The Psychology of Revolution Part 20

The conflicts between contrary ideals-that is, between beliefs in which reason can play no part-are always pitiless, and the struggle with the Vendee immediately a.s.sumed the ferocious savagery always observable in religious wars. It lasted until the end of 1795, when Hoche finally "pacified" the country. This pacification was the simple result of the practical extermination of its defenders.

"After two years of civil war," writes Molinari, "the Vendee was no more than a hideous heap of ruins. About 900,000 individuals-men, women, children, and aged people-had perished, and the small number of those who had escaped ma.s.sacre could scarcely find food or shelter. The fields were devastated, the hedges and walls destroyed, and the houses burned."

Besides their faith, which so often rendered them invincible, the soldiers of the Revolution had usually the advantage of being led by remarkable generals, full of ardour and formed on the battle- field.

The majority of the former leaders of the army, being n.o.bles, had emigrated so that a new body of officers had to be organised. The result was that those gifted with innate military apt.i.tudes had a chance of showing them, and pa.s.sed through all the grades of rank in a few months. Hoche, for instance, a corporal in 1789, was a general of division and commander of an army at the age of twenty-five. The extreme youth of these leaders resulted in a spirit of aggression to which the armies opposed to them were not accustomed. Selected only according to merit, and hampered by no traditions, no routine, they quickly succeeded in working out a tactics suited to the new necessities.

Of soldiers without experience opposed to seasoned professional troops, drilled and trained according to the methods in use everywhere since the Seven Years' War, one could not expect complicated manoeuvres.

Attacks were delivered simply by great ma.s.ses of troops. Thanks to the numbers of the men at the disposal of their generals, the considerable gaps provoked by this efficacious but barbarous procedure could be rapidly filled.

Deep ma.s.ses of men attacked the enemy with the bayonet, and quickly routed men accustomed to methods which were more careful of the lives of soldiers. The slow rate of fire in those days rendered the French tactics relatively easy of employment. It triumphed, but at the cost of enormous losses. It has been calculated that between 1792 and 1800 the French army left more than a third of its effective force on the battle-field (700,000 men out of 2,000,000).

Examining events from a psychological point of view, we shall continue to elicit the consequences from the facts on which they are consequent.

A study of the revolutionary crowds in Paris and in the armies presents very different but readily interpreted pictures.

We have proved that crowds, unable to reason, obey simply their impulses, which are always changing, but we have also seen that they are readily capable of heroism, that their altruism is often highly developed, and that it is easy to find thousands of men ready to give their lives for a belief.

Psychological characteristics so diverse must naturally, according to the circ.u.mstances, lead to dissimilar and even absolutely contradictory actions. The history of the Convention and its armies proves as much. It shows us crowds composed of similar elements acting so differently in Paris and on the frontiers that one can hardly believe the same people can be in question.

In Paris the crowds were disorderly, violent, murderous, and so changeable in their demands as to make all government impossible.

In the armies the picture was entirely different. The same mult.i.tudes of unaccustomed men, restrained by the orderly elements of a laborious peasant population, standardised by military discipline, and inspired by contagious enthusiasm, heroically supported privations, disdained perils, and contributed to form that fabulous strain which triumphed over the most redoubtable troops in Europe.

These facts are among those which should always be invoked to show the force of discipline. It transforms men. Liberated from its influence, peoples and armies become barbarian hordes.

This truth is daily and increasingly forgotten. Ignoring the fundamental laws of collective logic, we give way more and more to s.h.i.+fting popular impulses, instead of learning to direct them.

The mult.i.tude must be shown the road to follow; it is not for them to choose it.

CHAPTER VII

PSYCHOLOGY OF THE LEADERS OF THE REVOLUTION

1. Mentality of the Men of the Revolution. The respective Influence of Violent and Feeble Characters.

Men judge with their intelligence, and are guided by their characters. To understand a man fully one must separate these two elements.

During the great periods of activity-and the revolutionary movements naturally belong to such periods-character always takes the first rank.

Having in several chapters described the various mentalities which predominate in times of disturbance, we need not return to the subject now. They const.i.tute general types which are naturally modified by each man's inherited and acquired personality.

We have seen what an important part was played by the mystic element in the Jacobin mentality, and the ferocious fanaticism to which it led the sectaries of the new faith.

We have also seen that all the members of the a.s.semblies were not fanatics. These latter were even in the minority, since in the most sanguinary of the revolutionary a.s.semblies the great majority was composed of timid and moderate men of neutral character. Before Thermidor the members of this group voted from fear with the violent and after Thermidor with the moderate deputies.

In time of revolution, as at other times, these neutral characters, obeying the most contrary impulses, are always the most numerous. They are also as dangerous in reality as the violent characters. The force of the latter is supported by the weakness of the former.

In all revolutions, and in particularly in the French Revolution, we observe a small minority of narrow but decided minds which imperiously dominate an immense majority of men who are often very intelligent but are lacking in character

Besides the fanatical apostles and the feeble characters, a revolution always produces individuals who merely think how to profit thereby. These were numerous during the French Revolution. Their aim was simply to utilise circ.u.mstances so as to enrich themselves. Such were Barras, Tallien, Fouche, Barrere, and many more. Their politics consisted simply in serving the strong against the weak.

From the outset of the Revolution these "arrivists," as one would call them to-day, were numerous. Camille Desmoulins wrote in 1792: "Our Revolution has its roots only in the egotism and self-love of each individual, of the combination of which the general interest is composed."

If we add to these indications the observations contained in another chapter concerning the various forms of mentality to be observed in times of political upheaval, we shall obtain a general idea of the character of the men of the Revolution. We shall now apply the principles already expounded to the most remarkable personages of the revolutionary period.

2. Psychology of the Commissaries or Representatives "on Mission."

In Paris the conduct of the members of the Convention was always directed, restrained, or excited by the action of their colleagues, and that of their environment.

To judge them properly we should observe them when left to themselves and uncontrolled, when they possessed full liberty. Such were the representatives who were sent "on mission" into the departments by the Convention.

The power of these delegates was absolute. No censure embarra.s.sed them. Functionaries and magistrates had perforce to obey them.

A representative "on mission" "requisitions," sequestrates, or confiscates as seems good to him; taxes, imprisons, deports, or decapitates as he thinks fit, and in his own district he is a "pasha."

Regarding themselves as "pashas," they displayed themselves "drawn in carriages with six horses, surrounded by guards; sitting at sumptuous tables with thirty covers, eating to the sound of music, with a following of players, courtezans, and mercenaries... ." At Lyons "the solemn appearance of Collot d'Herbois is like that of the Grand Turk. No one can come into his presence without three repeated requests; a string of apartments precedes his reception-room, and no one approaches nearer than fifteen paces."

One can picture the immense vanity of these dictators as they solemnly entered the towns, surrounded by guards, men whose gesture was enough to cause heads to fall.

Petty lawyers without clients, doctors without patients, unfrocked clergymen, obscure attorneys, who had formerly known the most colourless of lives, were suddenly made the equals of the most powerful tyrants of history. Guillotining, drowning, shooting without mercy, at the hazard of their fancy, they were raised from their former humble condition to the level of the most celebrated potentates.

Never did Nero or Heliogabalus surpa.s.s in tyranny the representatives of the Convention. Laws and customs always restrained the former to a certain extent. Nothing restrained the commissaries.

"Fouche," writes Taine, "lorgnette in hand, watched the butchery of 210 inhabitants of Lyons from his window. Collot, Laporte, and Fouche feasted on days of execution (fusillades), and at the sound of each discharge sprang up with cries of joy, waving their hats."

Among the representatives "on mission" who exhibit this murderous mentality we may cite as a type the ex-cure Lebon, who, having become possessed of supreme power, ravaged Arras and Cambrai. His example, with that of Carrier, contributes to show what man can become when he escapes from the yoke of law and tradition. The cruelty of the ferocious commissary was complicated by Sadism; the scaffold was raised under his windows, so that he, his wife, and his helpers could rejoice in the carnage. At the foot of the guillotine a drinking-booth was established where the sans-culottes could come to drink. To amuse them the executioner would group on the pavement, in ridiculous att.i.tudes, the naked bodies of the decapitated.

"The reading of the two volumes of his trial, printed at Amiens in 1795, may be counted as a nightmare. During twenty sessions the survivors of the hecatombs of Arras and Cambrai pa.s.sed through the ancient hall of the bailiwick at Amiens, where the ex-member of the Convention was tried. What these phantoms in mourning related is unheard of. Entire streets dispeopled; nonagenarians and girls of sixteen decapitated after a mockery of a trial; death buffeted, insulted, adorned, rejoiced in; executions to music; battalions of children recruited to guard the scaffold; the debauchery, the cynicism, the refinements of an insane satrap; a romance by Sade turned epic; it seems, as we watch the unpacking of these horrors, that a whole country, long terrorised, is at last disgorging its terror and revenging itself for its cowardice by overwhelming the wretch there, the scapegoat of an abhorred and vanished system."

The only defence of the ex-clergyman was that he had obeyed orders. The facts with which he was reproached had long been known, and the Convention had in no wise blamed him for them.

I have already spoken of the vanity of the deputies "on mission," who were suddenly endowed with a power greater than that of the most powerful despots; but this vanity is not enough to explain their ferocity.

That arose from other sources. Apostles of a severe faith, the delegates of the Convention, like the inquisitors of the Holy Office, could feel, can have felt, no pity for their victims. Freed, moreover, from all the bonds of tradition and law, they could give rein to the most savage instincts that primitive animality has left in us.

Civilisation restrains these instincts, but they never die. The need to kill which makes the hunter is a permanent proof of this.

M. Cunisset-Carnot has expressed in the following lines the grip of this hereditary tendency, which, in the pursuit of the most harmless game, re-awakens the barbarian in every hunter:-

"The pleasure of killing for killing's sake is, one may say, universal; it is the basis of the hunting instinct, for it must be admitted that at present, in civilised countries, the need to live no longer counts for anything in its propagation. In reality we are continuing an action which was imperiously imposed upon our savage ancestors by the harsh necessities of existence, during which they had either to kill or die of hunger, while to- day there is no longer any legitimate excuse for it. But so it is, and we can do nothing; probably we shall never break the chains of a slavery which has bound us for so long. We cannot prevent ourselves from feeling an intense, often pa.s.sionate, pleasure in shedding the blood of animals towards whom, when the love of the chase possesses us, we lose all feeling of pity. The gentlest and prettiest creatures, the song-birds, the charm of our springtime, fall to our guns or are choked in our snares, and not a shudder of pity troubles our pleasure at seeing them terrified, bleeding, writhing in the horrible suffering we inflict on them, seeking to flee on their poor broken paws or desperately beating their wings, which can no longer support them... . The excuse is the impulse of that imperious atavism which the best of us have not the strength to resist."

At ordinary times this singular atavism, restrained by fear of the laws, can only be exercised on animals. When codes are no longer operative it immediately applies itself to man, which is why so many terrorists took an intense pleasure in killing. Carrier's remark concerning the joy he felt in contemplating the faces of his victims during their torment is very typical. In many civilised men ferocity is a restrained instinct, but it is by no means eliminated.

3. Danton and Robespierre.

Danton and Robespierre represented the two princ.i.p.al personages of the Revolution. I shall say little of the former: his psychology, besides being simple, is familiar. A club orator firstly, impulsive and violent, he showed himself always ready to excite the people. Cruel only in his speeches, he often regretted their effects. From the outset he shone in the first rank, while his future rival, Robespierre, was vegetating almost in the lowest.