The Ancient Regime Part 40

[Footnote 5330: See above, book I. p. 55.]

[Footnote 5331: Letrosne, ibid. (1779), p. 539.]

[Footnote 5332: Archives nationales, F16, 965, and H, 892. (Ordinance of August 4 1764; a circular of instructions of July 20, 1767; a letter of a police lieutenant of Toulouse, September 21, 1787).]

[Footnote 5333: Archives nationales, H, 724; H, 554; F4 2397; F16 965.--Letters of the jailers of Carca.s.sonne (June 22, 1789); of Beziers (July 19, 1786); of Nimes (July 1, 1786); of the intendant, M. d'Aine (March 19, 1786).]

[Footnote 5334: Archives nationales, H, 554. (Letter of M. de Bertrand, intendant of Rennes, August 7, 1785).]

[Footnote 5335: Archives nationales, H, 426. (Remonstrances, Feb.

1783).--H, 554. (Letter of M. de Bertrand, Aug. 17, 1785).]

[Footnote 5336: Archives nationales, H, 614 (Memoire by Rene de Hauteville, parliamentary advocate, Saint-Brieuc, Dec. 25, 1776.)]

[Footnote 5337: "Process-verbaux de l'a.s.s. Prov. de Soissonnais" (1787) p. 457.]

[Footnote 5338: Archives nationales, H, 616 (A letter of M. De Boves, intendant of Rennes, April 23, 1774).]

[Footnote 5339: Perin, "La Jeunesse de Robespierre," 301. (Doleances des parroisses rurales en 1789).]

[Footnote 5340: Hippeau, "Le Gouvern. de Normandie," VII. 147-177 (1789).--Boivin-Champeaux, "Notice hist. sur la Revolution dans le departement de l'Eure," p. 83 (1789).]

[Footnote 5341: Theron de Montauge, p. 87. (Letter of the prior of the convent, March, 1789).]

[Footnote 5342: "Proces-verbaux de l'a.s.s. prov. de Lyonnais,"

p.57.--Archives nationales, F4, 2073. Memorandum of Jan. 24, 1788.

"Charitable a.s.sistance is very limited, the provincial authorities providing no resources for such accidents."]

[Footnote 5343: Leva.s.seur, "La France industrielle," 119.--In 1862, the population being almost triple (1 696 000) there are but 90 000 paupers.]

[Footnote 5344: Albert Babeau, "Hist. de Troyes," I. 91. (Letter of the mayor Huez, July 30, 1788).]

[Footnote 5345: Floquet, VII, 506.]

[Footnote 5346: Archives nationales, H, 1453. (Letter of M. de Sainte-Suzanne, April 29, 1789).]

[Footnote 5347: Arthur Young, I. 256.]

[Footnote 5348: "Correspond. secret inedite," from 1777 to 1792, published by M. de Lescure, II. 351 (May 8, 1789). Cf. C. Desmoulins, "La Lanterne," of 100 rioters arrested at Lyons 96 were branded.]

[Footnote 5349: De Bezenval, II. 344, 350.--Dussault, "La Prise de la Bastille," 352.--Marmontel, II, ch. XIV, 249.--Mme. Vigee-Lebrun, I.

177, 188.]

[Footnote 5350: Mercier, I. 32; VI. 15; X. 179; XI. 59; XII. 83.--Arthur Young, I. 122.]

[Footnote 5351: In the original, pain de Gonesse,--bread, made in a village of this name near Paris, and renowned for its whiteness.--TR.]

[Footnote 5352: "Dialogues sur le commerce des bles," by Galiani (1770).

"If the strong of the markets are content, no misfortune will happen to the administration. The great conspire and rebel; the bourgeois murmurs and lives a celibate; peasants and artisans despair and go away; porters get up riots."]

CHAPTER IV. THE ARMED FORCES.

I.

Military force declines.--How the army is recruited.--How the soldier is treated.

Against universal sedition where is force?--The measures and dispositions which govern the 150,000 men who maintain order are the same as those ruling the 26 millions people subject to it. We find here the same abuses, disaffection, and other causes for the dissolution of the nation which, in their turn, will dissolve the army.

Of the 90 millions of pay[5401] which the army annually costs the treasury, 46 millions are for officers and only 44 millions for soldiers, and we are already aware that a new ordinance reserves ranks of all kinds for verified n.o.bles. In no direction is this inequality, against which public opinion rebels so vigorously, more apparent. On the one hand, authority, honors, money, leisure, good-living, social enjoyments, and plays in private, for the minority. On the other hand, for the majority, subjection, dejection, fatigue, a forced or betrayed enlistment, no hope of promotion, pay at six sous a day,[5402] a narrow cot for two, bread fit for dogs, and, for several years, kicks like those bestowed on a dog.[5403] On the one hand, a n.o.bility of high estate, and, on the other, the lowest of the populace. One might say that this was specially designed for contrast and to intensify irritation. "The insignificant pay of the soldier," says an economist, "the way in which he is dressed, lodged and fed, his utter dependence, would render it cruelty to take any other than a man of the lower cla.s.s."[5404] Indeed, he is sought for only in the lowest layers of society. Not only are n.o.bles and the bourgeoisie exempt from conscription, but again the employees of the administration, of the fermes and of public works, "all gamekeepers and forest-rangers, the hired domestics and valets of ecclesiastics, of communities, of religious establishments, of the gentry and of n.o.bles,"[5405] and even of the bourgeoisie living in grand style, and still better, the sons of cultivators in easy circ.u.mstances, and, in general, all possessing influence or any species of protector. There remains, accordingly, for the militia none but the poorest cla.s.s, and they do not willingly enter it. On the contrary, the service is hateful to them; they conceal themselves in the forests where they have to be pursued by armed men: in a certain canton which, three years later, furnishes in one day from fifty to one hundred volunteers, the young men cut off their thumbs to escape the draft.[5406] To this sc.u.m of society is added the sweepings of the depots and of the jails. Among the vagabonds that fill these, after winnowing out those able to make their families known or to obtain sponsors, "there are none left," says an intendant, "but those who are entirely unknown or dangerous, out of which those regarded as the least vicious are selected and efforts are made to place these in the army."[5407]--The last of its affluents is the half-forced, half-voluntary enlistment by which the ranks are for the most part filled, the human waste of large towns, like adventurers, discharged apprentices, young reprobates turned out of doors, and people without homes or steady occupation. The recruiting agent who is paid so much a head for his recruits and so much an inch on their stature above five feet, "holds his court in a tavern, treating everyone" promoting his merchandise:

"Come, boys, soup, fish, meat and salad is what you get to eat in the regiment;" nothing else, "I don't deceive you--pie and Arbois wine are the extras."[5408]

He pours the wine, pays the bill and, if need be, yields his mistress.

"After a few days debauchery, the young libertine, with no money to pay his debts, is obliged to sell himself, while the laborer, transformed into soldier, begins to drill under the lash."--Strange recruits these, for the protection of society, all selected from the cla.s.s which will attack it, down-trodden peasants, imprisoned vagabonds, social outcasts, poor fellows in debt, disheartened, excited and easily tempted, who, according to circ.u.mstances, become at one time rioters, and at another soldiers.--Which lot is preferable? The bread the soldier eats is not more abundant than that of the prisoner, while poorer in quality; for the bran is taken out of the bread which the locked-up vagabond eats, and left in the bread which is eaten by the soldier who locks him up[5409]. In this state of things the soldier ought not to mediate on his lot, and yet this is just what his officers incite him to do. They also have become politicians and fault-finders. Some years before the Revolution[5410] "disputes occurred" in the army, "discussions and complaints, and, the new ideas fermenting in their heads, a correspondence was established between two regiments. Written information was obtained from Paris, authorized by the Minister of War, which cost, I believe, twelve louis per annum. It soon took a philosophic turn, embracing dissertations, criticisms of the ministry, and of the government, desirable changes and, therefore, the more diffused." Sergeants like Hoche, and fencing-masters like Augereau, certainly often read this news, carelessly left lying on the tables, and commented on it during the evening in their soldier quarters. Discontent is of ancient date, and already, at the end of the late reign, grievous words are heard. At a banquet given by a prince of the blood,[5411] with a table set for a hundred guests under an immense tent and served by grenadiers, the odor these diffused upset the prince's delicate nose.

"These worthy fellows," said he, a little too loud, "smell strong of the stocking." One of the grenadiers bluntly responded, "Because we haven't got any," which "was followed by profound silence." During the ensuring years irritation smolders and augments; the soldiers of Rochambeau have fought side by side with the free militia of America, and they keep this in mind. In 1788,[5412] Marshal de Vaux, previous to the insurrection in Dauphiny, writes to minister that "it is impossible to rely on the troops," while four months after the opening of the States-General 16,000 deserters roaming around Paris leads the revolts instead of suppressing them.[5413]

II.

The social organization is dissolved.--No central rallying point.--Inertia of the provinces.--Ascendancy of Paris.

Once this barrier has disappeared, no other embankment remains and the inundation spreads all over France like over an immense plain.

With other nations in like circ.u.mstances, some obstacles have been encountered; elevations have existed, centers of refuge, old constructions in which, in the universal fright, a portion of the population could find shelter. Here, the first crisis sweeps away all that remains, each individual of the twenty-six scattered millions standing alone by himself. The administrations of Richelieu and Louis XIV. had been a long time at work insensibly destroying the natural groupings which, when suddenly dissolved, unite and form over again of their own accord. Except in Vendee, I find no place, nor any cla.s.s, in which a good many men, having confidence in a few men, are able, in the hour of danger, to rally around these and form a compact body. Neither provincial nor munic.i.p.al patriotism any longer exists. The inferior clergy are hostile to the prelates, the gentry of the province to the n.o.bility of the court, the va.s.sal to the seignior, the peasant to the townsman, the urban population to the munic.i.p.al oligarchy, corporation to corporation, parish to parish, neighbor to neighbor. All are separated by their privileges and their jealousies, by the consciousness of having been imposed on, or frustrated, for the advantage of another.

The journeyman tailor is embittered against his foreman for preventing him from doing a day's work in private houses, hairdressers against their employers for the like reason, the pastry-cook against the baker who prevents him from baking the pies of housekeepers, the village spinner against the town spinners who wish to break him up, the rural wine-growers against the bourgeois who, in the circle of seven leagues, strives to have their vines pulled up,[5414] the village against the neighboring village whose reduction of taxation has ruined it, the overtaxed peasant against the under taxed peasant, one-half of a parish against its collectors, who, to its detriment, have favored the other half.

"The nation," says Turgot, mournfully,[5415] "is a society composed of different orders badly united and of a people whose members have few mutual liens, n.o.body, consequently, caring for any interest but his own.

Nowhere is there any sign of an interest in common. Towns and villages maintain no more relation with each other than the districts to which they are attached; they are even unable to agree together with a view to carry out public improvements of great importance to them."

The central power for a hundred and fifty years rules through its division of power. Men have been kept separate, prevented from acting in concert, the work being so successful that they no longer understand each other, each cla.s.s ignoring the other cla.s.s, each forming of the other a chimerical picture, each bestowing on the other the hues of its own imagination, one composing an idyll, the other framing a melodrama, one imagining peasants as sentimental swains, the other convinced that the n.o.bles are horrible tyrants.--Through this mutual misconception and this secular isolation, the French lose the habit, the art and the faculty for acting in an entire body. They are no longer capable of spontaneous agreement and collective action. No one, in the moment of danger, dares rely on his neighbors or on his equals. No one knows where to turn to obtain a guide. "A man willing to be responsible for the smallest district cannot be found; and, more than this, one man able to answer for another man[5416]." Utter and irremediable disorder is at hand. The Utopia of the theorists has been accomplished, the savage condition has recommenced. Individuals now stand in by themselves; everyone reverting back to his original feebleness, while his possessions and his life are at the mercy of the first band that comes along. He has nothing within him to control him but the sheep-like habit of being led, of awaiting an impulsion, of turning towards the accustomed center, towards Paris, from which his orders have always arrived. Arthur Young[5417] is struck with this mechanical movement.

Political ignorance and docility are everywhere complete. He, a foreigner, conveys the news of Alsace into Burgundy: the insurrection there had been terrible, the populace having sacked the city-hall at Strasbourg, of which not a word was known at Dijon; "yet it is nine days since it happened; had it been nineteen I question if they would more than have received the intelligence." There are no newspapers in the cafes; no local centers of information, of resolution, of action. The province submits to events at the capital; "people dare not move; they dare not even form an opinion before Paris speaks."--This is what Monarchical centralization leads to. It has deprived the groups of their cohesion and the individual of his motivational drive. Only human dust remains, and this, whirling about and gathered together in ma.s.sive force, is blindly driven along by the wind.[5418]

III.

Direction of the current.--The people led by lawyers.-- Theories and piques the sole surviving forces.--Suicide of the Ancient regime.

We are all well aware from which side the gale comes, and, to a.s.sure ourselves, we have merely to see how the reports of the Third-Estate are made up. The peasant is led by the man of the law, the petty attorney of the rural districts, the envious advocate and theorist. This one insists, in the report, on a statement being made in writing and at length of his local and personal grievances, his protest against taxes and deductions, his request to have his dog free of the clog, and his desire to own a gun to use against the wolves[5419]. Another one, who suggests and directs, envelopes all this in the language of the Rights of Man and that of the circular of Sieyes.

"For two months," writes a commandant in the South,[5420] "inferior judges and lawyers, with which both town and country swarm, with a view to their election to the States-General, have been racing after the members of the Third-Estate, under the pretext of standing by them and of giving them information. . . They have striven to make them believe that, in the States-General, they alone would be masters and regulate all the affairs of the kingdom; that the Third-Estate, in selecting its deputies among men of the robe, would secure the might and the right to take the lead, to abolish n.o.bility and to cancel all its rights and privileges; that n.o.bility would no longer be hereditary; that all citizens, in deserving it, would be ent.i.tled to claim it; that, if the people elected them, they would have accorded to the Third-Estate whatever it desired, because the curates, belonging to the Third-Estate, having agreed to separate from the higher clergy and unite with them, the n.o.bles and the clergy, united together, would have but one vote against two of the Third-Estate. . . . If the third--Estate had chosen sensible townspeople or merchants they would have combined without difficulty with the other two orders. But the a.s.semblies of the bailiwicks and other districts were stuffed with men of the robe who had absorbed all opinions and striven to take precedence of the others, each, in his own behalf, intriguing and conspiring to be appointed a deputy."