is, in the Middle Ages, was occasionally +to initiate a national policy in critical moments, but more generally to +grant taxes. What a democratic parliament might do, no one in 1789 could +conceive. + +There was indeed one great example of democratic representation in +existence: the example of the United States; but the conditions were +wholly different from those of Europe. No true central power yet existed +there; no ancient central institution, no Crown nor any Custom of the +City. The numbers over which American representative democracy then held +power were not to be compared to the twenty-five millions who inhabited +the French realm. And even so, most of what counted in their lives was +regulated by a system of highly local autonomy: for they were as +scattered as they were few, and the wisest and strongest and best were +dependent upon slaves. In Europe, I repeat, the experiment was untried; +and it is one of the chief faults of the French revolutionaries that, +having been compelled in the critical moment of the opening of the +Revolution to the use of election and representation, they envisaged the +permanent use of a similar machinery as a something sacred to and normal +in the democratic State. + +True, they could not foresee modern parliamentarism. Nothing could be +more alien to their conception of the State than the deplorable method +of government which parliamentarism everywhere tends to introduce +to-day. + +True, the French people during the revolutionary wars made short work of +parliamentary theory, and found it a more national thing to follow a +soldier (being by that time all soldiers themselves), and to incarnate +in a dictator the will of the nation. + +But though the French revolutionaries could not have foreseen what we +call "Parliamentarism" to-day, and though the society from which they +sprang made short work of the oligarchic pretensions of a parliament +when the realities of the national struggle had to be considered, yet +they did as a fact pay an almost absurd reverence to the machinery of +representation and election. + +They went so far as to introduce it into their attempted reform of the +Church; they introduced it everywhere into civil government, from the +smallest units to the highest. They even for a moment played with the +illusion in that most real of games which men can ever play at--the +business of arms: they allowed the election of officers. They were led +to do this by that common fallacy, more excusable in them than in us, +which confounds the individual will with the corporate. A representative +(they thought) could in some way be the permanent receptacle of his +electorate. They imagined that corporate initiative was always +sufficiently active, in no matter what divisions or subdivisions, to +react at once upon the delegate, to guide him as may be guided a driven +animal, or to command him as may be commanded a servant. + +It was in vain that Rousseau, the great exponent of the democratic +theory upon which France attempted to proceed, had warned posterity +against the possible results of the representative system: they fell +into the error, and it possesses many of their descendants to this day. + +Rousseau's searching mind perceived indeed no more than the general +truth that men who consent to a representative system are free only +while the representatives are not sitting. But (as is so often the case +with intuitions of genius) though he saw not the whole of the evil, he +had put his finger upon its central spot, and from that main and just +principle which he laid down--that under a merely representative system +men cannot be really free--flow all those evils which we now know to +attach to this method of government. What a rather clumsy epigram has +called "the audacity of elected persons" is part of this truth. The +evident spectacle of modern parliamentary nations driven against their +will into economic conditions which appal them, proceeds again from the +same truth; the conspicuous and hearty contempt into which parliamentary +institutions have everywhere fallen again proceeds from it, and there +proceeds from it that further derivative plague that the representatives +themselves have now everywhere become more servile than the electorate +and that in all parliamentary countries a few intriguers are the +unworthy depositories of power, and by their service of finance permit +the money-dealers to govern us all to-day. Rousseau, I say, the chief +prophet of the Revolution, had warned the French of this danger. It is a +capital example of his talent, for the experiment of democratic +representation had not yet, in his time, been tried. But much more is +that power of his by which he not only stamped and issued the gold of +democracy as it had never till then been minted. No one man makes a +people or their creed, but Rousseau more than any other man made vocal +the creed of a people, and it is advisable or necessary for the reader +of the Revolution to consider at the outset of his reading of what +nature was Rousseau's abundant influence upon the men who remodelled the +society of Europe between 1789 and 1794. + +Why did he dominate those five years, and how was it that he dominated +them increasingly? + +An explanation of Rousseau's power merits a particular digression, for +few who express themselves in the English tongue have cared to +understand it, and in the academies provincial men have been content to +deal with this great writer as though he were in some way inferior to +themselves. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] We need not waste any time upon those who talk about such and such a +form of government being good because "it works." The use of such +language connotes that the user of it is fatigued by the effort of +thought. For what is "working," _i.e._ successful action, in any sphere? +The attainment of certain ends in that sphere. What are those ends in a +State? If material well-being, then there is an end to talk of +patriotism, the nation, public opinion and the rest of it which, as we +all very well know, men always have regarded and always will regard as +the supreme matters of public interest. If the end is not material +well-being, but a sense of political freedom and of the power of the +citizen to react upon the State, then to say that an institution "works" +though apparently not democratic, is simply to say that under such and +such conditions that institution achieves the ends of democracy most +nearly. In other words, to contrast the good "working" of an institution +superficially undemocratic with democratic theory is meaningless. The +institution "works" in proportion as it satisfies that political sense +which perfect democracy would, were it attainable, completely satisfy. + + + + +II + +ROUSSEAU + + +In order to appreciate what Rousseau meant to the revolutionary +movement, it is necessary to consider the effect of style upon men. + +Men are influenced by the word. Spoken or written, the _word_ is the +organ of persuasion and, therefore, of moral government. + +Now, degraded as that term has become in our time, there is no proper +term to express the exact use of words save the term "style." + +What words we use, and in what order we put them, is the whole matter of +style; and a man desiring to influence his fellow men has therefore not +one, but two co-related instruments at his disposal. He cannot use one +without the other. The weakness of the one will ruin the other. These +two instruments are his idea and his style. + +However powerful, native, sympathetic to his hearers' mood or cogently +provable by reference to new things may be a man's idea, he cannot +persuade his fellow men to it if he have not words that express it. And +he will persuade them more and more in proportion as his words are well +chosen and in the right order, such order being determined by the genius +of the language whence they are drawn. + +Whether the idea of which Rousseau made himself the exponent in his +famous tract be true or false, need not further concern us in this +little book. We all know that the difficult attempt to realise political +freedom has attracted various communities of men at various times and +repelled others. What English readers rarely hear is that the triumph of +Rousseau depended not only on the first element in persuasion, which is +vision, but also upon the second of the two co-related instruments by +which a man may influence his fellows--to wit, style. It was his choice +of French words and the order in which he arranged them, that gave him +his enormous ascendancy over the generation which was young when he was +old. + +I have alluded to his famous tract, the _Contrat Social_, and here a +second point concerning it may be introduced. This book which gave a +text for the Revolution, the document to which its political theory +could refer, was by no means (as foreign observers have sometimes +imagined) the whole body of writing for which Rousseau was responsible. +To imagine that is to make the very common error of confusing a man with +his books. + +Rousseau wrote on many things: his character was of an exalted, nervous +and diseased sort. Its excessive sensibility degenerated with advancing +years into something not distinguishable from mania. He wrote upon +education, and the glory of his style carried conviction both where he +was right and where the short experience of a hundred years has proved +him to have been wholly wrong. He wrote upon love, and half the lessons +to be drawn from his writing will be condemned by the sane. He wrote +upon botany at vast length; he wrote also upon music--with what success +in either department I am incompetent to determine. He wrote upon human +inequality: and though the sentences were beautiful and the sentiment +just, the analysis was very insufficient and the historical conception +bad. He wrote upon a project for perpetual peace, which was rubbish; and +he wrote upon the government of Poland an essay which was a perfect +masterpiece. + +But when a great writer writes, each of his great writings has a life of +its own, and it was not any of these other writings of Rousseau, on +love or botany, which were the text of the Revolution. The text of the +Revolution was his _Contrat Social_. + +Now it is not too much to say that never in the history of political +theory has a political theory been put forward so lucidly, so +convincingly, so tersely or so accurately as in this short and wonderful +book. The modern publisher in this country would be ashamed to print it: +not for its views (which would now seem commonplace), nor for its +excellence, which would ensure it a failure, but for its brevity. It is +as short as a gospel, and would cover but a hundred pages of one of our +serious reviews. A modern publisher in this city would not know what +price to set upon such a work, and the modern reader in this country +would be puzzled to understand how a great thing could be got within so +narrow a compass. A debate in Parliament or the libretto of a long +pantomime is of greater volume. + +Nevertheless, if it be closely read the _Contrat Social_ will be +discovered to say all that can be said of the moral basis of democracy. +Our ignorance of the historical basis of the State is presumed in the +very opening lines of it. The logical priority of the family to the +State is the next statement. The ridiculous and shameful argument that +strength is the basis of authority--which has never had standing save +among the uninstructed or the superficial--is contemptuously dismissed +in a very simple proof which forms the third chapter, and that chapter +is not a page of a book in length. It is with the fifth chapter that the +powerful argument begins, and the logical precedence of _human +association_ to any particular form of government is the foundation +stone of that analysis. It is this indeed which gives its title to the +book: the moral authority of men in community arises from _conscious +association_; or, as an exact phraseology would have it, a "social +contract." All the business of democracy as based upon the only moral +authority in a State follows from this first principle, and is developed +in Rousseau's extraordinary achievement which, much more than any other +writing not religious, has affected the destiny of mankind. + +It is indeed astonishing to one who is well acquainted not only with the +matter, but with the manner of the _Contrat Social_, to remark what +criticisms have been passed upon it by those who either have not read +the work or, having read it, did so with an imperfect knowledge of the +meaning of French words. The two great counter arguments, the one +theoretic the other practical, which democracy has to meet, stand +luminously exposed in these pages, though in so short a treatise the +author might have been excused from considering them. The theoretical +argument against democracy is, of course, that man being prone to evil, +something external to him and indifferent to his passions must be put up +to govern him; the people will corrupt themselves, but a despot or an +oligarchy, when it has satisfied its corrupt desires, still has a wide +margin over which it may rule well because it is indifferent. You +cannot bribe the despot or the oligarch beyond the limit of his desires, +but a whole people can follow its own corrupt desires to the full, and +they will infect all government. + +The full practice of democracy, therefore, says Rousseau, is better +suited to angels than to men. + +As to the practical argument that men are not sufficiently conscious of +the State to practise democracy, save in small communities, that plea +also is recognised and stated better than any one else has stated it. +For there is not in this book an apology for democracy as a method of +government, but a statement of why and how democracy is right. + +The silly confusion which regards a representative method as essentially +democratic has never been more contemptuously dealt with, nor more +thoroughly, than in the few words in which the _Contrat Social_ +dismisses it for ever; though it was left to our own time to discover, +in the school of unpleasant experience, how right was Rousseau in this +particular condemnation. + +Exiguous as are the limits within which the great writer has finally +decided the theory of democracy, he finds space for side issues which +nowhere else but in this book had been orderly considered, and which, +when once one has heard them mentioned, one sees to be of the most +excellent wisdom: that the fundamental laws, or original and particular +bonds, of a new democracy must come from a source external to itself; +that to the nature of the people for whom one is legislating, however +democratic the form of the State, we must conform the particulars of +law; that a democracy cannot live without "tribunes"; that no utterly +inflexible law can be permitted in the State--and hence the necessity +for dictatorship in exceptional times; that no code can foresee future +details--and so forth. + +It would be a legitimate and entertaining task to challenge any man who +had not read the _Contrat Social_ (and this would include most academic +writers upon the treatise) to challenge any such one, I say, to put down +an argument against democratic theory which could not be found within +those few pages, or to suggest a limitation of it which Rousseau had not +touched on. + +If proof were needed of what particular merits this pamphlet displayed, +it would be sufficient to point out that in a time when the problem +represented by religion was least comprehended, when the practice of +religion was at its lowest, and when the meaning, almost, of religion +had left men's minds, Rousseau was capable of writing his final chapter. + +That the great religious revival of the nineteenth century should have +proved Rousseau's view of religion in the State to be insufficient is in +no way remarkable, for when Rousseau wrote, that revival was undreamt +of; what is remarkable is that he should have allowed as he did for the +religious sentiment, and above all, that he should have seen how +impossible it is for a selection of Christian dogma to be accepted as a +civic religion. + +It is further amazing that at such a time a man could be found who +should appreciate that for the State, to have unity, it must possess a +religion, and Rousseau's attempt to define that minimum or substratum of +religion without which unity could not exist in the State unfortunately +became the commonplace of the politicians, and particularly of the +English politicians who succeeded him. Who might not think, for +instance, that he was reading--though better expressed, of course, than +a politician could put it--some "Liberal" politician at Westminster, if +he were to come on such phrases as these with regard to what should be +taught in the schools of the country? + +"The doctrines taught by the State should be simple, few in number, +expressed with precision and without explanation or commentary. The +existence of a powerful God, beneficent, providential and good; the +future life; the happiness of the good and the punishment of evil; the +sanctity of the agreements which bind society together and of laws; +while as for negative doctrines, one is sufficient, and that one is the +wickedness of intolerance." + +Rousseau's hundred pages are the direct source of the theory of the +modern State; their lucidity and unmatched economy of diction; their +rigid analysis, their epigrammatic judgment and wisdom--these are the +reservoirs from whence modern democracy has flowed; what are now proved +to be the errors of democracy are errors against which the _Contrat +Social_ warned men; the moral apology of democracy is the moral apology +written by Rousseau; and if in this one point of religion he struck a +more confused and a less determined note than in the rest, it must be +remembered that in his time no other man understood what part religion +played in human affairs; for in his days the few who studied religion +and observed it could not connect it in any way with the political +nature of man, and of those who counted in the intellect of Europe, by +far the greater number thought political problems better solved if +religion (which they had lost) were treated as negligible. They were +wrong--and Rousseau, in his generalities upon the soul, was +insufficient; both were beneath the height of a final theory of man, but +Rousseau came much nearer to comprehension, even in this point of +religion, than did any of his contemporaries. + + + + +III + +THE CHARACTERS OF THE REVOLUTION + + +KING LOUIS XVI + +As might be expected, the character of King Louis XVI has suffered more +distortion at the hands of historians than has any other of the +revolutionary figures; and this because he combined with that personal +character of his a certain office to which were traditionally attached +certain points of view and methods of action which the historian takes +for granted when he deals with the character of the man. As any one +thinking of a judge of some standing upon the English bench cannot but +believe that he is possessed of some learning or some gravity, etc.; as +any one hearing of a famous soldier cannot but believe that he has +certain qualities associated with the business of soldiering, so +historians tend to confuse the personality and character of Louis XVI +with that of his office; they either by contrast exaggerate his unkingly +defects or by sympathy exaggerate his kingly opposition to reform. + +The student will do well to avoid this error and its source, and to +think of Louis as of a man who had been casually introduced, almost +without preparation, into the office which he held. In other words, the +student will do well, in his reading of the Revolution, to consider +Louis XVI simply as a man, and his character as a private character. For +this last of the long, unbroken line of Capetians possessed a character +essentially individual. It was of a type which, no matter what accidents +of fortune might have fallen upon its possessor, would have remained the +same. Nor was ever a man possessed of high office whom high office had +less moulded. + +Men thus impervious to their environment are commonly so from two +causes: either from an intense and vivid personal initiative which may +border upon madness, or from something thick and heavy in their moral +accoutrement which defends against external action the inner personal +temperament. The latter was the case with Louis. + +He was very slow of thought, and very slow of decision. His physical +movements were slow. The movement of his eyes was notably slow. He had a +way of falling asleep under the effort of fatigue at the most +incongruous moments. The things that amused him were of the largest and +most superficial kind. Horse-play, now and then a little touched with +eccentricity, and very plain but unexpected jokes. One may express him +from one aspect by saying that he was one of those men whom you could +never by any chance have hoped to convince of anything. The few things +which he accepted he accepted quite simply, and the process of reasoning +in the mouth of any who approached him was always too rapid for him to +follow. But it must not be imagined on this account that the moral +integument so described was wrapped about a void. On the contrary, it +enclosed a very definite character. Louis possessed a number of intimate +convictions upon which he was not to be shaken. He was profoundly +convinced of the existence and value of a certain corporate tradition in +the organism which he ruled: the French nation. He was national. In this +he differed from many a pedant, many a courtier, many an ecclesiastic, +and many a woman about him, especially his wife. + +He was, again, possessed of all the elements of the Catholic faith. + +It was, indeed, a singular thing for a man of his position at such a +time to hold intimately to religion, but Louis held to it. He confessed, +he communicated, he attended mass, he performed his ordinary +devotions--not by way of tradition or political duty, or State function, +to which religious performance was now reduced in the vast majority of +his wealthy contemporaries, but as an individual for whom these things +had a personal value. Had he, with precisely the same interior spirit, +woken in his bed some morning to find himself a country squire, and to +discover that all his past kingship had been a dream of the night, he +would have continued the practice of his religion as before. + +Now this is a sufficiently remarkable point, for the country squire, the +noble, the lawyer, the university professor of the generation +immediately preceding the Revolution had, as a rule, no conception of +the Catholic Church. With them the faith was dead, save in the case of a +very few who made it, if one may say so without disrespect, a mania, and +in their exaggerations were themselves the proofs of the depth of decay +into which the Church of Gaul had fallen. + +Louis XVI was possessed, then, of religion: it appeared in many of his +acts, in his hesitation to appoint not a few of the many atheist bishops +of the time, in his real agony of responsibility upon the Civil +Constitution of the clergy, and in nothing more than the peculiar +sobriety and solid ritual whereby he prepared for a tragic, sudden, and +ignominious death. + +It is next to be observed that though he was a man not yet in middle +age, and though he was quite devoid of ardour in any form, he had from +the first matured a great basis of courage. It is well to admit that +this quality in him was connected with those slow processes of thought +and action which hampered him, but it is not to be explained by them. No +man yet has become brave through mere stupidity. + +It was not only the accidents of the Revolution that proved this quality +in him: his physical habits proved it long before. He was a resolute and +capable rider of the horse: an aptitude in that exercise is impossible +to the coward. Again, in those by-products of courage which are +apparent, even where no physical danger threatens, he was conspicuous; +he had no hesitation in facing a number of men, and he had aptitude in a +mechanical trade--a business by no means unconnected with virility. + +Now in mentioning his virility, it is of prime importance for the +student to remember, though the matter can be touched upon but lightly, +that Louis, in this department of physical life, suffered from a +mechanical impediment which gravely distorted the first years of his +marriage, which undoubtedly wounded his self-respect, and which was +perhaps the only thing that caused him permanent anxiety. He was cured +by medical aid in the summer of the year 1777, but he was already three +years a king and seven years a husband before that relief came to him. +The tragedy affected his whole life, and, I repeat, must never be +forgotten when one considers either him or Marie Antoinette in their +intimate character, and in their effect as actors in the great drama. + +For the rest, the character of Louis betrayed certain ineptitudes (the +word ineptitude is far more accurate in this connection than the word +weakness), which ineptitudes were peculiarly fatal for the military +office which he held and for the belligerent crisis which he had to +meet. + +Few men are possessed of the eye, the subtle sympathy, the very rapid +power of decision, and the comprehension of human contrasts and +differences which build up the apt leader of an armed force great or +small. Most men are mediocre in the combination of these qualities. But +Louis was quite exceptionally hopeless where they were concerned. He +could never have seen the simplest position nor have appreciated the +military aspects of any character or of any body of men. He could ride, +but he could not ride at the head of a column. He was not merely bad at +this trade, he was nul. Drafted as a private into a conscript army, he +would never have been entrusted with the duties of a corporal. He would +have been impossible as a sergeant; and, possessed of commissioned rank, +ridicule would have compelled him to take his discharge. + +This lack did not only, or chiefly, betray itself in his inability to +meet personally the armed crisis of a revolution; it was not only, or +chiefly, apparent in his complete breakdown during the assault upon the +palace on the 10th of August: it was also, and much more, the disastrous +cause of his inability to oversee, or even to choose, military advisers. + +Those who propose in the early part of the Revolution to check the mob +in Paris, are excellent commanders: but Louis does not know it. Those +who succeed each other at the Ministry of War, or at the head of the +armies during the active part of the revolution are various in the +extreme: but they all seem one to him. Between a fop like Narbonne and a +subtle, trained cavalry man like Dumouriez, Louis made no distinction. +The military qualities of La Fayette (which were not to be despised) +meant no more to him than does music, good or bad, to a deaf man. From +the beginning to the end of the movement, the whole of the military +problem escaped him. + +Another hole in his character, which was of prime importance at such a +time, was his inability to grasp in a clear vision any general social +problem. Maps he could well comprehend, and he could well retain +statistics; but the landscape, as it were, of the Revolution his +protuberant and lethargic eyes completely missed. He was quite unable to +see where lay danger and where support, in what large masses such and +such forces were grouped, and the directions in which they were +advancing, or upon which they must retreat. In this matter he was, as +will be seen in a moment, the very opposite of Mirabeau, and it was on +account of this weakness, or rather this form of nullity, that all +Mirabeau's vision was wasted upon Louis. + +Finally, he had no working comprehension of Europe. He did not even +exaggerate the powers of the allies in the later phases of the +Revolution when they were marching upon France. He did not either +under-estimate or over-estimate the policy and naval force of Great +Britain, the military resources of his own subjects, the probable +sympathies of the Netherlands (anti-Austrian but Catholic), the decay of +Spain, the division and impotence of the Italian Peninsula. Louis saw +nothing of all these things. + +One may conclude the picture (for the purposes of such a short study as +this) by saying that only one coincidence could have led him through the +labyrinth of the time with success. That coincidence would have been the +presence at his side of a friend fully trusted from childhood, loved, as +religious as himself, and yet possessing precisely those qualities which +he himself lacked. Had Louis found to hand such a lieutenant, the +qualities I have mentioned would have been a sort of keel and ballast +which would have secured the monarchy, for he was not weak, he was not +impulsive, he was not even foolish: he was only wretchedly alone in his +incapacities. Certainly such a nature could trust and rely upon no one +who was not of this intimate kind, and he possessed no such intimate, +let alone an intimate who could command the qualities I have suggested. + +Being what he was, his character is among the half-dozen which +determined the Revolution to take the course which it did. + + +THE QUEEN + +Marie Antoinette presents to history a character which it is of the +highest interest to regard as a whole. It is the business of her +biographers to consider that character as a whole; but in her connection +with the Revolution there is but one aspect of it which is of +importance, and that is the attitude which such a character was bound to +take towards the French nation in the midst of which the Queen found +herself. + +It is the solution of the whole problem which the Queen's action sets +before us to apprehend the gulf that separated her not only from the +French temperament, but from a comprehension of all French society. Had +she been a woman lacking in energy or in decision, this alien character +in her would have been a small matter, and her ignorance of the French +in every form of their activity, or rather her inability to comprehend +them, would have been but a private failing productive only of certain +local and immediate consequences, and not in any way determining the +great lines of the revolutionary movement. + +As it was, her energy was not only abundant but steadfast; it grew more +secure in its action as it increased with her years, and the initiative +which gave that energy its course never vacillated, but was always +direct. She knew her own mind, and she attempted, often with a partial +success, to realise her convictions. There was no character in touch +with the Executive during the first years of the Revolution comparable +to hers for fixity of purpose and definition of view. + +It was due to this energy and singleness of aim that her +misunderstanding of the material with which she had to deal was of such +fatal importance. + +It was she who chose, before the outbreak of the Revolution, the +succession of those ministers both Liberal and Reactionary, whose unwise +plans upon either side precipitated violence. It was she who called and +then revoked, and later recalled to office the wealthy and +over-estimated Necker; she who substituted for him, and then so +inopportunely threw over Calonne, the most national of the precursors of +the Revolution, and ever after her most bitter enemy; it was she who +advised the more particularly irritating details of resistance after the +meeting of the first revolutionary Parliament; it was she who presided +over (and helped to warp) the plans for the flight of the royal family; +it was she who, after this flight had failed, framed a definite scheme +for the coercion of the French people by the Governments of Europe; it +was she who betrayed to foreign chanceries the French plan of campaign +when war had become inevitable; finally, it was she who inspired the +declaration of Brunswick which accompanied the invasion of French +territory, and she was in particular the author of the famous threat +therein contained to give over Paris to military execution, and to hold +all the popular authorities responsible with their lives for the +restoration of the pre-revolutionary state of affairs. + +As research proceeds, the capital effect of this woman's continual and +decided interference will be more and more apparent to historians. + +Now Marie Antoinette's conception of mankind in general was the +conception that you will find prevalent in such societies as that +domestic and warm centre which had nourished her childhood. The romantic +affection of a few equals, the personal loyalty of a handful of personal +servants, the vague histrionic content which permeates the poor at the +sight of great equipages and rich accoutrements, the cheers of a crowd +when such symbols accompanying monarchy are displayed in the +streets--all these were for Marie Antoinette the fundamental political +feelings of mankind. An absence of them she regarded with bewilderment, +an active opposition to them she hated as something at once +incomprehensible and positively evil. + +There was in all this illusion, of course, a great element of what the +English call middle class, and the French bourgeois. To be quite +ignorant of what servitors will say of their masters behind their backs; +not to appreciate that heroic devotion is the faculty of a few; never +to have imagined the discontents of men in general, and the creative +desire for self-expression which inspires men when they act politically; +not to know that men as a whole (and particularly the French people) are +not deceived by the accidents of wealth, nor attach any real inferiority +to poverty; to despise the common will of numbers or to doubt its +existence; to see society established in a hierarchy not of office but +of leisure: all this may seem to the democrat a very unnatural and +despicable mood. But it was not despicable, still less unnatural; in the +case of Marie Antoinette: it was the only experience and the only +conception of society which had ever been given her. She had always +believed, when she gazed upon a mass of the populace, that the +difference between the crowd and herself was a moral reality. The +contrast in external habits between the wealthy, the middle class, and +the poor--a contrast ultimately produced by differences in the +opportunity and leisure which wealth affords--she thought to be +fundamental. Just as children and certain domestic pet animals regard +such economic accidents in society as something real which +differentiates men, so did she;--but she happened to nourish this +illusion in the midst of a people, and within a day's walk of a capital, +where the misconception had less hold than in any other district of +Europe. + +Of the traits peculiar to the French she knew nothing, or, to put it +more strongly, she could not believe that they really existed. + +The extremes of cruelty into which this people could fall were +inconceivable to her, as were also the extremes of courage to which they +can rise under the same excitements as arouse them to an excess of +hatred. But that character in the French which she most utterly failed +to foresee or to comprehend, was their power of _corporate +organisation_. + +That a multitude could instruct and order themselves for a common +purpose, rapidly acquire and nominate the officers who should bring that +purpose to fruition, and in general pass in one moment from a mere +multitude to an incipient army--that was a faculty which the French had +and have to a peculiar degree, and which she (like so many of our own +contemporaries, and especially those of German blood) could not believe +to be real. This faculty in the French, when it took action and was +apparent in the physical struggles of the Revolution, seemed to her, to +the very end, a sort of nightmare; something which, by all the laws of +reality, _ought not_ to be happening, but somehow or other _was_ +happening in a manner evilly miraculous. It was her ignorance upon this +main point of all that caused her to rely so continually upon the use of +the regular forces, and of those forces in insufficient numbers. She +could not but believe that a few trained soldiery were necessarily the +masters of great civilian bodies; their uniforms were a powerful +argument with her, and mere civilian bodies, however numerous, were +always, in her conception, a dust of disparate and inchoate humanity. +She believed there was nothing to attack or resist in popular numbers +but the opinion, the fear, or the cupidity of the individual. In this +error of judgment concerning the French people she was not peculiar: it +is an error repeated over and over again by foreigners, and even by some +native commentators when they seek to account for some national movement +of the Gauls. The unlearning of it is the first lesson which those who +would either administrate or resist the French should learn. + +In the matter of religion (which the reader may see in these pages to be +of such moment in the revolutionary story), the queen was originally far +more indifferent than her husband, though she observed a certain measure +of personal practice. It was not until her heavy misfortunes came upon +her that any degree of personal devotion appeared in her daily life, +though it must be admitted that, by a sort of premonition of disaster, +she turned to religion in the months immediately preceding the outbreak +of the reform. + +It remains to describe the personal effect she had upon those who were +in her immediate presence. Most of the French aristocracy she repelled. +The same misfortune which made her unable to understand the French +temperament as a whole divorced her from that particular corner of it +which took the shape of French aristocratic tradition. She did not +understand its stiffness, its exactitude, its brilliancy or its +hardness: and she heartily disliked all four. + +On this account she produced on the great families of her court, and +especially upon the women of them, an effect of vulgarity. Had she +survived, and had her misfortunes not been of so tragic an intensity, +the legend she would have left in French society would certainly have +been one of off-handed carelessness, self-indulgence, and lack of +dignity which have for the French of that rank the savour that a loud +voice, a bad accent, an insufficient usage in the rules of daily +conduct, leave upon what is left of a corresponding rank in England +to-day. + +She was, on the other hand, easily deceived by the flattery of place +seekers, and the great power which she wielded in politics just before +the Revolution broke out made her, as it were, a sort of _butt_ of the +politicians. + +They haunted her presence, they depended upon her patronage, and, at the +same time, they secretly ridiculed her. Her carriage, which was designed +to impress onlookers and did have that effect upon most foreigners, +seemed to most of the French observers (of a rank which permitted them +to approach her familiarly) somewhat theatrical and sometimes actually +absurd. The earnestness which she displayed in several lines of conduct, +and notably in her determined animosity to certain characters (as that +of La Fayette, for instance), was of an open and violent sort which +seemed to them merely brutal and unintelligent; her luxury, moreover, +was noticed by the refined world of Versailles to be hardly ever of her +own choosing, but nearly always practised in imitation of others. + +In connection with that trait of luxury, the reader must appreciate at +the outset that it was grievously exaggerated by her contemporaries, and +has been still more exaggerated by posterity. She was not a very +frivolous, still less a dissipated, woman. She was woefully loose in +tongue, but she was certainly virtuous. + +She gambled, but as the times went, and the supposed unlimited fortune +of the Crown, her gambling was not often excessive; her expenditure upon +jewellery and dress would be thought most moderate to-day in the case of +any lady of our wealthier families. On the other hand, her whims were +continual and as continually changing, especially in the earlier part of +her life. + +Since that surrounding world of the Court which she misunderstood and +which had no sympathy with her was ready to find some handle against +her, that handle of dissipation was the easiest for them to seize; but +the accusation was not a just one. + +Had fortune made her the wife of a poor man in a lower class of society, +Marie Antoinette would have been a capable housewife: her abundant +energy would have found a proper channel, and she was in no way by +nature extravagant. + +She had a few very passionate and somewhat too sentimental friendships, +some of which were returned, others of which their objects exploited to +their own advantage. The two most famous were her friendship for the +Princess de Lamballe and for Madame de Polignac. These moved her not +infrequently to unwise acts of patronage which were immediately seized +by the popular voice and turned against her. They were among the few +weaknesses apparent in her general temper. They were certainly ill +balanced and ill judged. + +She indulged also in a number of small and unimportant flirtations which +might almost be called the routine of her rank and world; she had but +one great affection in her life for the other sex, and it was most +ardently returned. Its object was a Swedish noble of her own age, the +very opposite of the French in his temper, romantically chivalrous, +unpractical in the extreme, gentle, intensely reserved; his name Count +Axel de Fersen. The affair remained pure, but she loved him with her +whole heart, and in the last months of her tragedy this emotion must be +regarded as the chief concern of her soul. They saw each other but very +rarely, often they were separated for years; it was this, perhaps, which +lent both glamour and fidelity to the strange romance. + + +MIRABEAU + +Mirabeau, the chief of the "practical" men of the Revolution (as the +English language would render the most salient point in their political +attitude), needs a very particular examination. His influence upon the +early part of the Revolution was so considerable, the effect of his +death was so determinant and final, the speculation as to what _might_ +have happened had he survived is so fruitful, so entertaining, and so +common, and the positive effect of his attitude upon the development of +the Revolution after his death was so wide, that to misunderstand +Mirabeau is in a large measure to misunderstand the whole movement; and +Mirabeau has unfortunately been ill or superficially understood by many +among now three generations of historians; for a comprehension of this +character is not a matter for research nor for accumulated historic +detail, but rather a task for sympathy. + +Mirabeau was essentially an artist, with the powers and the frailties +which we properly associate with that term: that is, strong emotion +appealed to him both internally and externally. He loved to enjoy it +himself, he loved to create it in others. He studied, therefore, and was +a master of, the material by which such emotion may be created; he +himself yielded to strong emotion and sought it where it might be found. +It is foolish alike to belittle and to exaggerate this type of +temperament. Upon it or upon its admixture with other qualities is based +the music, the plastic art, and in a large measure the permanent +literature of the world. This aptitude for the enjoyment and for the +creation in others of emotion clothes intellectual work in a manner +which makes it permanent. This is what we mean when we say that _style_ +is necessary to a book; that a great civilisation may partly be judged +by its architecture; that, as Plato says, music may be moral or immoral, +and so forth. The artist, though he is not at the root of human affairs, +is a necessary and proper ally in their development. + +When I say that Mirabeau was an artist I mean that wherever his energies +might have found play he would there have desired to enjoy and to create +enjoyment through some definite medium. This medium was in part +literary, but much more largely oral expression. To be a _tribune_, that +is the voice of great numbers, to persuade, nay, to please by his very +accents and the very rhythm of his sentences, these things occupied the +man; but he also brought into his art that without which no great art +can exist: mere intellect. + +He believed in the main principles at least which underlay the +revolutionary movement, he understood them and he was prepared to +propagate them; but his power over men was not due to this conviction: +his power over men was wholly that of the artist, and had he by some +accident been engaged in maintaining the attack against democracy, he +would have been nearly as famous as he became under the title of its +defender. We must then always consider Mirabeau as an orator, though an +orator endowed with a fine and clear intelligence and with no small +measure of reasoned faith. + +Much else remains to be said of him. + +He was a gentleman; that is, he both enjoyed and suffered the +consequences which attach to hereditary wealth and to the atmosphere +that surrounds its expenditure. On this account, he being personally +insufficiently provided with wealth, he was for ever in debt, and +regarded the sums necessary to his station in life and to his large +opportunities as things due to him, so to speak, from society. We are +right when we say that he took bribes, but wrong if we imagine that +those bribes bound him as they would bind a man meaner in character or +less lucky in his birth. He stooped as gentlemen will to all manner of +low intrigues, to obtain "the necessary and the wherewith"; that is, +money for his _role_. But there was a driving power behind him, bound up +with his whole character, which made it impossible for any such sums to +control his diction or to make of such a man a mere advocate. He was +never that dirtiest of political phenomena, the "party man." He would +never have been, had he been born a hundred years later and thrust into +the nastiness of modern parliamentary life, "a parliamentary hand." + +Mirabeau had behind him a certain personal history which we must read in +connection with his temperament. + +He had travelled widely, he knew Englishmen and Germans of the wealthier +classes well. The populace he knew ill even in his own country; abroad +he knew it not at all. He had suffered from his father's dislike of him, +from the consequence of his own unbridled passions, also not a little +from mere accidental misfortune. Capable of prolonged and faithful +attachment to some woman, the opportunity for that attachment had never +been afforded him until the last few months before his death. Capable of +paying loyal and industrious service to some political system, no +political system had chosen him for its servant. It is a fruitful matter +of speculation to consider what he might have done for the French +monarchy had Fate put him early at Court and given him some voice in the +affairs of the French Executive before the Revolution broke out. As it +was, the Revolution provided him with his opportunity merely because it +broke down old barriers and conventions and was destructive of the +framework of the State in which he lived. He was compelled to enter the +Revolution as something of a destroyer, for by no other avenue could he +be given his chance; but by nature he detested destruction. I mean +(since this phrase is somewhat vague) he detested that spirit which will +disendow a nation of certain permanent institutions serving definite +ends, without a clear scheme of how those institutions should be +replaced by others to serve similar ends. It was on this account that he +was most genuinely and sincerely a defender of the monarchy: a permanent +institution serving the definite ends of national unity and the +repression of tendencies to oligarchy in the State. + +Mirabeau had none of the revolutionary Vision. In mind he was +prematurely aged, for his mind had worked very rapidly over a very +varied field of experience. The pure doctrine of democracy which was a +religion to many of his contemporaries, with all the consequences of a +religion, he had never thought of accepting. But certain consequences of +the proposed reforms strongly appealed to him. He loved to be rid of +meaningless and dead barriers, privileges which no longer corresponded +to real social differences, old traditions in the management of trade +which no longer corresponded to the economic circumstances of his time, +and (this is the pivotal point) the fossils of an old religious creed +which, like nearly all of his rank, he simply took for granted to be +dead: for Mirabeau was utterly divorced from the Catholic Church. + +Much has been said and will be said in these pages concerning the +religious quarrel which, though men hardly knew it at the time, cut +right across the revolutionary effort, and was destined to form the +lasting line of cleavage in French life. There will be repeated again +and again what has already been written, that a reconciliation between +the Catholic Church and the reconstruction of democracy was, though men +did not know it, the chief temporal business of the time, and the reader +of these pages will be made well acquainted in them with the degradation +to which religion had fallen among the cultivated of that generation. +But in the case of Mirabeau this absence of religion must be +particularly insisted upon. It would no more have occurred to Mirabeau +that the Catholic Faith had a future than it could occur to (let us say) +an English politician of thirty years ago that the Irish might become a +wealthy community or that an English Government might within his own +lifetime find itself embarrassed for money. I use this parallel for the +sake of strengthening my contention, but it is indeed a weak parallel. +No contemporary parallel in our strange and rapidly changing times +corresponds to the fixed certitude which permeated the whole of the end +of the eighteenth century that the Catholic Faith was dead. Mirabeau had +perhaps never engaged in his life in intimate conversation a single man +who took the Catholic sacraments seriously, or suffered a moment's +anxiety upon the tenets of the creed. + +He knew, indeed, that certain women and a much smaller number of +insignificant men wrapped themselves up in old practices of an odd, +superstitious kind; he knew that great, dull areas of ignorant +peasantry, in proportion to their poverty and isolation, repeated by +rote the old formulae of the Faith. But of the Faith as a living thing +he could have no conception. + +He saw on the one hand a clerical institution, economic in character, +providing places and revenues for men of his own rank; he met those men +and never discovered them to have any religion at all. He saw on the +other hand a proposed society in which such a fossil, unjust and +meaningless, must relinquish its grip upon those large revenues. But of +the Faith as a social force, as a thing able to revive, he could have +no conception. It would have seemed to him a mere folly to suggest that +the future might contain the possibility of such a resurrection. The +dissolution of the religious orders, which was largely his work, the +civil constitution of the clergy which he presided over, were to him the +most natural acts in the world. They were the mere sweeping away of a +quantity of inorganic stuff which cumbered the modern State. He felt of +them as we might feel of the purchase of waste spaces in our cities, of +the confiscation of some bad landlords' property in them. The Church +served no kind of purpose, no one who counted believed in it, it was +defended only by people who enjoyed large revenues from the survival of +what had once been, but was now no longer, a living, social function. + +In everything of the Revolution which he understood Mirabeau was upon +the side of caution. He was not oblivious to the conception of popular +government, he was not even mistrustful of it, but he could not conceive +of it save as acting through the established strength of the wealthier +classes. Of military power he judged very largely through Prussian eyes. +And in long and enthusiastic passages he described the Prussian army as +invincible. Had he lived to see the military enthusiasm of the +Republicans he would utterly have distrusted it. He favoured in his +heart an aristocratic machinery of society--though not an aristocratic +theory of the State; he was quite determined to preserve as a living +but diminished national organ the traditional monarchy of France; he was +curious upon a number of details which were present and close to his +eyes: methods of voting, constitutional checks, commercial codes and the +rest of it. The little equilibriums of diplomacy interested him also, +and the watching of men immediately under his eye in the Parliament. + +It was in the Parliament that his whole activity lay, it was there that +he began to guide the Revolution, it was his absence from the Parliament +after his death that the Revolution most feels in the summer of 1791. + +This very brief sketch does not present Mirabeau to the reader. He can +only be properly presented in his speeches and in the more rhetorical of +his documents. It is probable as time proceeds that his reputation in +this department will grow. His constitutional ideas, based as they were +upon foreign institutions, and especially upon the English of that time, +were not applicable to his own people and are now nearly forgotten: he +was wrong upon English politics as he was wrong upon the German armies, +but he had art over men and his personality endures and increases with +time. + + +LA FAYETTE + +The character of La Fayette has suffered chiefly from his own aloofness +towards his contemporaries on the one hand, and from his rigid adherence +to principle upon the other. Both these causes are clearly connected. +The same quality in him which made him so tenacious of principle made +him contemptuous of the run of men about him. Fundamentally, he was +nearer the extreme Republicans than any other class, from the very fact +of his possessing a clear political creed and a determination to follow +it out to its logical consequence. But there was no chance of his +comprehending the concrete side of the movement or the men engaged upon +it, for his great wealth, inherited in very early life, had cut him off +from experience. His moral fault was undoubtedly ambition. It was an +ambition which worked in the void, as it were, and never measured itself +with other men's capacities or opportunities. He made no plans for +advancement, not because he would have despised the use of intrigue in +reason, but because he was incapable of working it. He was exceedingly +attached to popularity, when it came he thought it his due; unpopularity +in its turn seemed to him a proof of the vileness of those who despised +him. He made himself too much the measure of his world. + +Undoubtedly a very great part in the moulding of his character proceeded +from his experience in the United States of America. He was then at the +most impressionable and formative period of human life, little more than +a boy, or at least just entering early manhood. He had just married, he +had just come into the administration of his vast fortune. At such a +moment he took part in the victorious rebellion of the English colonies, +and it may be imagined how powerful was the effect of this youthful +vision upon the whole of the man's future life; because there was no +proletariat in the colonies, he never saw or comprehended the +dispossessed classes of Paris--for that matter he never saw or +comprehended the French peasantry upon his own lands; because a chance +and volunteer soldiery had, under the peculiar conditions of the +half-populated Atlantic seaboard in conjunction with the French fleet +and with the aid of French money and arms, got the better of the small +and heterogeneous forces of George III, he believed that a military +nation like the French, in the midst of powerful enemies, could make +something of an amateur civic force; because a certain type of ease in +social relations was the ideal of many, perhaps of most, of those with +whom he had served in America, he confused so simple and mundane an +ideal with the fierce crusading blast and the sacred passion for +equality which was stirring his own nation when his opportunity for +leadership came. + +It may be said of La Fayette with justice that he never upon a single +occasion did the right thing. It may also be said with justice that he +never did politically any major thing for which his own conscience would +later reproach him. It is noticeable that the Queen held him in +particular odium. He had been a wealthy young noble about the Court, the +friend of all her women friends, and his sympathy with the revolutionary +movement at its inception therefore seemed to her nothing better than +treason. There was also undoubtedly something in his manner which +grievously repelled her; that it was self-sufficient we cannot doubt, +and that it was often futile and therefore exasperating to women, events +are sufficient to show. But Marie Antoinette's violent personal +antagonism towards La Fayette was not common, though several ardent +spirits (Danton's, for instance) shared it. The mass of those who came +across La Fayette felt in connection with him a certain irritation or a +certain contempt or a certain rather small and distant respect; he +inspired no enthusiasms, and when he timidly attempted a rebellion +against the new Government after the fall of the monarchy, no one would +sacrifice himself or follow him. + +It may be affirmed of La Fayette that if he had not existed the +Revolution would have pursued much the same course as it did, with this +exception: that there would not have been formed a definitely middle +class armed guard to provoke friction in Paris: the National Guard would +have been more open to all ranks. + +In religion the man was anodyne, Catholic of course by baptism, but +distinctly Protestant in morals and in general tone, in dogma (until the +end of his life) freethinking, of course, like all his contemporaries. +He was personally courageous but foolishly despised the duel. One +anecdote out of many will help to fix his nature in the mind of the +reader. Mirabeau, casting about as usual for aid in his indebtedness, +sent urgently to him as to a fellow noble, a fellow politician and a +fellow supporter of the Crown, begging a loan of L2000. La Fayette +accorded him L1000. + + +DUMOURIEZ + +Dumouriez presents a character particularly difficult for the modern +Englishman to comprehend, so remote is it in circumstance and +fundamentals from those of our time. + +Of good birth, but born in a generation when social differences had +become a jest for intelligent and active men (and he was intelligent and +active), courageous, with a good knowledge of his trade of soldiering, +of rapid decision and excellent judgment where troops or _terrain_ were +concerned, he was all at sea in the comprehension of men, and he bore no +loyalty to the State. + +It is this last feature which will particularly surprise the English +reader, for it is the singular and permanent advantage of oligarchic +communities such as the British that they retain under any stress and +show throughout the whole commonwealth the sense of the State. To betray +the State, to act against its interests, to be imperfectly conscious of +its existence, are crimes or weaknesses unknown to the citizens of an +oligarchy, and a citizen of this country cannot easily conceive of them +to-day. In democracies and despotisms, on the other hand, to forget +one's duty to the State, to be almost oblivious of its corporate +existence, is a common weakness. There is here a compensation, and by +just so much as despotism and democracy permit rapid, effective and +all-compelling action on the part of the State, by just so much as they +permit sudden and sometimes miraculous enthusiasms which save or which +confirm a State, by that also do they lack the quiet and persistent +consciousness of the State which oligarchy fosters and determines. + +Dumouriez' excellence as a general can only be appreciated by those who +have looked closely into the constitution of the forces which he was to +command and the adversaries with whom he had to deal. It is the prime +quality of a great commander that his mind stands ready for any change +in circumstances or in the material to his hand, and even when we have +allowed for the element of luck which is so considerable in military +affairs, we must not forget that Dumouriez saved without disaster the +wretched and disorganised bands, inchoate and largely mutinous as to +their old units, worthless and amateur as to their new, which had to +meet, in and behind the Argonne, the model army of Prussia. + +We must not forget that his plan for the invasion of the Low Countries +was a just and sensible one, nor with what skill, after the inevitable +defeat and retreat of the spring of 1793, he saved his command intact. + +As a subordinate to an armed executive, to the Government of Napoleon, +for instance, the man would have been priceless. Nay, had circumstances +permitted him to retain supreme command of civil as of military power, +he would have made no bad dictator. His mere technical skill was so +considerable as to make the large sums paid him by the English +Government seem a good bargain even at our distance of time, and his +plans for the defence of England and for the attack on Napoleon are a +proof of the value at which he was estimated. + +But Dumouriez was quite unable to act under the special circumstances in +which he happened to be placed at the moment of his treason. A mere +ambition had carried him from intrigue to intrigue among the +politicians. He despised them as an active and capable soldier was +compelled to despise them; he was too old to share any of their +enthusiasms, even had his temperament permitted him to entertain any +vision, political or religious. He certainly never felt the least moral +bond attaching him to what was in his eyes the chance anarchy of the +last six months of French Government under which he served, and if he is +to be branded with the title of traitor, then we must brand with the +same title all that multitude of varied men who escaped from the country +in the Emigration, who left it in disgust, or even who remained in +France, but despaired of French fortunes, in the turmoil of 1793. + +It is perhaps a worthy excuse for Dumouriez' failure to point out that +he also was one of those whom the Court might have used had it known how +to use men; but the Court had no such knowledge. + + +DANTON + +The character of Danton has more widely impressed the world than that of +any other revolutionary leader, because it contained elements +permanently human, independent of the democratic theory of the time, and +necessary neither to the support of that theory nor to the criticism of +it. + +The character of Danton appeals to that sense in man which is interested +in action, and which in the field of letters takes the form of drama. +His vigour, his personal strength of mind and body, the individuality of +his outline, arrest equally the man who loves the Revolution, and the +man who hates it, and the man who is quite indifferent to its success or +failure. + +It is on this very account that historians, especially foreign +historians, have tended to misinterpret the man. Thus Carlyle, who has +great intuition in the matter, yet makes him out farmer-like--which he +certainly was not; Michelet, fascinated by his energy, presents him as +something uncouth, and in general those who would describe Danton stand +at a distance, as it were, where his loud voice and forcible gesture may +best be appreciated; but a man to be seen truly must be seen in +intimacy. + +Danton was essentially a compound of two powerful characters in man. He +was amative or constructive, and at the same time he not only possessed +but liked to exercise lucidity of thought. The combination is among the +strongest of all those that go to build up human personalities. + +That which was amative and constructive in him, his virility if you +will, brought him into close touch with reality; he knew and loved his +own country, for instance, and infinitely preferred its happy survival +to the full development of any political theory. He also knew and loved +his fellow countrymen in detail and as persons; he knew what made a +Frenchman weak and what made him strong. The vein of Huguenotry, though +he did not know it for what it was, he disliked in his compatriots. On +the other hand, the salt and freshness of the French was native to him +and he delighted in it; the freedom of their expression, the noise of +their rhetoric, and the military subsoil of them, were things to all of +which he immediately responded. He understood their sort of laughter, +nor was he shocked, as a man less national would have been, at their +peculiarly national vices, and in especial their lapses into rage. It is +this which must account for what all impartial judgment most blames in +him, which is, his indifference to the cruelties, his absorbed interest +in foreign and military affairs, at the moment of the Massacres of +September. + +This touch with reality made him understand in some fashion (though only +from without) the nature of the Germans. The foolish mania of their +rulers for mere territorial expansion unaccompanied by persuasion or the +spread of their ideas, he comprehended. The vast superiority of their +armies over the disorganised forces of the French in 1792 he clearly +seized: hence on the one hand his grasp of their foreign policy, and on +the other his able negotiation of the retreat after Valmy. He also +understood, however, and more profoundly, the rapid self-organisation of +which his own countrymen were capable, and it was upon this knowledge +that his determination to risk the continuance of the war reposed. It +should be remarked that both in his military and in his quasi-military +action he was himself endowed in a singular degree with that power of +immediate decision which is characteristic of his nation. + +His lucidity of thought permitted him to foresee the consequences of +many a revolutionary decision, and at the same time inclined him to a +strong sympathy with the democratic creed, with the doctrine of +equality, and especially with the remoulding of the national +institutions--particularly his own profession of the law--upon simple +lines. He was undoubtedly a sincere and a convinced revolutionary, and +one whose doctrine more permeated him than did that of many of his +contemporaries their less solid minds. He was not on that account +necessarily republican. Had some accident called his genius into play +earlier in the development of the struggle, he might well, like +Mirabeau, with whom he presents so curious a parallel, have thought it +better for the country to save the Monarchy. + +It must always be remembered that he was a man of wide culture and one +who had achieved an early and satisfactory professional success; he was +earning a sound income at the moment of his youthful marriage; he read +English largely and could speak it. His dress was not inexpensive, and +though somewhat disordered (as it often is with men of intense energy +and constant gesture) it never gave an impression of carelessness or +disarray. He had many and indifferent intellectual interests, and was +capable, therefore, of intelligent application in several fields. He +appreciated the rapid growth of physical science, and at the same time +the complexity of the old social conditions--too widely different from +contemporary truths. + +To religion he was, of course, like all men of that time, utterly +indifferent, but unlike many of them he seized the precise proportion of +its remaining effect upon certain districts and certain sections of the +countrysides. There has been a tendency latterly to exaggerate the part +which Freemasonry played in the launching of him; he was indeed a member +of a masonic lodge, as were, for that matter, all the men, conspicuous +or obscure, democratic or utterly reactionary, who appeared upon the +revolutionary stage: probably the king, certainly old aristocrats like +the father of Madame de Lamballe, and the whole host of the middle +class, from men like Bailly to men like Condorcet. But it is reading +history backwards, and imagining the features of our own time to have +been present a century ago, to make of Masonry the determining element +in his career. + +Danton failed and died from two combined causes: first his health gave +way, secondly he obtruded his sanity and civilian sense into the heated +fury and calculated martial law of the second year of the Republic. To +both that fury and that calculation he was an obstacle; his opposition +to the Terror lost him the support of the enthusiasts, but it was the +interference which such a judgment made in the plans of the soldiers, +and notably of Carnot, that determined his condemnation and death. He +also, like Mirabeau, will undoubtedly increase as the years proceed, +and, if only as a representative of the national temper, become more and +more the typical figure of the Revolution in action. + + +CARNOT + +Carnot, the predecessor of Napoleon, and the organising soldier of the +early revolutionary wars, owed his power to backbone. + +He had not only a good solidity of brain, but an astonishing power of +using it for hours and hours on end. This he owed perhaps to the +excellent physical stock of which he came, the eldest of a very large +family born to a notable lawyer in Burgundy. + +It was Carnot's pride to hold a commission in the learned arms which +were to transform at that moment the art of war: for as Bonaparte, his +successor, was a gunner, so he was a sapper. His practice of exact +knowledge in application, and the liberal education which his career +demanded, further strengthened the strong character he had inherited. +More important still, in his democratic views he was what none of the +older officers had been, convinced and sincere. He had not come within +the influence of the very wealthy or of the very powerful. He was +young, and he knew his own mind not only in matters of political faith +but in the general domain of philosophy, and in the particular one of +military science. + +It has been said of him that he invented the revolutionary method of +strategical concentration and tactical massing in the field. There is +some truth in this; but the method would not have been possible had he +not also invented, in company with Danton, and supported after Danton +left power, a universal system of conscription. + +Carnot understood, as only trained soldiers can, the value of numbers, +and _he depended with great sagacity upon the national temper_; thus at +Wattignies, which was a victory directly due to his genius, though it +was novel in him to have massed troops suddenly upon the right after a +check on the extreme left of the field, yet the novelty would have been +of no effect had he not comprehended that, with his young fellow +countrymen as troopers, he could depend upon a charge delivered after +thirty-six hours of vigil. + +He used not only the national but also the revolutionary temper in war. +One of the chief features, for instance, of the revolutionary armies +when they began to be successful, was the development of lines of +skirmishers who pushed out hardily before the main bodies and were the +first in the history of modern warfare to learn the use of cover. This +development was spontaneous: it was produced within and by each unit, +not by any general command. But Carnot recognised it at Hoondschoote +and used it ever after. + +The stoical inflexibility of his temper is the noblest among the many +noble characters of his soul. He never admitted the empire, and he +suffered exile, seeming thereby in the eyes of the vilest and most +intelligent of his contemporaries, Fouche, to be a mere fool. He was as +hard with himself as with others, wholly military in the framework of +his mind, and the chief controller of the Terror, which he used, as it +was intended to be used, for the military salvation of the republic. + + +MARAT + +Marat is easily judged. The complete sincerity of the enthusiast is not +difficult to appreciate when his enthusiasm is devoted to a simple human +ideal which has been, as it were, fundamental and common to the human +race. + +Equality within the State and the government of the State by its general +will: these primal dogmas, on the reversion to which the whole +Revolution turned, were Marat's creed. + +Those who would ridicule or condemn him because he held such a creed, +are manifestly incapable of discussing the matter at all. The ridicule +and condemnation under which Marat justly falls do not attach to the +patent moral truths he held, but to the manner in which he held them. He +did not only hold them isolated from other truths--it is the fault of +the fanatic so to hold any truth--but he held them as though no other +truths existed. And whenever he found his ideal to be in practice +working at a friction or stopped dead, his unnourished and acute +enthusiasms at once sought a scapegoat, discovered a responsible agent, +and suggested a violent outlet, for the delay. + +He was often right when he denounced a political intriguer: he often +would have sacrificed a victim not unjustly condemned, he often +discovered an agent partially responsible, and even the violent +solutions that he suggested were not always impracticable. But it was +the prime error of his tortured mind that beyond victims, and sudden +violent clutches at the success of democracy, there was nothing else he +could conceive. He was incapable of allowing for imperfections, for +stupidities, for the misapprehension of mind by mind, for the mere +action of time, and for all that renders human life infinitely complex +and infinitely adjustable. + +Humour, the reflection of such wisdom, he lacked;--"judgment" (as the +English idiom has it) he lacked still more--if a comparative term may be +attached to two such absolute vacuities. + +It must not be forgotten that so complete an absence of certain +necessary qualities in the building up of a mind are equivalent to +madness. Marat was not sane. His insanity was often generous, the creed +to which it was attached was obvious enough, and in the eyes of most of +us it is a creed to be accepted. But he worked with it as a madman who +is mad on collectivism, let us say, or the rights of property, might +work in our society, thinking of his one thesis, shrieking it and +foaming at the mouth upon it, losing all control when its acceptance was +not even opposed but merely delayed. He was valueless for the +accomplishment of the ends of the Revolution. His doctrine and his +adherence to it were so conspicuously simple and sincere that it is no +wonder the populace made him (for a few months) a sort of symbol of +their demand. + +For the rest, his face, like his character, was tortured; he carried +with him a disease of the skin that irritated perpetually his wholly +unbalanced temper. + +Some say (but one must always beware of so-called "Science" in the +reading of history) that a mixture of racial types produced in him a +perpetual physical disturbance: his face was certainly distorted and +ill-balanced--but physical suggestions of that sort are very +untrustworthy. + +Those who met him in the management of affairs thought him worthless +enough; a few who knew him intimately loved him dearly; more who came +across him continually were fatigued and irritated by his empty +violence. He was, among those young revolutionaries, almost an elderly +man; he was (this should never be forgotten) a distinguished scholar in +his own trade, that of medicine; and he effected less in the Revolution +than any man to whom a reputation of equal prominence happened to +attach. He must stand responsible for the massacres of September.[2] + + +ROBESPIERRE + +No character in the Revolution needs for its comprehension a wider +reading and a greater knowledge of the national character than +Robespierre's. + +Upon no character does the comprehension of the period more depend, and +none (for reasons I will give in a moment) has been more misunderstood, +not only in the popular legend but in the weighed decisions of competent +historians. + +So true is this that even time, which (in company with scholarship) +usually redresses such errors, has not yet permitted modern authors to +give a true picture of the man. + +The reason of so conspicuous a failure in the domain of history is this: +that side by side with the real Robespierre there existed in the minds +of all his contemporaries _save those who actually came across him in +the junctions of government_, a legendary Robespierre--a Robespierre +popularly imagined; and that this imaginary Robespierre, while it (or +he) has proved odious to posterity, seemed, while he lived, a +fascinating portrait to the man himself, and therefore he accepted it. +For Robespierre, though just, lacked humility. + +The problem is an exceedingly subtle as well as an exceedingly difficult +one. The historian, as he reads his authorities, has perpetually to +distinguish between what is strong and what is weak evidence, and to +recall himself, as he reads, to reality by a recollection of what +Robespierre himself was. If he does not do so he falls at once into the +legend; so powerful is that legend in the numbers that supported it, and +so strongly did Robespierre himself support it by his own attitude. The +legendary Robespierre may be described in a very few lines. + +Conceive a man sincerely convinced of the purest democratic theory, a +man who cared for nothing else but the realisation of that theory, and +who had never sacrificed his pursuit of its realisation in the State to +any personal advantage whatsoever. This man, trusted by the people and +at last idolised by them, becomes more and more powerful. He enters the +governing body (the Committee of Public Safety), he is the master both +within and without that body, and uses his mastery for establishing an +ideal democracy which shall recognise the existence of God and repose +upon civic virtue; and to establish this ideal he has recourse to +terror. He finds that human defections from his ideal are increasingly +numerous: he punishes them by death. The slaughter grows to be enormous; +the best of Democrats are involved in it; at last it can be tolerated no +longer, his immediate subordinates revolt against him in the Committee, +he is outlawed, fails to raise a popular rebellion in his favour in +Paris, is executed, and his system of terror falls to the ground. + +This picture, though purely legendary in tone, contains not only much +truth, but truth of precisely that sort which conspires to make credible +what is false in the whole. + +Robespierre was sincerely attached to the conception of an ideal +democracy; he was incorruptible in the pursuit of it--and to be a +politician and incorruptible amounts to something like what the Church +calls heroic virtue in a man. He _did_ enter the Committee of Public +Safety; he _did_ support the Terror, and when he was overthrown the +Terror _did_ come to an end. Where, then, does the legend differ from +the truth? + +In these capital points, which change it altogether: that Robespierre +was not the chief influence in the Committee of Public Safety, _i.e._ +the all powerful executive of the Republic; that he did not desire the +Terror, that he did not use it, that he even grew disgusted with it, and +that, in general, he was never the man who governed France. + +It need hardly be pointed out how such a truth destroys such a legend. +The whole nature of the twelve months between the summer of 1793 and the +summer of 1794 must vary according as we regard them as Robespierrean or +no: and they were not Robespierrean. + +What were they then, and why has the error that Robespierre was then +master, arisen? + +Those months, which may be roughly called the months of the Terror, +were, as we shall see later in this book, months of martial law; and the +Terror was simply martial law in action--a method of enforcing the +military defence of the country and of punishing all those who +interfered with it or were supposed by the Committee to interfere with +it. + +No one man in the Committee was the author of this system, but the one +most determined to use it and the one who had most occasion to use it, +was undoubtedly the military organiser, Carnot. Side by side with him +one man, such as Barrere, supported it because it kept up the Committee +of Public Safety which gave him all his political position. Another, +such as Saint-Just, supported it because he believed that the winning of +the war (in which he took an active part) would secure democracy +everywhere and for ever. Another, such as Jean Bon, supported it from +the old sectarian bitterness of the Huguenot. But of all men in the +Committee, Robespierre supported the Terror least, and was most +suspected by his colleagues--and increasingly suspected as time went +on--of desiring to interfere with the martial system of the Terror and +to modify it. + +Why, then, was Robespierre popularly identified with the Terror, and +why, when he was executed, did the Terror cease? + +Robespierre was identified with the Terror because he was identified +with the popular clamour of the time, with the extreme democratic +feeling of the time, and its extreme fear of a reaction. Robespierre +being the popular idol, had become also the symbol of a popular frenzy +which was supposed to be ruling the country. But that frenzy was not +ruling the country. What was ruling the country was the Committee of +Public Safety, in which Carnot's was the chief brain. Robespierre was +indeed the idol of the populace; he was in no way the agent of their +power or of any power. + +Why, when he fell, did the Terror cease if he were not its author? +Because the Terror was acting under a strain; it was with the utmost +difficulty that this absolute, intolerant and intolerable martial system +could be continued when once the fear of invasion was removed. For some +weeks before Robespierre fell the victories had begun to render it +unnecessary. When the Committee saw to it that Robespierre should be +outlawed by the Parliament, they knocked away, without knowing it, the +keystone of their own policy; it was _his_ popular position which made +_their_ policy possible. When he was destroyed they suddenly found that +the Terror could no longer be maintained. Men had borne with it because +of Robespierre, falsely imagining that Robespierre had desired it. +Robespierre gone, men would not bear with it any more. + +Now, finally, if Robespierre himself had always felt opposed to the +system of the Terror, why did he not take the lead in the popular +reaction against it? + +He had his opportunity given him by Danton in December 1793--seven +months before his own catastrophe. The Committee determined to put +Danton out of the way because Danton, in appealing for mercy, was +weakening the martial power of their government. Robespierre might have +saved Danton: he preferred to let him be sacrificed. The reason was that +Robespierre wrongly believed popularity to lie upon the side of the +Terror and against Danton; he was in no way a leader (save in rhetoric +and in rhetoric directed towards what men already desired), and his own +great weakness or vice was the love of popular acclaim. + +Later on, in the summer of 1794, when he actually began to move against +the Terror, he only did so privately. He so misread men that he still +believed the Terror to be popular, and dared not lose his popular name. +A man by nature as sincere as crystal, he was tempted to insincerity in +this major thing, during the last months of his life, and he yielded +completely to the temptation. For the sake of his memory it was +deplorable, and deplorable also for history. His weakness has been the +cause of an historical error as grave as any that can be discovered in +modern letters, and at the same time has wholly maligned him to +posterity. + +A factor in Robespierre's great public position which is often forgotten +is the great effect of his speeches. That men should still debate, after +so vast a change in taste, whether those speeches were eloquent or no, +is a sufficient proof of their effect. He spoke in an ordered and a +reasoned manner, which bored the fine spirits of the earlier +Parliaments, but well suited the violent convictions of the later +Revolution. His phraseology, his point of view, just jumped with that of +his audience. He could express what they felt, and express it in terms +which they knew to be exact, and which they believed to be grand. For +his manner was never excessive, and those excessive men who heard him in +an excessive mood, were proud to know that their violence could be +expressed with so much scholarship and moderated skill. + +By birth he was of the smaller gentry, though poor. It is an indication +of his character that he had thought of taking Orders, and that in early +youth literary vanity had affected him. He has left no monument; but +from the intensity of his faith and from his practice of it, his name, +though it will hardly increase, will certainly endure. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[2] There is but one trustworthy monograph on Marat. It will interest +the student as a proof of the enthusiasm which Marat can inspire. It is +by Champfleury. + + + + +IV + +THE PHASES OF THE REVOLUTION + + +I + +_From May 1789 to 17th of July 1789._ + +The first point which the reader must hold in the story of the +Revolution is the quarrel between its first Parliament and the Crown. + +Of what nature was that quarrel? + +It was not, as it has sometimes been represented, a simple issue between +privilege and a democratic demand for equality, or between traditional +organs of government and a democratic demand for self-government by the +nation. To imagine this is to read history backwards, and to see in the +untried conditions of 1789 the matured results which only appeared after +years of struggle. + +The prime issue lay between legality and illegality. + +The forms of French law and all the inherited method of French +administration demanded a certain form of authority; a centralised +government of unlimited power. The King was absolute. From him proceeded +in the simplest fashion whatever will was paramount in the State. He +could suspend a debtor's liabilities, imprison a man without trial, +release him without revision of his case, make war or peace, and in +minor details such as the discipline and administration of public +bodies, the power of the Crown was theoretically and legally equally +supreme. It was not exercised as the enormous power of modern government +is exercised, it did not perpetually enter into every detail of the life +of the poor in the way in which the power of a modern English Government +enters into it; it is in the very nature of such autocratic power that, +while unlimited in theory, it is compelled to an instinctive and +perpetual self-limitation lest it break down; and autocracy maybe +compared in this to aristocracy, or more properly speaking to oligarchy, +the government of a few: for where a few govern they know that their +government reposes upon public opinion or public tolerance; they are +very careful not to exceed certain limits the transgression of which +would weaken the moral foundation of their power; they welcome allies, +they recruit themselves perpetually from other classes in the community. + +In the same way an autocracy always has the desire to be popular. Its +strokes affect the great and the powerful, and are hardly ever aimed at +the mass of the community. The intellectual, the wealthy, the privileged +by birth, fortune or exceptional personal powers, are suspect to it. As +for the mass of men an Autocracy attempts to represent and, in a certain +sense, to obey them. + +Now the French autocracy (for it was no less) erred not in the will to +act thus popularly in the early part of the Revolution, but in the +_knowledge_ requisite for such action. + +The Parliament, shortly after it had met in May 1789, began to show, in +the Commons part of it, the working of that great theory which had +leavened all France for a generation. The Commons said, "We are the +people; at once the symbols of the people, the direct mandatory servants +of the people, and" (though this was a fiction) "we are of the people in +our birth and origin. We are therefore the true sovereign; and the +prince, the head of the Executive, is no more than an organ of +government, morally less in authority than ourselves, who are the true +source of government." This attitude, which was at the back of all men's +minds, and which was concentrated, of course, in the Commons, clashed +with legality. It could not express itself in the terms of law, it could +not act save in a fashion which should be, in the strictest sense of the +word, _revolutionary_. + +Now the Crown, on the whole national in sympathy, and comprehending this +new theory well (I mean by the Crown the general body of advisers round +the King, and the King himself), was offended at the illegality not of +the theory or of the pretence (for these were not illegal), but of the +action of the Commons. And this comparatively small source of friction +was the irritant upon which we must fix as the cause of what followed. +The Nobles, by 108 to 47, decided, the day after the opening of the +Parliament, to sit as a separate House. The Clergy, by a much smaller +majority, 133 to 114, came to the same decision, but carefully qualified +it as provisional. The Commons declared that the hall in which they met +should be regarded as the hall of the National Assembly, and later made +it their business (to quote the phrase of the motion) "to attempt to +unite in common all the deputies of the nation in that hall and never to +abandon the principle of voting individually" (that is, not by separate +Houses) "or the principle that the States-General formed one undivided +body." This attitude was qualified and compromised with to some extent +in the days that followed, but it held the field, and while the Commons +were insisting upon this attitude as a moral right, the Nobles countered +by a reaffirmation of the right of each House to a separate judgment +upon public matters. The Nobles were standing upon legal precedent: the +Commons had nothing in their favour but political theory; if the orders +sat all together and voted as individuals, the Commons, who were in +number equal to the two other Houses combined, would, with their noble +and clerical sympathisers, have a majority. + +Now the King and his advisers, notably Necker, who still had great +weight, were by no means "Impossiblists" in this struggle. They desired +an understanding, and through the last days of May and the first days of +June the attempt at an understanding was made. But the attempt dragged, +and as it seemed that nothing would come of it, on the 10th of June +Sieyes moved that the Assembly should "verify its powers" (a French +phrase for admitting and registering the presence of each member as +acceptable to the whole body, and to the theory of its Constitution), +and that this should be done "in the case of each member" (meaning +members of all the three orders and _not_ of the Commons alone), +"whether the members of the two privileged Houses were present or +absent." The roll was called and completed upon the 15th. None of the +nobles attended the common roll-call, three of the parish clergy (they +were from the province of Poitou) did so, and thus admitted the right of +the Commons so to act. A dozen of their colleagues joined them later; +but that was all. + +So far there had been no action which could be precisely called illegal +or revolutionary. The Commons had affirmed a right based upon a +political theory which the vast majority of the nation admitted, and the +legal depositary of power, the King, had not yet reproved. One may draw +a parallel and compare the action of the Commons so far to some action +which a trade union, for instance, may take in England; some action the +legality of which is doubtful but upon which the courts have not yet +decided. + +It was upon the 17th of June, two days after the completion of the +roll-call by the Commons, that the first revolutionary act took place, +and the student of the Revolution will do well to put his finger upon +that date and to regard it not indeed as the moral origin of the +movement, but as the precise moment from which the Revolution, as a +Revolution, begins to act. For upon that day the Commons, though in fact +only joined by a handful of the Clerical House, and by none of the +nobility, _declared themselves to be the National Assembly_; that is, +asserted the fiction that Clergy, Nobles and Commons were all present +and voted together. To this declaration they added a definite act of +sovereignty which trespassed upon and contradicted the legal authority +of the Crown. True, the motion was only moved and passed +"provisionally," but the words used were final, for in this motion the +self-styled "National Assembly" declared that "provisionally" taxes and +dues might be raised upon the old authority but that only until the +National Assembly should disperse; "after which day"--and here we reach +the sacramental formula, as it were, of the crisis--"the National +Assembly _wills and decrees_ that all taxes and dues of whatever nature +which have not been specifically formally and freely granted by the said +Assembly shall cease in every province of the kingdom no matter how such +that province may be administered." (This is an allusion to the fact +that in some provinces there was a representative machinery, in others +nothing but the direct action of the Crown.) "The Assembly declares that +when it has _in concert with_ (not in obedience to) the King laid down +the principle of a national re-settlement, it will busy itself with the +examination and ordering of the public debt." Etc., etc. + +Such was the point of departure after which sovereignty was at issue +between the Crown and the States-General; the Crown a known institution +with its traditions stretching back to the Roman Empire, and the +National Assembly a wholly new organ according to its own claims, basing +its authority upon a political theory stretching back to the very +origins of human society. + +Two days later, on the 19th of June, the "National Assembly," still only +self-styled and possessing only the powers which it had ascribed to +itself beyond all forms of law, set to work, nominated its committees, +and assumed the sovereignty thus claimed. The Nobles protested (notably +the Bishops), and the King, on the advice of Barentin, keeper of the +Seals, determined upon immediate resistance. The excuse was taken that +the Royal Session, as it was called, in which the King would declare his +will, needed the preparation of the hall, and when the Commons presented +themselves at the door of that hall on the next day, the 20th, they +found it shut against them. They adjourned to a neighbouring tennis +court, and took a solemn corporate oath that they would not separate +without giving France a Constitution. They continued to meet, using a +church for that purpose, but on the 23rd the Royal Session was opened +and the King declared his will. + +The reader must especially note that even in this crisis the Crown did +not offer a complete resistance. There was an attempt at compromise. +Necker would have had a more or less complete surrender, the Queen and +her set would have preferred an act of authority which should have +annulled all that the Commons had done. What actually happened was a +permission by the Crown that the three Orders should meet as one body +for certain common interests, but should preserve the system of voting +as separate Houses in "all that might regard the ancient and +constitutional rights of the three Orders, the Constitution to be given +to future Parliaments, feudal property, and the rights and prerogatives +of the two senior Houses." As a mere numerical test, such a conclusion +would have destroyed the power of the Commons, since, as we have seen, +numbers were the weapon of the Commons, who were equal to the two other +Houses combined, and if all sat together would, with the Liberal +members of the clergy and the nobility, be supreme. But apart from this +numerical test, the act of sovereignty affirmed by the National Assembly +when it declared itself, and itself only, competent to vote taxes, was +annulled. Moreover, the royal declaration ended with a command that on +the next day the three Orders should meet separately. + +Now at this critical point the King was disobeyed. The current of the +time chose the revolutionary bed, and as it began to flow deepened and +confirmed its course with every passing day and event. Already the +majority of the clergy had joined the National Assembly when it had +affirmed its right to sit in spite of the check of the 20th of June. +There was a half-hour on that decisive day of the Royal Session, the +23rd of June, when armed force might have been used for the arrest and +dispersion of the Deputies. They declared themselves inviolable and +their arrest illegal, but there was, of course, no sanction for this +decree. As a fact, not a corporal's file was used against them. The next +day, the 24th, the majority of the clergy again joined the Commons in +their session (in flat defiance of the King's orders), and on the 25th, +forty-seven of the nobles followed their example. The King yielded, and +on the 27th, two days later, ordered the three Houses to meet together. + +The National Assembly was now legally constituted, and set out upon its +career. The Crown, the old centre of authority, had abandoned its +position, and had confirmed the Revolution, but in doing so it had acted +as it were in contradiction with itself. It had made technically legal +an illegality which destroyed its own old legal position, but it had +done so with ill-will, and it was evident that some counter-stroke would +be attempted to restore the full powers of the Crown. + +At this point the reader must appreciate what forces were face to face +in the coming struggle. So far, the illegal and revolutionary act of the +17th of June, the Royal Session which replied to that act upon the 23rd, +the King's decree which yielded to the Commons upon the 27th, had all of +them been but words. If it came to action, what physical forces were +opposed? + +On the side of the Crown was the organised armed force which it +commanded. For it must never be forgotten that the Crown was the +Executive, and remained the Executive right on to the capture of the +palace three years later, and the consummation of the Revolution on the +10th of August, 1792. On the side of the National Assembly was without +doubt the public opinion of the country (but that is not a force that +can be used under arms), and, what was much more to the point, the +municipal organisation of France. + +Space forbids a full description of the origins and strength of the +French municipal system; it is enough to point out that the whole of +Gallic civilisation, probably from a moment earlier than Caesar's +invasion, and certainly from the moment when Roman rule was paramount +in Gaul, was a _municipal_ one. It is so still. The countrysides take +their names mainly from their chief towns. The towns were the seats of +the bishops, whose hierarchy had preserved whatever could be preserved +of the ancient world. In the towns were the colleges, the guilds, the +discussion and the corporations which built up the life of the nation. +The chief of these towns was Paris. The old systems of municipal +government, corrupt and varied as they were, could still give the towns +a power of corporate expression. And even where that might be lacking it +was certain that some engine would be found for expressing municipal +action in a crisis of the sort through which France was now passing. In +Paris, for instance, it was seen when the time came for physical force +that the College of Electors, who had chosen the representatives for +that city, were willing to act at once and spontaneously as a municipal +body which should express the initiative of the people. It was the +towns, and especially Paris, prompt at spontaneous organisation, ready +to arm, and when armed competent to frame a fighting force, which was +the physical power behind the Assembly. + +What of the physical power behind the King? His power was, as we have +said, the Regular Armed forces of the country: the army. But it is +characteristic of the moment that only a part of that armed force could +be trusted. For an army is never a mere weapon: it consists of living +men; and though it will act against the general opinion of its members +and will obey orders long after civilians would have broken with the +ties of technical and legal authority, yet there is for armies also a +breaking point in those ties, and the Crown, I repeat, could not use as +a whole the French-speaking and French-born soldiery. Luckily for it, a +very great proportion of the French army at that moment consisted of +foreign mercenaries. + +Since the position was virtually one of war, we must consider what was +the strategical object of this force. Its object was Paris, the chief of +the towns; and round Paris, in the early days of July, the mercenary +regiments were gathered from all quarters. That military concentration +once effected, the gates of the city held, especially upon the north and +upon the west, by encamped regiments and by a particularly large force +of cavalry (ever the arm chosen for the repression of civilians), the +Crown was ready to act. + +On the 11th of July, Necker, who stood for Liberal opinions, was +dismissed. A new ministry was formed, and the counter-revolution begun. +What followed was the immediate rising of Paris. + +The news of Necker's dismissal reached the masses of the capital (only +an hour's ride from Versailles) on the afternoon of the 12th, Sunday. +Crowds began to gather; an ineffectual cavalry charge in one of the +outer open spaces of the city only inflamed the popular enthusiasm, for +the soldiers who charged were German mercenary soldiers under the +command of a noble. Public forces were at once organised, arms were +commandeered from the armourers' shops, the Electoral College, which had +chosen the members of the Assembly for Paris, took command at the Guild +Hall, but the capital point of the insurrection--what made it +possible--was the seizure of a great stock of arms and ammunition, +including cannon, in the depot at the Invalides. + +With such resources the crowd attacked, at the other end of the city, a +fortress and arsenal which had long stood in the popular eye as the +symbol of absolute monarchy, the Bastille. With the absurdly +insufficient garrison of the Bastille, its apparent impregnability to +anything the mob might attempt, the supposed but doubtful treason of its +governor in firing upon those whom he had admitted to parley, we are not +here concerned. The Bastille was rushed, after very considerable efforts +and an appreciable loss in killed and wounded. By the evening of that +day, Tuesday, the 14th of July, 1789, Paris had become a formidable +instrument of war. The next news was the complete capitulation of the +King. + +He came on the morrow to the National Assembly, promising to send away +the troops; he promised to recall Necker, a municipal organisation was +granted to the city, with Bailly for its first mayor, and--a point of +capital importance--an armed militia dependent upon that municipality +was legally formed, with La Fayette at its head. On the 17th Louis +entered Paris to consummate his capitulation, went to the Guild Hall, +appeared in the tricoloured cockade, and the popular battle was won. + +It behoves us here to consider the military aspect of this definitive +act from which the sanction of the Revolution, the physical power behind +it, dates. + +Paris numbered somewhat under a million souls: perhaps no more than +600,000: the number fluctuated with the season. The foreign mercenary +troops who were mainly employed in the repression of the popular feeling +therein, were not sufficient to impose anything like a siege. They could +at the various gates have stopped the provisioning of the city, but then +at any one of those separate points, any one of their detachments upon a +long perimeter more than a day's march in circumference would certainly +have been attacked and almost as certainly overwhelmed by masses of +partially armed civilians. + +Could the streets have been cleared while the ferment was rising? It is +very doubtful. They were narrow and tortuous in the extreme, the area to +be dealt with was enormous, the tradition of barricades not forgotten, +and the spontaneous action of that excellent fighting material which a +Paris mob contains, had been quite as rapid as anything that could have +been effected by military orders. + +The one great fault was the neglect to cover the Invalides, but even had +the Invalides not been looted, the stock of arms and powder in the city +would have been sufficient to have organised a desperate and prolonged +resistance. The local auxiliary force (of slight military value, it is +true), the "French Guards," as they were called, were wholly with the +people. And in general, the Crown must be acquitted of any considerable +blunder on the military side of this struggle. It certainly did not fail +from lack of will. + +The truth is (if we consider merely the military aspect of this military +event) that in dealing with large bodies of men who are (a) not +previously disarmed, (b) under conditions where they cannot be +dispersed, and (c) capable by a national tradition or character of some +sort of rapid, spontaneous organisation, the issue will always be +doubtful, and the uncertain factor (which is the tenacity, decision and +common will of the civilians, to which soldiers are to be opposed) is +one that varies within the very widest limits. + +In massing the troops originally, the Crown and its advisers estimated +that uncertain factor at far too low a point. Even contemporary educated +opinion, which was in sympathy with Paris, put it too low. That factor +was, as a fact, so high that no armed force of the size and quality +which the Crown then disposed of, could achieve its object or hold down +the capital. + +As for the absurd conception that any body of men in uniform, however +small, could always have the better of civilian resistance, however +large and well organised, it is not worthy of a moment's consideration +by those who interest themselves in the realities of military history. +It is worthy only of the academies. + +So ends the first phase of the Revolution. It had lasted from the +opening of the States-General in May to the middle of July 1789. + + +II + +_From the 17th of July 1789 to the 6th of Oct. 1789._ + +We have seen the military conditions under which the attempt at an armed +counter-revolution failed. There follows a short phase of less than +three months, whose character can be quickly described. + +It was that moment of the Revolution in which ideas had the freest play, +in which least had been done to test their application, and most scope +remained for pure enthusiasm. That is why we find in the midst of that +short phase the spontaneous abandonment of the feudal rights by the +nobility. And that is why the violent uprisings all over France +continued. It is the period in which the Declaration of the Rights of +Man and of the Citizen, a document which may fittingly stand side by +side with the Declaration of Independence (for together they form the +noblest monuments of our modern origins), was promulgated. In the same +period were the elements of the future Constitution rapidly debated and +laid down, and notably that national policy of a _Single Chamber_ which +the modern French have imprudently abandoned. In that same period, +however, appeared, and towards the close of it, another form of +resistance on the part of the Crown and of those who advised the Crown. +The King hesitated to accept the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and +similarly hesitated to promulgate the Decree of the 4th of August in +which the nobility had abandoned their feudal dues. It would be foolish +to exaggerate the military aspect of what followed. Louis did call in +troops, but only in numbers sufficient for personal defence, and we can +hardly believe that he intended anything more than to police the +surroundings of his throne. But the brigade (for it was no more, nor was +it of full strength) which he summoned was sufficient to kindle +suspicion; and the determinedly false position of the Queen (who all her +life was haunted by the idea that the regular soldiers, especially if +they were well dressed and held themselves rigidly, were a sort of +talisman) provoked an explosion. A feast was given in which the officers +of the Regiment of Flanders, which had just reached Versailles, were +entertained by the officers of the Guard. It was made the occasion for a +good deal of drunkenness and a violent Royalist manifestation, at which +the Queen was present, which she approved, and which some thought she +had designed. + +The failure of the harvest to relieve the scarcity of bread in Paris, +the permanent state of alarm in which Paris had remained, and of +suspicion for the safety of the Parliament which it continually +entertained since the early part of the summer, needed no more to +provoke an outbreak. It is an error to imagine that that outbreak was +engineered or that such a movement could have been factitious. Great +masses of women (in whom the movement originated), and after them a +whole flood of the populace, marched upon Versailles. + +There was no direct attack upon the palace, though the palace feared +such an attack at any moment. The troops present were sufficient to +prevent violence. + +La Fayette followed in the night at the head of his new Parisian militia +force. + +Too much reliance was placed upon the military character of this force; +the palace was invaded in the early morning, an attempt to assassinate +the Queen on the part of the mob failed, though two of the Guards were +killed. And after scenes whose violence and apparent anarchy only masked +the common determination of the populace, the royal family were +compelled to abandon Versailles and to take up their place in the +Tuileries; the Parliament followed them to Paris, and neither King nor +Parliament returned again to the suburban palace. + +This recapture of the King by Paris is much more significant than a mere +impulse of the mob. The King in Paris, the unison of his person with the +capital city, had been the very sacrament of French life for century +upon century. It was precisely a hundred years since Paris had been +abandoned by Louis XIV for Versailles. The significance of that error +may be understood by the citizens of an aristocratic country if they +will imagine the abandonment of their countrysides by the squires, or, +again, the future historian of our modern industrial civilisation may +understand it when he describes how the wealthy manufacturers abandoned +the cities in which their wealth was made, to dwell outside and apart +from the living interests of their people. + +With the return of the royal family to Paris, and with the presence of +the Assembly within the heart of the national life, one prime factor +appears, which is this: that while the National Assembly proceeds step +by step to what it imagines to be a complete attainment of democracy +(though how partial will soon be seen), the resistance of the Crown is +transformed into a resistance of the mere Court. The attack on the +Revolution becomes a personal thing. The King is still wholly the chief +of the Executive; he can give what commands he wills to the armed force; +he controls receipts and payments; he is for all active purposes the +Government. But he is no longer considering that prime function of his, +nor even using it to restore his old power. He acts henceforward as an +individual, and an individual in danger. The Queen, whose view of the +Revolution and its dangers had always been a purely personal one, is the +directing will in the court-group from this moment, October 1789, +onwards; and the chief preoccupation of that group for eighteen months +is personal safety. Surrounded by the pomp of the Tuileries and amid all +the external appearances of a power still greater than that of any other +monarch in Europe, Louis and his wife and their very few immediate and +devoted friends and followers thought of the palace as a prison, and +never considered their position save as one intolerable. + + +III + +_From October 1789 to June 1791._ + +It is this which must explain all that followed in the succeeding phase, +which lasted from these early days of October 1789 to the last week of +June 1791. Throughout that period of twenty-one months the King is +letting the Revolution take its course, with the fixed idea of thwarting +it at last by flying from it, and perhaps conquering it by foreign aid. +But even this policy is not consecutively followed. The increasing +repugnance of the Court and of the King himself to the revolutionary +development forbids a consecutive and purely hypocritical acceptation of +the National Assembly's decrees. + +Deliberate and calculated intrigue might yet have saved the monarchy and +the persons of the royal family. Oddly enough, an ally in the struggle, +an excellent intriguer, a saviour of the monarchical institution and a +true defender of the royal persons was at hand: it was at hand in the +person of Mirabeau. + +This man had more and more dominated the Assembly; he had been +conspicuous from its first opening days; he had been its very voice in +the resistance to the King at Versailles; it was he who had replied to +the Master of Ceremonies on June 23, that the Commons would not +disperse; it was he who had moved that the persons of the Commons were +privileged against arrest. He was of a family noble in station and +conspicuous before the people by the wealth and eccentricities of its +head, Mirabeau's father. He himself was not unknown even before the +Revolution broke out, for his violence, his amours, his intelligence and +his debts. He was a few years older than the King and Queen: his +personality repelled them; none the less his desire to serve them was +sincere; and it was his plan, while retaining the great hold over the +National Assembly which his rhetoric and his use of men furnished him, +to give to the Court and in particular to the Queen, whom he very +greatly and almost reverently admired, such secret advice as might save +them. This advice, as we shall see in a moment, tended more and more to +be an advice for civil war. But Mirabeau's death at the close of the +phase we are now entering (on April 2, 1791), and the increasing fears +of the King and Queen, between them prevented any statesmanship at all; +they prevented even the statesmanship of intrigue; and the period +became, on the side of the Revolution, a rapid and uncontrolled +development of its democratic theory (limited by the hesitation of the +middle class), and on the side of the Court an increasing demand for +mere physical security and flight, coupled with an increasing +determination to return, and to restore as a popular monarchy the scheme +of the past. + +The eighteen months that intervened between the fixing of the Assembly +and the royal family in Paris, and the death of Mirabeau, are remarkable +for the following points, which must all be considered abreast, as it +were, if we are to understand their combined effects. + +1. This was the period in which the constructive work of the National +Assembly was done, and in which the whole face of the nation was +changed. The advising bodies of lawyers called "Parliaments" were +abolished (eleven months after the King had come to Paris), the Modern +Departments were organised in the place of the old provinces, the old +national and provincial militia was destroyed; but (as it is very +important to remember) _the old regular army was left untouched_. A new +judicature and new rules of procedure were established. A new code +sketched out in the place of "Common Law" muddle. In a word, it was the +period during which most of those things which we regard as +characteristic of the revolutionary work were either brought to their +theoretic conclusion or given at least their main lines. + +2. Among these constructive acts, but so important that it must be +regarded separately, was the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which +will be dealt with at length further in this book; it was the principal +work (and the principal error) of that year and a half. + +3. The general spirit of the Revolution, more difficult to define than +its theory but easy to appreciate as one follows the development of the +movement, increased regularly and enormously in intensity during the +period. The power of the King, who was still at the head of the +Executive, acted more and more as an irritant against public opinion, +and-- + +4. That public opinion began to express itself in a centralised and +national fashion, of which the great federation of the 14th of July +1790, in Paris, on the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille, was the +nucleus and also the symbol. This federation consisted in delegates from +the National Guard throughout the country, and it was of this capital +importance: that it introduced into the revolutionary movement a feature +of soldiery which made even the regular troops for the most part +sympathetic with the enthusiasm of the time. + +5. These eighteen months were, again, filled with the movement of the +"Emigration." That movement was, of course, the departure of many of the +more prominent of the privileged orders and of a crowd of humbler +nobles, as also of a few ecclesiastics, from France. The King's brothers +(one fled at the beginning of the emigration, the younger, the Comte +d'Artois; the other, the elder, at its close, and coincidently with the +flight of the King) must especially be noted in this connection; they +formed in company with the more notable of the other emigrants a regular +political body, which intrigued continually beyond the frontiers, in +Germany and Italy, against the Revolution. And-- + +6. It was therefore during these months that the ultimate origins of the +large European war must be found. The armed body of the emigrants under +Conde formed an organised corps upon the Rhine, and though there was not +yet the semblance of an armed movement in Europe besides theirs against +the French, yet by the _emigres_, as they were called, were sown the +seeds the harvest of which was to be the war of 1792. + +I have said that during these months in which most of the constructive +work of the Revolution was done, in which the seeds of the great war +were sown, and in which the absolute position of the Crown as the head +of the Executive was increasingly irritating to the public opinion of +the French, and especially of the capital, Mirabeau was the one man who +might have preserved the continuity of national institutions by the +preservation of the monarchy. He received money from the Court and in +return gave it advice. The advice was the advice of genius, but it was +listened to less and less in proportion as it was more and more +practical. Mirabeau also favoured the abandonment of Paris by the King, +but he would have had the King leave Paris openly and with an armed +force, withdraw to a neighbouring and loyal centre such as Compiegne, +and thence depend upon the fortunes of civil war. + +Meanwhile the Queen was determined upon a very different and much more +personal plan, into which no conception of statesmanship entered. She +was determined to save the persons of her children, herself and her +husband. Plans of flight were made, postponed and re-postponed. It was +already agreed at the Court that not Mirabeau's plan should be followed, +but this plan of mere evasion. The army which Bouille commanded upon the +frontier was to send small detachments along the great road from Paris +to the east; the first of these were to meet the royal fugitives a +little beyond Chalons and to escort their carriage eastward; each armed +detachment in the chain, as the flight proceeded, was to fall in for its +defence, until, once the town of Varennes was reached, the King and +Queen should be in touch with the main body of the army. + +What was then intended to follow remains obscure. It is fairly certain +that the King did not intend to pass the frontier but to take refuge at +Montmedy. The conflict that would have inevitably broken out could +hardly have been confined to a civil war: foreign armies and the German +mercenaries in the French service were presumably to be organised, in +case the flight succeeded, for a march upon Paris and the complete +restoration of the old state of affairs. + +Had Mirabeau lived this rash and unstatesmanlike plan might yet have +been avoided; it so happened that he died upon April 2, 1791, and soon +after we enter the third phase of the Revolution, which is that leading +directly to the great war, and to the fall of the monarchy. + +Shortly after Mirabeau's death a tumult, which excessively frightened +the royal family, prevented the King and Queen from leaving the palace +and passing Easter at St. Cloud, in the suburbs. Though further +postponements of their flight followed, the evasion actually took place +in the night of the 20th to 21st of June. It very nearly succeeded, but +by a series of small accidents, the last of which, the famous ride of +Drouet to intercept the fugitives, is among the best-known episodes in +history, the King and Queen and their children were discovered and +arrested at Varennes, within a few hundred yards of safety, and were +brought back to Paris, surrounded by enormous and hostile crowds. With +the failure of this attempt at flight in the end of June 1791, ends the +third phase of the Revolution. + + +IV + +_From June 1791 to September 1792._ + +To understand the capital effect both of this flight and of its failure, +we must once more insist upon the supreme position of the monarchy in +the traditions and instinct of French polity. The unwisdom of the flight +it would be difficult to exaggerate: it is impossible to exaggerate the +moral revolution caused by its failure. It was regarded as virtually an +abdication. The strong body of provincial, silent, and moderate opinion, +which still centred on the King and regarded it as his function to lead +and to govern, was bewildered, and in the main divorced, in the future, +from the Crown. + +It is an excellent proof of what the monarchy had for so long been to +France, that even in such a crisis barely the name of "a republic" was +mentioned, and that only in the intellectual circles in Paris. All the +constitutional and standing forces of society conspired to preserve the +monarchy at the expense of no matter what fictions. The middle class +Militia Guard under La Fayette repressed, in what is known as the +Massacre of the Champ-de-Mars, the beginnings of a popular movement. The +more Radical leaders (among whom was Danton) fled abroad or hid. The +Duke of Orleans utterly failed to take advantage of the moment, or to +get himself proclaimed regent: the monarchical tradition was too strong. + +Immediately after the second anniversary of the taking of the Bastille, +in July, the decrees of Parliament created the fiction that the King was +not responsible for the flight, that he "had been carried off," and in +the following September, though until then suspended from executive +power, the King, on taking the oath to the Constitution, was once more +at the head of all the forces of the nation. + +But all this patching and reparation of the facade of constitutional +monarchy (a fiction whose tawdriness is more offensive to the French +temper than its falsehood) had come too late. Already the Queen had +written to her brother, the Emperor of Austria, suggesting the +mobilisation of a considerable force, and its encampment on the +frontier, to overawe the revolutionary movement. Her action coincided +within a few days with the end of that great Parliament, which had been +chosen on the most democratic suffrage, and which had transformed the +whole of society and laid the basis of the revolutionary Constitution. +With the meeting of the National Assembly's successor on the 1st of +October, 1791, war was already possible; that possibility was to be +transformed very soon into probability, and at last into actuality. + +In the new Parliament the weight, not of numbers but of leadership, fell +to a group of enthusiastic and eloquent men who, from the fact that +certain of their principal members came from the Gironde, were called +_The Girondins_. They represented the purest and the most enthusiastic +ideal of democracy, less national, perhaps, than that advocated by men +more extreme than they, but of a sort which, from that time to this, has +been able to rouse the enthusiasm of historians. + +Vergniaud and Isnard were their great orators, Brissot was their +intellectual intriguer, and the wife of Roland, one of their members, +was, as it were, the soul of the whole group. It was the fact that these +men desired war which made war certain, once the temper of this new +second Assembly should be felt. + +The extremists over against them, to whom I have alluded (known as "the +Mountain"), were especially Parisian in character. Robespierre, who had +been first an obscure, and later a sectarian orator of the National +Assembly, though not sitting in this second Parliament, was perhaps the +most prominent figure in that group, for he was the public orator of +Paris; and indeed the Mountain was Paris; Paris, whether inside or +outside the Parliament; Paris acting as the responsible brain of France. +Later, it was the Mountain (that had first opposed the war) which was to +ensure the success of the French arms by a rigidity and despotism in +action such as the purer and less practical minds of the Girondins +abhorred. + +On the 3rd of December, 1791 (to quote a fundamental date in the rapid +progress towards the war which was to transform the Revolution), the +King--writing in a manner which betrays dictation by his wife--begged +the King of Prussia (as _she_ had begged the Emperor) to mobilise an +armed force, and with it to back a Congress that should have for its +object the prevention of the spread of the Revolution. That letter was +typical of the moment. From both sides tension was rapidly proceeding to +the breaking point. Nor was the tension merely upon generalities. The +Revolution had broken a European treaty in the annexation of the Papal +State of Avignon, and it had broken European conventions when it had +abolished in Alsace feudal rights that were possessed by the princes of +the empire. It was as though some State to-day, attempting Collectivism, +should confiscate, along with other property, securities lying in its +banks, but held by the nationals of a foreign State. + +On the revolutionary side also there was a definite point at issue, +which was the permission accorded within the empire for the emigrants to +meet in arms and to threaten the French frontier. + +But these precise and legal points were not the true causes of the war. +The true causes of the war were the desire of the unreformed European +Governments (notably those of Prussia and Austria) that the Revolution +should, in their own interests, be checked, and the conviction that +their armed forces were easily capable of effecting the destruction of +the new French _regime_. + +The Court of Vienna refused to accept a just indemnity that was offered +the princes of the empire in Alsace for the loss of their old feudal +rights; Leopold, the emperor, who was one of the same generation as the +French King and Queen, died upon the 1st of March, 1792, and was +succeeded by a son only twenty-four years of age and easily persuaded to +war. + +On the French side, with the exception of the Mountain and notably of +Robespierre, there was a curious coalition of opinion demanding war. + +The Court and the reactionaries were sufficiently certain of the victory +of the Allies to find their salvation in war. + +The revolutionary party, that is, the mass of public opinion and the +"patriots," as they called themselves, the Girondins, also, and +especially, desired war as a sort of crusade for the Revolution; they +suffered grievous illusions, as enthusiasts always must, and believed +the French armed forces capable of sustaining the shock. The plans had +already been drawn up for the campaign (and promptly betrayed to the +enemy by the Queen); Dumouriez, an excellent soldier, had from the +middle of March 1792 been the chief person in the ministry, and the +director of foreign affairs, and a month later, on the 20th of April, +war was declared against Austria, or, to be accurate, against "the King +of Hungary and Bohemia." + +Such was still the official title of Marie Antoinette's nephew, who, +though now succeeded to the empire, had not yet been crowned emperor. It +was hoped to confine the war to this monarch, and, indeed, the German +princes of the empire did not join him (the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel +was an exception). But the one German power that counted most, the +kingdom of Prussia, which Dumouriez had especially hoped to keep +neutral, joined forces with Austria. The royal letters had done their +work. + +At this critical moment the French armed forces and the French +strongholds were at their worst. The discipline of the army was +deplorable. The regular soldiers of the old _regime_ had lost from six +to nine thousand officers by emigration, and mixed no better than water +and oil with the revolutionary volunteers who had been drafted (to the +number of over two hundred battalions) into the ranks of the army; +moreover, these volunteer battalions were for the most part ill +provided, far below their establishment, some only existed on paper; +none were trained as soldiers should be trained. In a more orderly time, +when the decrees of the Government corresponded with reality, four +hundred thousand men would have held the frontier; such a number was in +the estimates. As it was, from the Swiss mountains to the English +Channel, the French could count on no more than _one-fifth_ of that +number. Eighty thousand alone were under arms. The full Prussian army +was, alone, apart from its allies, close upon treble the size of this +disorganised and insufficient force. + +Panics at once ludicrous and tragic opened the campaign upon the French +side. The King took advantage of them to dismiss his Girondin Ministry +and to form a reactionary Government. The Parliament replied by measures +useless to the conduct of war, and designed only to exasperate the +Crown, which was betraying the nation. It ordered the dismissal of the +royal Guard, the formation of a camp of revolutionary Federals outside +Paris, the transportation of the orthodox priests; in pursuit of the +Court's determination to resist the Assembly and to await the victorious +allies, Louis vetoed the last two decrees. La Fayette, who was now in +command of the army of the centre, with his headquarters at Sedan, right +upon the route of the invasion, declared for the King. + +Had the armies of Austria and Prussia moved with rapidity at this +moment, the Revolution was at an end. As it was, their mobilisation was +slow, and their march, though accurate, leisurely. It gave time for the +populace of Paris to demonstrate against the palace and the royal family +on the 20th of June. It was not until the first days of August that the +main force of the combined monarchs, under the generalship-in-chief of +the Duke of Brunswick (who had the reputation of being the best general +of his time), set out for the march on Paris. It was not until the 23rd +of August that the invaders took the first French frontier town, Longwy. + +Meanwhile two very important things had lent to the French, in spite of +the wretched insufficiency of their armed force, an intensity of feeling +which did something to supply that insufficiency. In the first place, +the third anniversary of the Fall of the Bastille, the 14th of July, had +called to Paris deputations from all the provinces, many of them armed; +this gave the national feeling unity. In the second place, Brunswick had +issued from Coblentz, which was his base, upon the 25th of that same +month of July, a manifesto which was known in Paris three days later, +and which (though certain modern historians have questioned this) +undoubtedly set revolutionary opinion ablaze. + +This manifesto demanded, in the name of the Allied Army, a complete +restoration of the old _regime_, professed to treat the French and their +new authorities as rebels subject to military execution, and contained a +clause of peculiar gravity, which excited an immediate and exasperated +response from Paris. The authorship of this clause lay with Marie +Antoinette, and it threatened, if there were any attack upon the palace, +to give the capital over to military execution and total subversion. + +Two days later the Federals from Marseilles, a middle-class body of +excellent citizens, though merely amateurs at soldiering and small in +numbers, marched into the city. Their marching song has become famous +under the title of the "Marseillaise." They had accomplished the +astonishing feat of traversing France, drawing cannon with them, at the +rate of eighteen miles a day, in the height of a torrid summer, for +close upon a month on end. There is no parallel to such an effort in the +history of war, nor did contemporary opinion exaggerate when it saw in +the battalion of Marseilles the centre of the coming fight. + +The shock between the palace and the populace was joined in the morning +of the 10th of August. The palace was held by about six thousand men,[3] +of whom some twelve hundred were regulars of the Swiss Guard. The palace +(the Tuileries) was, or should have been, impregnable. The popular +attack, we may be certain, would have been beaten back had the +connection between the Tuileries and the Louvre on the south been +properly cut. The flooring had indeed been removed at this point for +some distance, but either the gap was not wide enough or the post was +insufficiently guarded; the populace and the Federals, badly beaten in +their main attack upon the long front of the palace, succeeded in +turning its flank where it joined on to the Louvre; they thus enfiladed +the suites of rooms and utterly put an end to the resistance of its +garrison. + +Meanwhile the King and Queen, the Dauphin and his little sister, with +others of the royal household, had taken refuge during the fighting in +the hall of the Parliament. + +After the victory of the populace their fate was debated and decided +upon; they were imprisoned in the Tower of the Temple, a mediaeval +fortress still standing in the north-east of Paris, and though monarchy +was not yet formally abolished, the most extreme spirits which the +Revolution then contained, and the most vigorous, stepped into the place +of the old Executive, with Danton at their head. With them appeared in +the seat of Government the spirit of military action, its contempt for +forms and its rapid decision. The known accomplices of the supporters of +the Court's resistance and alliance with the invaders were arrested by +the hundred. The enrolment of volunteers, already enthusiastic +throughout France, was supported with the new vigour of official aid; +and the Revolution left at once all its old moorings to enter an extreme +phase. At the same moment the frontier was crossed and the national soil +invaded on the 19th of August. + +It is possible that the delay of the Prussians until that moment had +been calculated, for the position in France was complicated and their +decision to fight had been tardily arrived at. It was the news of the +fall of the palace that seems to have decided them. The place, like the +date, of this grave event, deserves to be more famous than it is. +Brunswick touched what was then French soil, in that little triangle +where now German and French Lorraine and Luxembourg meet. The village is +called Redange: thence did the privileged of Europe set out to reach +Paris and to destroy democracy. The first task occupied them for full +twenty-two years, upon the latter they are still engaged. + +What forces the French could there bring against Brunswick were +contemptuously brushed aside. Four days later he had, as we have seen, +taken the frontier stronghold of Longwy; within a week he was in front +of Verdun. + +Verdun had no chance of resistance, no garrison to call a garrison, and +no opportunity for defence. The news that it must fall reached Paris on +the morning of a fatal date, the 2nd of September; after its fall there +would lie nothing between it and the capital; and from that moment the +whole nature of the Revolution is wholly transformed by the +psychological effect of war. + + +V + +_From the invasion of September 1792 to the establishment of the +Committee of Public Safety, April 1793._ + +The fifth phase of the French Revolution may be said to date from these +first days of September 1792, when the news of the successful invasion +was maddening Paris, and when the revolutionary Executive, established +upon the ruins of the old dead monarchy and in its image, was firmly in +the saddle, up to the establishment of the yet more monarchical +"Committee of Public Safety," seven months later. And these seven months +may be characterised as follows:-- + +They were a period during which it was attempted to carry on the +revolutionary war against the Governments of Europe upon democratic +principles. The attempt failed. In the place of discipline and +comprehension and foresight the rising and intense enthusiasm of the +moment was depended upon for victory. The pure ideal of the Girondin +faction, with the model republic which it hoped to establish, proved +wholly insufficient for the conduct of a war; and to save the nation +from foreign conquest and the great democratic experiment of the +Revolution from disaster, it was necessary that the military and +disciplined side of the French, with all the tyranny that accompanies +that aspect of their national genius, should undertake the completion of +the adventure. + +This period opens with what are called the Massacres of September. I +have said upon a former page that "the known accomplices and supporters +of the Court's alliance with the invaders were arrested by the hundred," +upon the fall of the palace and the establishment of a revolutionary +Executive with Danton at its head. + +These prisoners, massed in the jails of the city, were massacred to the +number of eleven hundred by a small but organised band of assassins +during the days when the news of the fall of Verdun was expected and +reached the capital. Such a crime appalled the public conscience of +Europe and of the French people. It must never be confused with the +judicial and military acts of the Terror, nor with the reprisals +undertaken against rebellion, nor with the gross excesses of mob +violence; for though votes in favour of the immediate execution of those +who had sided with the enemies of the country were passed in certain +primary assemblies, the act itself was the mechanical, deliberate and +voluntary choice of a few determined men. It had, therefore, a character +of its own, and that character made it stand out for its contemporaries +as it should stand out for us: it was murder. + +The prisoners were unarmed--nay, though treasonable, they had not +actually taken arms; their destruction was inspired, in most of those +who ordered it, by mere hatred. Those who ordered it were a small +committee acting spontaneously, and Marat was their chief.[4] + +It was under the impression of these massacres that the Deputies of the +new or third Assembly of the Revolution, known to history as _The +Convention_, met in Paris. + +This Parliament was to be at first the actual, later the nominal +governing power in France during the three critical years that followed; +years which were the military salvation of the Revolution, and which +therefore permitted the establishment of the democratic experiment in +modern Europe. + +It was on the 20th of September that the Convention met for its first +sitting, which was held in the palace of the Tuileries. During the hours +of that day, while it was electing its officials, choosing its Speaker +and the rest, the French Army upon the frontier, to its own astonishment +and to that of its enemy, managed to hold in check at the cannonade of +_Valmy_ the allied invaders. + +Upon the morrow the new Assembly met in the riding school (the Manege), +where the two former Assemblies had also sat. It was about to separate +after that day's sitting when one of the members proposed the abolition +of Royalty; the Convention voted the reform unanimously and dispersed. + +On the third day, the 22nd of September, it was decreed that the public +documents should henceforward bear the date "First Year of the +Republic"; but there was no solemnity on the occasion; the idea of "No +King" was novel and untried; there was as yet no enthusiasm for any save +the monarchic form of government. It was not until the title "Republic" +began to connote in men's minds political liberty, and had become also +the flag, as it were, for the victorious national defence, that the +Republican name acquired in our Europe, and from France, that strong and +almost religious force which it has since retained. + +The check given to the invaders at Valmy (again to the astonishment of +both soldiers and statesmen!) determined the campaign. Sickness and the +difficulty of communications made the further advance of the invaders +impossible. They negotiated for and obtained an unmolested retreat, and +a few weeks later they had re-crossed the frontier. + +Meanwhile, in Paris the great quarrel had begun between the Municipal +and the National Government, which, because Paris was more decided, more +revolutionary, and, above all, more military in temper than the +Parliament, was destined to terminate in the victory of the capital. The +Girondins still stood in the Assembly for an ideal republic; a republic +enjoying to the utmost limit individual liberty in its citizens and the +autonomy of local government in every city and parish; but opposed to +this ideal, and far more national, was that of the revolutionary +extremists, called in the Convention "the Mountain," who had the support +of the Municipal Government of Paris (known as "the Commune"), and were +capable of French victories in the field. These stood for the old French +and soldierly conception of a strong central Government, wherewith to +carry on the life-and-death struggle into which the Revolution had now +entered: therefore they conquered. + +All that autumn the quarrel between France and Europe remained doubtful, +for though the armies of the Republic under Dumouriez won the battle of +Jemappes, swept across the north-eastern frontier and occupied Belgium, +while to the south another French army swept right up to the Rhine, +Dumouriez himself knew well enough that a campaign undertaken merely +upon enthusiasm, and with troops so mixed in character and many of them +so undisciplined, would end fatally. But until the advent of the new +year public opinion was not instructed upon these lines, and the +revolutionary war seemed to have passed suddenly from the defence of the +national territory to a crusade against the kings and the aristocratic +Governments of Europe. Enthusiasm, and enthusiasm alone, was the force +of the moment. Violent decrees such as the Declaration of Fraternity +(which decreed an alliance with all people struggling to be free) and +the opening of the Scheldt (a direct violation of treaty rights to which +England, among other nations, was a partner) were characteristic of the +moment; chief act of all, the King was put upon his trial at the bar of +the Parliament. + +It was upon the 4th of January, 1793 (the King had already made his will +upon Christmas Day), that the chief orator of the Girondins moved that +the sentence should be referred to the people for ratification. The fear +of civil war more than anything else forbade this just suggestion to +pass. Upon the 15th of January the question was put to the Parliament, +"whether the King had been guilty of conspiring against public liberty +and of attempting the general safety of the State." Many were absent and +many abstained: none replied in the negative; the condemnation of Louis +was therefore technically almost a unanimous one. + +The voting on these grave issues was what the French call "nominal": +that is, each member was called upon "by name" to give his vote--and an +expression of opinion as well if he so chose. A second attempt to appeal +to the people was rejected by 424 to 283. On the third question, which +was the decisive one of the penalty, 721 only could be found to vote, +and of these a bare majority of 53 declared for death as against the +minority, of whom some voted for the death penalty "conditionally"--that +is, not at all--or voted against it. A respite was lost by a majority of +70; and on the 21st of January, 1793, at about ten in the morning, Louis +XVI was guillotined. + +Then followed war with England, with Holland, and with Spain; and almost +at that moment began the inevitable reflux of the military tide. For the +French eruption up to the Rhine in the Low Countries and the Palatinate, +had no permanent military basis upon which to depend. Dumouriez began to +retreat a month after the King's execution, and on the 18th of March +suffered a decisive defeat at Neerwinden. It was this retreat, followed +by that disaster, which decided the fate of the Girondin attempt to +found a republic ideally, individually, and locally free. Already, +before the battle of Neerwinden was fought, Danton, no longer a +minister, but still the most powerful orator in the Convention, proposed +a special court for trying cases of treason--a court which was later +called "the Revolutionary Tribunal." The news of Neerwinden prepared the +way for a stronger measure and some exceptional form of government; a +special Parliamentary committee already formed for the control of +ministers was strengthened when, on the 5th of April, after some +negotiation and doubt, Dumouriez, despairing of the armies of the +Republic, thought to ally his forces with the invaders and to restore +order. His soldiers refused to follow him; his treason was apparent; +upon the morrow the Convention nominated that first "Committee of Public +Safety" which, with its successor of the same name, was henceforward the +true despotic and military centre of revolutionary government. It was +granted secrecy in deliberation, the virtual though not the theoretic +control of the Ministry, sums of money for secret expenditure, and, in a +word, all the machinery necessary to a military executive. Rousseau's +_Dictator_ had appeared, the great mind which had given the _Contrat +Social_ to be the gospel of the Revolution had also foreseen one of the +necessary organs of democracy in its hardest trial; his theory had been +proved necessary and true in fact. Nine members formed this first +Committee: Barere, who may be called the clerk of it, Danton its genius, +and Cambon its financier, were the leading names. + +With the establishment of this truly national and traditional thing, +whose form alone was novel, but whose power and method were native to +all the military tradition of Gaul, the Revolution was saved. We have +now chiefly to follow the way in which the Committee governed and in +which it directed affairs in the great crisis of the war. This sixth +phase lasts for nearly sixteen months, from the beginning of April 1793 +to the 28th of July 1794, and it is convenient to divide those sixteen +months into two divisions. + + +VI + +_From April 1793 to July 1794._ + +The first division of this period, which ends in the height of the +summer of 1793, is the gradual consolidation of the Committee as a new +organ of government and the peril of destruction which it runs, in +common with the nation it governs at the hands of allied Europe. + +The second period includes part of August and all the rest of 1793, and +the first seven months of 1794, during which time the Committee is +successful in its military effort, the nation is saved, and in a manner +curiously dramatic and curiously inconsequential, the martial _regime_ +of the Terror abruptly ceases. + +The first step in the consolidation of the power of the Committee was +their letting loose of the Commune of Paris and the populace it governed +against the Girondins. + +Looked at merely from the point of view of internal politics (upon +which most historians have concentrated) the attack of the populace of +Paris and their Commune against the Parliament seems to be no more than +the end of the long quarrel between the Girondins with their ideal +federal republic, and the capital with its instinct for strong +centralised government. But in the light of the military situation, of +which the Committee of Public Safety were vividly aware, and which it +was their business to control, a very different tale may be told. + +When the defeats began the Parliament had voted a levy of three hundred +thousand men. It was a mere vote which came to very little: not enough +in numbers and still less in moral, for the type of troops recruited +under a system of money forfeit and purchased substitutes was wholly +beneath the task of the great war. + +This law of conscription had been passed upon the 24th of February. The +date for its first application was, in many villages, fixed for the 10th +of March. All that country which borders the estuary of the Loire, to +the north and to the south, a country whose geographical and political +peculiarities need not here detain us, but which is still curiously +individual, began to resist. The decree was unpopular everywhere, of +course, as military service is everywhere unpopular with a settled +population. But here it had no ally, for the Revolution and all its +works were grossly unpopular as well. The error of the Civil +Constitution of the Clergy was a powerful factor in this revolt. The +piety and the orthodoxy of this district were and are exceptional. Some +such resistance in some such quarter was perhaps expected: what was not +expected was its military success. + +Four days before the defeat of Neerwinden itself, and four days after +the decree of conscription in the villages, a horde of peasantry had +taken possession of the town of Chollet in the southern part of this +district, Vendee. Three days before the Committee of Public Safety was +formed the insurgents had defeated regular forces at Machecoul, and had +tortured and put to death their prisoners. The month of April, when the +Committee of Public Safety was first finding its seat in the saddle, saw +the complete success of the rebels. The forces sent against them were +worthless, for all military effort had been concentrated upon the +frontier. Most of them were not even what we should call militia. A +small force of regulars was to have moved from Orleans, but, before they +could attack, Thouars, Parthenay, and Fontenay fell into the power of +the rebels. These posts afforded an advanced triangle right into the +regularly administered territory of the Republic: the great town of +Nantes was outflanked. Even in such a moment the Girondins still clung +to their ideal: an individually free and locally autonomous republic. It +is little wonder that the temper of Paris refused to support them, or +their influence over the Parliament, and we can easily understand how +the new Committee supported Paris in its revolt. + +That revolt took place on the 31st of May. The forces under the command +of the capital did not march, but a deputation of the sections of Paris +demanded the arrest of the leading Girondins. The body of the debating +hall was invaded by the mob. The Committee of Public Safety pretended to +compromise between Paris and the Parliament, but a document, recently +analysed, sufficiently proves that their sympathy was with the Parisian +attack. They proposed, indeed, to put the armed force of Paris at the +disposition of the Assembly: that is, in their own hands. + +That day nothing of moment was done, but the Parliament had proved of no +strength in the face of the capital. On the frontier the advance of the +invaders had begun. The great barrier fortress of Valenciennes relied +for its defence upon the neighbouring camp of Famars. The garrison of +that camp had been compelled to evacuate it by the advance of the Allied +Army upon the 23rd of May, and though some days were to be spent before +the heavy artillery of the Austrians could be emplaced, Valenciennes was +henceforward at the mercy of its besiegers. There was news that La +Vendee was not the only rebellion. Lyons had risen three days before. +There had been heavy fighting. The Royalists and the Girondins had +combined and had carried the town hall and established an +insurrectionary and unelected Municipal Government. Such news, coming +immediately after the 31st of May, roused the capital to action. This +time the Parisian forces actually marched against the Parliament. The +demand for the suspension of the twenty-two named Girondin deputies was +made under arms. Much has been written, and by the best historians, to +make of this successful day a mere conquest by the Commune of Paris over +the Parliament. Though Barere and Danton both protested in public, it +was in reality their politics that conquered with Paris. To the +twenty-two names that the forces of Paris had listed, seven were added. +The great Girondins, Brissot, Vergniaud and the rest, were not indeed +imprisoned, they were considered "under arrest in their houses." But the +moral authority of the Convention as an administrative machine, not as a +legislative one, was broken on this day, the 2nd of June, 1793. Paris +had ostensibly conquered, but the master who was stronger than ever and +whom Paris had served, was the Committee of Public Safety. + +This first Committee of Public Safety endured to the 10th of July. In +the midst of such a war and of such an internal struggle the Convention +had voted (upon the initiative of the Committee of Public Safety) the +famous Constitution of '93, that prime document of democracy which, as +though to mock its own ideal, has remained no more than a written thing +from then until now. Therein will be found universal suffrage, therein +the yearly Parliament, therein the referendum, therein the elected +Executive--a thing no Parliament would ever give us to-day. The +Constitution was passed but three weeks after the successful +insurrection of Paris. A fortnight later still, on the 10th of July, the +first of the Committees of Public Safety was followed by its successor. + +All this while the Vendeans were advancing. Nantes, indeed, had held out +against the rebels, but as we shall see in a moment, the Republican +troops had not yet made themselves good. The rebellion of Lyons was +fortifying itself, and a week later was to execute the Radical Chalier. +Marseilles was rising. On the 10th of July the Convention summoned to +its bar Westermann, the friend of Danton, who had just suffered defeat +at the hands of the western rebels. + +It is well to note at this point one of those small individual factors +which determine the fate of States. Danton, the master of all that first +movement towards centralisation, the man who had made the 10th of +August, who had negotiated with the Prussians after Valmy, who had +determined upon and formed a central government against the Girondin +anarchy--had broken down. His health was gone. He was a giant in body, +but for the moment he had tired himself out. + +The renewing of his Committee was proposed: he was thrust out from the +new choice. Barere remained to link the old Committee with the new. A +violent sectarian Calvinist pastor, Jeanbon Saint-Andre, among the +bravest and most warped of the Revolutionaries; Couthon, a friend of +Robespierre; Saint-Just, a still more intimate friend (a young, +handsome, enormously courageous and decisive man), entered, with others +to the number of nine, the new Committee. Seventeen days later, on the +27th of July, Robespierre replaced one of the minor members thus chosen. +He had precisely a year to live, and it is the moment for fixing before +the reader's mind the nature of his career. + +Robespierre was at this moment the chief figure in the eyes of the +crowd, and was soon to be the chief revolutionary figure in the eyes of +Europe: that is the first point. The second is of equal importance, and +is far less generally recognised. He was not, and was never destined to +be, the chief force in the revolutionary Government. + +As to the first point, Robespierre had attained this position from the +following combination of circumstances: first, alone of the +revolutionary personalities, he had been continually before the public +eye from the beginning; he had been a member of the first Parliament of +all and had spoken in that Parliament in the first month of its +sessions. Though then obscure in Versailles, he was already well known +in his province and native town of Arras. + +Secondly, this position of his in the public eye was maintained without +a break, and his position and reputation had increased by accumulation +month after month for the whole four years. No one else was left in the +political arena of whom this could be said. All the old reactionaries +had gone, all the moderate men had gone; the figures of 1793 were all +new figures--except Robespierre; and he owed this continued and steady +increase of fame to:-- + +Thirdly, his conspicuous and vivid sincerity. He was more wholly +possessed of the democratic faith of the _Contrat Social_ than any other +man of his time: he had never swerved from an article of it. There is no +better engine for enduring fame than the expression of real convictions. +Moreover-- + +Fourthly, his speeches exactly echoed the opinions of his audience, and +echoed them with a lucidity which his audience could not have commanded. +Whether he possessed true eloquence or no is a matter still debated by +those who are scholars in French letters. But it is certain that he had +in his own time all the effects of a great orator, though his manner was +precise and cold. + +Fifthly, he was possessed of a consistent body of doctrine: that is, he +was not only convinced of the general democratic creed which his +contemporaries held, and he not only held it unswervingly and +uncorruptedly, but he could supplement it with a system of morals and +even something which was the adumbration of religion. + +Sixthly, he had, as such characters always can, but not often do, gather +round themselves, a group of intensely devoted personal admirers and +supporters, chief of whom was the young and splendidly courageous +Saint-Just. + +It was the combination of all these things, I say, which made +Robespierre the chief personality in the public eye when he entered the +Committee of Public Safety on the 27th of July, 1793. + +Now let it be noted that, unlike his follower Saint-Just, and +exceedingly unlike Danton, Robespierre possessed none of those military +qualities without which it is impossible to be responsible for +government over a military nation--especially if that nation be in the +act of war: and such a war! The Committee of Public Safety was the Caesar +of revolutionary France. Robespierre as a member of that Caesar was +hopeless. His popularity was an advantage to his colleagues in the +Committee, but his conception of action upon the frontiers was vague, +personal, and futile. His ambition for leadership, if it existed, was +subordinate to his ambition to be the saviour of his people and of their +democratic experiment, and he had no comprehension of those functions of +leadership by which it can co-ordinate detail and impose a plan of +action. Robespierre, therefore, in every crisis of the last year we are +about to study, yielded to his colleagues, never impressed them and +never led them, and yet (it was the irony of his fate) was imagined by +his fellow countrymen and by the warring Governments of Europe to be the +master of them all. + +The first weeks after his appearance in the Committee of Public Safety +were the critical weeks of the whole revolutionary movement. The +despotic action of Paris (which I have concluded to be secretly +supported by the Committee)[5] had provoked insurrection upon all sides +in the provinces. Normandy had protested, and on the 13th of July a +Norman girl stabbed Marat to death. Lyons, as we have seen, had been +some weeks in revolt; Marseilles had rebelled in the first week of June, +Bordeaux and the whole department of the Gironde had of course risen, +for their men were at stake. Later Toulon, the great naval depot of +France, revolted: a reactionary municipal provincial Government was +formed in that port, the little boy imprisoned in the Temple, heir to +the kingdom, was proclaimed under the title of Louis XVII, and before +the end of August the English and Spanish fleets had been admitted into +the harbour and an excellent foreign garrison was defending the town +against the national Government. + +Meanwhile the Allies upon the Belgian frontier were doing what they +could, taking fortress after fortress, and while Mayence was falling on +the Rhine, Valenciennes and Conde were capitulating on the north-eastern +border, and a portion of the Allied Army was marching to besiege +Dunquerque. The insurrection in Vendee, which had broken out in the +early part of the year, though checked by the resistance of Nantes, was +still successful in the field. + +It was in the month of August that a successful effort was made. Carnot, +who soon proved the military genius of the Revolution, entered the +Committee of Public Safety. On the 23rd of the month a true levy, very +different from the futile and insufficiently applied attempt of the +spring, was forced upon the nation by a vote in Parliament. It was a +levy of men, vehicles, animals and provision, and soon furnished +something not far short of half a million soldiers. With September the +tide turned, the first victory in this crisis of the struggle, +Hoondschoote, relieved Dunquerque in the early days of September. By +mid-October a second and decisive victory, that of Wattignies, relieved +Maubeuge. Lyons had been taken, Normandy was pacified long before; by +the end of the year Toulon was reoccupied, and at the same time the last +cohesive force of the Vendeans destroyed. + +But meanwhile the crisis had had a double effect, moral and material. +The moral effect had been a sort of national madness in which the most +extreme measures were proposed and many of them carried through with +what one may call a creative audacity. The calendar itself was changed, +the week itself abolished, the months re-named and re-adjusted. Such an +act sufficiently symbolises the mental attitude of the Revolutionaries. +They were determined upon a new earth. + +There went with this the last and most violent attack upon what was +believed to be the last remnants of Catholicism in the country, a +hideous persecution of the priesthood, in which an uncounted number of +priests died under the rigours of transportation or of violence. The +reprisals against the rebels varied from severity of the most awful kind +to cruelty that was clearly insane, and of which the worst examples took +place at Arras and at Nantes. + +In all this turmoil the governing centre of the country, the Committee +of Public Safety, not only kept its head but used the enormous forces of +the storm for the purposes of achieving military success, under that +system known as "the Terror," which was for them no more than martial +law, and an engine of their despotic control. Of the two thousand and +more that passed before the revolutionary tribunal and were executed in +Paris, the large majority were those whom the Committee of Public Safety +judged to be obstacles to their military policy; and most were men or +women who had broken some specific part of the martial code which the +Government had laid down. Some were generals who had failed or were +suspected of treason; and some, among the most conspicuous, were +politicians who had attempted to check so absolute a method of +conducting the war. + +Of these the greatest was Danton. Before the end of 1793 he began to +protest against the system of the Terror; he believed, perhaps, that the +country was now safe in the military sense and needed such rigours no +more. But the Committee disagreed, and were evidence available we should +perceive that Carnot in particular determined that such opposition must +cease. Danton and his colleagues--including Desmoulins, the journalist +of the Revolution and the chief publicist who promoted the days of July +1789--were executed in the first week of April 1794. + +Parallel to this action on the part of the Committee was their sudden +attack upon men of the other extreme: the men whose violence, excessive +even for that time, threatened to provoke reaction. Hebert was the chief +of these, the spokesman of the Commune of Paris; and he also perished. + +Meanwhile the Committee had permitted other persecutions and other +deaths, notably that of the Queen. A sane policy would have demanded +that she should be kept a hostage: she was sacrificed to the desire for +vengeance, and her head fell on the same day on which the decisive +battle of Wattignies was won. Later the King's sister, Madame Elisabeth, +was sacrificed to the same passions, and with her must be counted a +certain proportion of the victims whose destruction could be no part of +the Committee's scheme, and proceeded purely from the motives of an +ancient hatred, though in the case of many of these who were of +aristocratic birth or of influence through their wealth, it is not easy +to determine how far the possibility of their intrigue with the +foreigner may not have led them to the scaffold. + +In the last four months of the period we are considering in this book, +through April, that is, after the execution of Danton, through May and +June and almost to the end of July, Robespierre appears with a +particular prominence. Fads or doctrines of his own are admitted upon +the Statute Book of the Revolution, notably his religious dogmas of a +personal God and of the immortality of the soul. Nay, a public solemnity +is arranged in honour of such matters, and he is the high priest +therein. The intensity of the idolatry he received was never greater; +the numbers that shared it were, perhaps, diminishing. It is certain +that he did not appreciate how far the supports of his great popularity +were failing. It is certain that he saw only the increasing enthusiasm +of his immediate followers. The Committee still used him as their +tool--notably for an increase of the Terror in June, but it is possible +that for the first time in all these months he began to attempt some +sort of authority within the Committee: we know, for instance, that he +quarrelled with Carnot, who was easily the strongest man therein. + +In the past they had permitted him to indulge a private policy where it +did not interfere with the general military plan. He was largely +responsible, not through his own judgment but from his desire to voice +opinion, for the trial and execution of the Queen. He had temporised +when Danton was beginning his campaign against the Terror at the end of +1793, and it is an ineffaceable blot upon his memory and his justly +earned reputation for integrity and sincerity, that he first permitted +and then helped towards Danton's execution. We may presume from the few +indications we have that he protested against it in the secret counsels +of the Committee, but he had yielded, and what is more, since Saint-Just +desired to be Danton's accuser he had furnished Saint-Just with notes +against Danton. Though it was the Committee who were morally responsible +for the extreme extension of the Terror which proceeded during those +last few months, Robespierre had the unwisdom to act as their +instrument, to draft their last decrees, and, believing the Terror to be +popular, to support it in public. It was this that ruined him. The +extreme Terrorists, those who were not yet satiated with vengeance, and +who hated and feared a popular idol, determined to overthrow him. + +The mass of those who might be the next victims and who, knowing nothing +of the secret councils of the Committee, imagined Robespierre to be what +he posed as being, the master of the Committee, were eager for his +removal. In his fictitious character as the supposed chief power in the +State, all the growing nausea against the Terror was directed against +his person. + +Coincidently with such forces, the Committee, whom, relying upon his +public position, he had begun to interfere with, and probably to check +in their military action (he certainly had attempted unsuccessfully to +save certain lives against the decision of his colleagues), determined +to be rid of him. The crisis came in the fourth week of July: or as the +revolutionary calendar then went, in the second week of Thermidor. He +was howled down in the Parliament, an active and clever conspiracy had +organised all the latent forces of opposition to him; he still so +trusted in his popularity that the scene bewildered him, and he was +still so beloved and so ardently followed, that when at that same +sitting he was outlawed, his brother sacrificed himself to follow him. +Saint-Just was included in the sentence, and his strict friend Lebas +voluntarily accepted the same doom. + +What followed was at first a confusion of authority; put under arrest, +the governor of the prison to which Robespierre was dispatched refused +to receive him. He and his sympathisers met in the Hotel de Ville after +the fall of darkness, and an attempt was made to provoke an +insurrection. There are many and confused accounts of what immediately +followed at midnight, but two things are certain: the populace refused +to rise for Robespierre, and the Parliament, with the Committee at its +back, organised an armed force which easily had the better of the +incipient rebellion at the Hotel de Ville. It is probable that +Robespierre's signature was needed to the proclamation of insurrection: +it is certain that he did not complete it, and presumable that he would +not act against all his own theories of popular sovereignty and the +general will. As he sat there with the paper before him and his +signature still unfinished, the armed force of the Parliament burst into +the room, a lad of the name of Merda aimed a pistol from the door at +Robespierre, and shot him in the jaw. (The evidence in favour of this +version is conclusive.) Of his companions, some fled and were captured, +some killed themselves, most were arrested. The next day, the 10th +Thermidor, or 28th of July, 1794, at half-past seven in the evening, +Robespierre, with twenty-one others, was guillotined. + +The irony of history would have it that the fall of this man, which was +chiefly due to his interference with the system of the Terror, broke all +the moral force upon which the Terror itself had resided; for men had +imagined that the Terror was his work, and that, he gone, no excuse was +left for it. A reaction began which makes of this date the true term in +that ascending series of revolutionary effort which had by then +discussed every aspect of democracy, succeeded in the military defence +of that experiment, and laid down, though so far in words only, the +basis of the modern State. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[3] The reader should be warned that these numbers are hotly disputed. +The latest authority will allow no more than 4000. After a full +consultation of the evidence I can reduce the garrison to no less than +6000. + +[4] The legend that Danton was connected with the massacres is based on +insufficient historical foundation. There are several second or third +hand stories in support of it, but the chief positive evidence brought +forward in this connection is the stamped paper of the Minister of +Justice which, it has been amply proved by Dr. Robinet, was taken by a +subordinate and without Danton's knowledge or complicity. To the much +stupider story that the Federals of Marseilles took part in the +massacres, the modern student need pay no attention; it has been +destroyed piecemeal and on indefeasible documentary evidence in the +monograph of Pollio and Marcel. + +[5] On p. 403 of my monograph on Danton (Nisbet & Co., 1899) the reader +will find an unpublished report of the Committee of Public Safety, drawn +up immediately before the destruction of the Girondins on the 31st of +May. It forms, in my view, conclusive evidence, read in the light of +their other actions, of the Committee's determination to side with +Paris. + + + + +V + +THE MILITARY ASPECT OF THE REVOLUTION + + +The Revolution would never have achieved its object: on the contrary, it +would have led to no less than a violent reaction against those +principles which were maturing before it broke out, and which it carried +to triumph, had not the armies of revolutionary France proved successful +in the field; but the grasping of this mere historic fact, I mean the +success of the revolutionary armies, is unfortunately no simple matter. + +We all know that as a matter of fact the Revolution was, upon the whole, +successful in imposing its view upon Europe. We all know that from that +success as from a germ has proceeded, and is still proceeding, modern +society. But the nature, the cause and the extent of the military +success which alone made this possible, is widely ignored and still more +widely misunderstood. No other signal military effort which achieved its +object has in history ended in military disaster--yet this was the case +with the revolutionary wars. After twenty years of advance, during which +the ideas of the Revolution were sown throughout Western civilisation, +and had time to take root, the armies of the Revolution stumbled into +the vast trap or blunder of the Russian campaign; this was succeeded by +the decisive defeat of the democratic armies at Leipsic, and the superb +strategy of the campaign of 1814, the brilliant rally of what is called +the Hundred Days, only served to emphasise the completeness of the +apparent failure. For that masterly campaign was followed by Napoleon's +first abdication, that brilliant rally ended in Waterloo and the ruin of +the French army. When we consider the spread of Grecian culture over +the East by the parallel military triumph of Alexander, or the conquest +of Gaul by the Roman armies under Caesar, we are met by political +phenomena and a political success no more striking than the success of +the Revolution. The Revolution did as much by the sword as ever did +Alexander or Caesar, and as surely compelled one of the great +transformations of Europe. But the fact that the great story can be read +to a conclusion of defeat disturbs the mind of the student. + +Again, that element fatal to all accurate study of military history, the +imputation of civilian virtues and motives, enters the mind of the +reader with fatal facility when he studies the revolutionary wars. + +He is tempted to ascribe to the enthusiasm of the troops, nay, to the +political movement itself, a sort of miraculous power. He is apt to use +with regard to the revolutionary victories the word "inevitable," which, +if ever it applies to the reasoned, willing and conscious action of men, +certainly applies least of all to men when they act as soldiers. + +There are three points which we must carefully bear in mind when we +consider the military history of the Revolution. + +First, that it succeeded: the Revolution, regarded as the political +motive of its armies, won. + +Secondly, that it succeeded through those military aptitudes and +conditions which happened to accompany, but by no means necessarily +accompanied, the strong convictions and the civic enthusiasm of the +time. + +Thirdly, that the element of chance, which every wise and prudent +reasoner will very largely admit into all military affairs, worked in +favour of the Revolution in the critical moments of the early wars. + +With these points fixed, and with a readiness to return to them when we +have appreciated the military story, it is well to begin our study by +telling that story briefly, and upon its most general lines. In so +doing, it will be necessary to cover here and there points which have +already been dealt with in this book, but that is inevitable where one +is writing of the military aspect of any movement, for it is impossible +to deal with that aspect save as a living part of the whole: so knit +into national life is the business of war. + + +ONE + +When the Revolution first approached action, the prospect of a war +between France and any other great Power of the time--England, Prussia, +the Empire, or let us say Russia, or even Spain--was such a prospect as +might have been entertained at any time during the past two or three +generations of men. + +For pretty well a hundred years men had been accustomed to the +consideration of dynastic quarrels supported by a certain type of army, +which in a moment I shall describe. + +I have called these quarrels dynastic; that is, they were mainly +quarrels between the ruling houses of Europe: were mainly motived by +the desire of each ruling house to acquire greater territory and +revenue, and were limited by the determination of all the ruling houses +to maintain certain ideas inviolate, as, for instance, the sacredness of +monarchy, the independence of individual States, etc. Though they were +in the main dynastic, yet in proportion as a dynasty might represent a +united nation, they were national also. The English oligarchy was in +this respect peculiar and more national than any European Government of +its time. It is also true to say that the Russian despotism had behind +it, in most of its military adventures and in all its spirit of +expansion, the subconscious agreement of the people. + +Still, however national, the wars of the time preceding the Revolution +moved within a fixed framework of ideas, as it were, which no commander +and no diplomatist dreamed of exceeding. A, the crowned head of a State, +would have some claims against B, the crowned head of another State, +with regard to certain territories. C, the crowned head or Government of +a third State, would remain neutral or ally himself with either of the +two; if he allied himself, then, as a rule, it was with the weaker +against the stronger, in order to guarantee himself against too great an +increase on the part of a rival. Or, again, a rebellion would break out +against the power of A in some part of his dominions; then would B, +somewhat reluctantly (as the almost unlimited right of an existing +executive was still a strong dogma in men's minds), tend to ally +himself with the rebels in order to diminish the power of A. + +Human affairs have always in them very strongly and permanently +inherent, the character of a sport: the interest (at any rate of males) +in the conduct of human life is always largely an interest of seeing +that certain rules are kept, and certain points won, according to those +rules. We must, therefore, beware of ridiculing the warfare of the +century preceding the Revolution under the epithet of "a game." But it +is true of that warfare, and honourably true, that it attempted limited +things in a limited manner; it did not attempt any fundamental change in +society; it was not overtly--since the Thirty Years' War at least--a +struggle of ideas; it was conducted on behalf of known and limited +interests for known and highly limited objects, and the instruments with +which it was conducted were instruments artificial and segregated from +the general life of nations. + +These instruments were what have been called the "professional" armies. +The term is very insufficient, and, in part, misleading. The gentry of +the various Powers, mixed with whom were certain adventurers not always +of gentle blood, were the officers that led these forces; and for the +major part of the gentry in most European countries, the military career +was the chief field of activity. The men whom they led were not a +peasantry nor a working class, still less a civic force in which the +middle class would find itself engaged: they were the poorest and the +least settled, some would have said the dregs of European life. With the +exception here and there of a man--usually a very young man whom the +fabled romance of this hard but glorious trade had attracted--and with +the exception of certain bodies that followed in a mass and by order the +relics of a feudal lordship, the armies of the period immediately +preceding the Revolution were armies of very poor men, who had sold +themselves into a sort of servitude often exciting and even adventurous, +but not, when we examine it minutely, a career that a free man would +choose. The men were caught by economic necessity, by fraud, and in +other ways, and once caught were held. No better proof of this could be +found than the barbarous severity of the punishments attached to +desertion, or to minor forms of indiscipline. So held, they were used +for the purposes of the game, not only in what would make them +serviceable instruments of war, but also in what would make them +pleasing to their masters. Strict alignment, certain frills of parade +and appearance, all that is required in a theatre or in a pretentious +household, appear in the military regulations of the time. + +I must not in all this be supposed to be belittling that great period +between 1660 and 1789, during which the art of war was most thoroughly +thought out, the traditions of most of our great European armies fixed, +and the permanent military qualities which we still inherit developed. +The men so caught as private soldiers could not but enjoy the game when +it was actively played, for men of European stock will always enjoy the +game of war; they took glory in its recital and in its memories; to be a +soldier, even under the servile conditions of the time, was a proper +subject for pride, and it is further to be remarked that the excesses of +cruelty discoverable in the establishment of their discipline were also +accompanied by very high and lasting examples of military virtue. The +behaviour of the English contingents at Fontenoy afford but one of many +examples of what I mean. + +Still, to understand the wars of the Revolution we must clearly +establish the contrast between the so-called professional armies which +preceded that movement and the armies which the Revolution invented, +used, and bequeathed to the modern world. + +So also, to revert to what was said above, we must recall the dynastic +and limited character of the wars in which the eighteenth century had +been engaged; at the outbreak of the Revolution no other wars were +contemplated by men. + +Had you spoken, for instance, at any moment in 1789, to a statesman, +whether of old experience or only introduced to political life by the +new movement, of the position of Great Britain, he would at once have +discussed that position in the terms of Great Britain's recent defeat at +the hands of France in the affair of the American colonies. Had you +discussed with him the position of Prussia he would at once have argued +it in connection with Prussia's secular opposition to Austria and the +Empire. Had you asked him how he considered Spain, he would have spoken +of the situation of Spain as against France in the light of the fact +that Spain was a Bourbon monarchy allied in blood to the French throne. +And so forth. No true statesman imagined at the time, nor, indeed, for +many years, that a war of _ideas_, nor even, strictly speaking, of +_nations_, was possible. Even when such a war was actually in process of +waging, the diplomacy which attempted to establish a peace, the +intrigues whereby alliances were sought, or neutrality negotiated, were +dependent upon the older conception of things; and the historian is +afforded, as he regards this gigantic struggle, the ironic satisfaction +of seeing men fighting upon doctrines the most universal conceivable and +yet perpetually changing their conduct during the struggle according to +conceptions wholly particular, local and ephemeral, and soon to be +entirely swept away by time. + +Napoleon himself must needs marry an Austrian archduchess as part of +this old prejudice, and for years brains as excellent as Danton's or +Talleyrand's conjecture the possibility of treating now England, now +Prussia, as neutral to the vast attempt of the French to destroy +privilege in European society! + +One may say that for two years the connection of the revolutionary +movement with arms had no aspect save that of civil war. True, whenever +a considerable change is in progress in society the possibility of +foreign war in connection with it must always arise. Were some European +State, for instance, to make an experiment in Collectivism to-day, the +chance of foreign intervention would certainly be discussed by the +promoters of that experiment. But no serious danger of an armed struggle +between the French and any of their neighbours in connection with the +political experiment of the Revolution was imagined by the mass of +educated men in France itself nor without the boundaries of France +during those first two years. And, I repeat, the military aspect of +those years was confined to civil tumult. Nevertheless, that aspect is +not to be neglected. The way in which the French organised their civil +war (and there was always something of it present from the summer of +1789 onwards) profoundly affected the foreign war that was to follow: +for in their internal struggles great masses of Frenchmen became +habituated to the physical presence, millions to the discussion, of +arms. + +It is, as we have seen in another part of this book, a repeated and +conspicuous error to imagine that the first revolutionary outbreaks were +not met sufficiently sternly by royal troops. On the contrary, the royal +troops were used to the utmost and were defeated. The populace of the +large towns, and especially of Paris, proved itself capable of military +organisation and of military action. When to this capacity had been +added the institution of the militia called the National Guard, there +were already the makings of a nation wholly military. + +Much in this exceptional and new position must be ascribed to the Gallic +character. It may be said that from the fall of the Roman Empire to the +present day that character has been permanently and of its own volition +steeped in the experience of organised fighting. Civil tumult has been +native to it, the risk of death in defence of political objects has been +equally familiar, and the whole trade of arms, its necessary +organisation, its fatigues and its limiting conditions, have been very +familiar to the population throughout all these centuries. But beyond +this the fact that the Revolution prepared men in the school of civil +tumult was of the first advantage for its later aptitude against foreign +Powers. + +It is always well in history to fix a definite starting-point for any +political development, and the starting-point of the revolutionary wars +may easily be fixed at the moment when Louis, his queen and the royal +children attempted to escape to the frontier and to the Army of the +Centre under the command of Bouille. This happened, as we have seen, in +June 1791. + +Many factors combine to make that date the starting-point. In the first +place, until that moment no actual proof had been apparent in the eyes +of European monarchs of the captivity of their chief exemplar, the king +of France. + +The wild march upon Versailles, in the days of October 1789, had its +parallel in a hundred popular tumults with which Europe was familiar +enough for centuries. But the rapidly succeeding reforms of the year +1790, and even the great religious blunder of 1791, had received the +signature and the public assent of the Crown. The Court, though no +longer at Versailles, was splendid, the power of the King over the +Executive still far greater than that of any other organ in the State, +and indefinitely greater than that of any other individual in the State. +The talk of captivity, of insult and the rest, the outcries of the +emigrants and the perpetual complaint of the French royal family in its +private relations, seemed exaggerated, or at any rate nothing to act +upon, until there came the shock of the King's attempted flight and +recapture. This clinched things; and it clinched them all the more +because more than one Court, and especially that of Austria, believed +for some days that the escape had been successful. + +Again, the flight and its failure put the army into a ridiculous +posture. Action against the Revolution was never likely, so long as the +discipline and steadiness of the French army were believed in abroad. +But the chief command had hopelessly failed upon that occasion, and it +was evident that the French-speaking troops could not easily be trusted +by the Executive Government or by their own commanders. Furthermore, the +failure of the flight leads the Queen, with her vivacity of spirit and +her rapid though ill-formed plans, to turn for the first time to the +idea of military intervention. Her letters suggesting this (in the form +of a threat rather than a war, it is true) do not begin until after her +capture at Varennes. + +Finally, coincident with that disaster was the open mention of a +Republic, the open suggestion that the King should be deposed, and the +first definite and public challenge to the principles of monarchy which +the Revolution had thrown down before Europe. + +We are, therefore, not surprised to find that this origin of the +military movement was followed in two months by the Declaration of +Pillnitz. + +With the political nature of that Declaration one must deal elsewhere. +Its military character must here be observed. + +The Declaration of Pillnitz corresponded as nearly as possible to what +in the present day would be an order preparatory to mobilising a certain +proportion of the reserve. It cannot with justice be called equivalent +to an order _calling out_ all the reserves, still less equivalent to an +order mobilising upon a war footing the forces of a modern nation, for +such an action is tantamount to a declaration of war (as, for instance, +was the action of the English Government before the South African +struggle), and Pillnitz was very far from that. But Pillnitz was +certainly as drastic a military proceeding as would be the public +intimation by a group of Powers that the reserves had been warned in +connection with their quarrel against another Power. It was, for +instance, quite as drastic as the action of Austria against Servia in +1908. And it was intended to be followed by such submission as is +expected to follow upon the threat of superior force. + +Such was the whole burden of Marie Antoinette's letters to her brother +(who had called the meeting at Pillnitz), and such was the sense in +which the politicians of the Revolution understood it. + +All that autumn and winter the matter chiefly watched by foreign +diplomatists and the clearest of French thinkers was the condition of +the French forces and of their command. Narbonne's appointment to the +War Office counted more than any political move, Dumouriez' succession +to him was the event of the time. Plans of campaign were drawn up (and +promptly betrayed by Marie Antoinette to the enemy), manifold occasions +for actual hostilities were discovered, the Revolution challenged the +Emperor in the matter of the Alsatian princes, the Emperor challenged, +through Kaunitz, the Revolution in a letter directly interfering with +the internal affairs of France, and pretending to a right of _ingerence_ +therein; and on the 20th of April, 1792, war was declared against the +Empire. Prussia thereupon informed the French Government that she made +common cause with the Emperor, and the revolutionary struggle had begun. + +The war discovered no serious features during its first four months: so +slow was the gathering and march of the Allies; but the panics into +which the revolutionary troops fell in the first skirmishes, their lack +of discipline, and the apparent breakdown of the French military power, +made the success of the Invasion in Force, when it should come, seem +certain. The invading army did not cross the frontier until more than a +week after the fall of the palace. Longwy capitulated at once; a week +later, in the last days of August, the great frontier fortress of Verdun +was summoned. It capitulated almost immediately. + + +TWO + +On the 2nd of September Verdun was entered by the Prussians, and a +little outside the gates of the town, near a village bearing the name of +Regret, the allied camp was fixed. Rather more than a week later, on the +11th, the Allies marched against the line of the Argonne. + +The reader will remember that this moment, with the loss of the frontier +fortresses Longwy and Verdun, and the evidence of demoralisation which +that afforded, was also the moment of the September massacres and of the +horrors in Paris. Dumouriez and the mixed French force which he +commanded had been ordered by the Ministers of War to hold the line of +the Argonne against which the Allies were marching. And here it is well +to explain what was meant in a military sense by this word "line." + +The Argonne is a long, nearly straight range of hills running from the +south northward, a good deal to the west of north. + +Their soil is clay, and though the height of the hills is only three +hundred feet above the plain, their escarpment or steep side is towards +the east, whence an invasion may be expected. They are densely wooded, +from five to eight miles broad, the supply of water in them is bad, in +many parts undrinkable; habitation with its provision for armies and +roads extremely rare. It is necessary to insist upon all these details +because the greater part of civilian readers find it difficult to +understand how formidable an obstacle so comparatively unimportant a +feature in the landscape may be to an army upon the march. It was quite +impossible for the guns, the wagons, and therefore the food and the +ammunition of the invading army, to pass through the forest over the +drenched clay land of that wet autumn save where proper roads existed. +These were only to be found wherever a sort of natural pass negotiated +the range. + +Three of these passes alone existed, and to this day there is very +little choice in the crossing of these hills. The accompanying sketch +will explain their disposition. Through the southernmost went the great +high road from the frontier and Verdun to Paris. At the middle one +(which is called the Gap of Grandpre) Dumouriez was waiting with his +incongruous army. The third and northern one was also held, but less +strongly. The obvious march for an unimpeded invader would have been +from Verdun along the high road, through the southern pass at "Les +Islettes," and so to Chalons and on to Paris. But Dumouriez, marching +down rapidly from the north, had set an advanced guard to hold that pass +and was lying himself with the mass of the army on the pass to the north +of it at Grandpre. Against Grandpre the Prussians marched, and meanwhile +the Austrians were attacking the further pass to the north. Both were +forced. Dumouriez fell back southward to St. Menehould. Meanwhile +Kellermann was coming up from Metz to join him, and all the while the +main pass at "Les Islettes," through which the great road to Paris went, +continued to be held by the French. + +[Illustration: Sketch Map, showing the turning of the positions on the +Argonne and the Cannonade at Valmy, September 1792.] + +The Prussians and the Austrians joined forces in the plain known as the +Champagne Pouilleuse, which lies westward of Argonne. It will be seen +that as they marched south along this plain to meet Dumouriez and to +defeat him, their position was a peculiar one: they were nearer the +enemy's capital than the enemy's army was, and yet they had to fight +with their backs to that capital, and their enemy the French had to +fight with their faces towards it. Moreover, it must be remarked that +the communications of the Allied Army were now of a twisted, roundabout +sort, which made the conveyance of provisions and ammunition slow and +difficult--but they counted upon an immediate destruction of Dumouriez' +force and after that a rapid march on the capital. + +On September 19 Kellermann came up from the south and joined hands with +Dumouriez near St. Menehould, and on the morning of the 20th his force +occupied a roll of land on which there was a windmill and immediately +behind which was the village of Valmy; from this village the ensuing +action was to take its name. It must here be insisted upon that both +armies had been subjected to the very worst weather for more than a +fortnight, but of the two the Prussian force had suffered from this +accident much more severely than the French. Dysentery had already +broken out, and the length and tortuousness of their communications were +greatly emphasised by the condition of the roads. + +On the morning of that day, the 20th of September, a mist impeded all +decisive movements. There was an encounter, half accidental, between an +advanced French battery and the enemy's guns, but it was not until +mid-morning that the weather lifted enough to show each force its +opponent. Then there took place an action, or rather a cannonade, the +result of which is more difficult to explain, perhaps, than any other +considerable action of the revolutionary wars. For some hours the +Prussian artillery, later reinforced by the Austrian, cannonaded the +French position, having for its central mark the windmill of Valmy, +round which the French forces were grouped. At one moment this cannonade +took effect upon the limbers and ammunition wagons of the French; there +was an explosion which all eye-witnesses have remembered as the chief +feature of the firing, and which certainly threw into confusion for some +moments the ill-assorted troops under Kellermann's command. At what hour +this took place the witnesses who have left us accounts differ to an +extraordinary extent. Some will have it at noon, others towards the +middle of the afternoon--so difficult is it to have any accurate account +of what happens in the heat of an action. At any rate, if not +coincidently with this success, at some moment not far removed from it, +the Prussian charge was ordered, and it is here that the difficulties of +the historian chiefly appear. That charge was never carried home; +whether, as some believe, because it was discovered, after it was +ordered, to be impossible in the face of the accuracy and intensity of +the French fire, or whether, as is more probably the case, because the +drenched soil compelled the commanders to abandon the movement after it +had begun--whatever the cause may have been, the Prussian force, though +admirably disciplined and led, and though advancing in the most exact +order, failed to carry out its original purpose. It halted halfway up +the slope, and the action remained a mere cannonade without immediate +result apparent upon either side. + +Nevertheless that result ultimately turned out to be very great, and if +we consider its place in history, quite as important as might have been +the result of a decisive action. In the first place, the one day's delay +which it involved was just more than the calculations of the Allies, +with their long impeded line of communications, had allowed for. In the +next place, a singular increase in determination and moral force was +infused into the disheartened and ill-matched troops of the French +commanders by this piece of resistance. + +We must remember that the French force upon the whole expected and +discounted a defeat, the private soldier especially had no confidence in +the result; and to find that at the first action which had been so long +threatened and had now at last come, he could stand up to the enemy, +produced upon him an exaggerated effect which it would never have had +under other circumstances. + +Finally, we must recollect that whatever causes had forbidden the +Prussian charge forbade on the next day a general advance against the +French position. And all the time the sickness in the Prussian camp was +rapidly increasing. Even that short check of twenty-four hours made a +considerable difference. A further delay of but yet another day, during +which the Allied Army could not decide whether to attack at once or to +stand as they were, very greatly increased the list of inefficients from +illness. + +For a whole week of increasing anxiety and increasing inefficiency the +Allied Army hung thus, impotent, though they were between the French +forces and the capital. Dumouriez ably entertained this hesitation, with +all its accumulating dangers for the enemy, by prolonged negotiations, +until upon the 30th of September the Prussian and Austrian organisation +could stand the strain no longer, and its commanders determined upon +retreat. It was the genius of Danton, as we now know, that chiefly +organised the withdrawal of what might still have been a dangerous +invading force. It is principally due to him that no unwise Jingoism was +permitted to claim a trial of strength with the invader, that he was +allowed to retire with all his guns, his colours and his train. The +retreat was lengthy and unmolested, though watched by the French forces +that discreetly shepherded it but were kept tightly in hand from Paris. +It was more than three weeks later when the Allied Army, upon which +Europe and the French monarchy had counted for an immediate settlement +of the Revolution, re-crossed the frontier, and in this doubtful and +perhaps inexplicable fashion the first campaign of the European Powers +against the Revolution utterly failed. + + +THREE + +Following upon this success, Dumouriez pressed on to what had been, from +the first moment of his power at the head of the army, his personal +plan--to wit, the invasion of the Low Countries. + +To understand why this invasion failed and why Dumouriez thought it +might succeed, we must appreciate the military and political situation +of the Low Countries at the time. They then formed a very wealthy and +cherished portion of the Austrian dominions; they had latterly suffered +from deep disaffection culminating in an open revolution, which was due +to the Emperor of Austria's narrow and intolerant contempt of religion. +From his first foolish policy of persecution and confiscation he had +indeed retreated, but the feeling of the people was still strongly +opposed to the Government at Vienna. It is remarkable, indeed, and in +part due to the pressure of a strongly Protestant and aristocratic +state, Holland, to the north of them, that the people of the Austrian +Netherlands retained at that time a peculiar attachment to the Catholic +religion. The Revolution was quite as anti-Catholic as the Austrian +Emperor, but of the persecution of the latter the Belgians (as we now +call them) knew something; that of the former they had not yet learnt to +dread. It was, therefore, Dumouriez' calculation that, in invading this +province of the Austrian power, he would be fighting in friendly +territory. Again, it was separated from the political centre of the +empire; it was, therefore, more or less isolated politically, and even +for military purposes communication with it was not so easy, unless, +indeed, Austria could count on a complete co-operation with Prussia, +which Power had been for now so long her ruthless and persistent rival. + +[Illustration: Sketch Map of towns occupied by French in 1792 and +evacuated in March 1793, with sites of battles of Jemappes and of +Neerwinden, and of Dumouriez' treason.] + +Favourable, however, as the circumstances appeared for an invasion, two +factors telling heavily against the French had to be counted: the first +was the formation of their army, the second the spirit of rebellion +against any anti-Catholic Government which had given such trouble to +Joseph II. + +Of these two factors by far the most important was, of course, the +first. If the French forces had been homogeneous, in good spirit, and +well trained, they might have held what they won; as a fact, they were +most unhomogeneous, great portions of them were ill trained, and, worst +of all, there was no consistent theory of subordinate command. Men who +imagined that subordinate, that is, regimental, command in an army +could be erected from below, and that a fighting force could resemble a +somewhat lax and turbulent democracy, marched alongside of and were +actually incorporated with old soldiers who had spent their whole +careers under an unquestioned discipline, and under a subordinate +command which came to them they knew not whence, and as it were by fate. +The mere mixture of two such different classes of men in one force would +have been bad enough to deal with, but what was worse, the political +theories of the day fostered the military error of the new battalions +though the politicians dared not interfere with the valuable +organisation of the old. + +The invasion of the Low Countries began with a great, though somewhat +informal and unfruitful success, in the victory of Jemappes. It was the +first striking and dramatic decisive action which the French, always of +an eager appetite for such news, had been given since between forty and +fifty years. The success in America against the English, though +brilliantly won and solidly founded, had not presented occasions of this +character, and Fontenoy was the last national victory which Paris could +remember. Men elderly or old in this autumn of 1792 would have been boys +or very young men when Fontenoy was fought. The eager generation of the +Revolution, with its military appetites and aptitudes, as yet had hardly +expected victory, though victory was ardently desired by them and +peculiarly suitable to their temper. + +It may be imagined, therefore, what an effect the news of Jemappes had +upon the political world in Paris. The action was fought just below the +town of Mons, a few miles over the frontier, and consisted in a somewhat +ill-ordered but successful advance across the River Haine. Whether +because the Austrians, with an inferior force, attempted to hold too +long a line, or because the infantry and even the new French volunteer +battalions, as yet untried by fatigue, proved irresistible in the centre +of the movement, Jemappes was a victory so complete that the attempts of +apologists to belittle it only serve to enhance its character. + +Like many another great and apparently decisive action, however, it bore +no lasting fruit. Both the factors of which I have spoken above appeared +immediately after this success. Belgium was, indeed, over-run by the +French, but in their over-running of it with something like eighty +thousand men, they made no attempt to spare the traditions or to +conciliate the sympathies of the inhabitants. Hardly was Jemappes won +when Mons, the neighbouring fortified frontier town, was at once endowed +with the whole machinery of revolutionary government. Church property +was invaded and occasionally rifled, and the French paper money, the +assignats of which we have heard, poured in to disturb and in places to +ruin the excellent commercial system upon which Belgium then as now +reposed. + +Jemappes was fought upon the 6th of November, 1702. Brussels was entered +upon the 14th, and throughout that winter the Low Countries lay +entirely in the hands of the French. The Commissioners from the +Convention, though endowing Belgium with republican institutions, +treated it as a conquered country, and before the breaking of spring, +the French Parliament voted its annexation to France. This annexation, +the determination of the politicians in Paris that the new Belgian +Government should be republican and anti-Catholic, the maltreatment of +the Church in the occupied country and the increasing ill discipline and +lack of cohesion in his army, left Dumouriez in a position which grew +more and more difficult as the new year, 1793, advanced. It must be +remembered that this moment exactly corresponded with the execution of +the King and the consequent declaration of war by or against France in +the case of one Power after another throughout Europe. Meanwhile, it was +decided, foolishly enough, to proceed from the difficult occupation of +Belgium to the still more difficult occupation of Holland, and the siege +of Maestricht was planned. + +The moment was utterly ill-suited for such a plan. Every Executive in +the civilised world was coalescing openly or secretly, directly or +indirectly, against the revolutionary Government. The first order to +retreat came upon the 8th of March, when the siege of Maestricht was +seen to be impossible, and when the great forces of the Allies were +gathered again to attempt what was to be the really serious attack upon +the Revolution: something far more dangerous, something which much more +nearly achieved success, than the march of the comparatively small force +which had been checked at Valmy. + +For ten days the French retreat continued, when, upon the 18th of March, +Dumouriez risked battle at Neerwinden. His army was defeated. + +The defeat was not disastrous, the retreat was continued in fairly good +order, but a civilian population understands nothing besides the words +defeat and victory; it can appreciate a battle, not a campaign. The news +of the defeat, coming at a moment of crisis in the politics of Paris, +was decisive; it led to grave doubts of Dumouriez' loyalty to the +revolutionary Government, it shattered his popularity with those who had +continued to believe in him, while the general himself could not but +believe that the material under his command was rapidly deteriorating. +Before the end of the month the army had abandoned all its conquests, +and Valenciennes, in French territory, was reached upon the 27th. The +dash upon Belgium had wholly failed. + +At this moment came one of those political acts which so considerably +disturb any purely military conspectus of the revolutionary wars. +Dumouriez, at the head of his army, which, though in retreat and +defeated, was still intact, determined upon what posterity has justly +called treason, but what to his own mind must have seemed no more than +statesmanship. He proposed an understanding with the enemy and a +combined march upon Paris to restore the monarchical government, and +put an end to what seemed to him, as a soldier, a perfectly hopeless +situation. He certainly believed it impossible for the French army, in +the welter of 1793, to defeat the invader. He saw his own life in peril +merely because he was defeated. He had no toleration for the rising +enthusiasm or delirium of the political theory which had sent him out, +and, even before he had reached French territory, his negotiations with +Coburg, the Austrian commander, had begun. They lasted long. Dumouriez +agreed to put the frontier fortresses of the French into the hands of +the enemy as a guarantee and a pledge; and on the 5th of April all was +ready for the alliance of the two armed forces. + +But just as the treason of Dumouriez is, in the military sense, abnormal +and disturbing to any general conspectus of the campaign, so was the +action of his army. + +The doubtful point of a general command which is political in nature, +and may be unpopular with the rank and file, lies, of course, in the +attitude of the commanders of units, and these unanimously refused to +obey the orders of their chief. It was known that Dumouriez had been +summoned to the bar of the Convention, which body had sent commissioners +to apprehend him. He had arrested the commissioners, and had handed them +over as hostages and prisoners to Coburg. So far from Dumouriez upon the +critical day handing over his force to the enemy, or constituting it a +part of an allied army to march upon the capital, he was compelled to +fly upon the 8th of April; all that disappeared with him, counting many +who later deserted back again to the French colours, was less than a +thousand men--and these foreign mercenaries. + +The consequence of this strange passage upon the political history of +the time we have already seen. Its consequence upon the military history +of it was indirect but profound. The French forces, such as they were, +were still intact, but no general officer could in future be trusted by +Paris, and the stimulus which nations in the critical moments of +invasion and of danger during foreign war seek in patriotism, in the +offering of a high wage to the men and of honours and fortunes to their +commanders, was now sought by the French in the singular, novel and +abnormal experiment of the Terror. Command upon the frontier throughout +1793 and the first part of 1794, during the critical fourteen months, +that is, which decided the fate of the Revolution, and which turned the +tide of arms in favour of the French, was a task accomplished under the +motive power of capital punishment. A blunder was taken as a proof of +treason, and there lay over the ordering of every general movement the +threat of the guillotine. + +What we have now to follow is somewhat over a year of a struggle thus +abnormally organised upon the French side, and finally successful +through the genius of a great organiser, once a soldier, now a +politician, Carnot. The French succeeded by the unshakable conviction +which permitted the political leaders to proceed to all extremity in +their determination to save the Revolution; by the peculiar physical +powers of endurance which their army displayed, and finally, of course, +by certain accidents--for accident will always be a determining factor +in war. + +The spring of 1793, the months of April and May, form the first crisis +of the revolutionary war. The attack about to be delivered is universal, +and seems absolutely certain to succeed. With the exception of the rush +at Jemappes, where less than thirty thousand Austrians were broken +through by a torrent superior in numbers (though even there obviously +ill-organised), no success had attended the revolutionary armies. Their +condition was, even to the eye of the layman, bad, and to the eye of the +expert hopeless. There was no unity apparent in direction, there were +vast lesions in the discipline of the ranks like great holes torn in +some rotten fabric. Even against the forces already mobilised against +it, it had proved powerless, and it might be taken for granted that by +an act more nearly resembling police work than a true campaign, the +Allies would reach Paris and something resembling the old order be soon +restored. What remains is to follow the process by which this +expectation was disappointed. + +The situation at this moment can best be understood by a glance at the +sketch map on p. 178. Two great French advances had been made in the +winter of 1792-93; the one a northern advance, which we have just +detailed, the over-running of Belgium; the other an eastern advance +right up to the Rhine and to the town of Mayence. Both had failed. The +failure in Belgium, culminating in the treason of Dumouriez, has been +read. On the Rhine (where Mayence had been annexed by the French +Parliament just as Belgium had been) the active hostility of the +population and the gathering of the organised forces of the Allies had +the same effect as had been produced in the Low Countries. + +It was on March 21, 1793, that the Prussians crossed the Rhine at +Bacharach, and within that week the French commander, Custine, began to +fall back. On the first of April he was back again in French territory, +leaving the garrison of Mayence, somewhat over twenty thousand men, to +hold out as best it could; a fortnight later the Prussians had +surrounded the town and the siege had begun. + +On the north-eastern front, stretching from the Ardennes to the sea, a +similar state of things was developing. There, a barrier of fortresses +stood between the Allies and Paris, and a series of sieges corresponding +to the siege of Mayence in the east had to be undertaken. At much the +same time as the investment of Mayence, on April 9, the first step in +this military task was taken by the Allies moving in between the +fortress of Conde and the fortress of Valenciennes. Thenceforward it was +the business of the Austrians under Coburg, with the Allies that were to +reach him, to reduce the frontier fortresses one by one, and when his +communications were thus secure, to march upon Paris. + +It is here necessary for the reader unacquainted with military history +to appreciate two points upon which not a little of contemporary +historical writing may mislead him. The first is that both in the Rhine +valley and on the Belgian frontier the forces of the Allies in their +numbers and their organisation were conceived to be overwhelming. The +second is that no competent commander on the spot would have thought of +leaving behind him the garrison of even one untaken fortress. It is +important to insist upon these points, because the political passions +roused by the Revolution are still so strong that men can hardly write +of it without prejudice and bias, and two errors continually present in +these descriptions of the military situation in the spring of 1793, are, +first, that the Allies were weakened by the Polish question, which was +then active, and secondly, that the delay of their commanders before the +French fortresses was unnecessary. + +Both these propositions are put forward with the object of explaining +the ultimate defeat of the enemies of the Revolution: both, however +great the authority behind them, are unhistorical and worthless. The +French success was a military success due to certain military factors +both of design and accident, which will appear in what follows. The +Allies played their part as all the art of war demanded it to be played; +they were ultimately defeated, not from the commission of any such +gross and obvious error in policy or strategy as historians with too +little comprehension of military affairs sometimes pretend, but from the +military superiority of their opponents. + +It is true that the Polish question (that is the necessity the Austrian +and Prussian Governments were each under of watching that the other was +not lessened in importance by the approaching annexations of further +Polish territory with the consequent jealousy and mistrust that arose +from this between Austria and Prussia) was a very important feature of +the moment. But it is bad military history to pretend that this affected +the military situation on the Rhine or in the Netherlands. + +Every campaign is conditioned by its political object. The political +object in this case was to march upon and to occupy Paris. The political +object of a campaign once determined, the size and the organisation of +the enemy are calculated and a certain force is brought against it. No +much larger force is brought than is necessary: to act in such a fashion +would be in military art what paying two or three times the price of an +article would be in commerce. The forces of the Allies upon the Rhine +and in the Netherlands were, in the opinion of every authority of the +time, amply sufficient for their purpose; and more than sufficient: so +much more than sufficient that the attitude of that military opinion +which had to meet the attack--to wit, the professional military opinion +of the French republican soldiers, was that the situation was +desperate, nor indeed was it attempted to be met save by a violent and, +as it were, irrational enthusiasm. + +The second point, the so-called "delay" involved in the sieges +undertaken by the Allies, proves, when it is put forward, an +insufficient acquaintance with contemporary conditions. Any fortress +with a considerable garrison left behind untaken would have meant the +destruction of the Austrian or Prussian communications, and their +destruction at a moment when the Austrian and Prussian forces were +actually advancing over a desperately hostile country. Moreover, when +acting against forces wholly inferior in discipline and organisation, an +untaken fortress is a refuge which one must take peculiar pains to +destroy. To throw himself into such a refuge will always stand before +the commander of those inferior forces as a last resource. It is a +refuge which he will certainly avail himself of ultimately, if it is +permitted to him. And when he has so availed himself of it, it means the +indefinite survival of an armed organisation in the rear of the +advancing invaders. We must conclude, if we are to understand this +critical campaign which changed the history of the world, that Coburg +did perfectly right in laying siege to one fortress after another before +he began what every one expected to be the necessarily successful +advance on Paris. The French despair, as one town after another +surrendered, is an amply sufficient proof of the excellence of his +judgment. + +We approach the military problem of 1793, therefore, with the following +two fields clear before us:-- + +1. In the north-east an advance on Paris, the way to which is blocked by +a quadrilateral of fortresses: Mons, Maubeuge, Conde, and Valenciennes, +with the subsidiary stronghold of Lequesnoy in the neighbourhood of the +last. Mons has been in Austrian hands since Dumouriez' retreat; Conde is +just cut off from Valenciennes by Coburg's advance, but has not fallen; +Valenciennes and the neighbouring Lequesnoy are still intact, and so is +Maubeuge. All must be reduced before the advance on Paris can begin. +Behind these fortresses is a French army incapable as yet of attacking +Coburg's command with any hope of success. Such is the position in the +last fortnight of April. + +2. Meanwhile, on the Rhine the French garrison in Mayence is besieged; +Custine, the French commander in that quarter, has fallen back on the +French town of Landau, and is drawing up what are known in history as +the Lines of Weissembourg. The accompanying sketch map explains their +importance. Reposing upon the two obstacles of the river on the right +and the mountains on the left, they fulfilled precisely the same +functions as a fortress; and those functions we have just described. +Until these lines were carried, the whole of Alsace may be regarded as a +fortress defended by the mountains and the river on two sides, and by +the Lines of Weissembourg on the third. + +A reader unacquainted with military history may ask why the obstruction +was not drawn upon the line of the Prussian advance on Paris. The answer +is that the presence of a force behind fortifications anywhere in the +neighbourhood of a line of communication is precisely equivalent to an +obstacle lying right upon those lines. For no commander can go forward +along the line of his advance and leave a large undestroyed force close +to one side of that line, and so situated that it can come out when he +has passed and cut off his communications; for it is by communications +that an army lives, especially when it is marching in hostile country. + +[Illustration: Strategic situation in early summer of 1793. Mayence +besieged, Conde and Valenciennes about to be besieged. Conditions of the +double advance on Paris.] + +Custine, therefore, behind his Lines of Weissembourg, and the besieged +garrison in Mayence, correspond to the barrier of fortresses on the +north-east and delayed the advance of the Prussians under Wurmser and +Brunswick from the Rhine, just as Conde, Valenciennes, and Maubeuge +prevented the advance of Coburg on the north-east. Such in general was +the situation upon the eastern frontier at the end of that month of +April, 1793. + + +FOUR + +Let us first follow the development of the northern position. It will be +remembered that all Europe was at war against the French. The Austrians +had for allies Dutch troops which joined them at this moment, and +certain English and Hanoverian troops under the Duke of York who also +joined them. + +At this moment, when Coburg found himself in increasing strength, a +tentative French attack upon him was delivered and failed. Dampierre, +who was in command of all this French "Army of the North," was killed, +and Custine was sent to replace him. The Army of the North did not, as +perhaps it should have done, concentrate into one body to meet Coburg's +threatened advance; it was perpetually attempting diversions which were +useless because its strength was insufficient. Now it feinted upon the +right towards Namur, now along the sea coast on the left; and these +diversions failed in their object. Before the end of the month, Coburg, +to give himself elbow room, as it were, for the sieges which he was +preparing, compelled the main French force to retreat to a position well +behind Valenciennes. It was immediately after this success of Coburg's +that Custine arrived to take command on the Belgian frontier, his place +on the Rhine being taken by Houchard. + +Custine was a very able commander, but a most unlucky one. His plan was +the right one: to concentrate all the French forces (abandoning the +Rhine) and so form an army sufficient to cope with Coburg's. The +Government would not meet him in this, and he devoted himself +immediately to the reorganisation of the Army of the North alone. The +month of June and half of July was taken up in that task. + +Meanwhile, the Austrian siege work had begun, and Conde was the first +object of its attention. Upon July 10 Conde fell. Meanwhile Custine had +been recalled to Paris, and Valenciennes was invested. Custine was +succeeded by Kilmaine, a general of Irish extraction, who maintained his +position for but a short time, and was unable while he maintained it to +do anything. The forces of the Allies continually increased. The number +at Coburg's disposal free from the business of besieging Valenciennes +was already larger than the force required for that purpose. And yet +another fifteen thousand Hessian troops marched in while the issue of +that siege was in doubt. This great advantage in numbers permitted him +to get rid of the main French force that was still present in front of +him, though not seriously annoying him. + +This force lay due south-west of Valenciennes, and about a day's march +distant. He depended for the capture of it upon his English and +Hanoverian Allies under the Duke of York, but that general's march +failed. The distance was too much for his troops in the hot summer +weather, and the French were able to retreat behind the line of the +Scarpe and save their army intact. + +The Duke of York's talents have been patriotically exaggerated in many a +treatise. He always failed: and this was among the most signal of his +failures. + +Kilmaine had hardly escaped from York, drawn up his army behind the +Scarpe and put it into a position of safety when he in his turn was +deprived of the command, and Houchard was taken from the Rhine just as +Custine had been, and put at the head of the Army of the North. Before +the main French army had taken up this position of safety, Valenciennes +had fallen. It fell on the 28th of July, and its fall, inevitable though +it was and, as one may say, taken for granted by military opinion, was +much the heaviest blow yet delivered. Nothing of importance remained to +block the march of the Armies of the Allies, save Maubeuge. + +At about the same moment occurred three very important changes in the +general military situation, which the reader must note if he is to +understand what follows. + +The first was the sudden serious internal menace opposed to the +Republican Government; the second was the advent of Carnot to power; the +third was the English diversion upon Dunquerque. + +The serious internal menace which the Government of the Republic had to +face was the widespread rebellion which has been dealt with in the +earlier part of this book. The action of the Paris Radicals against the +Girondins had raised whole districts in the provinces. Marseilles, which +had shown signs of disaffection since April, and had begun to raise a +local reactionary force, revolted. So did Bordeaux, Nimes, and other +great southern towns. Lyons had risen at the end of May and had killed +the Jacobin mayor of the town in the period between the fall of Conde +and that of Valenciennes. The troop which Marseilles had raised against +the Republic was defeated in the field only the day before Valenciennes +fell, but the great seaport was still unoccupied by the forces of the +Government. The Norman march upon Paris had also failed between those +two dates, the fall of Conde and the fall of Valenciennes. The Norman +bark had proved worse than the Norman bite; but the force was so +neighbouring to the capital that it took a very large place in the +preoccupations of the time. The Vendean revolt, though its triumphant +advance was checked before Nantes a fortnight before the fall of Conde, +was still vigorous, and the terrible reprisals against it were hardly +begun. Worst of all, or at least, worst perhaps, after the revolt of +Lyons, was the defection of Toulon. Toulon rose two days before the fall +of Valenciennes, and was prepared to hand itself over (as at last it did +hand itself over) to occupation by the English fleet. + +The dates thus set in their order may somewhat confuse the reader, and I +will therefore summarise the general position of the internal danger +thus: A man in the French camp on the Scheldt, listening to the guns +before Valenciennes fifteen miles away, and hourly expecting their +silence as a signal that the city had surrendered, would have heard by +one post after another how Marseilles still held out against the +Government; how the counter-attack against the successful Vendeans had +but doubtfully begun (all July was full of disasters in that quarter); +how Lyons was furiously successful in her rebellion and had dared to put +to death the Republican mayor of the town; and that the great arsenal +and port at Toulon, the Portsmouth of France upon the Mediterranean, had +sickened of the Government and was about to admit the English fleet. His +only comfort would have been to hear that the Norman march on Paris had +failed--but he would still be under the impression of it and of the +murder of Marat by a Norman woman. + +There is the picture of that sudden internal struggle which coincides +with this moment of the revolutionary war, the moment of the fall of +Conde and of Valenciennes, and the exposure of the frontier. + +The second point, the advent of Carnot into the Committee of Public +Safety, which has already been touched upon in the political part of +this work, has so preponderating a military significance that we must +consider it here also. + +The old Committee of Public Safety, it will be remembered, reached the +end of its legal term on July 10. It was the Committee which the wisdom +of Danton had controlled. The members elected to the new Committee did +not include Carnot, but the military genius of this man was already +public. He came of that strong middle class which is the pivot upon +which the history of modern Europe turns; a Burgundian with lineage, +intensely republican, he had been returned to the Convention and had +voted for the death of the King; a sapper before the Revolution, and one +thoroughly well grounded in his arm and in general reading of military +things, he had been sent by the Convention to the Army of the North on +commission, he had seen its weakness and had watched its experiments. +Upon his return he was not immediately selected for the post in which he +was to transform the revolutionary war. It was not until the 14th of +August that he was given a temporary place upon the Committee which his +talents very soon made permanent. He was given the place merely as a +stopgap to the odious and incompetent fanatic, Saint-Andre, who was for +the moment away on mission. But from the day of his admission his +superiority in military affairs was so incontestable that he was +virtually a dictator therein, and his first action after the general +lines of organisation had been laid down by him was to impose upon the +frontier armies the necessity of concentration. He introduced what +afterwards Napoleon inherited from him, the tactical venture of "all +upon one throw." + +It must be remembered that Carnot's success did not lie in any +revolutionary discovery in connection with the art of war, but rather in +that vast capacity for varied detail which marks the organiser, and in +an intimate sympathy with the national character. He understood the +contempt for parade, the severity or brutality of discipline, the +consciousness of immense powers of endurance which are in the Frenchman +when he becomes a soldier;--and he made use of this understanding of +his. + +It must be further remembered that this powerful genius had behind him +in these first days of his activity the equally powerful genius of +Danton; for it was Danton and he who gave practical shape to that law of +conscription by which the French Revolution suddenly increased its armed +forces by nearly half a million of men, restored the Roman tradition, +and laid the foundation of the armed system on which Europe to-day +depends. With Carnot virtually commander-in-chief of all the armies, and +enabled to impose his decisions in particular upon that Army of the +North which he had studied so recently as a commissioner, the second +factor of the situation I am describing is comprehended. + +The third, as I have said, was the English diversion upon Dunquerque. + +The subsequent failure of the Allies has led to bitter criticism of this +movement. Had the Allies not failed, history would have treated it as +its contemporaries treated it. The forces of the Allies on the +north-eastern frontier were so great and their confidence so +secure--especially after the fall of Valenciennes--that the English +proposal to withdraw their forces for the moment from Coburg's and to +secure Dunquerque, was not received with any destructive criticism. +Eighteen battalions and fourteen squadrons of the Imperial forces were +actually lent to the Duke of York for this expedition. What is more, +even after that diversion failed, the plan was fixed to begin again when +the last of the other fortresses should have fallen: so little was the +English plan for the capture of the seaport disfavoured by the +commander-in-chief of the Allies. + +That diversion on Dunquerque turned out, however, to be an error of +capital importance. The attempt to capture the city utterly failed, and +the victory which accompanied its repulsion had upon the French that +indefinable but powerful moral effect which largely contributed to their +future successes. + +The accompanying sketch map will explain the position. Valenciennes and +Conde have fallen; Lequesnoy, the small fortress subsidiary to +Valenciennes, has not yet been attacked but comes next in the series, +when the moment was judged propitious for the detachment of the +Anglo-Hanoverian force with a certain number of Imperial Allies to march +to the sea. + +It must always be remembered by the reader of history that military +situations, like the situations upon a chess board, rather happen than +are designed; and the situation which developed at the end of September +upon the extreme north and west of the line which the French were +attempting to hold against the Allies was strategically of this nature. +When the Duke of York insisted upon a division of the forces of the +Allies and an attack upon Dunquerque, no living contemporary foresaw +disaster. + +[Illustration: Showing condition of the frontier fortresses blocking the +road to Paris when the expedition to Dunquerque was decided upon. August +1793.] + +Coburg, indeed, would have preferred the English to remain with him, and +asked them to do so, but he felt in no sort of danger through their +temporary absence, nor, as a matter of fact, was he in any danger +through it. + +Again, though the positions which the Duke of York took up when he +arrived in front of Dunquerque were bad, neither his critics at home, +nor any of his own subordinates, nor any of the enemy, perceived fully +how bad they were. It was, as will presently be seen, a sort of drift, +bad luck combined with bad management, which led to this British +disaster, and (what was all-important for the conduct of the war) to the +first success in a general action which the French had to flatter and +encourage themselves with during all that fatal summer. + +The Duke of York separated his force from that of Coburg just before the +middle of August; besides the British, who were not quite 7,000 strong, +11,000 Austrians, over 10,000 Hanoverians and 7,000 Hessians were under +his command. The total force, therefore, was nearly 37,000 strong. No +one could imagine that, opposed by such troops as the French were able +to put into line, and marching against such wretched defences as those +of Dunquerque then were, the Duke's army had not a perfectly easy task +before it; and the plan, which was to take Dunquerque and upon the +return to join the Austrian march on Paris, was reasonable and feasible. + +It is important that the reader should firmly seize this and not read +history backward from future events. + +Certain faults are to be observed in the first conduct of the march. It +began on the 15th of August, proceeding from Marchiennes to Menin, and +at the outset displayed that deplorable lack of marching power which the +Duke of York's command had shown throughout the campaign.[6] From +Marchiennes to Tourcoing is a long day's march: it took the Duke of York +four days; and, take the march altogether, nine days were spent in +covering less than forty miles. In the course of that march, the British +troops had an opportunity of learning to despise their adversary: they +found at Linselles, upon the flank of their advance, a number of +undisciplined boys who broke the moment the Guards were upon them, and +whose physical condition excited the ridicule of their assailants. The +army proceeded after this purposeless and unfruitful skirmish to the +neighbourhood of the sea coast, and the siege of Dunquerque was +undertaken under conditions which will be clear to the reader from the +following sketch map. + +[Illustration: Operations round Dunquerque. September 1793.] + +The date of the 20th of August must first be fixed in the mind: on that +date the army which was to take Dunquerque was separated into its two +component parts. The first, under the Duke of York, was to attack the +town itself; the second, under the aged Austrian general, Freytag, was +to watch the movement of any approaching enemy and to cover the force +which was besieging the town. Two days later, the Duke of York was +leaving Furnes, which he had made his base for the advance, and Freytag +had with the greatest ease brushed the French posts--mainly of +volunteers--from before him, and was beginning to take up the flanking +positions south and east of Bergues which covered the siege of +Dunquerque. + +Two days later again, on August 24, Freytag had occupied Wormhoudt and +Esquelbecque, capturing guns by the dozen, doing pretty well what he +would with the French outposts, and quite surrounding the town of +Bergues. Wilder was his headquarters. On the same day, the 24th, the +Duke of York had with the greatest ease driven in the advanced posts of +the French before Dunquerque, and shut up the enemy within the town, +while he formed his besieging force outside of it, entrenched in a +position which he had chosen beforehand, reposing upon the sea at his +right, his left on the village of Tetteghem. He was then about 3,000 +yards from the fortifications at Dunquerque. + +Such was the situation upon the dawn of the 25th, when everything was +ready for active operations. And here the reader must look upon the map +for what ultimately proved the ruin of the situation. + +Supposing Freytag round Bergues in the position which the map shows; the +Duke of York in front of Dunquerque as the map also shows him; the two +forces are in touch across the road and the belt of country which unites +Bergues and Dunquerque. The covering army and the besieging force which +it covers are each a wing of one combined body; each communicates with +the other, each can support the other at the main point of effort, and +though between the one and the other eastward there stretches a line of +marshy country--the "meres" which the map indicates--yet a junction +between the two forces exists westward of these, and the two armies can +co-operate by the Bergues-Dunquerque road. + +A factor which the Duke of York may have neglected was the power of +flooding all that flat country round, the road which the French in +Dunquerque, being in possession of the sluices, possessed. They used it +at once: they drowned the low lands to the south of Dunquerque, upon the +very day when the last dispositions of the attacking force were +completed. But more important--and never yet explained--was the +Austrians' abandonment of Coudequerque. By this error, the main road +itself, standing above the flood, was lost, and from being one strong +army the force of the Allies became two weak ones. Communication was no +longer possible between the Duke of York's and Freytag's territories, +and it was of this separation that the French, in spite of their +deplorable organisation and more deplorable personnel, took advantage. + +They took advantage of it slowly. Houchard gathered altogether forty +thousand men near Cassel, but it was ten days before they could be +concentrated. It must again be insisted upon and repeated that, large as +the number was--it was four times as great as Freytag's now isolated +force--Houchard's command was made up of men quite two-thirds of whom +were hardly soldiers: volunteers both new and recent, ill-trained +conscripts and so forth. There was no basis of discipline, hardly any +power to enforce it; the men had behaved disgracefully in all the +affairs of outposts, they had been brushed away contemptuously by the +small Austrian force from every position they had held. With all his +numerical superiority the attempt which Houchard was about to make was +very hazardous: and Houchard was a hesitating and uncertain commander. +Furthermore, of the forty thousand men one quarter at least remained out +of action through the ineptitude and political terror of Dumesny, +Houchard's lieutenant upon the right. + +It was upon the 6th of September that the French advance began along the +whole line; it was a mere pushing in of inferior numbers by superior +numbers, the superior numbers perpetually proving themselves inferior to +the Austrians in military value. Thus, the capture of old Freytag +himself in a night skirmish was at once avenged by the storming of the +village near which he had been caught, and he was re-taken. In actual +fighting and force for force, Houchard's command found nothing to +encourage it during these first operations. + +The Austrians in falling back concentrated and were soon one compact +body: to attack and dislodge it was the object of the French advance, +but an object hardly to be attained. + +What happened was not only the unexpected success of this advance, but +the gaining by the French of the first decisive action in the long +series which was to terminate twenty years later at Leipsic. + +The army of Freytag fell back upon the village of Hondschoote and stood +there in full force upon the morning of Sunday, the 8th of September. +Houchard attacked it with a force greatly lessened but still double that +of the defenders. So conspicuous, however, was the superiority of the +Austrian regulars over the French raw troops and volunteers that during +this morning of the 8th the result was still doubtful. By the afternoon, +however, the work was done, and the enemy were in a retreat which might +easily have been turned into a rout. A glance at the map will show that +Houchard, had he possessed the initiative common to so many of his +contemporaries, might at once have driven the numerically inferior and +heavily defeated force (it had lost one-third of its men) to the right, +and proceeded himself to cut the communications of the Duke of York and +to destroy his army, which lay packed upon the waterless sand dunes +where the village of Malo-les-Bains now stands. Houchard hesitated; +Freytag escaped; the Duke of York, abandoning his siege-pieces to the +number of forty and much of his heavy baggage, retreated precipitately +through the night to Furnes, right across the front of the French army, +and escaped destruction. + +The Battle of Hoondschoote, therefore, as it is called, raised the siege +of Dunquerque. It was, as I have said, the first successful decisive +action which the Revolution could count since the moment of its extreme +danger and the opening of the general European war. But it was nothing +like what it might have been had Houchard been willing to risk a hardy +stroke. Houchard was therefore recalled, condemned to death, and +executed by the Committee of Public Safety, whose pitiless despotism was +alone capable of saving the nation. He remains the single example of a +general officer who has suffered death for military incompetence after +the gaining of a victory, and his execution is an excellent example of +the way in which the military temper of the Committee, and particularly +of Carnot, refused to consider any factor in the war save those that +make for military success. + +Carnot and the Committee had no patience with the illusions which a +civilian crowd possesses upon mere individual actions: what they saw was +the campaign as a whole, and they knew that Houchard had left the armies +opposite him intact. + +Perhaps his execution was made more certain by the continuance of bad +news from that more important point of the frontier--the direct line of +Austrian advance upon Paris. Here, already, Valenciennes had fallen two +months before, and Conde also. Lequesnoy, the third point of the barrier +line, capitulated on the 11th of September, and the news of that +capitulation reached Paris immediately after the news of Hondschoote. No +fortress was now left between the Allies and the capital but Maubeuge. +Coburg marched upon it at once. + +Not only had he that immense superiority in the quality of his troops +which must be still insisted upon, but numerically also he was three to +one when, on the 28th of September, at dawn, he crossed the Sambre above +and below Maubeuge, and by noon of that day had contained the French +army in that neighbourhood within the lines of the fortress. + +The situation was critical in the extreme: Maubeuge was ill prepared to +stand siege; it was hardly provisioned; its garrison was of varied and, +on the whole, of bad quality. In mere victuals it could stand out for +but a few days, and, worst of all, it had behind it the continued +example of necessary and fatal surrenders which had marked the whole +summer. The orders of the Committee of Public Safety to its commander +were terse: "Your head shall answer for Maubeuge." After the receipt of +that message no more came through the lines. + +The reader, if he be unaccustomed to military history, does well to note +that in every action and in every campaign there is some one factor of +position or of arms or of time which explains the result. Each has a +pivot or hinge, as it were, upon which the whole turns. It was now upon +Maubeuge that the revolutionary war thus depended. At risk of +oversimplifying a complex story, I would lay this down as the prime +condition for the understanding of the early revolutionary wars: had +Maubeuge fallen, the road to Paris lay open and the trick was +done[7]--and here we must consider again the effect in the field of +Carnot's genius. + +In the first place, he had provided numbers not on paper, but in +reality; the Committee, through a decree of the Assembly, had +despotically "requisitioned" men, animals, vehicles and supplies. The +levy was a reality. Mere numbers then raw, but increasing, had begun to +pour into the north-east. It was they that had told at Hoondschoote, it +was they that were to tell in front of Maubeuge. + +Secondly, as the Committee supplied the necessary initiative, Carnot +supplied the necessary personality of war. His own will and own brain +could come to one decision in one moment, and did so. It was he, as we +shall see, who won the critical action. He chose Jourdan, a man whose +quaint military career we must reluctantly leave aside in so brief a +study as this, but at any rate an amateur, and put him in Houchard's +command over the Army of the Northern Frontier, and that command was +extended from right away beyond the Ardennes to the sea. He ordered (and +Jourdan obeyed) the concentration of men from all down that lengthy line +to the right and the left upon one point, Guise. To leave the rest of +the frontier weak was a grave risk only to be excused by very rapid +action and success: both these were to follow. The concentration was +effected in four days. Troops from the extreme north could not come in +time. The furthest called upon were beyond Arras, with sixty-five miles +of route between them and Guise. This division (which shall be typical +of many), not quite eight thousand strong, left on receiving orders in +the morning of the 3rd of October and entered Guise in the course of the +6th. The rate of marching and the synchrony of these movements of +imperfect troops should especially be noted by any one who would +understand how the Revolution succeeded. + +[Illustration: The rapid eight days' concentration in front of Maubeuge. +October 1783.] + +A second division of over thirteen thousand men followed along the +parallel road, with a similar time table. From the other end of his +line, a detachment under Beauregard, just over four thousand men, was +called up from the extreme right. It will serve as a typical example +upon the eastern side of this lightning concentration. It had been +gathered near Carignan, a town full fourteen miles beyond Sedan. It +picked up reinforcements on the way and marched into Fourmies upon the +11th, after covering just seventy miles in the three and a half days. +With its arrival the concentration was complete, and not a moment too +soon, for the bombardment of Maubeuge was about to begin. From the 11th +to the 15th of October the army was advanced and drawn up in line, a +day's march in front of Guise, with its centre at Avesnes and facing the +covering army of Coburg, which lay entrenched upon a long wooded crest +with the valley of the Sambre upon its right and the village of +Wattignies, on a sort of promontory of high land, upon its left. + +The Austrian position was reconnoitred upon the 14th. Upon the 15th the +general attack was delivered and badly repelled. When darkness fell upon +that day few in the army could have believed that Maubeuge was +succourable--and it was a question of hours. + +Carnot, however, sufficiently knew the virtues as the vices of his novel +troops, the troops of the great levy, stiffened with a proportion of +regulars, to attempt an extraordinary thing. He marched eight thousand +from his left and centre, over to his right during the night, and in the +morning of the 16th his right, in front of the Austrian left at +Wattignies had, by this conversion, become far the strongest point of +the whole line. + +A dense mist had covered the end of this operation as the night had +covered its inception, and that mist endured until nearly midday. The +Austrians upon the heights had no hint of the conversion, and Wattignies +was only held by three regiments. If they expected a renewed attack at +all, they can only have expected it in the centre, or even upon the left +where the French had suffered most the day before. + +Initiative in war is essentially a calculation of risk, and with high +initiative the risk is high. What Carnot gambled upon (for Jourdan was +against the experiment) when he moved those young men through the night, +was the possibility of getting active work out of them after a day's +furious action, the forced marches of the preceding week and on top of +it all a sleepless night of further marching. Most of the men who were +prepared to charge on the French right as the day broadened and the mist +lifted on that 16th of October, had been on foot for thirty hours. The +charge was delivered, and was successful. The unexpected numbers thus +concentrated under Wattignies carried that extreme position, held the +height, and arrived, therefore, on the flank of the whole Austrian line, +which, had not the effort of the aggressors exhausted them, would have +been rolled up in its whole length. As it was, the Austrians retreated +unmolested and in good order across the Sambre. The siege of Maubeuge +was raised; and the next day the victorious French army entered the +fortress. + +Thus was successfully passed the turning-point of the revolutionary +wars. + +Two months later the other gate of the country was recovered. In the +moment when Maubeuge was relieved, the enemy had pierced the lines of +Wissembourg. It is possible that an immediate and decisive understanding +among the Allies might then have swept all Alsace; but such an +understanding was lacking. The disarrayed "Army of the Rhine" was got +into some sort of order, notably through the enthusiasm of Hoche and the +silent control of Pichegru. At the end of November the Prussians stood +on the defensive at Kaiserslautern. Hoche hammered at them for three +days without success. What really turned the scale was the floods of men +and material that the levy and the requisitioning were pouring in. Just +before Christmas the enemy evacuated Haguenau. Landau they still held; +but a decisive action fought upon Boxing Day, a true soldiers' battle, +determined by the bayonet, settled the fate of the Allies on this point. +The French entered Wissembourg again, and Landau was relieved after a +siege of four months and a display of tenacity which had done not a +little to turn the tide of the war. + +Meanwhile the news had come in that the last of the serious internal +rebellions was crushed. Toulon had been re-captured, the English fleet +driven out; the town, the harbour and the arsenal had fallen into the +hands of the French largely through the science of a young major of +artillery (not captain: I have discussed the point elsewhere), +Bonaparte, and this had taken place a week before the relief of Landau. +The last confused horde of La Vendee had been driven from the walls of +Granville in Normandy, to which it had erred and drifted rather than +retreated. At Mans on the 13th of December it was cut to pieces, and at +Savenay on the 23rd, three days before the great victory in Alsace, it +was destroyed. A long peasant-and-bandit struggle, desperate yet hardly +to be called guerilla, continued through the next year behind the hedges +of Lower Brittany and of Vendee, but the danger to the State and to the +Revolution was over. The year 1793 ended, therefore, with the complete +relief of the whole territory of the Republic, save a narrow strip upon +the Belgian frontier, complete domination of it by its Caesar, the +Committee of Public Safety; with two-thirds of a million of men under +arms, and the future of the great experiment apparently secure. + +The causes of the wonder have been discussed, and will be discussed +indefinitely. Primarily, they resided in the re-creation of a strong +central power; secondly, in the combination of vast numbers and of a +reckless spirit of sacrifice. The losses on the National side were +perpetually and heavily superior to those of the Allies--in Alsace they +had been three to one; and we shall better understand the duel when we +appreciate that in the short eight years between the opening of the war +and the triumph of Napoleon at Marengo, there had fallen in killed and +wounded, on the French side, over seven hundred thousand men. + + +FIVE + +The story of 1794 is but the consequence of what we have just read. It +was the little belt or patch upon the Belgian frontier which was still +in the hands of the enemy that determined the nature of the campaign. + +It was not until spring that the issue was joined. The Emperor of +Austria reached Brussels on the 2nd day of April, and a fortnight later +reviewed his army. The French line drawn up in opposition to it suffered +small but continual reverses until the close of the month. + +On the 29th Clerfayt suffered a defeat which led to the fall, or rather +the escape, of the small garrison of Menin. Clerfayt was beaten again at +Courtray a fortnight later; but all these early engagements in the +campaign were of no decisive moment. Tourcoing was to be the first heavy +blow that should begin to settle matters, Fleurus was to clinch them. + +No battle can be less satisfactorily described in a few lines than that +of Tourcoing, so different did it appear to either combatant, so +opposite are the plans of what was expected on either side, and of what +happened, so confused are the various accounts of contemporaries. The +accusations of treason which nearly always arise after a disaster, and +especially a disaster overtaking an allied force, are particularly +monstrous, and may be dismissed: in particular the childish legend which +pretends that the Austrians desired an English defeat. + +What the French say is that excellent forced marching and scientific +concentration permitted them to attack the enemy before the junction of +his various forces was effected. What the Allies say is (if they are +speaking for their centre) that it was shamefully abandoned and +unsupported by the two wings; if they are speaking for the wings, that +the centre had no business to advance, when it saw that the two wings +were not up in time to co-operate. + +One story goes that the Archduke Charles was incapacitated by a fit; +Lord Acton has lent his considerable authority to this amusing version. +At any rate, what happened was this:-- + +The Allies lay along the river Scheldt on Friday, the 16th of May: +Tournay was their centre, with the Duke of York in command of the chief +force there; five or six miles north, down the river, was one extremity +of their line at a place called Warcoing: it was a body of Hanoverians. +The left, under the Archduke Charles, was Austrian and had reached a +place a day's march south of Tournay called St. Amand. Over against the +Allies lay a large French force also occupying a wide front of over +fifteen miles, the centre of which was Tourcoing, then a village. Its +left was in front of the fortress of Courtrai. Now, behind the French, +up country northward in the opposite direction from the line of the +Allies on the Scheldt was another force of the Allies under Clerfayt. +The plan was that the Allied right should advance on to Mouscron and +take it. The Allied centre should advance on to Tourcoing and Mouveaux +and take them, while the left should march across the upper waters of +the river Marque, forcing the bridges that crossed that marshy stream, +and come up alongside the centre. In other words, there was to be an +attack all along the French line from the south, and while it was +proceeding, Clerfayt, from the north of the French, was to cross the Lys +and attack also. + +On the day of the 17th what happened was this: The left of the Allies, +marching from St. Amand, came up half a day late; the right of the +Allies took Mouscron, but were beaten out of it by the French. The +centre of the Allies fulfilled their programme, reaching Tourcoing and +its neighbourhood by noon and holding their positions. It is to the +honour of English arms that this success was accomplished by a force a +third of which was British and the most notable bayonet work in which +was done by the Guards. Meanwhile, Clerfayt was late in moving and in +crossing the river Lys, which lay between him and his objective. + +[Illustration: Tourcoing. May 16 to 18, 1794. + +The breakdown of the attempt of the Allies to cut off the French near +Courtrai from Lille was due to their failure to synchronise They should +have been in line from A to B at noon of the 17th with Clerfayt at C.] + +When night fell, therefore, on the first day of the action, a glance at +the map will show that instead of one solid line advancing against the +French from A to B, and the northern force in touch with it at C, the +Allied formation was an absurd projection in the middle, due to the +success of the mixed and half-British force under the Duke of York: a +success which had not been maintained on the two wings. A bulge of this +sort in an attacking line is on the face of it disastrous. The enemy +have only to be rapid in falling upon either flank of it and the bulge +can be burst in. The French were rapid, and burst in the bulge was. By +concentrating their forces against this one central part of the Allies +they fought three to one. + +That same capacity which at Wattignies had permitted them to scorn sleep +and to be indefatigable in marching, put them on the road before three +o'clock in the morning of Sunday, the 18th, and with the dawn they fell +upon the central force of the Allies, attacking it from all three sides. + +It is on this account that the battle is called the Battle of Tourcoing, +for Tourcoing was the most advanced point to which the centre of the +Allies had reached. The Germans, upon the Duke of York's right at +Tourcoing, felt the first brunt of the attack. The Duke of York himself, +with his mixed, half-British force, came in for the blow immediately +afterwards, and while it was still early morning. The Germans at +Tourcoing began to fall back. The Duke of York's force, to the left of +them, was left isolated: its commander ought not to have hung on so +long. But the defence was maintained with the utmost gallantry for the +short time during which it was still possible. The retreat began about +nine in the morning and was kept orderly for the first two miles, but +after that point it was a rout. The drivers of the British cannon fled, +and the guns, left without teams, blocked the precipitate flight of the +cavalry. Their disorder communicated itself at once to the Guards, and +to the line. + +Even in this desperate strait some sort of order was restored, notably +by the Guards Brigade, which were apparently the first to form, and a +movement that could still be called a retreat was pursued towards the +south. The Duke of York himself was chased from spinney to spinney and +escaped by a stroke of luck, finding a bridge across the last brook held +by a detachment of Hessians. In this way were the central columns, who +between them numbered not a third of the total force of the Allies, +destroyed. + +Clerfayt had first advanced--but far too late to save the centre--and +then retreated. The Archduke Charles, upon the left, was four hours late +in marching to the help of the Duke of York; the right wing of the +Allies was not even late: it spent the morning in an orderly artillery +duel with the French force opposed to it. By five in the afternoon +defeat was admitted and a general retreat of the Allies ordered. + +I have said that many reasons are given to account for the disaster of +Tourcoing, one of the very few in which a British force has been routed +upon the Continent; but I confess that if I were asked for an +explanation of my own, I would say that it was simply due to the gross +lack of synchrony on the part of the Allies, and that this in its turn +was taken advantage of by the power both of vigil and of marching which +the French troops, still inferior in most military characteristics, had +developed and maintained, and which (a more important matter) their +commanders knew how to use. + +This heavy blow, delivered on the 18th of May, in spite of a successful +rally a week later, finally convinced the Emperor that the march on +Paris was impossible. Eleven days later, on the 29th, it was announced +in the camp of Tournay, upon which the Allied army had fallen back, that +the Emperor had determined to return to Vienna. The Allied army was +indeed still left upon that front, but the French continued to pour up +against it. It was again their numbers that brought about the next and +the final victory. + +Far off, upon the east of that same line, the army which is famous in +history and in song as that of the Sambre et Meuse was violently +attempting to cross the Sambre and to turn the line of the Allies. +Coburg reinforced his right opposite the French left, but numbers had +begun to bewilder him. The enthusiasm of Saint-Just, the science of +Carnot, decided victory at this eastern end of the line. + +Six times the passage of the Sambre had failed. Reinforcements continued +to reach the army, and the seventh attempt succeeded. + +Charleroi, which is the main fortress blocking the passage of the +Sambre at this place, could be, and was, invested when once the river +was crossed by the French. It capitulated in a week. But the evacuation +of Charleroi was but just accomplished when Coburg, seventy thousand +strong, appeared in relief of the city. + +[Illustration: Showing effect of _Ypres_, _Charleroi_ and _Fleurus_ in +wholly throwing back the Allies in June 1794. + +_Ypres_ captured on June 19 by the French, they march on Oudenarde and +pass it on June 25 to 27. Meanwhile _Charleroi_ has also surrendered to +the French, and when, immediately afterwards, the Austrians try to +relieve it, they are beaten at _Fleurus_ and retire on Brussels. + +Thus the English at _Tournai_ and all the Allied Forces at _Conde_, +_Valenciennes_, _Landrecies_, and _Mons_ are imperilled and must +surrender or retire.] + +The plateau above the town where the great struggle was decided, is +known as that of Fleurus, and it was upon the 26th of June that the +armies were there engaged. Never before had forces so equal permitted +the French any success. It had hitherto been the ceaseless +requisitioning of men to supply their insufficient training and command, +which had accomplished the salvation of the country. At Fleurus, though +there was still some advantage on the French side, the numbers were +more nearly equal. + +The action was not determined for ten hours, and on the French centre +and left was nearly lost, when the Reserves' and Marceau's obstinacy in +front of Fleurus village itself at last decided it. + +The consequences of the victory were final. As the French right advanced +from Fleurus the French left advanced from Ypres, and the centre became +untenable for the Allies. The four French fortresses which the enemy +still garrisoned in that Belgian "belt" of which I have spoken, were +invested and re-captured. By the 10th of July the French were in +Brussels, the English were beaten back upon Holland, the Austrians +retreating upon the Rhine, and the continuous success of the +revolutionary armies was assured. + + * * * * * + +While these things were proceeding upon land, however, there had +appeared a factor in the war which modern desire for comfort and, above +all, for commercial security has greatly exaggerated, but which the +student will do well to note in its due proportion. This factor was the +military weakness of France at sea. + +In mere numbers the struggle was entered upon with fleets in the ratio +of about two to one, while to the fleet of Great Britain, already twice +as large as its opponent, must be added the fleets of the Allies. But +numbers did not then, nor will they in the future, really decide the +issue of maritime war. It was the supremacy of English gunnery which +turned the scale. This triumphant superiority was proved in the battle +of the 1st of June, 1794. + +The English fleet under Lord Howe attacked the French fleet which was +waiting to escort a convoy of grain into Brest; the forces came in +contact upon the 28th of May, and the action was a running one of three +days. + +Two examples must suffice to prove how determining was the superiority +of the British fire. The _Queen Charlotte_, in the final action, found +herself caught between the _Montagne_ and the _Jacobin_. We have the +figures of the losses during the duel of these two flagships. The _Queen +Charlotte_ lost forty-two men in the short and furious exchange, the +_Montagne_ alone three hundred. Again, consider the total figures. The +number of the crews on both sides was nearly equal, but their losses +were as eleven to five. It cannot be too often repeated that the initial +advantage which the English fleet gained in the great war, which it +maintained and increased as that war proceeded, and which it made +absolute at Trafalgar, was an advantage mainly due to the guns. + +The reader must not expect in a sketch which ends with the fall of +Robespierre any treatise, however short, upon the effect of sea power in +the revolutionary wars. It has of late years been grossly exaggerated, +the reaction which will follow this exaggeration may as grossly belittle +it. It prevented the invasion of England, it permitted the exasperation +and wearing out of the French forces in the Peninsula. But it could not +have determined the fate of Napoleon. That was determined by his Russian +miscalculation and by his subsequent and consequent defeat at Leipsic. + +Upon the early success of the Revolution and the resulting establishment +of European democracy, with which alone these pages deal, sea power was +of no considerable effect. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[6] Incidentally it should be noted how true it is that this supreme +military quality is a matter of organisation rather than of the physical +power of troops; in the Napoleonic wars the marching power of the +English troops was often proved exceptional, and perhaps the greatest of +all feats accomplished by a small body was that of the Light Brigade +marching to the succour of Wellington at Talavera. + +[7] I must not, in fairness to the reader, neglect the great mass of +opinion, from Jomini to Mr. Fortescue's classic work upon the British +Army, which lays it down that the Allies had but to mask the frontier +fortresses and to advance their cavalry rapidly along the Paris road. +Historical hypothesis can never be more than a matter of judgment, but I +confess that this view has always seemed to me to ignore--as purely +military historians and especially foreign ones might well ignore--the +social condition of "'93." Cavalry is the weakest of all arms with which +to deal with sporadic, unorganised, but determined resistance. To pass +through the densely populated country of the Paris road may be compared +to the forcing of an open town, and cavalry can never be relied upon for +_that_. As for the army moving as a whole without a perfect security in +its communications, the matter need not even be discussed; and it must +further be remembered that, the moment such an advance began, an +immediate concentration from the north would have fallen upon the +ill-guarded lines of supply. It may be taken that Coburg knew his +business when he sat down before this, the last of the fortresses. + + + + +VI + +THE REVOLUTION AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH + + +The last and the most important of the aspects which the French +Revolution presents to a foreign, and in particular to an English +reader, is the antagonism which arose between it and the Church. + +As this is the most important so it is the most practical of the +historical problems which the Revolution sets the student to solve; for +the opposition of the Church's organisation in France has at once been +the most profound which the Revolution has had to encounter, the most +active in its methods, and the only one which has increased in strength +as time proceeded. It is hardly too much to say that the Revolution +would, in France at least, have achieved its object and created a +homogeneous, centralised democracy, had not this great quarrel between +the Republic and the Church arisen; and one may legitimately contrast +the ready pliancy of men to political suggestion and the easy story of +their institutions where men knew nothing of the Church, with the great +storms that arise and the fundamental quarrels that are challenged +wherever men are acquainted with the burning truths of Catholicism. + +Finally, the struggle between the Catholic Church and the Revolution is +not only the most important and the most practical, but also by an +unhappy coincidence the most difficult of comprehension of all the +matters presented to us by the great change. + +We have seen in this book that one department of revolutionary history, +the second in importance, perhaps, to the religious department, was also +difficult of comprehension--to wit, the military department. And we have +seen (or at least I have postulated) that the difficulty of following +the military fortunes of the Republic was due to the mass of detail, to +the technical character of the information to be acquired and to the +natural unfamiliarity of the general reader with the elements of +military science. In other words, an accurate knowledge of great numbers +of facts, the proper disposition of these facts in their order of +military importance, and the correlation of a great number of +disconnected actions and plans will alone permit us to grasp the +function of the armies in the development and establishment of the +modern State through the revolutionary wars. + +Now in this second and greater problem, the problem of the function +played by religion, it is an exactly opposite method which can alone be +of service. + +We must examine the field generally, and still more generally we must +forget details that here only bewilder, and see in the largest possible +outline what forces were really at issue, why their conflict occurred, +upon what points that conflict was vital. Any more particular plan will +land us, as it has landed so many thousands of controversialists, in +mere invective on one side or the other, till we come to see nothing but +a welter of treason on the part of priests, and of massacre upon the +part of democrats. + +Men would, did they try to unravel the skein by analysing the documents +of the Vatican or of the French archives, come apparently upon nothing +but a host of petty, base, and often personal calculations; or again, +did they attempt to take a local sample of the struggle and to follow it +in one department of thought, they would come upon nothing but a whirl +of conflict with no sort of clue to the motives that lay behind. + +The contrast between the military and the religious problem of the +French Revolution is like the contrast between the geological +composition and the topographical contours of a countryside. To +understand the first we must bore and dig, we must take numerous samples +of soil and subject them to analysis, we must make ourselves acquainted +with detail in its utmost recesses. But for the second, the more general +our standpoint, the wider our gaze, and the more comprehensive our +judgment, the more accurately do we grasp the knowledge we have set out +to seek. + +We must, then, approach our business by asking at the outset the most +general question of all: "_Was there a necessary and fundamental quarrel +between the doctrines of the Revolution and those of the Catholic +Church?_" + +Those ill acquainted with either party, and therefore ill equipped for +reply, commonly reply with assurance in the affirmative. The French (and +still more the non-French) Republican who may happen, by the accident of +his life, to have missed the Catholic Church, to have had no intimacy +with any Catholic character, no reading of Catholic philosophy, and +perhaps even no chance view of so much as an external Catholic ceremony, +replies unhesitatingly that the Church is the necessary enemy of the +Revolution. Again, the _emigre_, the wealthy woman, the recluse, any one +of the many contemporary types to whom the democratic theory of the +Revolution came as a complete novelty, and to-day the wealthy families +in that tradition, reply as unhesitatingly that the Revolution is the +necessary enemy of the Church. The reply seems quite sufficient to the +Tory squire in England or Germany, who may happen to be a Catholic by +birth or by conversion; and it seems equally obvious to (let us say) a +democratic member of some Protestant Church in one of the new countries. + +Historically and logically, theologically also, those who affirm a +necessary antagonism between the Republic and the Church are in error. +Those who are best fitted to approach the problem by their knowledge +both of what the Revolution attempted and of what Catholic philosophy +is, find it in proportion to their knowledge difficult or impossible to +answer that fundamental question in the affirmative. They cannot call +the Revolution a necessary enemy of the Church, nor the Church of +Democracy. + +What is more, minds at once of the most active and of the best +instructed sort are the very minds which find it difficult to explain +how any such quarrel can have arisen. French history itself is full of +the names of those for whom not so much a reconciliation between the +Revolution and the Church, as a statement that no real quarrel existed +between them, was the motive of politics; and almost in proportion to a +man's knowledge of his fellows in Catholic societies, almost in that +proportion is the prime question I have asked answered by such a man in +the negative. A man who knows both the Faith and the Republic will tell +you that there is not and cannot be any necessary or fundamental reason +why conflict should have arisen between a European Democracy and the +Catholic Church. + +When we examine those who concern themselves with the deepest and most +abstract side of the quarrel, we find the same thing. It is impossible +for the theologian, or even for the practical ecclesiastical teacher, to +put his finger upon a political doctrine essential to the Revolution and +to say, "This doctrine is opposed to Catholic dogma or to Catholic +morals." Conversely, it is impossible for the Republican to put his +finger upon a matter of ecclesiastical discipline or religious dogma and +to say, "This Catholic point is at issue with my political theory of the +State." + +Thousands of active men upon either side would have been only too +willing during the last hundred years to discover some such issue, and +it has proved undiscoverable. In a word, only those Democrats who know +little of the Catholic Church can say that of its nature it forbids +democracy; and only those Catholics who have a confused or imperfect +conception of democracy can say that of its nature it is antagonistic to +the Catholic Church. + +Much that is taught by the purely temporal theory of the one is +indifferent to the transcendental and supernatural philosophy of the +other. In some points, where there is contact (as in the conception of +the dignity of man and of the equality of men) there is agreement. To +sum up, the Republican cannot by his theory persecute the Church; the +Church cannot by her theory excommunicate the Republican. + +Why, then, it must next be asked, has there in practice arisen so +furious and so enormous a conflict, a conflict whose activity and whose +consequence are not narrowing but broadening to-day? + +It may be replied to this second question, which is only less general +than the first, in one of two manners. + +One may say that the actions of men are divided not by theories but by +spiritual atmospheres, as it were. According to this view men act under +impulses not ideal but actual: impulses which affect great numbers and +yet in their texture correspond to the complex but united impulses of an +individual personality. Thus, though there be no conflict demonstrable +between the theology of the Catholic Church and the political theory of +the Revolution, yet there may be necessary and fundamental conflict +between the _Persons_ we call the Revolution and the Church, and between +the vivifying principles by which either lives. That is one answer that +can be, and is, given. + +Or one may give a totally different answer and say, "There was no +quarrel between the theology of the Catholic Church and the political +theory of the Revolution; but the folly of this statesman, the ill +drafting of that law, the misconception of such and such an institution, +the coincidence of war breaking out at such and such a moment and +affecting men in such and such a fashion--all these material accidents +bred a misunderstanding between the two great forces, led into conflict +the human officers and the human organisations which directed them; and +conflict once established feeds upon, and grows from, its own +substance." + +Now, if that first form of reply be given to the question we have posed, +though it is sufficient for the type of philosophy which uses it, though +it is certainly explanatory of all human quarrels, and though it in +particular satisfies a particular modern school of thought, it is +evident that history, properly so called, cannot deal with it. + +You may say that the Revolution was the expression of a spirit far more +real than any theory, that this spirit is no more susceptible of +analysis or definition than is the personality of a single human +character, and that this reality was in conflict with another +reality--to wit, the Catholic Church. You may even (as some minds by no +means negligible have done) pass into the field of mysticism in the +matter, and assert that really personal forces, wills superior and +external to man, Demons and Angels, drove the Revolution against the +Catholic Church, and created The Republic to be an anti-Catholic force +capable of meeting and of defeating that Church, which (by its own +definition of itself) is not a theory, but the expression of a +Personality and a Will. To put it in old-fashioned terms, you may say +that the Revolution was the work of antichrist;--but with that kind of +reply, I repeat, history cannot deal. + +If it be true that, in spite of an absence of contradictory intellectual +theories, there is a fundamental spiritual contradiction between the +Revolution and the Catholic Church, then time will test the business; we +shall see in that case a perpetual extension of the quarrel until the +Revolution becomes principally a force for the extinction of +Catholicism, and the Catholic Church appears to the supporter of the +Revolution not as his principal, but as his only enemy. Such a +development has not arisen in a hundred years; a process of time far +more lengthy will alone permit us to judge whether the supposed duello +is a real matter or a phantasm. + +The second type of answer, the answer which pretends to explain the +antagonism by a definite series of events, does concern the historian. + +Proceeding upon the lines of that second answer, he can bring his +science to bear and use the instruments of his trade; and he can show +(as I propose to show in what follows) how, although no quarrel can be +found between the theory of the Revolution and that of the Church, an +active quarrel did in fact spring up between the Revolution in action +and the authorities of Catholicism; a quarrel which a hundred years has +not appeased, but accentuated. + + * * * * * + +Behind the revolutionary quarrel lay the condition of the Church in the +French State since the settlement of the quarrel of the Reformation. + +With what that quarrel of the Reformation was, the reader is +sufficiently familiar. For, roughly speaking, a hundred years, from the +first years of the sixteenth century to the first years of the +seventeenth (from the youth of Henry VIII to the boyhood of Charles I in +England), a great attempt was made to change (as one party would have +said to amend, as the other would have said to denaturalise) the _whole +body_ of Western Christendom. A _general_ movement of attack upon the +inherited form of the Church, and a general resistance to that attack, +was at work throughout European civilisation; and either antagonist +hoped for a universal success, the one of what he called "The +Reformation of religion," the other of what he called "The Divine +Institution and visible unity of the Catholic Church." + +At the end of such a period it became apparent that no such general +result had been, or could be, attained. All that part of the West which +had rejected the authority of the See of Rome began to appear as a +separate territorial region permanently divided from the rest; all that +part of Europe which had retained the Authority of the See of Rome began +to appear as another region of territory. The line of cleavage between +the two was beginning to define itself as a geographical line, and +nearly corresponded to the line which, centuries before, had divided the +Roman and civilised world from the Barbarians. + +The Province of Britain had an exceptional fate. Though Roman in origin +and of the ancient civilisation in its foundation, it fell upon the +non-Roman side of the new boundary; while Ireland, which the Roman +Empire had never organised or instructed, remained, alone of the +external parts of Europe, in communion with Rome. Italy, Spain, and in +the main southern or Romanised Germany, refused ultimately to abandon +their tradition of civilisation and of religion. But in Gaul it was +otherwise--and the action of Gaul during the Reformation must be seized +if its modern religious quarrels are to be apprehended. A very +considerable proportion of the French landed and mercantile classes, +that is of the wealthy men of the country, were in sympathy with the new +religious doctrines and the new social organisation which had now taken +root in England, Scotland, Holland, northern Germany and Scandinavia, +and which were destined in those countries to lead to the domination of +wealth. These French squires and traders were called the Huguenots. + +The succeeding hundred years, from 1615 to 1715, let us say, were a +settlement, not without bloodshed, of the unsatisfied quarrel of the +preceding century. All Englishmen know what happened in England; how the +last vestiges of Catholicism were crushed out and all the social and +political consequences of Protestantism established in the State. + +There was, even in that same seventeenth century, a separate, but +futile, attempt to destroy Catholicism in Ireland. In Germany a struggle +of the utmost violence had only led to a similar regional result. The +first third of that hundred years concluded in the Peace of Westphalia, +and left the Protestant and Catholic territorial divisions much what we +now know them. + +In France, however, the peculiar phenomenon remained of a body powerful +in numbers and (what was far more important) in wealth and social power, +scattered throughout the territory of the kingdom, organised and, by +this time, fixedly anti-Catholic, and therefore anti-national. + +The nation had recovered its traditional line and had insisted upon the +victory of a strong executive, and that executive Catholic. France, +therefore, in this period of settlement, became an absolute monarchy +whose chief possessed tremendous and immediate powers, and a monarchy +which incorporated with itself all the great elements of the national +tradition, _including the Church_. + +It is the name of Louis XIV, of course, which symbolises this great +time; his very long reign precisely corresponds to it. He was born +coincidently with that universal struggle for a religious settlement in +Europe, which I have described as characteristic of the time; he died +precisely at its close; and under him it seemed as though the +reconstructed power of Gaul and the defence of organised Catholicism +were to be synonymous. + +But there were two elements of disruption in that homogeneous body which +Louis XIV apparently commanded. The very fact that the Church had thus +become in France an unshakable national institution, chilled the vital +source of Catholicism. Not only did the hierarchy stand in a perpetual +suspicion of the Roman See, and toy with the conception of national +independence, but they, and all the official organisation of French +Catholicism, put the security of the national establishment and its +intimate attachment to the general political structure of the State, far +beyond the sanctity of Catholic dogma or the practice of Catholic +morals. + +That political structure--the French monarchy--seemed to be of granite +and eternal. Had it indeed survived, the Church in Gaul would doubtless, +in spite of its attachment to so mundane a thing as the crown, have +still survived to enjoy one of those resurrections which have never +failed it in the past, and would have returned, by some creative +reaction, to its principle of life. But for the moment the consequence +of this fixed political establishment was that scepticism, and all those +other active forces of the mind which play upon religion in any Catholic +State, had full opportunity. The Church was, so to speak, not concerned +to defend itself but only its method of existence. It was as though a +garrison, forgetting the main defences of a place, had concentrated all +its efforts upon the security of one work which contained its supplies +of food. + +Wit, good verse, sincere enthusiasm, a lucid exposition of whatever in +the human mind perpetually rebels against transcendental affirmations, +were allowed every latitude and provoked no effective reply. But overt +acts of disrespect to ecclesiastical authority were punished with +rigour. + +While in the wealthy, the bureaucratic, and the governing classes, to +ridicule the Faith was an attitude taken for granted, seriously to +attack the privileges or position of its ministers was ungentlemanly, +and was not allowed. It did not shock the hierarchy that one of its +Apostolic members should be a witty atheist; that another should go +hunting upon Corpus Christi, nearly upset the Blessed Sacrament in his +gallop, and forget what day it was when the accident occurred. The +bishops found nothing remarkable in seeing a large proportion of their +body to be loose livers, or in some of them openly presenting their +friends to their mistresses as might be done by any great lay noble +round them. That a diocese or any other spiritual charge should be +divorced from its titular chief, seemed to them as natural as does to us +the absence from his modern regiment of some titular foreign colonel. +Unquestioned also by the bishops were the poverty, the neglect, and the +uninstruction of the parish clergy; nay--and this is by far the +principal feature--the abandonment of religion by all but a very few of +the French millions, no more affected the ecclesiastical officials of +the time than does the starvation of our poor affect, let us say, one of +our professional politicians. It was a thing simply taken for granted. + +The reader must seize that moribund condition of the religious life of +France upon the eve of the Revolution, for it is at once imperfectly +grasped by the general run of historians, and is also the only fact +which thoroughly explains what followed. The swoon of the Faith in the +eighteenth century is the negative foundation upon which the strange +religious experience of the French was about to rise. France, in the +generation before the Revolution, was passing through a phase in which +the Catholic Faith was at a lower ebb than it had ever been since the +preaching and establishment of it in Gaul. + +This truth is veiled by more than one circumstance. Thus many official +acts, notably marriages and the registration of births, took place under +a Catholic form, and indeed Catholic forms had a monopoly of them. +Again, the State wore Catholic clothes, as it were: the public occasions +of pomp were full of religious ceremony. Few of the middle classes went +to Mass in the great towns, hardly any of the artisans; but the Churches +were "official." Great sums of money--including official money--were at +the disposal of the Church; and the great ecclesiastics were men from +whom solid favours could be got. Again, the historic truth is masked by +the language and point of view of the great Catholic reaction which has +taken place in our own time. + +It is safe to say that where one adult of the educated classes concerned +himself seriously with the Catholic Faith and Practice in France before +the Revolution, there are five to-day. But in between lies the violent +episode of the persecution, and the Catholic reaction in our time +perpetually tends to contrast a supposed pre-revolutionary "Catholic" +society with the revolutionary fury. "Look," say its champions, "at the +dreadful way in which the Revolution treated the Church." And as they +say this the converse truth appears obvious and they seem to imply, +"Think how different it must have been before the Revolution persecuted +the Church!" The very violence of the modern reaction towards +Catholicism has exaggerated the revolutionary persecution, and in doing +so has made men forget that apart from other evidence of the decline of +religion, it is obvious that persecution could never have arisen without +a strong and continuous historical backing. You could not have had a +Diocletian in the thirteenth century with the spirit of the Crusaders +just preceding him; you could not have had Henry VIII if the England of +the fifteenth century just preceding him had been an England devoted to +the monastic profession. And you could not have had the revolutionary +fury against the Catholic Church in France if the preceding generation +had been actively Catholic even in a considerable portion. + +As a fact, of course it was not: and in the popular indifference to or +hatred of the Church the principal factor was the strict brotherhood not +so much of Church and State as of Church and executive Government. + +But there was another factor. We were describing a little way back how +in France there had arisen, during the movement of the Reformation, a +wealthy, powerful and numerically large Huguenot body. In mere numbers +it dwindled, but it maintained throughout the seventeenth century a very +high position, both of privilege and (what was its characteristic) of +money-power; and even to-day, though their birth-rate is, of course, +lower than the average of the nation, the French Huguenots number close +upon a million, and are far wealthier, upon the average, than their +fellow citizens. It is their wealth which dominates the trade of +certain districts, which exercises so great an effect upon the +universities, the publishing trade, and the press; and in general lends +them such weight in the affairs of the nation. + +Now the Huguenot had in France a special and permanent quarrel with the +monarchy, and therefore with the Catholic Church, which, precisely +because it was not of the vivid and intense kind which is associated +with popular and universal religions, was the more secretly ubiquitous. +His quarrel was that, having been highly privileged for nearly a +century, the member of "a State within a State," and for more than a +generation free to hold assemblies separate from and often antagonistic +to the national Government, these privileges had been suddenly removed +from him by the Government of Louis XIV a century before the Revolution. +The quarrel was more political than religious; it was a sort of "Home +Rule" quarrel. For though the Huguenots were spread throughout France, +they had possessed special cities and territories wherein their spirit +and, to a certain extent, their private self-government, formed +_enclaves_ of particularism within the State. + +They had held this position, as I have said, for close upon a hundred +years, and it was not until a date contemporary with the violent +settlement of the religious trouble in England by the expulsion of James +II that a similar settlement, less violent, achieved (as it was thought) +a similar religious unity in France. But that unity was not achieved. +The Huguenots, though no longer permitted to exist as a State within a +State, remained, for the hundred years between the Revocation of the +Edict of Nantes and the outbreak of the Revolution, a powerful and +ever-watchful body. They stood upon the flank of the attack which +intellectual scepticism was making upon the Catholic Church, they were +prepared to take advantage of that scepticism's first political victory, +and since the Revolution they have been the most powerful and, after the +Freemasons, with whom they are largely identified, the most strongly +organised, of the anti-clerical forces in the country. + +The Jews, whose action since the Revolution has been so remarkable in +this same business, were not, in the period immediately preceding it, of +any considerable influence, and their element in the coalition may be +neglected. + +Such, then, was the position when the Revolution was preparing. Within +memory of all men living, the Church had become more and more official, +the masses of the great towns had wholly lost touch with it; the +intelligence of the country was in the main drawn to the Deist or even +to the purely sceptical propaganda, the powerful Huguenot body was ready +prepared for an alliance with any foe of Catholicism, and in the eyes of +the impoverished town populace--notably in Paris, which had long +abandoned the practice of religion--the human organisation of the +Church, the hierarchy, the priesthood, and the few but very wealthy +religious orders which still lingered on in dwindling numbers, were but +a portion of the privileged world which the populace hated and was +prepared to destroy. + +It is upon such a spirit and in such conditions of the national +religious life that the Revolution begins to work. In the National +Assembly you have the great body of the Commons which determines the +whole, touched only here and there with men in any way acquainted with +or devoted to Catholic practice, and those men for the most part +individual and eccentric, that is, uncatholic, almost in proportion to +the genuineness of their religious feeling. Among the nobility the +practice of religion was a social habit with some--as a mental attitude +the Faith was forgotten among all but a very few. Among the clergy a +very wealthy hierarchy, no one of them prepared to defend the Church +with philosophical argument, and almost unanimous in regarding itself as +a part of the old political machine, was dominant; while the +representatives of the lower clergy, strongly democratic in character, +were at first more occupied with the establishment of democracy than +with the impending attack upon the material and temporal organisation of +the Church. + +Now, that material and temporal organisation offered at the very +beginning of the debates an opportunity for attack which no other +department of the old _regime_ could show. + +The immediate peril of the State was financial. The pretext and even to +some extent the motive for the calling of the States-General was the +necessity for finding money. The old fiscal machinery had broken down, +and as always happens when a fiscal machine breaks down, the hardship it +involved, and the pressure upon individuals which it involved, appeared +to be universal. _There was no immediate and easily available fund of +wealth upon which the Executive could lay hands save the wealth of the +clergy._ + +The feudal dues of the nobles, if abandoned, must fall rather to the +peasantry than to the State. Of the existing taxes few could be +increased without peril, and none with any prospect of a large +additional revenue. The charge for debt alone was one-half of the total +receipts of the State, the deficit was, in proportion to the revenue, +overwhelming. Face to face with that you had an institution not popular, +one whose public functions were followed by but a small proportion of +the population, one in which income was most unequally distributed, and +one whose feudal property yielded in dues an amount equal to more than a +quarter of the total revenue of the State. Add to this a system of +tithes which produced nearly as much again, and it will be apparent +under what a financial temptation the Assembly lay. + +It may be argued, of course, that the right of the Church to this +ecclesiastical property, whether in land or in tithes, was absolute, and +that the confiscation of the one or of the other form of revenue was +mere theft. But such was not the legal conception of the moment. The +wealth of the Church was not even (and this is most remarkable) +defended as absolute property by the generality of those who enjoyed it. +The tone of the debates which suppressed the tithes, and later +confiscated the Church lands, was a tone of discussion upon legal +points, precedents, public utility, and so forth. There was not heard in +it, in any effective degree, the assertion of mere moral right; though +in that time the moral rights of property were among the first of +political doctrines. + +It was not, however, the confiscation of the Church lands and the +suppression of the tithe which founded the quarrel between the +Revolution and the clergy. No financial or economic change is ever more +than a preparation for, or a permissive condition of, a moral change. It +is never the cause of a moral change. Even the suppression of the +religious houses in the beginning of 1790 must not be taken as the point +of departure in the great quarrel. The religious orders in France were +at that moment too decayed in zeal and in numbers, too wealthy and much +too removed from the life of the nation, for this to be the case. The +true historical point of departure from which we must date the beginning +of this profound debate between the Revolution and Catholicism, is to be +found in the morning of the 30th of May, 1790, when a parliamentary +committee (the Ecclesiastical Committee) presented to the House its plan +for the reform of the Constitution of the Church in Gaul. + +The enormity of that act is now apparent to the whole world. The +proposal, at the bidding of chance representatives not elected _ad hoc_, +to change the dioceses and the sees of Catholic France, the decision of +an ephemeral political body to limit to such and such ties (and very +feeble they were) the bond between the Church of France and the Holy +See, the suppression of the Cathedral Chapters, the seemingly farcical +proposal that bishops should be elected, nay, priests also thus chosen, +the submission of the hierarchy in the matter of residence and travel to +a civil authority which openly declared itself indifferent in matters of +religion,--all this bewilders the modern mind. How, we ask, could men so +learned, so enthusiastic, so laborious and so closely in touch with all +the realities of their time, make a blunder of that magnitude? Much +more, how did such a blunder escape the damnation of universal mockery +and immediate impotence? The answer is to be discovered in what has just +been laid down with so much insistence: the temporary eclipse of +religion in France before the Revolution broke out. + +The men who framed the Constitution of the Clergy, the men who voted it, +nay, even the men who argued against it, all had at the back of their +minds three conceptions which they were attempting to reconcile: of +those three conceptions one was wholly wrong, one was imperfect because +superficial, the third alone was true. And these three conceptions were, +first, that the Catholic Church was a moribund superstition, secondly, +that it possessed in its organisation and tradition a power to be +reckoned with, and thirdly, that the State, its organs, and their +corporate inheritance of action, were so bound up with the Catholic +Church that it was impossible to effect any general political settlement +in which that body both external to France and internal, should be +neglected. + +Of these three conceptions, had the first been as true as the last, it +would have saved the Constitution of the Clergy and the reputation for +common-sense of those who framed it. + +It was certainly true that Catholicism had for so many centuries been +bound up in the framework of the State that the Parliament must +therefore do something with the Church in the general settlement of the +nation: it could not merely leave the Church on one side. + +It was also superficially true that the Church was a power to be +reckoned with politically, quite apart from the traditional union of +Church and State--but only superficially true. What the revolutionary +politicians feared was the intrigue of those who commanded the +organisation of the Catholic Church, men whom they knew for the most +part to be without religion, and the sincerity of all of whom they +naturally doubted. A less superficial and a more solid judgment of the +matter would have discovered that the real danger lay in the animosity +or intrigue against the Civil Constitution, not of the corrupt +hierarchy, but of the sincere though ill-instructed and dwindling +minority which was still loyally attached to the doctrines and +discipline of the Church. But even this superficial judgment would not +have been fatal, had not the judgment of the National Assembly been +actually erroneous upon the first point--the vitality of the Faith. + +Had the Catholic Church been, as nearly all educated men then imagined, +a moribund superstition, had the phase of decline through which it was +passing been a phase comparable to that through which other religions +have passed in their last moments, had it been supported by ancient +families from mere tradition, clung to by remote peasants from mere +ignorance and isolation, abandoned (as it was) in the towns simply +because the towns had better opportunities of intellectual enlightenment +and of acquiring elementary knowledge in history and the sciences; had, +in a word, the imaginary picture which these men drew in their minds of +the Catholic Church and its fortunes been an exact one, then the Civil +Constitution of the Clergy would have been a statesmanlike act. It would +have permitted the hold of the Catholic Church upon such districts as it +still retained to vanish slowly and without shock. It proposed to keep +alive at a reasonable salary the ministers of a ritual which would +presumably have lost all vitality before the last of its pensioners was +dead; it would have prepared a bed, as it were, upon which the last of +Catholicism in Gaul could peacefully pass away. The action of the +politicians in framing the Constitution would have seemed more generous +with every passing decade and their wisdom in avoiding offence to the +few who still remained faithful, would have been increasingly applauded. + +On the other hand, and from the point of view of the statesman, the +Civil Constitution of the Clergy bound strictly to the State and made +responsible to it those ancient functions, not yet dead, of the +episcopacy and all its train. It was a wise and a just consideration on +the part of the Assembly that religions retain their machinery long +after they are dead, and if that machinery has ever been a State +machinery it must remain subject to the control of the State: and +subject not only up to the moment when the living force which once +animated it is fled, but much longer; up, indeed, to the moment when the +surviving institutions of the dead religion break down and perish. + +So argued the National Assembly and its committee, and, I repeat, the +argument was just and statesmanlike, prudent and full of foresight, save +for one miscalculation. The Catholic Church was not dead, and was not +even dying. It was exhibiting many of the symptoms which in other +organisms and institutions correspond to the approach of death, but the +Catholic Church is an organism and an institution quite unlike any +other. It fructifies and expands immediately under the touch of a lethal +weapon; it has at its very roots the conception that material prosperity +is stifling to it, poverty and misfortune nutritious. + +The men of the National Assembly would have acted more wisely had they +closely studied the story of Ireland (then but little known), or had +they even made themselves acquainted with the methods by which the +Catholic Church in Britain, after passing in the fifteenth century +through a phase somewhat similar to that under which it was sinking in +Gaul in the eighteenth, was stifled under Henry and Elizabeth. + +But the desire of the men of 1789 was not to kill the Church but to let +it die; they thought it dying. Their desire was only to make that death +decent and of no hurt to the nation, and to control the political action +of a hierarchy that had been wealthy and was bound up with the old +society that was crumbling upon every side. + +The Civil Constitution of the Clergy failed: it lit the civil war, it +dug the pit which divided Catholicism from the Revolution at the moment +of the foreign invasion, it segregated the loyal priest in such a +fashion that his order could not but appear to the populace as an order +of traitors, and it led, in the furnace of 1793, to the great +persecution from the memories of which the relations between the French +democracy and the Church have not recovered. + +It is important to trace the actual steps of the failure; for when we +appreciate what the dates were, how short the time which was left for +judgment or for revision, and how immediately disaster followed upon +error, we can understand what followed and we can understand it in no +other way. + +If we find an enduring quarrel between two families whose cause of +contention we cannot seize and whose mutual hostility we find +unreasonable, to learn that it proceeded from a cataclysm too rapid and +too violent for either to have exercised judgment upon it will enable us +to excuse or at least to comprehend the endurance of their antagonism. +Now, it was a cataclysm which fell upon the relations of the Church and +State immediately after the error which the Parliament had committed; a +cataclysm quite out of proportion to their intentions, as indeed are +most sudden disasters quite out of proportion to the forces that bring +them about. + +It was, as we have seen, in the summer of 1790--upon the 12th of +July--that the Civil Constitution of the Clergy was approved by the +Assembly. But it was not until the 26th of August that the King +consented to sign. Nor was there at the moment any attempt to give the +law effect. The protests of the bishops, for instance, came out quite at +leisure, in the month of October, and the active principle of the whole +of the Civil Constitution--to wit, the presentation of the Civic Oath +which the clergy were required to take, was not even debated until the +end of the year. + +This Civic Oath, which is sometimes used as a bugbear in the matter, was +no more than an engagement under the sanction of an oath that the bishop +or priest taking it would maintain the new _regime_--though that +_regime_ included the constitution of the clergy; the oath involved no +direct breach with Catholic doctrine or practice. It was, indeed, a +folly to impose it, and it was a folly based upon the ignorance of the +politicians (and of many of the bishops of the day) as to the nature of +the Catholic Church. But the oath was not, nor was it intended to be, a +measure of persecution. Many of the parish clergy took it, and most of +them probably took it in good faith: nor did it discredit the oath with +the public that it was refused by all save four of the acting bishops, +for the condition of the hierarchy in pre-revolutionary France was +notorious. The action of the bishops appeared in the public eye to be +purely political, and the ready acceptance of the oath by so many, +though a minority, of the lower clergy argued strongly in its favour. + +Nevertheless, no Catholic priest or bishop or layman could take that +oath without landing himself in disloyalty to his religion; and that for +the same reason which led St. Thomas of Canterbury to make his curious +and fruitful stand against the reasonable and inevitable, as much as +against the unreasonable, governmental provisions of his time. The +Catholic Church is an institution of necessity autonomous. It cannot +admit the right of any other power exterior to its own organisation to +impose upon it a modification of its discipline, nor, above all, a new +conception of its hieratic organisation. + +The reader must carefully distinguish between the acceptation by the +Church of a detail of economic reform, the consent to suppress a +corporation at the request of the civil power, or even to forego certain +traditional political rights, and the admission of the general principle +of civil control. To that general principle the Assembly, in framing the +Constitution of the Clergy, was quite evidently committed. To admit such +a co-ordinate external and civil power, or rather to admit a _superior_ +external power, is in theory to deny the principle of Catholicism, and +in practice to make of the Catholic Church what the other State +religions of Christendom have become. + +I have said that not until the end of the year 1790 was the debate +opened upon the proposition to compel the clergy to take the oath. + +It is a singular commentary upon the whole affair that compulsion should +have been the subject for debate at all. It should have followed, one +would have imagined, normally from the law. But so exceptional had been +the action of the Assembly and, as they now were beginning to find, so +perilous, that a special decree was necessary--and the King's signature +to it--before this normal consequence of a measure which had been law +for months, could be acted upon. + +Here let the reader pause and consider with what that moment--the end of +1790--coincided. + +The assignats, paper-money issued upon the security of the confiscated +estates of the Church, had already depreciated 10 per cent. Those who +had first accepted them were paying throughout France a penny in the +livre, or as we may put it, a penny farthing on the shilling, for what +must have seemed to most of them the obstinacy of one single +corporation--and that an unpopular one--against the decrees of the +National Assembly. + +It was now the moment when a definite reaction against the Revolution +was first taking shape, and when the populace was first beginning +uneasily to have suspicion of it; it was the moment when the Court was +beginning to negotiate for flight; it was the moment when (though the +populace did not know it) Mirabeau was advising the King with all his +might to seize upon the enforcement of the priests' oath as an +opportunity for civil war. + +The whole air of that winter was charged with doubt and mystery: in the +minds of all who had enthusiastically followed the march of the +Revolution, the short days of that rigorous cold of 1790-91 contained +passages of despair, and a very brief period was to suffice for making +the clerical oath not only the test of democracy against reaction, but +the wedge that should split the nation in two. + +With the very opening of the new year, on the 4th of January, the +bishops and priests in the Assembly were summoned to take the oath to +the King, the Nation, and the Law; but that law included the Civil +Constitution of the Clergy, and they refused. Within three months +Mirabeau was dead, the flight of the King determined on, the suspicion +of Paris at white heat, the oath taken or refused throughout France, +and the schismatic priests introduced into their parishes--it may be +imagined with what a clamour and with how many village quarrels! In that +same fortnight appeared the papal brief, long delayed, and known as the +Brief "_Caritas_," denouncing the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. Six +weeks later, at the end of May, the papal representative at the French +Court was withdrawn, and in that act religious war declared. + +Throughout this quarrel, which was now exactly of a year's duration, but +the acute phase of which had lasted only six months, every act of either +party to it necessarily tended to make the conflict more violent. Not +only was there no opportunity for conciliation, but in the very nature +of things the most moderate counsel had to range itself on one side or +the other, and every public act which touched in any way upon the sore +point, though it touched but indirectly, and with no desire on the part +of the actors to rouse the passions of the moment, immediately appeared +as a provocation upon one side or the other. + +It was inevitable that it should be so, with a population which had +abandoned the practice of religion, with the attachment of the clerical +organisation to the organisation of the old _regime_, with the strict +bond of discipline that united the priesthood of the Church in France +into one whole, and above all with the necessity under which the +Revolution was, at this stage, of finding a definite and tangible +enemy. + +This last point is of the very first importance. Public opinion was +exasperated and inflamed, for the King was known to be an opponent of +the democratic movement; yet he signed the bills and could not be +overtly attacked. The Queen was known to be a violent opponent of it; +but she did not actually govern. The Governments of Europe were known to +be opponents; but no diplomatic note had yet appeared of which public +opinion could make an object for attack. + +The resistance, therefore, offered by the clergy to the Civil +Constitution, had just that effect which a nucleus will have in the +crystallisation of some solution. It polarised the energies of the +Revolution, it provided a definite foil, a definite negative, a definite +counterpoint, a definite butt. Here was a simple issue. Men wearing a +special uniform, pursuing known functions, performing a known part in +society--to wit, the priests--were now for the most part the enemies of +the new democratic Constitution that was in preparation. They would not +take the oath of loyalty to it: they were everywhere in secret rebellion +against it and, where they were dispossessed of their cures, in open +rebellion. The clergy, therefore, that is the non-juring clergy (and the +conforming clergy were an experiment that soon became a fiction), were +after April 1791, in the eyes of all the democrats of the time, the +plainest and most tangible form of the opposition to democracy. + +To the way in which I have presented the problem a great deal more might +be added. The very fact that the democratic movement had come after a +period of unfaith, and was non-Catholic in its springs, would have +tended to produce that quarrel. So would the necessary attachment of the +Catholic to authority and the easy confusion between the principle of +authority and claims of a traditional monarchy. Again, the elements of +vanity, of material greed, and of a false finality which are to be +discovered in any purely democratic theory of the State, will between +them always bring this theory into some conflict with religion. The +centuries during which the throne and the altar had stood as twin +symbols, especially in France, the very terminology of religious +metaphor which had been forged during the centuries of monarchical +institutions in Europe, helped to found the great quarrel. But, I +repeat, the overt act without which the quarrel could never have become +the terribly great thing it did, the master blunder which destroyed the +unity of the revolutionary movement, was the Civil Constitution of the +Clergy. + +So much for the first year of the schism, May 1790 to May 1791. The +second year is but an intensification of the process apparent in the +first. + +It opens with the King's flight in June 1791: that is, with the first +open act of enmity taken against the authority of the National +Parliament since, two years before, the National Parliament had declared +itself supreme. Already the Court had been generally identified with the +resistance of the clergy, and a particular example of this had appeared +in the opinion that the King's attempted journey to St. Cloud in April +had been prompted by a desire to have communion at the hands of a +non-juring priest.[8] When, therefore, the King fled, though his flight +had nothing whatsoever to do with the clerical quarrel, it was +associated in men's minds with the clerical quarrel through his attempt +to leave Paris in April and from a long association of the Court with +the clerical resistance. The outburst of anti-monarchical feeling which +followed the flight was at the same time an outburst of anti-clerical +feeling; but the clergy were everywhere and could be attacked +everywhere. The Declaration of Pillnitz, which the nation very rightly +interpreted as the beginning of an armed European advance against the +French democracy, was felt to be a threat not only in favour of the King +but in favour also of the rebellious ecclesiastics. + +And so forth. The uneasy approach of war throughout that autumn and +winter of 1791-92, the peculiar transformation of the French +temperament which war or its approach invariably produces--a sort of +constructive exaltation and creative passion--began to turn a great part +of its energy or fury against the very persons of the orthodox priests. + +The new Parliament, the "Legislative" as it was called, had not been +sitting two months when it passed, upon November 29, 1791, the decree +that non-juring priests should be deprived of their stipend. And here +again we must note the curious lack of adjustment between law and fact +in all this clerical quarrel! For more than a year public money had been +paid to men who, under the law, should not during the whole of that year +have touched any salary! Yet, as in the case of the oath, special action +was necessary, and moreover the Parliament added to this tardy and +logical consequence of the law a declaration that those who had not so +taken the oath within eight days of their decree should be rendered +"suspect." + +The word "suspect" is significant. The Parliament even now could not +act, at least it could not act without the King; and this word +"suspect," which carried no material consequences with it, was one that +might cover a threat of things worse than regular and legal punishment. +It was like the mark that some power not authorised or legal makes upon +the door of those whom that power has singled out for massacre in some +city. + +Three weeks later Louis vetoed the decree refusing stipends to +non-jurors, and the year 1791 ended with the whole matter in suspense +but with exasperation increasing to madness. + +The first three months of 1792 saw no change. The non-juring clergy were +still tolerated by the Executive in their illegal position, and, what is +more extraordinary, still received public money and were still for the +most part in possession of their cures; the conception that the clergy +were the prime, or at any rate the most obvious, enemies of the new +_regime_ now hardened into a fixed opinion which the attempted +persecution of religion, as the one party called it, the obstinate and +anti-national rebellion of factious priests, as the other party called +it, was rapidly approaching real persecution and real rebellion. + +With April 1792 came the war, and all the passions of the war. + +The known hostility of the King to the Revolution was now become +something far worse: his known sympathy with an enemy under arms. To +force the King into the open was henceforward the main tactic of the +revolutionary body. + +Now for those whose object was forcing Louis XVI to open declarations of +hostility against the nation, his religion was an obvious instrument. In +no point could one come to closer grips with the King than on this +question of the Church, where already, in December 1791, he had +exercised his veto. + +On May 27, 1792, therefore, Guadet and Vergniaud, the Girondins, moved +that a priest who had refused to take the oath should be subjected to +transportation upon the mere demand of any twenty taxpayers within that +assembly of parishes known as a "Canton." It was almost exactly two +years since the Civil Constitution of the Clergy had first been reported +to the House by the Ecclesiastical Committee of the Constituent or +National Assembly. + +It must not be forgotten under what external conditions this violent +act, the first true act of persecution, was demanded. It was already a +month since, upon the 20th of April, the war had opened upon the Belgian +frontier by a disgraceful panic and the murder of General Dillon; almost +contemporaneous with that breakdown was the corresponding panic and +flight of the French troops in their advance to Mons. All Europe was +talking of the facile march upon Paris which could now be undertaken; +and in general this decree against the priests was but part of the +exasperated policy which was rising to meet the terror of the invasion. + +It was followed, of course, by the decree dismissing the Royal Guard, +and, rather more than a week later, by the demand for the formation of a +camp of volunteers under the walls of Paris. But with this we are not +here concerned. The King vetoed the decree against the non-juring +priests, and in the wild two months that followed the orthodox clergy +were, in the mind of the populace, and particularly the populace of +Paris, identified with the cause of the re-establishment of the old +_regime_ and the success of the invading foreign armies. + +With the crash of the 10th of August the persecution began: the true +persecution, which was to the growing bitterness of the previous two +years what a blow is to the opening words of a quarrel. + +The decree of the 27th of May was put into force within eleven days of +the fall of the Tuileries. True, it was not put into force in that +crudity which the Parliament had demanded: the non-juring priests were +given a fortnight to leave the kingdom, and if they failed to avail +themselves of the delay were to be transported. + +From this date to the end of the Terror, twenty-three months later, the +story of the relations between the Revolution and the Church, though +wild and terrible, is simple: it is a story of mere persecution +culminating in extremes of cruelty and in the supposed uprooting of +Christianity in France. + +The orthodox clergy were everywhere regarded by this time as the typical +enemies of the revolutionary movement; they themselves regarded the +revolutionary movement, by this time, as being principally an attempt to +destroy the Catholic Church. + +Within seven months of the fall of the monarchy, from the 18th of March, +1793, the priests, whether non-juring or schismatic, might, on the +denunciation of any six citizens, be subjected to transportation. + +There followed immediately a general attack upon religion. The attempted +closing of all churches was, of course, a failure, but it was firmly +believed that such attachment as yet remained to the Catholic Church was +due only to the ignorance of the provincial districts which displayed +it, or to the self-seeking of those who fostered it. The attempt at mere +"de-christianisation," as it was called, failed, but the months of +terror and cruelty, the vast number of martyrdoms (for they were no +less) and the incredible sufferings and indignities to which the priests +who attempted to remain in the country were subjected, burnt itself, as +it were, into the very fibre of the Catholic organisation in France, and +remained, in spite of political theory one way or the other, and in +spite of the national sympathies of the priesthood, the one great active +memory inherited from that time. + +Conversely, the picture of the priest, his habit and character, as the +fatal and necessary opponent of the revolutionary theory, became so +fixed in the mind of the Republican that two generations did nothing to +eliminate it, and that even in our time the older men, in spite of pure +theory, cannot rid themselves of an imagined connection between the +Catholic Church and an international conspiracy against democracy. Nor +does this non-rational but very real feeling lack support from the +utterances of those who, in opposing the political theory of the French +Revolution, consistently quote the Catholic Church as its necessary and +holy antagonist. + +The attempt to "de-christianise" France failed, as I have said, +completely. Public worship was restored, and the Concordat of Napoleon +was believed to have settled the relations between Church and State in a +permanent fashion. We have lived to see it dissolved; but this +generation will not see, nor perhaps the generation succeeding it, the +issue of the struggle between two bodies of thought which are divided by +no process of reason, but profoundly divorced by the action of vivid and +tragic historical memories. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[8] This opinion has entered into so many Protestant and non-Catholic +histories of the Revolution that it is worth criticising once again in +this little book. The King was perfectly free to receive communion +privately from the hands of orthodox priests, did so receive it, and had +received communion well within the canonical times. There was little +ecclesiastical reason for the attempted leaving of Paris for St. Cloud +on Monday the 18th April, 1791, save the _custom_ (not the religious +duty) of communicating in public on Easter Sunday itself; it was a +political move. + + + + +INDEX + + + Alexander the Great, 144 + Argonne, the, 156 + Arras, 132, 137 + Artois, Comte d', 105 + Avignon, 111 + + Bacharach, 173 + Bailly, 71, 95 + Barentin, 89 + Barrere, 80, 125, 130, 131 + Bastille, the, 95, 105, 109, 115 + Beauregard, 200 + Belgium, 123, 167, 169, 173 + Bergues, 191 + Bordeaux, 135 + Bouille, 107, 152 + Brissot, 110, 130 + Brunswick, Duke of, 115, 118, 178 + Brussels, 168 + + Caesar, 144 + Calonne, 46 + Cambon, 125 + Carignan, 200 + Carlyle, Thomas, 68 + Carnot, 72-74, 80, 81, 136, 139, 171, 184, 186, 195, 197, 198, 200, + 201 + Cassel, 192 + Chalons, 107, 158 + Champ-de-Mars, Massacre of, 109 + Champfleury, 77 + Charleroi, 210, 211 + Charles I of England, 222 + Chollet, 128 + Clerfayt, 206, 207, 209 + Coblentz, 115 + Coburg, 170, 173, 176, 177, 179, 186, 188, 196, 210 + Committee of Public Safety, 78, 79, 80, 81, 119, 125, 126, 128, 129, + 131, 134, 136, 137, 140, 183, 195, 196, 203 + Conde, 106 + Conde, fortress of, 135, 173, 177, 178, 180, 182, 183, 186, 195 + Condorcet, 71 + _Contrat Social_, 21, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37, 125, 133 + Coudequerque, 192 + Couthon, 131 + Custine, 177, 178, 179, 180 + + Danton, 64, 67-72, 73, 81, 82, 109, 117, 119, 120, 125, 130, 131, 135, + 137, 138, 139, 150, 162, 184, 185 + Desmoulins, 138 + Dillon, General, 250 + Drouet, 108 + Dumouriez, 43, 65-67, 113, 123, 124, 125, 155, 157, 158, 159, 162, + 163, 165, 168, 169, 170, 173 + Dunquerque, 135, 136, 181, 185, 186, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 195 + + England, 14, 124, 145 + Elizabeth, Queen of England, 239 + Esquelbecque, 191 + + Fersen, Count Axel de, 53 + Fleurus, 211, 212 + Fontenay, 128 + Fontenoy, 149, 166 + Fouche, 74 + Freemasonry, 71, 231 + Freytag, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194 + Furnes, 190, 194 + + George III of England, 63 + Gironde, 110 + _Girondins, The_, 110, 112, 119, 122, 123, 129, 249 + Grandpre, 158 + Guadet, 249 + Guise, 198, 200 + + Haguenau, 202 + Haine, the River, 167 + Hebert, 138 + Henry VIII of England, 222, 229, 239 + Hesse-Cassel, Landgrave of, 113 + Hoche, 202 + Holland, 124, 163 + Hoondschoote, 74, 136, 195, 196, 197 + Houchard, 179, 181, 192, 193, 194, 195, 198 + Howe, Lord, 213 + + Ireland, 239 + Isnard, 110 + + James II of England, 230 + Jefferson, 21 + Jemappes, 123, 166, 167 + Joseph II of Austria, 112, 163, 165 + Jourdan, 198 + + Kaiserslautern, 202 + Kaunitz, 155 + Kellermann, 159, 160 + Kilmaine, 180, 181 + + La Fayette, 43, 51, 61-65, 95, 100, 109, 114 + Lamballe, Princess de, 53, 71 + Landau, 177, 202, 203 + Lebas, 141 + Leipsic, 143, 214 + Lequesnoy, 177, 186, 195 + Linselles, 189 + Longwy, 115, 118, 156 + Lorraine, 118 + Louis XIV of France, 100, 225, 230 + Louis XVI of France, vi, 37-45, 71, 84, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, + 93, 95, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 107, 108, 109, 111, 114, + 117, 123, 124, 152, 153, 243, 245, 246, 247, 248, 249, 250 + Louis XVII of France, 135 + Louvre, the, 116, 117 + Luxembourg, 118 + Lyons, 129, 136, 182, 183 + Lys, the River, 206, 207 + + Machecoul, 128 + Maestricht, 168 + Malo-les-Bains, 194 + Marat, 74-77, 120, 135, 183 + Marcel, 120 + Marchionnes, 189 + Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, vi, 45-53, 63, 64, 90, 99, 100, + 101, 102, 103, 106, 107, 108, 109, 113, 116, 117, 138, 139, 152, + 153, 155, 245 + Marque, the River, 206 + "Marseillaise," the, 116 + Marseilles, 116, 131, 135, 182 + Maubeuge, 136, 177, 178, 181, 196, 197, 202 + Mayence, 135, 173, 177, 178 + Merda, 142 + Metz, 159 + Michelet, 68 + Mirabeau, 44, 53-61, 64, 70, 72, 102, 103, 104, 106, 107, 243 + Mons, 167, 177, 250 + Montmedy, 107 + Mouveau, 206 + + Namur, 179 + Nantes, 128, 131, 136, 137, 182 + Napoleon I, 66, 67, 72, 143, 150, 205, 214, 253 + Narbonne, 43, 155 + Necker, 46, 90, 94, 95 + Neerwinden, 124, 125, 128, 169 + + Orleans, 128 + Orleans, Duke of, 109 + + Parthenay, 128 + Pichegru, 202 + Pillnitz, 154, 247 + Poland, 31 + Polignac, Madame de, 53 + Pollio, 120 + + Redange, 118 + Robespierre, 77-83, 111, 112, 132, 133, 134, 140, 141, 142, 213 + Robinet, Dr., 120 + Roland, 110 + Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 20, 21, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, + 36, 37, 125 + Russia, 14 + + St. Amand, 206 + Saint-Andre, Jeanbon, 80, 131, 185 + St. Cloud, 108, 247 + Saint-Just, 80, 131, 133, 140, 141, 210 + St. Menehould, 159 + Scheldt, the, 123, 183, 205, 206 + Sedan, 114 + Servia, 155 + Sieyes, 87 + Spain, 24, 44, 124, 150 + + Talavera, 189 + Talleyrand, 150 + Terror, the, 79, 80, 81, 82, 120, 137, 139, 140, 142, 251 + Tetteghem, 191 + Thouars, 128 + Toulon, 135, 136, 182, 183, 203 + Tourcoing, 189, 206, 208, 209 + Tournay, 210 + Trafalgar, 213 + Tuileries, the, 100, 101, 116, 121, 251 + + Valenciennes, 129, 135, 169, 173, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, + 186, 195 + Valmy, 121, 122, 131, 158, 159, 160, 169 + Varennes, 107, 108, 154 + Vendee, 128, 135, 203 + Verdun, 118, 120, 156, 157 + Vergniaud, 110, 130, 249 + Versailles, 52, 94, 99, 100, 102, 152, 153 + Vienna, 163, 210 + + Warcoing, 205 + Waterloo, 143 + Wattignies, 73, 136, 201, 208 + Wellington, Duke of, 189 + Westermann, 131 + Wilder, 191 + Wissembourg, 202 + Wormhoudt, 191 + Wurmser, 178 + + York, Duke of, 179, 181, 186, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 194, 205, 208, + 209 + + * * * * * + +_Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London and Bungay._ + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The French Revolution, by Hilaire Belloc + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FRENCH REVOLUTION *** + +***** This file should be named 35215.txt or 35215.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/5/2/1/35215/ + +Produced by Steven Gibbs, Richard J. 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