A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795 Part 39

An apprehension of some attempt from the Jacobins, and the discontents which the scarcity of bread give rise to among the people, have produced a private order from the Committees of government for arming and re-organizing the National Guard.*

* Though I have often had occasion to use the term National Guard, it is to be understood only as citizens armed for some temporary purpose, whose arms were taken from them as soon as that service was performed. The _Garde Nationale,_ as a regular inst.i.tution, had been in a great measure suppressed since the summer of 1793, and those who composed it gradually disarmed. The usual service of mounting guard was still continued, but the citizens, with very few exceptions, were armed only with pikes, and even those were not entrusted to their own care, each delivering up his arms when he retired more exactly than if it were an article of capitulation with a successful enemy.

--I remember, in 1789 and 1790, when this popular militia was first inst.i.tuted, every one, either from policy or inclination, appeared eager to promote it; and nothing was discussed but military fetes, b.a.l.l.s, exercise, and uniforms. These patriotic levities have now entirely vanished, and the business proceeds with languor and difficulty. One dreads the present expence, another future persecution, and all are solicitous to find cause for exemption.

This reluctance, though perhaps to be regretted, is in a great measure justifiable. Where the lives and fortunes of a whole nation are dependent on the changes of party, obscurity becomes the surest protection, and those who are zealous now, may be the first sacrifices hereafter. Nor is it encouraging to arm for the defence of the Convention, which is despised, or to oppose the violence of a populace, who, however misguided, are more objects of compa.s.sion than of punishment.

Fouquier Tinville, with sixteen revolutionary Judges and Jurymen, have been tried and executed, at the moment when the instigators of their crimes, Billaud-Varennes, Collot, &c. were sentenced by the Convention to a banishment, which is probably the object of their wishes. This Tinville and his accomplices, who condemned thousands with such ferocious gaiety, beheld the approach of death themselves with a mixture of rage and terror, that even cowardice and guilt do not always exhibit. It seems an awful dispensation of Providence, that they who were inhuman enough to wish to deprive their victims of the courage which enabled them to submit to their fate with resignation, should in their last moments want that courage, and die despairing, furious, and uttering imprecations, which were returned by the enraged mult.i.tude.*

--Yours, &c.

* Some of the Jurymen were in the habit of taking caricatures of the prisoners while they condemned them. Among the papers of the Revolutionary Tribunal were found blank sentences, which were occasionally sent to the Committee of Public Safety, to be filled up with the names of those intended to be sacrificed.--The name of one of the Jurymen executed on this occasion was Leroi, but being a very ardent republican, he had changed it for that of Citizen Tenth of August.

Amiens, May 26, 1795.

Our journey to Paris has been postponed by the insurrection which occurred on the first and second of Prairial, (20th and 21st of May,) and which was not like that of Germinal, fabricated--but a real and violent attempt of the Jacobins to regain their power. Of this event it is to be remarked, that the people of Paris were at first merely spectators, and that the Convention were at length defended by the very cla.s.ses which they have so long oppressed under the denomination of aristocrats. For several hours the a.s.sembly was surrounded, and in the power of its enemies; the head of Ferraud, a deputy, was borne in triumph to the hall;* and but for the impolitic precipitation of the Jacobins, the present government might have been destroyed.

* The head of Ferraud was placed on a pole, and, after being paraded about the Hall, stationed opposite the President. It is impossible to execrate sufficiently this savage triumph; but similar scenes had been applauded on the fourteenth of July and the fifth and sixth of October 1789; and the Parisians had learned, from the example of the Convention themselves, that to rejoice in the daily sacrifice of fifty or sixty people, was an act of patriotism. As to the epithets of Coquin, Scelerats, Voleurs, &c. which were now bestowed on the a.s.sembly, they were only what the members were in the constant habit of applying to each other.

The a.s.sa.s.sin of Ferraud being afterwards taken and sentenced to the Guillotine, was rescued by the mob at the place of execution, and the inhabitants of the Fauxbourg St. Antoine were in revolt for two days on this occasion, nor would they give him up until abandoned by the cannoneers of their party.--It is singular, and does no honour to the revolutionary school, or the people of Paris, that Madame Elizabeth, Malsherbes, Cecile Renaud, and thousands of others, should perish innocently, and that the only effort of this kind should be exerted in favour of a murderer who deserved even a worse death.

The contest began, as usual, by an a.s.semblage of females, who forced themselves into the national palace, and loudly clamoured for immediate supplies of bread. They then proceeded to reproach the Convention with having robbed them of their liberty, plundered the public treasure, and finally reduced the country to a state of famine.*

* People.--_"Nous vous demandons ce que vous avez fait de nos tresors et de notre liberte?"_--"We want to know what you have done with our treasure and our liberty?"

President.--_"Citoyens, vous etes dans le sein de la Convention Nationale."_--"Citizens, I must remind you that you are in the presence of the National Convention."

People.--_"Du pain, du pain, Coquin--Qu'as tu fait de notre argent?

Pas tant de belles phrases, mais du pain, du pain, il n'y a point ici de conspirateurs--nous demandons du pain parceque nous avons saim."_--"Bread, bread, rogue!--what have you done with our money?-- Fine speeches won't do--'tis bread we want.--There are no conspirators among us--we only ask for bread, because we are hungry."

See Debates of the Convention.

--It was not easy either to produce bread, or refute these charges, and the Deputies of the moderate party remained silent and overpowered, while the Jacobins encouraged the mob, and began to head them openly. The Parisians, however interested in the result of this struggle, appeared to behold it with indifference, or at least with inactivity. Ferraud had already been ma.s.sacred in endeavouring to repel the croud, and the Convention was abandoned to outrage and insult; yet no effectual attempt had been made in their defence, until the Deputies of the Mountain prematurely avowed their designs, and moved for a repeal of all the doctrines since the death of Robespierre--for the reincarceration of suspected persons--and, in fine, for an absolute revival of the whole revolutionary system.

The avowal of these projects created an immediate alarm among those on whom the ma.s.sacre of Ferraud, and the dangers to which the a.s.sembly was exposed, had made no impression. The dismay became general; and in a few hours the aristocrats themselves collected together a force sufficient to liberate the a.s.sembly,* and wrest the government from the hands of the Jacobins.--

* This is stated as a ground of reproach by the Jacobins, and is admitted by the Convention. Andre Dumont, who had taken so active a part in supporting Robespierre's government, was yet on this occasion defended and protected the whole day by a young man whose father had been guillotined.

--This defeat ended in the arrest of all who had taken a part against the now triumphant majority; and there are, I believe, near fifty of them in custody, besides numbers who contrived to escape.*

* Among those implicated in this attempt to revive the revolutionary government was Carnot, and the decree of arrest would have been carried against him, had it not been suggested that his talents were necessary in the military department. All that remained of Robespierre's Committees, Jean Bon St. Andre, Robert Lindet, and Prieur, were arrested. Carnot alone was excepted; and it was not disguised that his utility, more than any supposed integrity, procured him the exemption.

That the efforts of this more sanguinary faction have been checked, is doubtless a temporary advantage; yet those who calculate beyond the moment see only the perpetuation of anarchy, in a habit of expelling one part of the legislature to secure the government of the other; nor can it be denied, that the freedom of the representative body has been as much violated by the Moderates in the recent transactions, as by the Jacobins on the thirty-first of May 1793. The Deputies of the Mountain have been proscribed and imprisoned, rather as partizans than criminals; and it is the opinion of many, that these measures, which deprive the Convention of such a portion of its members, attach as much illegality to the proceedings of the rest, as the former violences of Robespierre and his faction.*

* The decrees pa.s.sed by the Jacobin members during their few hours triumph cannot be defended; but the whole Convention had long acquiesced in them, and the precise time when they were to cease was certainly a matter of opinion. The greater part of these members were accused of no active violence, nor could they have been arrested on any principles but that of being rivals to a faction stronger than themselves.

--It is true, the reigning party may plead in their justification that they only inflict what they would themselves have suffered, had the Jacobins prevailed; and this is an additional proof of the weakness and instability of a form of government which is incapable of resisting opposition, and which knows no medium between yielding to its adversaries, and destroying them.

In a well organized const.i.tution, it is supposed that a liberal spirit of party is salutary. Here they dispute the alternatives of power and emolument, or prisons and guillotines; and the sole result to the people is the certainty of being sacrificed to the fears, and plundered by the rapacity of either faction which may chance to acquire the superiority.-- Had the government any permanent or inherent strength, a party watching its errors, and eager to attack them, might, in time, by these perpetual collisions, give birth to some principles of liberty and order. But, as I have often had occasion to notice, this species of republicanism is in itself so weak, that it cannot exist except by a constant recurrence to the very despotism it professes to exclude. Hence it is jealous and suspicious, and all opposition to it is fatal; so that, to use an argument somewhat similar to Hume's on the liberty of the press in republics, the French possess a sort of freedom which does not admit of enjoyment; and, in order to boast that they have a popular const.i.tution, are obliged to support every kind of tyranny.*

* Hume observes, that absolute monarchies and republics nearly approach; for the excess of liberty in the latter renders such restraints necessary as to make them in practice resemble the former.

The provinces take much less interest in this event, than in one of a more general and personal effect, though not apparently of equal importance. A very few weeks ago, the Convention a.s.severated, in the usual acclamatory style, that they would never even listen to a proposal for diminis.h.i.+ng the value, or stopping the currency, of any description of a.s.signats. Their oaths are not, indeed, in great repute, yet many people were so far deceived, as to imagine that at least the credit of the paper would not be formally destroyed by those who had forced its circulation. All of a sudden, and without any previous notice, a decree was issued to suppress the corsets, (or a.s.signats of five livres,) bearing the King's image;* and as these were very numerous, and chiefly in the hands of the lower order of people, the consternation produced by this measure was serious and unusual.--

* The opinion that prevailed at this time that a restoration of the monarchy was intended by the Convention, had rendered every one solicitous to ama.s.s a.s.signats issued during the late King's reign.

Royal a.s.signats of five livres were exchanged for six, seven, and eight livres of the republican paper.

--There cannot be a stronger proof of the tyranny of the government, or of the national propensity to submission, than the circ.u.mstance of making it penal to refuse one day, what, by the same authority, is rendered valueless the next--and that notwithstanding this, the remaining a.s.signats are still received under all the probability of their experiencing a similar fate.

Paris now offers an interval of tranquillity which we mean to avail ourselves of, and shall, in a day or two, leave this place with the hope of procuring pa.s.sports for England. The Convention affect great moderation and grat.i.tude for their late rescue; and the people, persuaded in general that the victorious party are royalists, wait with impatience some important change, and expect, if not an immediate restoration of the monarchy, at least a free election of new Representatives, which must infallibly lead to it. With this hope, which is the first that has long presented itself to this hara.s.sed country, I shall probably bid it adieu; but a visit to the metropolis will be too interesting for me to conclude these papers, without giving you the result of my observations.

--Yours. &c.

Paris, June 3, 1795.

We arrived here early on Sat.u.r.day, and as no stranger coming to Paris, whether a native of France, or a foreigner, is suffered to remain longer than three days without a particular permission, our first care was to present ourselves to the Committee of the section where we lodge, and, on giving proper security for our good conduct, we have had this permission extended to a Decade.

I approached Paris with a mixture of curiosity and apprehension, as though I expected the scenes which had pa.s.sed in it, and the moral changes it had undergone, would be every where visible; but the gloomy ideas produced by a visit to this metropolis, are rather the effect of mental a.s.sociation than external objects. Palaces and public buildings still remain; but we recollect that they are become the prisons of misfortune, or the rewards of baseness. We see the same hotels, but their owners are wandering over the world, or have expired on the scaffold. Public places are not less numerous, nor less frequented; but, far from inspiring gaiety, we behold them with regret and disgust, as proofs of the national levity and want of feeling.

I could almost wish, for the credit of the French character, to have found some indications that the past was not so soon consigned to oblivion. It is true, the reign of Robespierre and his sanguinary tribunal are execrated in studied phrases; yet is it enough to adopt humanity as a mode, to sing the _Revel du Peuple_ in preference to the _Ma.r.s.eillois,_ or to go to a theatre with a well-powdered head, instead of cropped locks a la Jacobin? But the people forget, that while they permitted, and even applauded, the past horrors, they were also accessary to them, and if they rejoice at their termination, their sensibility does not extend to compunction; they cast their sorrows away, and think it sufficient to exhibit their reformation in dressing and dancing--

"Yet hearts refin'd their sadden'd tint retain, "The sigh is pleasure, and the jest is pain."

Sheridan.

French refinements are not, however, of this poetical kind.*

* This too great facility of the Parisians has been commented upon by an anonymous writer in the following terms:

"At Paris, where more than fifty victims were dragged daily to the scaffold, the theatres never failed to overflow, and that on the Place de la Revolution was not the least frequented. The public, in their way every evening to the Champs Ellisees, continued uninterruptedly to cross the stream of blood that deluged this fatal spot with the most dreadful indifference; and now, though these days of horror are scarcely pa.s.sed over our heads, one would suppose them ages removed--so little are we sensible that we are dancing, as it were, on a platform of dead bodies. Well may we say, respecting those events which have not reached ourselves--

_'Le malheur Qui n'est plus, n'a jamais existe.'_

But if we desire earnestly that the same misfortunes should not return, we must keep them always present in our recollection."

The practice of the government appears to depart every day more widely from its professions; and the moderate harangues of the tribune are often succeeded by measures as arbitrary as those which are said to be exploded.--Perhaps the Convention begin to perceive their mistake in supposing that they can maintain a government against the inclination of the people, without the aid of tyranny. They expected at the same time that they decried Robespierre, to retain all the power he possessed.

Hence, their a.s.sumed principles and their conduct are generally at variance; and, divided between despotism and weakness, they arrest the printers of pamphlets and newspapers one day, and are obliged to liberate them the next.--They exclaim publicly against the system of terror, yet secretly court the a.s.sistance of its agents.--They affect to respect the liberty of the press, yet every new publication has to defend itself against the whole force of the government, if it happen to censure a single member of the reigning party.--Thus, the _Memoirs of Dumouriez_ had circulated nearly through all Europe, yet it was not without much risk, and after a long warfare, that they were printed in France.*

*On this subject the government appears sometimes to have adopted the maxim--that prevention is better than punishment; for, in several instances, they seized on ma.n.u.scripts, and laid embargoes on the printers' presses, where they only suspected that a work which they might disapprove was intended to be published.

I know not if it be attributable to these political inconsistencies that the calm which has succeeded the late disorders is little more than external. The minds of the people are uncommonly agitated, and every one expresses either hope or apprehension of some impending event. The royalists, amidst their ostensible persecutions, are particularly elated; and I have been told, that many conspicuous revolutionists already talk of emigration.

I am just returned from a day's ramble, during which I have met with various subjects of unpleasant meditation. About dinner-time I called on an old Chevalier de St. Louis and his lady, who live in the Fauxbourg St. Germain. When I knew them formerly, they had a handsome annuity on the Hotel de Ville, and were in possession of all the comforts necessary to their declining years. To-day the door was opened by a girl of dirty appearance, the house looked miserable, the furniture worn, and I found the old couple over a slender meal of soup maigre and eggs, without wine or bread. Our revolutionary adventures, as is usual on all meetings of this kind, were soon communicated; and I learned, that almost before they knew what was pa.s.sing around them, Monsieur du G--------'s forty years'