against the nobles: "The grass has already grown go and eat it!"
Auxerre, Amiens, and Lille followed the example of Dijon.
A few days later, the "robbers" — as most historians call the hungry rioters gathered in Pontoise, in Poissy, in Saint Germain with the intention of looting flour warehouses, headed for Versailles.
Louis XVI had to go out on the balcony of the palace, talk to the people and promise that the price of bread would be lowered by 2 sous (about 4 kopecks), which Turgot, as a true "economist", of course, resisted.
The price of bread was not lowered.
At the same time ,the "robbers" entered Paris, looted bakeries and gave the crowd bread, which they managed to capture.
The troops scattered them.
Two rioters were hanged in the square of Grava, and as they died, they shouted that they were dying for the people.
Since that time, a legend has been created about the "robbers" traveling in France — a legend that played such an important role in the summer of 1789, when it served as an excuse for the urban bourgeoisie to arm themselves.
Since that time, proclamations have been pasted up in Versailles, directed against the king and his ministers and threatening, if the price of bread remains the same, to execute the king the day after the coronation or to destroy the entire royal family.
Since that time, fake government decrees have begun to spread in the province.
One of them said that the Council had appointed a fee for grain bread.
These riots were, however, suppressed, but they left a deep mark.
A fierce struggle between the parties began.
Pamphlets were pouring in from everywhere; some accused the ministers, others spoke of a conspiracy of princes against the king, and others attacked the royal power.
In a word, with the general excited state of minds, the popular revolt was a spark that fell on gunpowder.
They began to talk about concessions to the people, which had never been thought of before: public works were opened; the grinding tax was abolished, which gave rise to various rumors to the people in the vicinity of Rouen; it was said that all landowner rights were destroyed, and the peasants began to refuse (in July) to pay duties.
In a word, the discontented, apparently, did not waste time and took every opportunity to expand the popular uprisings.
It is impossible to tell in sequence about all the popular riots in the reign of Louis XVI: there are not enough accurate materials for this.
Historians do not deal with this issue much, the archives are not used, and only by chance we have to meet indications that there were "riots"in one place or another.
In Paris, for example, they took place after the destruction of the guild courts in 1776; in the same year, there were extremely serious riots throughout France, caused by rumors about the abolition of the corvee and the poll tax paid to the landowner.
Some printed data that I have had to study, however, indicate that between 1777 and 1783 the number of riots decreased somewhat; it is possible that this was influenced to some extent by the American war, as well as better harvests.
From 1782 and 1783, however, the riots resumed and continued, increasing, until the revolution itself.
In 1782 there was an uprising in Poitiers; in 1786 in Visille; from 1783 to 1787 — in the Cevennes, in Vivar and in Gevodan.
The discontented, who were called "mascarats", broke into the courts, notaries and prosecutors and burned all the acts and contracts in order to take revenge on the so called praticiens (small lawyers), who sowed discord among the peasants and initiated all sorts of trials.
Three of the leaders were hanged, the rest were sent to hard labor; but the unrest resumed on the first occasion, namely, when the parliaments were closed.
In 1786, Lyon * * rebelled.
The weavers, who were processing silk, went on strike: they were promised an increase in wages and in the meantime the troops were called; there was a clash, and three of the instigators were hanged.
From that time on, Lyon became a hotbed of uprisings, and when elections were called in 1789, the same people who took part in the 1786 riot were elected.
* Vie C. de, Vaisseile ].
de.
Histoire generale du Languedoc, continuee par Du Mege, v. 1-10.
Paris, 1840—1846.
** Chassin Ch.
-L.
Genie de la Revolution, v. 1—2.
Paris, 1863.
Sometimes the uprisings took on a religious character; sometimes they appeared in the form of resistance to the recruitment of soldiers (every recruitment of militia, Turgot said, is accompanied by a riot); sometimes the people rebelled against the salt tax or refused to pay tithes.
One way or another, riots occurred constantly, and they were most numerous in the east, south — east and north east of France the future centers of the revolution.
They grew more and more, and finally, in 1788, after the dissolution of the judicial institutions, which were called parliaments at that time, and the appointment of other courts (coursplenieres) to replace them, uprisings covered almost the whole of France.
For the people, of course, there was not much difference between the parliament and "coursplenieres".
If parliaments sometimes refused to register a royal decree or a ministerial decree, they, on the other hand, did not show any attention to the needs of the people.
But the parliaments resisted the court — and that was enough.
When the representatives of the bourgeoisie and the parliaments asked the people for support, the people willingly began to worry in order to express their protest against the court and the rich.
In June 1787, the Paris Parliament gained popularity by denying the court money.
The law required that the royal decrees should be entered in the parliamentary registers for disclosure, and the Paris Parliament willingly fulfilled this with regard to some of them: on the grain trade, on the convocation of provincial assemblies and on serfdom.
But he refused to register a decree introducing new taxes: a new "land subsidy" and a new stamp duty.
Then the king called a special royal meeting, called litdejustice, and forced to register his decrees.
The Parliament protested and thereby won the sympathy of both the bourgeoisie and the people.
During each session of the Paris parliament, a whole crowd gathered near the courthouse; scribes from various judicial places, curious people and people from the family jostled at the doors and gave ovations to the members of parliament.
To put an end to this, the king exiled the parliament to Troyes; but then there were general demonstrations in Paris, and popular hatred was already directed mainly against the princes (especially against the Duke of Artois) and against the queen, who received the nickname of Madame Scarcity.
The Paris Chamber of Revenue, supported by popular unrest, as well as all the provincial parliaments and courts protested against the exile of the Paris parliament, and as the unrest increased, the king had to return the exiled parliament back on September 9, and this, of course, gave rise to new demonstrations in Paris, during which an effigy representing Minister Calonne was burned.
These disturbances occurred mainly among the petty bourgeoisie.
But in other places they also took on a more popular character.
In 1788, an uprising broke out in Brittany.
When the commandant of the city of Rennes and the intendant (governor) of this province appeared at the courthouse to announce to the Parliament of Brittany the order for its abolition, the whole city rose.
The crowd showered insults and even crushed the commandant of the city and the governor.
The fact is that the people hated the intendant Bertrand de Moleville, and the bourgeoisie, taking advantage of this, spread the rumor that all this was the work of his hands.
"This monster should be strangled," said one of the leaflets distributed in the crowd.
When Molville left the court, stones were thrown at him and several times they tried to throw a rope with a long noose on him.
The troops were summoned, and the battle was ready to begin, but the youth disorganized the troops: one of the officers threw down his sword and joined the people.
Little by little, similar unrest spread to other cities of Brittany; then the peasants rose in turn during the loading of bread at Quimper, Saint Brieuc, Morlaix, Port l'Abbe, Lambalet, etc.
It is interesting to note the active role played in these riots by the Rennes students who joined the uprising*.
* Du Chalelier A. R. Histoire de la Revolution dans les departements de 1'ancienne Bretagne.
Paris, 1836, v. 2, p. 60—70, 161 et suiv.
In the Dauphin, and especially in Grenoble, the movement took on an even more serious character.
As soon as the Commandant Clermont Toner published a decree on the dissolution of parliament, the population of Grenoble changed.
The alarm was sounded; its sounds soon reached the neighboring villages, and the peasants flocked to the city.
There was a bloody clash, many people were killed.
The guards guarding Dante's command were powerless; his palace was destroyed.
Clermont Toner himself, under the threat of an axe raised over his head, had to cancel the royal decree.
People, especially women, acted here.
As for the members of the Parliament, it was difficult for the people to even find them.
They hid and wrote to Paris that the uprising had taken place against their will.
When the people found them, they had to keep them as captives, because their presence gave the uprising an appearance of legality.
The captured members of parliament were guarded by women: they were afraid to entrust this matter to men for fear that they would not be released.
The bourgeoisie of Grenoble was evidently afraid of this popular uprising; at night it organized its own militia, which took possession of the city gates and military posts and then handed them over to the troops.
Guns were put up against the rebels, and members of the parliament and they took advantage of the darkness to escape.
From June 9 to June 14, the reaction was triumphant; but on the 14th they learned that there had been an uprising in Besancon and that the Swiss had refused to shoot at the people there, and this raised the spirit again; they even talked about convoking Provincial states.
But new troops were sent from Paris, and the excitement gradually subsided.
Nevertheless, the movement, supported especially by women, continued for some time*.
* Vic C. de, Vaissette J. de.
Histoire generate de Languedoc, v. 10, p. 637.
In addition to these two uprisings, which are mentioned by all historians, there were at the same time many others: in Provence, in Languedoc, in Roussillon, in Bearnais, in Flanders, in Franche Comte and in Burgundy.
Where there were no real uprisings, the general uprising was still used to support unrest and organize demonstrations.
In Paris, they celebrated with numerous demonstrations on behalf of Archbishop Sens, who was previously a minister.
A military force was deployed to protect the New Bridge, and several clashes took place between the army and the people, the leaders of which, Bertrand de Molville notes in his Notes (p.136), "were the very people who subsequently took part in all popular movements during the revolution."
An interesting letter from Marie Antoinette to the Count of Mercy dated August 24, 1788, in which she speaks of her fears, informs about the resignation of Archbishop Sens and says that she is making efforts to return Necker.
From this letter, it is clear what impression the street gatherings made on the courtyard.
The Queen foresees that the return of Necker will "weaken the royal power"; she is afraid "that it will be necessary to appoint a prime minister", but "time is running out".
It is necessary that the Broker agrees*.
* Feuillel de Conches F. S. Louis XVI, Mane Antoinette et Madame Elisabeth Lettres et documents inedits, v. 1-6.
Paris, 1864-1873, v. 1, p. 214-217 "Last night," writes the Queen, " the abbot wrote to us and informed us of my desire.
More than ever, I think that time is running out and that it is necessary for him (Necker) to agree.
The king has quite agreed with me, he has just brought me a paper written by his hand, with a statement of his opinions, a copy of which I am sending you."
The next day she writes again: "There is nothing more to hesitate.
If he can get down to business tomorrow, so much the better.
The matter is very urgent...
I am afraid that I will not have to appoint a prime minister, " i.e. to make up a ministry.
Three weeks later, at the news of Lamoignon's resignation, new gatherings were held.
The crowd rushed to set fire to the houses of two ministers, Lamoignon and Brienne, as well as the house of Dubois.
Troops were called up, and "a terrible beating of these unfortunate people who did not even defend themselves"took place on the streets of Malet and Grennel.
Dubois fled from Paris.
Otherwise, "the people would have organized their own lynching," say " Two Friends of Freedom."
Later, in October 1788, when the parliament exiled to Troyes was returned, the "clerks and the rabble" staged illuminations on the Place Dauphine for several consecutive evenings.
They begged people for money for fireworks, forced the gentlemen to get out of their carriages and bow to the statue of Henry IV, burned dolls that invented the favorites of the court of Calonne, Breteuil, the Duchess of Polignac.
They were also going to burn the image of the queen.
Little by little, these gatherings spread to other quarters, and troops were called to disperse them.
There was bloodshed, and there were many dead and wounded in the square of Grava; but as the members of parliament tried the prisoners, they got off lightly.
This is how the revolutionary spirit was excited and spread on the eve of the revolution*.
The initiative came from the bourgeoisie, especially from the small ones; but, generally speaking, the bourgeois tried not to compromise themselves, and very few of them decided to resist the court more or less openly before the convocation of the States General.
If there were nothing else, except for the rare cases of their protest, France would have been waiting for many years for the overthrow of the royal self will.
Fortunately, many reasons pushed the masses of the people to revolt; and despite the fact that every riot was followed by gallows, mass arrests, and even torture of those arrested, the people, driven to despair by poverty and at the same time driven by the vague hope that the old woman spoke to Arthur Jung, still rebelled.
He rose up against the quartermasters of the provinces, against the tax collectors, against the salt tax collectors, even against the army itself, and thus upset the government mechanism.
* For more information, see: Roquain F. L'esprit revolutionnaire avant la Revolution.
Paris, 1878.
Since 1788, peasant riots have become such a common phenomenon and taxes have been so poorly received in the treasury that there were not enough funds for state expenditures.
Then Louis XVI, who for 14 years refused to gather representatives of the people for fear that his royal power would suffer from this, was forced to convene first a Meeting of Notables ("venerable" people) and finally the States General.
VI
THE NEED TO CONVENE THE STATES GENERAL
To anyone who knew the situation of France, it was clear that the irresponsible management of the court could no longer continue.
The poverty in the villages grew and grew, and every year it became more difficult to collect taxes and, moreover, to force the peasants to pay more duties to the landowner and to serve all kinds of corvee by order of the provincial administration.
Taxes alone absorbed more than half, and sometimes more than two thirds, of what a peasant could earn in the course of a year.
Violence, on the one hand, and rebellion, on the other, became a common phenomenon in the villages.
And not only the peasants protested and rebelled now.
The bourgeoisie also loudly expressed dissatisfaction.
It is true that it took advantage of the ruin of the peasants to involve them in industry, took advantage of demoralization in the administration, and disorder in financial affairs to seize all sorts of monopolies and enrich itself on state loans.
However, this was not enough for the bourgeoisie.
For some time, the bourgeoisie can perfectly get along with the royal autocracy and the rule of the court.
But there comes a time when it begins to fear for its monopolies, for the money it has lent to the state, for the acquired land property, for its industrial enterprises, and then it begins to look condescendingly at popular riots or even encourages them in order to break the rule of the court and establish its own political power.
This is very clearly seen in the first 13 or 14 years of the reign of Louis XVI, from 1774 to 1788.
The necessity of a complete change in the entire political system of France was evident; but Louis XVI and the whole court resisted this and resisted it for so long that those modest reforms that would have been very well accepted at the beginning of the kingdom, or even in 1783 and 1785, turned out to be far behind the development of popular thought by the time the king decided to give them.
While in 1775 a mixed regime of government of the aristocracy with popular representation would have completely satisfied the bourgeoisie, 12 or 13 years later, in 1787 and 1788, the king was faced with public opinion, which no longer wanted to hear about half measures and already demanded representative government with all the resulting restrictions on royal power.
We have already seen how Louis XVI rejected Turgot's modest projects.
He resented the very idea of limiting the royal power.
That is why Turgot's reforms: the abolition of the serfdom, the abolition of the establishment of guild elders and a timid attempt to force the privileged classes, the nobility and clergy, to pay some taxes did not yield anything significant.
Everything is connected in the state, but in the old regime everything was destroyed.
Necker, who was appointed minister shortly after Turgot's resignation, was more of a financier than a statesman, and he also had a limited mind, the mind of a financier, catching the small side of public affairs rather than their large state sides.
He was at home among financial transactions and loans, but it is only necessary to read his book "Dupouvoirexecutif "("Executive Power") to see how poorly his mind, accustomed to talk about the theories of the state, understood the struggle of human passions and the needs of society at the moment; how little he was able to understand the enormous political, economic, religious and social task that France faced in 1789*.
* Necker J. Du pouvoir executif dans les grands Etats, \ 1—2 Paris, 1792.
The main idea of this work is that if France is experiencing a revolutionary crisis in 1792, the reason for this is that the National Assembly did not give the king a strong executive power.
"Everything would have gone in its own order, more or less well, if they had taken care to establish a saving governing power in our country," writes Necker in the preface and then explains in two volumes what enormous rights should have been granted to the king.
It is true that in the book "Surlalegislationetlecommercedesgrains", published in 1776, he developed — in contrast to the system of freedom of grain trade defended by Turgot some thoughts indicating his sympathy for the poor classes of the population; he demanded, for example, that the state intervene and establish a tax on bread in the interests of the poor; but this was limited to his governmental "socialism".
The most important thing for him was a strong state, a respected throne surrounded by high officials for this purpose, and a powerful executive in last.
Necker, therefore, could never deal with Louis XVI so decisively, definitely, strictly and boldly, as the situation required.
He timidly spoke to him about representative government and limited himself to such reforms that could neither lead France out of its predicament, nor satisfy anyone, but only showed everyone the need for radical changes.
The provincial zemstvo assemblies, which Necker called on 18 in addition to the previously convened Turgot, and which were followed by district and parish meetings, had to discuss the most difficult issues and discover the terrible ulcers of unlimited royal power.
And since the debates on these subjects soon became known and even reached the villages, they obviously further undermined the old order.
Thus, the provincial assemblies, which in 1776 could have served as a lightning rod, in 1788 were already accomplices of the revolution.
In the same way, the famous "Report on the State of Finances", published by Necker in 1781, a few months before it was published in the state Headquarters, was a thunderbolt for the royal power.
As is usually the case in such cases, Necker thus helped the fall of an already shattered system, but he was unable to prevent the transition of this fall of the old system into a revolution.
In all probability, he hardly even foresaw her approach.
Necker's first resignation was followed from 1781 to 1787 by a period of complete financial ruin.
The financial situation became so bad that the debts of the state, provinces, ministries and even the royal court itself grew in a terrible way.
The state could go bankrupt at any moment, and the bourgeoisie, interested in being lenders, did not want this for anything now.
The people were so impoverished that they could no longer pay taxes; they did not pay them and rebelled.
As for the clergy and nobility, they resolutely refused to sacrifice any of their privileges for the benefit of the state.
Under such conditions, peasant uprisings quickly brought the revolution closer.
And in the midst of all these difficulties, Minister Calonne called a Meeting of notables ("the best" people) in Versailles on February 22, 1787.
The convocation of the Assembly of Notables was exactly what Necker should not have done at the moment, since this half measure, on the one hand, inevitably led to the convocation of a National Legislative Assembly, and on the other hand, caused distrust of the court and hatred of the privileged classes — the nobility and the clergy.
Through the notables, it became known that the national debt reached the figure of 1,646 million livres, an enormous amount for that time, and that the annual deficit reached 140 million livres.
* And this is in such a ruined country as France was then!
* The livre was then about a franc.
All this became known; it was talked about; and when everyone was already talking about it, then the notables, elected from the upper classes of society and representing in essence a ministerial meeting, dispersed on May 25, having done absolutely nothing, having decided absolutely nothing.
During their meetings, Lomeny de Brienne, the archbishop of the city of Sane, was appointed minister in place of Calonne; but with his intrigues and "measures of severity" he only restored the parliaments against himself, and then caused riots everywhere by wanting to dissolve the parliaments, and further aroused public opinion against the court.
When he was dismissed (August 25), celebrations were held all over France.
But he so clearly proved the impossibility of an autocratic regime that the court had no choice but to obey.
And so, on August 8, 1788, Ludo vic XVI was finally forced to convene the States General.
Their opening was scheduled for May 1, 1789.
But even here the court and Necker, who was again called to the ministry in 1788, arranged it in such a way that they increased the general discontent.
Public opinion in France demanded that in the States General, where the three existing estates each had their own separate representation, the third estate should be given a double number of seats and that the voting should take place according to the number of deputies, and not according to the estates.
The provincial assemblies (i.e., the provincial lands) had already expressed themselves in this direction , but Louis XVI and Necker opposed this and even called (on November 6, 1788) a second Meeting of notables, which they hoped would reject both the double representation of the third estate and the universal vote.
The Notables did so, but it didnot help anything either.
Thanks to the provincial assemblies, public opinion was already so inclined in favor of the third estate that Necker and the court were still forced to give in.
The third estate received a double representation, i.e., out of a thousand deputies, it had the right to as many representatives as the clergy and the nobility combined.
we jumped into the first courtyard of the Bastille proper — the Provincial courtyard, in which the commandant's house was located.
This courtyard turned out to be empty, since after Thuriot's departure, the invalids, together with de Launay, retired to the interior of the fortress.
Once in the Governor's yard, these eight or nine people first lowered the small drawbridge of the Front part, broke down its gates with axes, and then lowered the large bridge.
Then more than three hundred people broke into the Governor's yard and ran to two other drawbridges, a small and a large one, which served to cross the wide main moat into the fortress itself.
Both bridges were, however, already raised from the inside by the defenders of the fortress.
Here something happened that immediately brought the rage of the Parisian nation to its highest point and later cost de Launay's life.
When the crowd flooded the Governor's Yard, the defenders of the Bastille began to shoot at it; someone even made an attempt to raise the drawbridge of the Front Line to prevent the crowd from leaving the Governor's Yard and taking it prisoner or destroying it.
Thus, at the very moment when Thuriot and Corny were telling the people on the Place de Grave that the commandant had promised not to shoot, the soldiers from the height of the fortress wall fired rifle volleys at the Governor's courtyard, and the Bastille cannons fired cannons into the neighboring streets.
* Now there are historians who are trying to prove that this attempt was made not on the orders of de Launay, but on the own initiative of several disabled people who went out for provisions and were now returning to the village.
It seems to me that such a course of action is absolutely incredible on the part of three or four soldiers lost in a huge crowd.
Besides, why was it necessary to lock the crowd in the courtyard, if it was not intended to make hostages out of it against the people or to kill it?
After all the negotiations that took place in the morning, this fire, which was fired at the crowd, was naturally understood as treason on the part of de Launay, and the people began to accuse him of having lowered the first two drawbridges of the Advanced part in order to lure the crowd under fire from the fortress wall*.
* Various explanations were given for this sudden shooting.
According to some, the defenders of the Bastille opened fire, because the crowd that flooded the courtyards of the Orme and the Governor's began to rob the commandant's house and the houses where the disabled lived.
Meanwhile, in the eyes of every military man, the very taking by assault of the Advanced part, which gave the people access to the access bridges of the fortress and to its gates, was already a sufficient reason for opening fire on the besiegers.
It is possible and even probable that at this very time de Launay received the order he expected to defend the Bastille to the last extreme.
It is known that one such order was intercepted; but it is possible that the same order, sent by another way, reached its destination.
There is even an assumption that such an order was actually transmitted to the commandant.
All this happened at about one o'clock in the afternoon.
The news that the guns of the Bastille were firing at the people immediately spread throughout Paris and led to two consequences.
The standing committee of the Paris militia, for its part, hastened to send a new deputation to the commandant with a proposal to accept a militia detachment into the fortress, which will defend it together with the troops.
But this deputation did not reach the commandant due to a strong exchange of fire, which continued all the time between the invaders and the attackers, who, standing under the walls of the surrounding buildings, fired especially at the soldiers standing on the wall at the guns.
The people, moreover, understood that the deputations of the Committee only hindered the siege.
"They donot want any more deputations, they demand the surrender of the Bastille and they want to destroy this terrible prison: they loudly demand the death of the commandant, " the deputies who returned said.
This, however, did not prevent the Committee sitting in the town hall from sending a third deputation.
The royal and city proctor, Rohr Ethis de Corny, and several other citizens were instructed to cool the ardor of the people, prevent the siege and enter into an agreement with de Launay, so that he would let the committee militia into the fortress.
The desire to prevent the people from taking possession of the Bastille was very clearly revealed here.
* "They were instructed to persuade all those who were in the vicinity of the Bastille to return to their districts and there immediately enlist in the Paris militia and remind M. de Launay of the promise he had made to Messrs. Thuriot de la Rosiere and Bellon"…
(LaJourneedu 14 juillet 1789, pCLVIII).
Having appeared in the courtyard of the Advanced unit, full of people armed with guns, axes, etc., the deputation turned to the invali ladies.
The latter, obviously, demanded that the people first of all leave the Governor's yard.
Then the deputation began to persuade the people to leave (Ibid., p.CCXIV, note).
Fortunately, the people did not even think of following their advice, but continued the siege, they realized that the time for negotiations had passed, and treated the gentlemen deputies very badly; they even once heard talk of killing them as traitors (Ibid., p. CCXVI, note, Proces verbaldeselecteurs).
As for the Parisian people in general, for their part, as soon as the news of the shooting spread throughout the city, they began to act without waiting for anyone's orders, but guided only by their revolutionary instinct.
He brought the guns captured at the Invalides to the Town Hall, and about three o'clock, when Corny's deputation was returning with the story of its failure, it met on the way about three hundred soldiers of the French guard and a lot of armed bourgeois under the command of the former soldier Julen, who were heading for the Bastille with five guns.
At this time, the shooting had been going on for about three hours.
The people did not retreat, despite many dead and wounded, and continued the siege, resorting to various tricks: for example, two carts of straw and manure were brought, so that the smoke from them formed a kind of veil and facilitated the siege of the two entrance gates (at the small and at the large drawbridge).
The buildings located in the Governor's Yard have already been burned.
* 83 people were killed on the spot, 15 died of wounds, 13 were injured, 60 were injured.
The guns arrived just in time.
They were brought into the Governor's yard and placed against the drawbridges and gates only 15 fathoms away from them.
It is easy to imagine what an impression these guns in the hands of the people must have made on the besieged!
It was clear that the suspension bridges would soon fall and the gates would be knocked out.
The crowd became more and more formidable and more numerous.
Finally, the moment came when the defenders of the fortress realized that to resist longer would mean condemning themselves to certain death.
De Launay decided to give up.
The invalids, who saw that they could not resist the whole of Paris, which was leading a siege on them, had advised capitulation even earlier, and about four o'clock or between four and five, the commandant threw out a white flag and ordered them to beat the battle, i.e. the order to cease fire and get off the fortress wall.
The garrison surrendered and asked to reserve the right to go out with weapons.
It is possible that the military Yulen and Eli, who were opposite the big drawbridge, gave their consent to such a condition, but the people did not want to hear about it.
There were fierce shouts: "Lower the bridges!"
Then at five o'clock the commandant passed through one of the loopholes near the small drawbridge a note reading: "We have 20 barrels of gunpowder; if you do not accept the surrender, we will blow up the entire quarter and the garrison."
These were mere words, for even if the commandant had thought of carrying out his threat, the garrison would never have allowed it to happen.
In any case, de Launay himself gave the key to the gate of the small drawbridge.
The gates were unlocked from the inside, and the people immediately flooded the fortress, disarming the Swiss and the disabled, and captured de Launay himself, who was dragged to the city hall.
On the way, the crowd, enraged by his treason, showered him with all sorts of insults.
Twenty times he risked being killed, despite the heroic efforts of not one Shol and another*, who shielded him with themselves.
A few hundred paces from the town hall, however, he was torn from their hands and his head was cut off.
De Guy, the chief of the Swiss, saved his life by declaring that he was surrendering to the city and the nation, and drank to their prosperity; but three officers of the general staff of the Bastille and three invalids were killed.
As for the mayor of Flessel, who was in communication with Besanval and the Duchess of Polignac, in whose hands, as it turns out from one of his letters, there were many other secrets that greatly compromised the Queen, the people were already preparing to execute him when an unknown person shot him with a pistol.
Has this unknown person decided that "the dead are the best at keeping secrets"?
* Was it Maillard?
It is known that de Launay was arrested by him.
As soon as the drawbridges of the Bastille were lowered, the people rushed into the courtyards and began to search for the prisoners who were buried alive in the Bastille.
At the sight of these ghosts coming out of the dark casemates and completely confused by the light and the hum of the voices greeting them, the moved crowd shed tears.
The martyrs of royal despotism were led in a solemn procession through the streets of Paris.
And soon, at the news that the Bastille was in the hands of the people, delight seized the whole city, and the population immediately began to take even more zealous care to preserve their conquest.
The coup planned by the court ended in a complete failure.
So the revolution began.
The people won their first victory.
Such a tangible victory was necessary.
It was necessary for the revolution to withstand the struggle and come out of it victorious.
People d olzhen had to show his strength in order to force his enemies to reckon with him, in order to arouse hatred everywhere in the country and everywhere give an impetus to uprisings, to the conquest of freedom.
XIII
CONSEQUENCES OF JULY 14 IN VERSAILLES
In every revolution, once it has begun, each individual event of it not only sums up what has already happened, but also contains the main rudiments of the future; so that if contemporaries were able to detach themselves from the impressions of the moment and separate the essential from the accidental in what was happening around them, they could already foresee the whole further course of the revolution on the day after July 14.
At the court, even the night before, i.e. on July 13, they did not understand at all the importance of the movement that was taking place in Paris.
A celebration was held in Ver Sala that evening.
In the palace, they danced in the greenhouse and drank to the future victory over the rebellious hundred lyceum.
The Queen, with her friend Polignac and other ladies of the court, and with her the princes and princesses lavished compliments on foreign soldiers in the barracks to wake them up for the upcoming battle.
With insane frivolity, the French court, which, like every court, lived in a world of delusions and conditional lies, did not even suspect that it was already impossible to take possession of Paris, that the moment was lost.
Louis XVI himself knew no more about the state of affairs than the queen or the princes.
When, on the evening of the 14th, the Assembly, frightened by the popular uprising, rushed to him and in servile expressions began to beg him to return the ministers and remove the troops, he replied in the tone of a sovereign still confident of victory.
He believed in the plan that had been advised to him, namely, to put loyal people at the head of the bourgeois militia, to curb the people with the help of this militia, and then limit himself to issuing several orders regarding the removal of troops.
This is the artificial world inhabited by ghosts in which the king and the court lived and continued to live, despite the brief moments of awakening, until the very moment when there was only one thing left to die on the scaffold.
* Mirabeau, in the report of the speech he made at the meeting of the Assembly, which opened on the 15th, at eight o'clock in the morning, speaks as if this event had happened the day before.
But he was talking about the celebration on the 13th.
And how well the characters of all the acting persons are already determined even then!
The king, clouded by his unlimited power, is always ready to take exactly the step that will lead to a catastrophe.
Then, when the catastrophe approaches, he shows his stubbornness, his inertia, only inertia, in the fight against it, and finally, just when everyone thinks that he will withstand and stubbornly resist, he gives in — always just for show.
But koro leva: vicious, corrupted to the depths of her soul by her unlimited power, she directly pushes the king to disaster.
At first, she sharply resists events, does not want to admit them; then suddenly decides to give in and falls into the childishness of a courtesan with her friends.
And the princes?
They advise the most disastrous decisions to the king and leave him at the first failure; they besiege France and become emigrants immediately after the capture of the Bastille and go to intrigue in Germany or in Savoy.
How quickly all these characters are outlined, in a few days, from July 8 to July 15!
And on the other hand, we see the people, with their ardent enthusiasm, with their generosity, with their willingness to die for the sake of freedom; but at the same time — a people looking for leaders, ready to submit to the new masters who are installed in the city hall.
He understands so well all the intrigues of the court, he sees so clearly better than the most astute people — the development of the conspiracy that has been preparing since the end of June, and at the same time he allows himself to be entangled by other conspirators, i.e. the propertied classes, who will soon drive hungry proletarians armed with pikes back into the slums.
They were called to help when it was necessary to counter the force of the army with the force of a popular uprising, and now they are being driven off the street, having given them various promises, and they obey.
From the very first days, all the future great dramas of the revolution have already been outlined in the behavior of the bourgeoisie.
On July 14, as the royal power becomes less and less dangerous, the representatives of the third estate gathered at Versailles are becoming more and more afraid of the people.
And, despite Mirabeau's fervent words about the celebration taking place in the greenhouse, it is enough for the king to appear in the Assembly, recognize the power of the representatives and promise them personal inviolability, so that they burst into applause, were delighted and went out into the street to see the king off, forming a guard of honor for him and reading Versailles cri kami: "Long live the king!"
And this is happening at the very time when in Paris the people are being beaten in the name of the same king, when in Versailles the crowd threatens the queen and the Duchess of Polignac, and about the promises of the king, people ask themselves whether they should not see in them only his usual falsehood.
The Parisian people really did not succumb to the promises of Kohl to remove the troops.
He didnot believe him.
He chose to organize himself into a revolutionary commune, and this Commune, like medieval communes, took the necessary measures to protect the city from the king.
The streets of Paris were cut with trenches or barricaded with barricades; people's patrols began to walk around the city, ready to sound the alarm at the slightest alarm.
Even the king's visit to Paris did not calm the people.
On July 17, seeing himself defeated and abandoned by everyone, Ludo vic XVI decided to go to Paris, to the city hall, to make peace there with his capital.
The bourgeoisie tried to make of this visit a solemn act of reconciliation between it and the king.
The bourgeois revolutionaries, of whom quite a few were freemasons, did the king great honor by forming from their swords crossed over his head the so called steel vault when he ascended to the town hall; and Bailly, who was called the mayor of Paris, pinned a tricolor to his hat.
In the bourgeoisie, there was even talk of erecting a statue of Louis XVI on the site of the destroyed Bastille.
But the people reacted to all this with great restraint and distrust, and this attitude did not disappear after the king's visit to the town hall.
The king of the bourgeoisie as much as you want, but not the king of the people!
For its part, the court understood perfectly well that after the uprising on July 14, there can be no reconciliation between the royal power and the people.
The Duchess of Polignac was escorted to Switzerland, despite the tears of Marie Antoinette, and the very next day the princes began to travel abroad.
Those who were the soul of the failed plot — the princes and ministers were in a hurry to leave France.
The Duke of Artois disappeared during the night and was so afraid for his life that he secretly passed through the city, and on the way he was accompanied by a whole regiment with two cannons.
The King promised to follow the emigrants dear to his heart as soon as possible; and since then a plan has already been formed for the king's flight abroad, in order to return to France at the head of the German troops.
In fact, on July 16, everything was already ready for the king's departure.
Louis XVI had to go to Metz, become the head of the army there and go to war on Paris.
The carriages were already harnessed, and they were ready to be brought to take away the king and queen under the cover of the troops stationed between Versailles and the German border.
But the Duke of Broglie refused to take the king to Metz, and the princes were in too much of a hurry to escape on their own.
Then Louis XVI, he himself told about it later, seeing himself abandoned by the princes and the nobility, abandoned the plan of armed resistance instilled in him by the history of King Charles I of England, and decided to go to Paris to express his submission to the will of the people.
Some royalist historians are trying to cast doubt on the very existence of a conspiracy at the court against the National Assembly and the city of Paris.
But the conspiracy has been proven by many documents.
Mignet — a very moderate historian, as is well known, and who wrote shortly after the events themselves, does not express the slightest doubt about this, and all later studies have confirmed his view.
On 13 July, the King was to repeat the statement he had made on 23 June, after which the Assembly was to be dissolved.
The king's statement has already been printed in 40 thousand copies for distribution throughout France.
The commander of the troops stationed in the area between Versailles and Paris was given unlimited powers to arrange a massacre of the Parisian people and take strict measures against the Assembly if it resisted.
One hundred million credit notes have already been printed without the permission of the Assembly to cover the costs of the court.
Everything was ready; and when the news came on the 12th that Paris had revolted, this revolt was at first looked upon at court as a revolt that contributed to the plans of the courtiers.
Then, a little later, when they learned that the movement was growing, the king was going to leave, leaving the ministers to disperse the Meeting with the help of hired foreign troops German regiments and Swiss.
But the ministers resisted this, because they saw that the wave of the movement was growing and growing.
That is why, after July 14, when the news of the capture of the Bastille and the murder of de Launay was received, such a panic seized the court, and why the Polignacs, princes and many other aristocrats, who were the soul of the conspiracy and were afraid of denunciations, hurried to flee abroad.
But the people were not asleep.
He vaguely understood what these fugitives were looking for on the other side of the border, and the peasants began to detain them.
Among them, Fullon and Berthier were detained.
We have already spoken about the poverty that was rampant in Paris and its environs, and about the speculators in bread, whose crimes are not allowed it was necessary to investigate.
Among these speculators, who were surrounded by popular poverty, Fullon was especially pointed out, who had made a huge fortune both by financial transactions and in his position as quartermaster of the army and navy.
At the same time, his hatred of the people and the revolution was known.
Broglie, when the coup was being prepared for July 16, invited Fullon to the ministry.
The cunning financier, however, refused this dangerous post, but he did not skimp on advice: in his opinion, it was necessary to get rid of all those who had gained influence in the revolutionary camp.
After the capture of the Bastille, when he learned how de Launay's head was carried through the streets, Fullon realized that he had no choice but to follow the example of the princes and escape; but as it was already difficult to do this due to the vigilant supervision of the Parisian "trenches", he took advantage of the death of one of his lackeys to spread the rumor that Fullon was dead and buried, while he himself left Paris and hid with one of his friends in the vicinity of Fontainebleau.
There Fullon was discovered and detained by the peasants, and then they took revenge on him for all their long suffering, for all their need.
Putting an armful of hay on his shoulders an allusion to his boast that he would make Parisians eat hay, the angry crowd dragged the speculator to Paris.
There, at the town hall, Lafayette tried to save him.
But the enraged people did not listen to the revolutionary general and hung Fullon on a lantern.
His son — in — law Berthier also a participant in the royal conspiracy and also the intendant of Broglie's army was detained at Compiegne and also brought by the crowd to Paris, where they were also going to hang him on a lantern; but he resisted in the hope of escaping and was killed.
Several other conspirators who had gone abroad were detained in the north and north east of France, and they were taken to the capital.
It is easy to imagine the horror that seized the courtiers at the news of these acts of popular violence and the vigilant vigilance of the peasants.
All the arrogance of the court party, all their determination to fight against the revolution, disappeared.
Now they wanted only one thing: to be forgotten.
The reactionary Party realized that its affairs were very bad.
XIV
POPULAR UPRISINGS
Having upset all the plans of the court, Paris dealt a fatal blow to the royal power.
At the same time, the appearance of the poorest strata of the people on the streets as an active force of the revolution gave a new character to the whole movement: it introduced new demands into it — the demands of equality.
The rich and powerful immediately understood the meaning of what had happened in Paris during these days, and the flight abroad of first princes, and then court favorites and speculators only emphasized the meaning of the people's victory.
The court began to look abroad for support against revolutionary France.
Nevertheless, if the movement had been limited to one capital, the revolution would never have grown to what it later became, that is, to the destruction of the entire old system.
The insurrection in the center was, of course, necessary in order to strike a blow at the central government, to shake it, to discourage its defenders.
But in order to break the power of the government in the provinces, on the ground, in order to destroy the old order in its governmental functions and in its economic privileges, it was necessary to have a broad popular uprising in cities, towns and villages.
Such an uprising took place in July in a large part of France.
Historians, who are all consciously or unconsciously guided by the first history of the revolution, written by the "Two Friends of Freedom", usually depict this movement in cities and villages as a consequence of the taking of the Bastille.
The news of the success of the people in Paris, they say, raised a movement in the villages; the peasants began to burn castles, and this peasant uprising caused such horror that on August 4 the nobility and clergy renounced all their feudal rights.
if the essence of this report was the idea of the need to maintain a balance between too extreme parties and moderates, its conclusion was, like the Ebertists: "death to the enemies of the people" — the strengthening of government terror.
The very next day, he demanded that the decisions of the revolutionary Tribunal be expedited.
At the same time, i.e. , on 4 Nivoz (December 24), news was received in Paris that Toulon had finally been recaptured from the British, and two days later, on 5 and 6 Nivoz (December 25 and 26), they learned that the Vendeans had finally been defeated at Savin.
On December 10 (December 30), the Army of the Rhine, going on the offensive, took back the fortified lines of Wissemburg; then the blockade of Landau was broken on January 12 (January 1, 1794), and the German troops were forced to clear the left bank of the Rhine and retreat to the right.
Thus, the republic gained new strength, having won a number of victories.
At the same time, the power of the Committee of Public Health increased, and then Desmoulins, in the fifth issue of his newspaper, repented of his attacks on the revolutionary government, continuing, however, his malicious attacks on Hebert.
Thanks to this, the meetings of the Jacobin Club during the second decade of the Nivoz (from December 31 to January 10, 1794) became real general fights because of personal attacks.
On January 10, the Jacobins pronounced the expulsion of Desmoulins from their club (which was tantamount to a close execution), and Robespierre had to use all his popularity in order for Society to finally reverse this decision.
However, 24 nivoz (January 13) The committees decided to act and immediately put fear on their accusers, ordering the arrest of Fabre d'Eglantine.
The pretext for the arrest was the forgery of a document, and the Committees announced with a bang and a bang that a big conspiracy had been discovered with the aim of casting a shadow on the integrity of the people's representation.
The fact that gave rise to Fabre's arrest was the forgery of a decree of the Convention in favor of a powerful Indian company; but now it is known that Fabre was falsely accused of forging this document.
The decree on the liquidation of the affairs of the Indian Company was actually forged, but not by Fabre, but by another member of the Convention — Delaunay.
This document still exists in the archives, and since it was discovered by Michelet, it is known that the amendments made in the decree in favor of the company were written by Delaunay, not Fabre; but since the prosecutor of the revolutionary court, Fouquier Tinville, who was undoubtedly loyal to the Committee of Public Safety, did not allow this document to be brought to court, Fabre died as a forger of the document.
Robespierre, of course, did not stand up for him: he did not see him.
* The case was quite complicated.
There was a very clever man in the service of the Royalists, Baron Batz, who was so brave and so adept at hiding that there were whole legends about him.
This Baron Batz, who had been trying for a long time to free Marie Antoinette, now began to persuade several members of the Convention to engage in a large stock exchange speculation with money that the Abbe Espagnac was supposed to deliver.
Batz once gathered Julien (from Toulouse), Delaunay, Bazire (a dantonist), as well as the banker Benoit, the poet Lagarpe and the Countess Beaufort, Julien's mistress, in his house for this purpose.
Chabot, a priest who had renounced the priesthood, at one time a great lover of the people, but now married the sister of the Austrian banker Frey, was also with them.
Fabre was apparently present at one of these meetings; they tried to bribe him, and indeed Delaunay was bribed to act in a case concerning an Indian company.
This company, however, was attacked in the Convention, which ordered the liquidation of its affairs and appointed special commissioners for this purpose.
Delaunay was commissioned to write a decree containing the decision of the Congress.
Then Delaunay wrote it and gave it to Fabre to read, who made several corrections in it with a pencil and signed it.
But other amendments, beneficial to the company, were made in ink by Delaunay's hand on the same draft, and, without submitting this draft to the Convention any more, it was passed off as the decree itself.
Three months later, Fabre was guillotined along with Chabot, Delaunay, the Abbe Espagnac and the two Frey brothers, Austrian bankers.
Thus there was a bloody struggle between the various factions of the revolutionary party, and it is easy to understand how much bitterness was brought into this struggle by the foreign invasion and all the horrors of the civil war.
Nevertheless, the question naturally arises: what prevented the struggle of the parties from taking a fierce character from the very beginning of the revolution?
What made it possible for people so different in beliefs as the Girondists, Danton, Rosier, Marat, to act together for several years against the royal power?
It is very likely that the intimate and fraternal communication established even before the beginning of the revolution in the Masonic lodges in Paris and the provinces between all the prominent figures of that time contributed to this unity of action.
It is known, in fact, through Louis Blanc, Henri Martin and from the excellent monograph about the professor Ernest Nys*, that almost all the outstanding revolutionaries belonged to frank Freemasonry.
Mirabeau, Bailly, Danton, Ro espier, Marat, Condorcet, brissot, Lalande, etc., etc. all belonged to the fraternity, but the Duke of Orleans (who called themselves during the revolution, "Philip Equality") has been the great national master of the Masonic fraternity until may 13 1793, in addition, it is also known that Robespierre, Mirabeau, chemist Lavoisier, and probably many others belonged to lodges illustr Minato based Weishaupt, whose purpose was "to liberate the people from the tyranny of princes and clergy, and as immediate progress, release of the workers and peasants from serfdom, from serfdom and from the craft guilds".
* Nyse Ideas modernes: Droit International et Franc Maconnerie Bruxelles, 1908 (has a Russian translation).
There is no doubt, as it says E. NIS that "their human aspirations, their unwavering sense to the merit of the person and its principles of liberty, equality and fraternity" Freemasonry greatly contributed to the preparation of public opinion for new ideas; and this the more, that "semesta throughout the country, the Freemasons kept meeting outlining and enthusiastically accepted progressive ideas and the fact is much more important than people think it is, under gotovilis people who knew how to discuss things together and vote".
"The connection of the three classes in June 1789 and the night of August 4 was, in all probability, have been prepared in Masonic lodges"*.
* Ibid., p. 82, 83.
This preliminary work has undoubtedly also established certain personal relations and habits of mutual respect between the people of action, in addition to relations that are always too narrow in parties and the interests of narrow parties.
This is what, we think, allowed the revolutionaries of very diverse parties to act for four years with some unity against the royal despotism.
Later, this unity was subjected to too severe tests and, of course, did not hold, especially since the Freemasons themselves were divided on the issue of royal power, on the execution of the king, and even more so in relation to communist teachings before the Masonic lodges were closed at the beginning of 1793.The relations established between the Freemasons before the revolution and at the beginning of it, thus did not survive until the end of the revolutionary period; and then the struggle of the parties broke out with desperate bitterness.
LXV
THE FALL OF THE EBERTISTS.
EXECUTION OF DANTON
The winter passed in this way in a dull struggle between the revolutionaries and the counter revolutionaries, the latter raising their heads more and more every day.
At the beginning of February, Robespierre became the voice of discontent against some of the commissioners of the Convention, who, like Carrieu in Vendee, in Nantes, or Fouche in Lyon, acted with desperate rage against the rebellious population, and they did not even make a distinction between those who prepared the uprisings and supported them, and people from the people involved in the riots.
He demanded that these commissioners be immediately recalled, and threatened them with prosecution.
But nothing came of this agitation, 5 vantosa (February 23) The Convention granted an amnesty to Carrie, from which it was to be concluded that the guilt of other commissars was forgiven, whatever they might be.
The Ebertists were triumphant.
Robespierre and Couthon, both ill, did not show up.
* Young Julien, by the way, openly wrote to Robespierre about the misbehavior of some commissars, especially Carrie.
See Une mission en Vendee.
Under this title, E. Lockroy published a book containing Julien's letters.
At the same time, Saint Just, having returned from the active army, delivered a long, processed speech on February 8 (February 26), which made a great impression and at the same time shuffled all the cards.
Saint Just not only did not talk about mitigating the persecution, he completely accepted the terrorist program of the Ebertists.
He also threatened, even stronger than them.
He promised to take up the party "dead people," indicating both the immediate Shih victims of the guillotine on kantonistov — the "political cult" which "slow steps", "is deceiving all of the party" and prepare the return response; she speaks of mercy, "because these men donot feel quite virtuous to be terrible."
Here Saint Juste, of course, conscious of his strength; staying honest of course, he had every right talking in the name of Republican honesty; whereas abortista, at least in words, lightly related to issues of morality, which gave reason to mix them with the whole crowd of bourgeois predators who have not seen the revolution, except for gain y.
As for the economic program of Saint Just, in his report on the 8th of Vantose, he reproduced from himself some of the thoughts of the rabid.
He admitted that he had not thought about these issues until then.
"The power of things," he said, " leads us, perhaps, to results that we did not think about before."
Now that he thought about it, however, he didnot think of much.
He had nothing against wealth in general; he rebelled against wealth only when it was in the hands of the enemies of the revolution.
"The property of patriots is sacred —" he said, " but the estates of the conspirators serve for the poor."
He made, however, a few comments about land ownership.
He would like the land to belong to those who cultivate it themselves: let them take the land, he said, from those who have not cultivated it for 20 or 50 years.
Thus, he imagined a democracy consisting of wealthy small proprietors living in modest prosperity.
And he demanded that the lands of the conspirators against the republic be selected for distribution to the poor.
As long as there are poor, have nots and as long as civil relations in the country* are such that they cause needs that contradict the form of government, freedom is impossible.
"How can freedom be established if there is still an opportunity to raise the poor against the new social order; and how can there be no poor if everyone does not own a piece of land...
Begging must be destroyed by distributing national property to the poor."
He also spoke about an organization like the national insurance of all citizens; about "a public land fund that exists in order to come to the rescue in case of a disaster."
This fund would serve for the "reward of virtue", for the benefit of individuals in case of personal misfortune, for education.
* Saint Just was referring here to economic relations.
And along with this, he preached an intensified terror: an ebertist terror, slightly tinged with socialism.
But the socialism of Saint Just has some fragmentary character.
These are rather moralizing tips than specific thoughts and projects of the legislator.
It is clear that Saint Just sought first of all to prove, as he himself put it, that "The Mountain still remains the peak of the revolution."
She wonot get ahead of herself.
It guillotines the rabid and the Ebertists, but it borrows something from them.
With this report (from which the Jacobins later wanted to make almost a bible of socialist demands) Saint Just obtained two decrees from the Convention.
One of them was answered by those who demanded mitigation of the persecution: the Public Security Committee was given the right to release "detained patriots".
The other represented an attempt to pull the ground out from under the feet of the ebertists and at the same time reassure those who bought national property: the estates bought by the patriots will remain in their possession; but the property of the enemies of the revolution will be taken away for the benefit of the republic.
As for the enemies themselves, they will be kept in prisons until peace is concluded, after which they will be expelled from France.
In fact, only words remained of Saint Just's speech.
Then the Cordeliers decided to act.
On March 14 (March 4), they covered the human rights table hanging in their club with a black blanket.
Vincent spoke of the guillotine for the enemies of the revolution, and Hebert made a speech against Amard, a member of the Committee of Public Safety, who did not dare to send another 73 Girondists to the scaffold.
He even hinted at Robespierre, not because he was an obstacle to really serious economic reforms, but because he stood up for Desmoulins.
Thus, the Cordeliers did not leave the area of terror.
Nothing was said about the main issues that worried the population — economic issues.
Carrieu raised the question of the necessity of an uprising directly.
But nothing was said that could raise Paris.
Paris did not rise, and the Commune refused to follow the cor deliers.
Then, on the night of the 23rd of Vantose (March 13), the Ebertist leaders Hebert, Momoro, Vincent, Roncin, Ducroquet and Lomur were arrested, and the Committee of Public Safety began to spread all sorts of fables and slander at their expense through Billot Varenne.
They were going, Billot said, to cut off all the grand pianos in the prisons; they wanted to rob the Mint; they were burying life supplies in the ground in order to create a famine in Paris!
28 vantosa (March 18) Chaumette was also arrested after the Committee of Public Safety, by its own authority, replaced him and put a certain Selye in his place.
In the same way, the Committee autocratically replaced the mayor of the city of Paris — Pasha.
Anacharsis Kloots was already arrested on December 8 (December 28) on the pretext that he was making inquiries whether the name of a lady was on the list of "suspicious".
Leclerc, a friend of the Communist Chalier, who came to Paris from Lyon, and an employee of Jacques Roux, was involved in the same case.
The government was triumphant.
The real reasons for these arrests in the extreme party are still unclear.
Were the Ebertists plotting to seize power with the help of Ronsen's "revolutionary army"?
This is possible, but nothing reliable is known about this.
The arrested Ebertists were immediately brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal and the government was not ashamed to arrange what was then called an "amalgam", i.e. it included bankers and German agents in the same process, along with people like Momoro, who already in 1790 was distinguished by his communist views, and certainly gave everything he had to the revolution, or the poor Leclerc, a friend of Chalier, Hebert and Anacharsis Kloots — "an orator of a kind human", who already in 1793 foresaw the republic of all mankind and had the courage to speak about it.
4 Germinal (March 24) after the process for the form, which lasted three days, all were guillotined.
It is easy to imagine what a holiday this day was among the royalists, with whom Paris was overflowing.
Crowds of "muscadins", dressed in the most incredible outfits, poured out into the streets, and they pursued the condemned with their taunts and insults, while they were being taken to the execution that took place on the Revolution Square.
Rich gentlemen paid crazy prices for seats near the guillotine in order to fully enjoy the execution of Hebert, the editor of the newspaper "Pere Duchesne".
"The square turned into a theater," Michelet wrote — " and there was a kind of fair around it; masses of cheerful people walked on the Champs Elysees between tents and benches."
The people, gloomy, did not show up.
He knew that his friends were being killed that day, that revolutions were dealing a fatal blow.
Chaumette was guillotined a few days later, on April 24 (April 13), together with Bishop Gobel, the same one who renounced his dignity, and the crime against them both was unbelief.
Robespierre and his party were clearly ingratiating themselves with the bourgeoisie in the hope of prolonging the revolution.
Desmoulins ' widow and Hebert's widow were included in the same group of guillotine victims.
They did not dare to execute the Mayor of Pasha, but the Committee of Public Safety replaced him and replaced him with a nonentity, Fleurio Lescaut, and Chaumette was first replaced by Selye, and then by Claude Payan, a man who was completely loyal to Robespierre.
In order to please his patron, he cared more about the "supreme being" than about the Parisian population*.
* By virtue of Law 14 of Fremer, which established a "revolutionary government", instead of the prosecutors of the communes, who were elected by the people and represented the self government bodies, national agents were introduced, appointed by the Committee of Public Salvation.
Chaumette was then confirmed in his position and thus became a "national agent", i.e. a government official.
On the day when the Committees decided to arrest the Ebertists, i.e. , on March 23 (March 13), the Committee of Public Safety introduced a new law to the Convention, which allowed it to replace the people elected by the communes and replace them with officials appointed by itself.
The Convention, of course, adopted this law, and, using it, the Committee replaced the Pasha and appointed its own man, Fleurio Lescaut, in his place.
Thus, the Committees of Public Safety and Public Salvation finally prevailed over the Paris Commune.
And so ended the struggle that this center of the revolution endured, from August 9, 1792 to April 13, 1794, against the official representatives of the centralist revolution.
The commune, which, together with its sections, had served for 20 months as an expression of the Parisian people and a beacon for revolutionary France, now turned to the organ of state officials.
After that, the end of the revolution was obviously already close.
With Pash and Chaumette, two people who represented the people's revolution in the eyes of the people disappeared from the revolution.
When the delegates sent by the departments to declare their consent to the June constitution of 1793 arrived in Paris, they were struck by the democratic character of the capital.
The mayor," Uncle Pash, " they wrote home, comes to the Commune from the village on foot, bringing his bread with him; Chaumette, the prosecutor of the Commune, " lives in the same room with his wife, who sits and fixes something.
Whoever knocks, he is answered: "Come in!"
Just like Ma Rat."
Hebert, a fellow prosecutor of the Commune, and the "orator of the human race", i.e. Anacharsis Kloots, are all equally accessible.
These people have now been taken away from the people for the sake of the bourgeoisie.
* Anacnarsis Clootz par Avenel, vol. II, p. 168—169.
The execution of the Ebertists, however, caused such rejoicing among the royalists that the Committees saw with horror how suddenly the triumph of the counter revolution was approaching.
Now on the" Tarpeian Rock", so dear to Brissot, his successors demanded already the members of both Committees themselves.
Desmoulins, who behaved in the most abominable manner during the execution of Hebert, inciting the screamers who ran after the cart in which he was being taken to execution (he himself told this), has now published the seventh issue of his newspaper, devoted entirely to attacks on the revolutionary system.
The royalists indulged in frenzied expressions of delight and begged Danton to launch an attack on the Committees.
The whole mass of the Girondists, who had disguised themselves under the name of Danton, were now going to take advantage of the Ebertists ' disappearance and the defeat of the Paris Commune to carry out their coup; and then Rosier, Couton, Saint Just, Billot Varenne, Collot d'Herbois and many others would go to the guillotine.
In this case, the counter revolution would have prevailed already in the spring of 1794.
Then the Committees decided to strike a strong blow to the right and sacrifice Danton and his friends for this.
On the night of March 30 to 31 (from 9 to 10 Germinal), Paris learned with horror that Danton, Desmoulins, Philippe and Lacroix had been arrested.
Based on the report read by Saint Just at the Convention (it was compiled according to a draft written by Robespierre and still preserved in the archives).
The Convention ordered the persecution to begin immediately.
The committees again composed an "amalgam" and handed over to the revolutionary tribunal Danton, Desmoulins, Bazire, Fabre, accused of robbery, Chabot, who admitted that he had received 100 thousand francs from the royalists for some case that remained unknown (he, however, did not spend them), Delaunay, who really committed forgery in favor of the Indian company, about which we spoke, and the intermediary Julien from Toulouse.
The process was, of course, only for the form.
When the Committees saw that the powerful defense of Danton could cause a popular uprising, they ordered to stop the defensive speeches.
All were executed on April 5, 1794 (16 Germinal III year).
It is clear what an impression on the population of Paris and on the revolutionaries of all France should have been made by the fall of the revolutionary Paris Commune and the execution of such people as Leclerc, Momoreau, Hebert and Cloots, followed by the execution of Danton and Desmoulins and, finally, Chaumette.
In Paris and in the provinces, the people realized that these executions marked the end of the revolution.
It was known in political circles, of course, that the counter revolutionaries were counting on Danton at the moment.
But for France in general, he remained a revolutionary who stood at the forefront of all the native movements.
"If these people are also traitors, then who can we rely on?" people asked themselves.
"But is it true that they are traitors?" others asked themselves.
"Isnot it clear that the end of the revolution has come?"
Yes, its end has come.
Once the upward movement was stopped, once a force was found capable of saying to the revolution: "You will not go further than this" - just at the moment when new popular aspirations were trying to find their expression; and since this force could take off the heads of those who were trying to find this expression, it became clear to true revolutionaries that the revolution was coming to an end.
They could not be deceived by the words of Saint Just, who assured them that he, too, was beginning to think like those whom he sent to Guillotine.
They realized that this was the beginning of the end.
And indeed, the triumph of the Committees over the Commune was the triumph of order, and the triumph of order means the end of the revolutionary period.
Now there could have been several more convulsions, but the revolution was over.
The people have since lost all interest in it.
In Paris, he left the street to bourgeois dandies muscadins - and madly dressed up women from the bourgeoisie.
LXVI
ROBESPIERRE AND HIS GROUP
Robespierre is very often portrayed as a dictator.
His enemies in the Convention even called him a tyrant.
And indeed, as the revolution neared its end, Robespierre's influence grew more and more, so that in France and abroad he was spoken of as the main person in the republic.
And when he died three months later, on the 9th of Thermidor, the era of reaction began.
Meanwhile, it would be completely wrong to see Robespierre as a dictator.
That many of his fans wanted to dictate for him, there can be no doubt about it*.
But it is also known that Cambon enjoyed almost unlimited power in his special field, in the Committee of finance, and Carnot had very broad powers in military affairs, despite the dislike of Robespierre and Saint Just for him.
On the other hand, the Committee of Public Security guarded its police power too jealously not to resist the dictatorship; and some of its members directly hated Robespierre.
Finally, if there were representatives in the Conte Vente who were willing to allow Robespierre's strong influence, they would still not want to submit to the dictatorship of Montagnard, who was so strict in his moral rules.
* No matter how little historical significance Baudot's work has (Baudot M. A. Notes historiques sur la Convention nationale, le Directoire, 1'Empire et 1'exil de votants. Paris, 1893), the proposal of Saint Just, mentioned by Baudot (p. 13), to appoint Robespierre as dictator in order to save the republic, has nothing improbable.
Buonarroti speaks of this intention as a well known fact.
And yet Robespierre really enjoyed great power.
Moreover, his enemies, as well as his admirers, felt that the disappearance of the Robespierre group would be — as it turned out in fact — a triumph of reaction.
How can we explain to ourselves the power of this group?
First of all, Robespierre remained incorruptible among all those, and there were a lot of them, who were seduced by power and wealth:
a circumstance of the highest importance during the revolution.
While the majority of those standing around him were perfectly engaged in the sale of national property, stock exchange speculations, etc., and thousands of Jacobins were in great demand for positions in the government, he stood before them as a strict judge, reminding them of the moral principles of the revolution and threatening with the guillotine those of them who were too devoted to profit.
Then, in all that he said and did during all the five years of the revolutionary storm, we still feel, and contemporaries should have felt it even more strongly, that he was one of the few political figures of that time in whom nothing weakened faith in the revolution and attachment to the democratic republic.
In this respect, Robespierre represented a real force, and if the Communists could have put forward an equal force of mind and will, they would undoubtedly have given the revolution a much stronger imprint of their aspirations.
However, these qualities of Robespierre alone, recognized even by his enemies, could not explain the enormous power that fell to his lot at the end of the revolution.
To this we must add that, in addition to the fanaticism that the honesty of his intentions gave him in the midst of all those who used the revolution in personal forms, he himself tried to strengthen his power over public opinion, even if he had to step over the corpses of other honest figures who turned out to be his opponents for this purpose.
Finally, the most important thing is that the nascent bourgeoisie helped him first of all in strengthening the power of Robes Pierre.
As soon as she realized that among revolutionaries he represented a man of the golden mean, that is, a figure standing at an equal distance from the "exalted" and from the "moderate" and thus representing the best defense of the bourgeoisie against what she called the" excesses " of the crowd, she began to nominate him.
The bourgeoisie realized that Robespierre was the man who, thanks to the respect he inspired in the people, and thanks to his moderate mind and love of power, was most capable of forming a firm government and thus putting an end to the revolutionary period.
Therefore, the bourgeoisie, as long as it was threatened with danger from the extreme parties, did not interfere, but helped him and his friends to consolidate their power, create a government, and defeat the extreme party.
But as soon as the" extreme " were defeated, the bourgeoisie overthrew Robespierre and his government and celebrated their fall, since it gave the real people of the bourgeoisie, the Girondists, the opportunity to return to the Convention and start the Thermidor reaction.
Robespierre's mindset perfectly suited this role.
This can be seen, among other things, from the draft written by him for the indictment against the group of Fabre d'Eglantine and Chabot and found in his papers after his death*.
This note characterizes Robespierre better than any reasoning.
* The charges for this group Robespierre wrote a draft of the indictment, which was read by his friend Saint just.
Cm.
this draft: Papiers inedits trouves chez Robespierre, Saint Just, Payan, etc. supprimes ou omis par Courtois, precedes du rapport de ce dernier a la Convention nationale, v. 1-3.
Paris, 1828, V. 1, p. 21 FF.
"The two coalitions have been openly competing with each other for some time now," he began his note.
— One of them tends to moderantism (excessive moderation), the other to extremes, essentially anti revolutionary.
One is waging war against all energetic patriots and preaches leniency towards the conspirators; the other secretly slanders the defenders of freedom, seeks to destroy every patriot who has ever made a mistake in anything, and yet turns a blind eye to the criminal machinations of our most dangerous enemies...
One is trying to use its influence or its presence in the Convention (here he meant the Dantonists); the other is trying to use its influence in popular societies (Commune, rabid).
One wants to cheat the Convention out of dangerous decrees or measures of persecution against its opponents; the other makes dangerous speeches in public meetings...
The triumph of both parties would be equally dangerous to freedom and representatives of the people's power."
And Robespierre told afterwards how both parties had attacked the Committee of Public Safety from its very foundation.
Accusing Fabre of taking care of leniency, "in order to hide his crimes," Robespierre added:
"The moment, of course, was chosen well to preach this cowardly teaching even to people with excellent intentions, when all the enemies of freedom pushed to excesses in the opposite direction; when a corrupt philosophy, sold to tyranny, forgot thrones from behind altars, opposed religion to patriotism, put morality in contradiction with itself, confused the cause of religion with the interests of despotism, all Catholics with conspirators, and wanted the people to see in the revolution the triumph of virtue, but the triumph of atheism, is not a source of national well — being, but the destruction of the moral and religious views of the people."
* From the book of Olar (Aulard A. Le culte de la Raison et le culte de 1'Etre supreme (1793-1794). 2e ed. Paris, 1904) one can see how much the anti religious movement was, on the contrary, connected with patriotism.
From these extracts it is clear that, if Robespierre really did not have the breadth of views and boldness of thought necessary to become the leader of revolutionary parties, he perfectly mastered the art of using those means with which it is always possible to arm the so called public opinion against certain persons.
Every sentence in this indictment is a poison twisted arrow hitting the target.
What strikes us most is that Robespierre and his friends did not understand the role that the true enemies of the revolution, the "modernists", forced them to play until the moment had not yet come to overthrow the Montagnards.
"There is a whole system of pushing the people to equalize everything," his younger brother from Lyon writes to Robespierre, " if no measures are taken, everything will be disorganized."
And Maximilian Robespierre did not go beyond such a narrow understanding of his younger brother.
For him, the efforts of the extreme parties to push the revolution even further were nothing more than attacks on the government to which he belongs.
Just like his enemy Brissot, he says that these extremes are tools in the hands of England and Austria.
In his eyes, communist attempts are nothing but "disorganization".
"We need to take measures," he writes: we need to crush them with terror, with the guillotine.
"What are the means to stop the civil war?" he asks himself in one note.
And he answers:
"To punish all traitors and conspirators, especially guilty deputies and administrators; to send troops of patriots under the command of patriots to pacify the aristocrats in Lyon, Marseille, Toulon, in Vendee, Jura and other areas where the banner of rebellion and royalism is raised; and to give a number of frightening examples, executing all the villains who have defiled freedom and shed the blood of patriots."
*  * Papiers inedits..
., v. 2, p .
14.
As can be seen, a person of the governmental mindset speaks here in the language that all governments always speak, but he is by no means a revolutionary.
Therefore, his entire policy, from the moment of the fall of the Commune up to the 9th Thermidor (July 27, 1794), turns out to be completely fruitless.
He does nothing to prevent the impending catastrophe, which should end the people's revolution, but he does a lot to accelerate it.
He does not turn away the daggers that are sharpened in the dark to kill the revolution with them; but he does just that which gives deadly force to these blows.
LXVII
TERROR
After the blows inflicted on their rivals from both the left and the right, the Committee of Public Safety and the Committee of Public Safety continued to concentrate power in their hands.
Until that time, there were six ministries that were subordinate to the Committee of Public Safety only through the Executive Committee, which consisted of six ministers.
Now, on the 12th of Germinal (April 1, 1794), the ministries were destroyed and replaced by 12 Executive Commissions, each placed under the supervision of a special group of the Committee of Public Safety*.
In addition, the Committee also received the right to recall by its authority the commissioners of the Convention sent to the provinces.
* As shown by James Guillaume (Proces verbaux du Comite d'instruction publique de la Convention nationale. Publ. et annot. par J. Guillaume. Paris, 1889-1907, t. 4, Introduction, p. 11, 12), most of these commissions were gradually established already starting from October 1793.
On the other hand, it was decided that the Supreme Revolutionary Tribunal would sit in Paris under the supervision of both Committees.
Those accused of conspiracies anywhere in France were allowed to be brought to Paris for trial.
At the same time, measures were taken to clear Paris of dangerous people.
All former nobles and all foreigners belonging to the nations waging war with France were to be expelled from Paris.
Only a few necessary exceptions were made (de cretes 26 and 27 of Germinal).
The concentration of power in a few hands and intimidation with the help of a Revolutionary Tribunal this was how the supreme centralized government of both Committees was created.
That was their main concern.
Another serious concern of the Government was the war.
In January 1794, there was still hope that the liberal opposition in the English parliament, which was supported by a significant part of the population of London, as well as several influential members of the House of Lords, would not allow Pitt's conservative ministry to continue the war.
Danton, apparently, shared this illusion, which was one of the crimes exposed against him.
But Pitt drew the majority of parliament against the "godless French", and from the beginning of spring, England waged war energetically together with Prussia, which is in her pay.
Soon, four armies of 315 thousand people gathered on the borders of France, having against themselves four armies of the republic numbering 294 thousand people.
But these were already republican, democratic armies that had developed their own tactics, and soon they prevailed over the allies.
The blackest point, however, was the state of minds in the province, especially in the south.
The wholesale extermination of both the leaders of the counter revolution and the dark masses raised by them, to which the local Jacobins and the commissars of the Convention resorted, gave rise to a deep hatred against the republic in the towns and villages of southern France.
The worst thing was that no one, either on the ground or in Paris, could think of anything except the most extreme measures of extermination.
For example, in the department of Vaucluse, overflowing with royalists and runaway priests, it happened that in one of the small villages located at the foot of the Ventoux Mountains, in a Bedouin village that has always stood quite openly for the old order, "a terrible insult was inflicted on the law!".
On the first of May, the tree of Freedom was cut down and "the decrees of the Convention were thrown into the mud!".
The military commander of this area Suchet — he later became an imperialist demanded a "frightening" example.
He demanded the destruction of the entire village.
Meunier, the commissioner of the Convention, hesitated and turned to Paris, from where he was ordered to " act with all rigor."
Then Suchet set fire to the village and turned 433 houses into ruins.
It is clear that with such a system, there was only one thing left: to "act with all rigor"forever.
And so they did.
A few days later, in view of the impossibility of sending to Paris all the citizens arrested in this area (it would take an entire army to accompany them and prepare supplies on the way, wrote Meunier), Couthon, a friend of Robespierre, proposed to both Committees, which immediately accepted his proposal, to appoint a special commission of five members, which would meet in the city of Orange, to try the enemies of the revolution arrested in the departments of Vaucluse and Bouches du Rhone.
Robespierre wrote in his own hand the instructions for the commission, and this instruction soon served as the basis for the law on terror, issued on 22 Prairie**.
* I am following here the story of Louis Blanc (Blanc L. Histoire de la Revolution francaise, v. 1-3.
Paris, 1869, v. 3, 1. 12, ch. 13), who cannot be suspected of hostility in the Robespierre group.
** "The enemies of the revolution," the instructions said, " are those who, by whatever means and whatever appearances they may hide behind, try to hinder the course of the revolution and hinder the establishment of the republic.
The penalty for such a crime is death; the evidence necessary for pronouncing a sentence will be all kinds of information, of whatever kind they may be, if only they can convince a reasonable person and a friend of freedom.
The rule in pronouncing sentences should be the conscience of the judge, sanctified by the love of justice and for the fatherland; their goal is public salvation and the death of the enemies of the fatherland."
There is no need for a jury, judges alone are enough.
So, the judge's conscience and "information of any kind" became a sufficient basis for pronouncing a death sentence.
A few days later, Robespierre developed the same principles before the Convention, saying that until now the enemies of freedom had been treated too carefully, that it was necessary to simplify the courts by discarding their formalities.
And two days after the feast of the supreme being, he introduced into the Convention, with the consent of his comrades on the Committee, the well known law of the 22nd Prairie (June 10) on the reorganization of the Revolutionary Tribunal.
By virtue of this law, the tribunal was divided into divisions, each consisting of three judges and nine jurors.
Seven were enough to make up the court.
The basis of the sentences should have been the very principles that we saw in the instructions given to the commission in Orange; only among the crimes for which the death penalty was imposed, was also included the dissemination of false news in order to sow confusion or divide the people and the corruption of morals and public conscience.
* "They want to control revolutions with the help of judicial hook — making," wrote Robespierre.
- Conspiracies against the republic are treated as processes between private individuals.
Tyranny kills, and freedom makes speeches.
And the code drawn up by the conspirators is the law by which they are judged!
To execute the enemies of the fatherland, "he continued," it is enough to establish their identity.
It is not punishment that is required, but their destruction."
To issue such a law meant to recognize the complete inability of the revolutionary government.
This meant, assuming the rank of legality, to do the same thing that the Parisian people did in a revolutionary, open way in a moment of panic and despair during the September days.
And the result of the law of the 22nd prairie was that in six weeks it helped to mature a counter revolution.
When Robespierre prepared this law, did he only mean, as some historians try to prove, to strike at those members of the Convention whom he considered most harmful to the revolution?
His removal from business, after the debate proved that the Convention would not give any more of its members to the Committees without protecting him, gives some probability to this assumption.
But, on the other hand, the fact that it is firmly established that the instructions of the judicial commission in Orange were drawn up by Robespierre refutes this assumption.
It is much more likely that Robespierre simply followed the flow of the moment and that he, Couthon and Saint Just, in agreement with many others, including even Cambon, saw terror as a weapon of struggle for the whole of France, as well as a threat against some members of the Convention.
In fact, this law has been approached since the decrees of 19 Floreal (May 8) and 9 Prairie (May 28) "on the concentration of power".
It is also very likely that Ladmiral's attempt to kill Collot d'Herbois and the strange case of the girl Cecilia Renaud, presented as an attempt on Robespierre's life, also prompted the Convention to pass the law of 22 prairie.
At the end of April, a number of thefts were committed in Paris, which were supposed to arouse the anger of the royalists.
After the massacre of April 13, in which Chaumette, Gobel, the widow of Desmoulins, the widow of Hebert and 15 others were killed, d'Epremenil, Le Chapelier, Type, old Maleserbe, who defended the king in his trial, Lavoisier, a great chemist and a good Republican, and, finally, Louis XVI's sister, Elizabeth, who could be released together with her niece without any danger to the republic.
The royalists were worried, and on the 7th of the prairie (May 25), a certain Ladmiral, a scribe, about 50 years old, came to the Convention with the intention of killing Robes Pierre.
He fell asleep there during a speech delivered by Barer, and thus missed the "tyrant".
Then he went to the house where Collot d'Herbois lived and shot Collot while he was climbing the stairs to his apartment.
A strong struggle ensued between them, and Collo disarmed Ladmiral.
On the same day, a young girl, about 20 years old, Cecilia Renaud, the daughter of the owner of a paper shop, an extreme royalist, came to the courtyard of the house where Robespierre lived with the carpenter contractor Dupleix, and demanded a meeting with Robespierre.
Her behavior aroused suspicion; she was arrested and two small knives were found in her pockets.
Her clumsy speech suggested an attempt on Robespierre's life, at least completely childish.
There is no doubt that both of these attempts served as pretexts in favor of the law on terror.
Both Committees immediately seized the opportunity to eliminate a huge "amalgam", i.e., the execution of every p an ode to people connected somehow in one process.
Cecilia's father and brother were arrested, as well as several people whose only crime was acquaintance with Ladmiral.
The same" amal gama " included Madame Saint Amarant, who ran a gambling house where visitors met her daughter, Madame Sartin, known for her beauty.
And since this house was assiduously visited by all sorts of people, among others Chabot, Defier and Herault de Sechel, and Danton and Robespierre's younger brother apparently went there, they tried to make a royalist conspiracy out of it, in which they wanted to mix even Maximilian Robespierre through his brother.
Sombreuil (the same one whom Maillard saved during the murders on September 2), the actress Grand Maison, a friend of the famous royalist Baron Batz, the royalist Sartin, one of the royalist "knights of the dagger", and next to these gentlemen — an unfortunate 17 year old girl, the dressmaker Nicole, were included in the same process.
By virtue of Law 22 of the prairie, the court case was resolved in the fastest way.
This time, 54 people were taken to the execution at once, dressed in red shirts, like parricides, and the execution lasted two hours.
So a new law came into effect, which was called the Robespierre Law.
He immediately made the reign of terror impossible for the mass of Parisians.
It is easy to imagine the state of mind among those arrested under the September law "on suspicious persons", which was then filled with Parisian prisons, when they learned about the law of 22 Prairie and its application to 54 executed.
They were waiting for a general beating, "in order to clear the prisons," as was done in Nantes and Lyon, and were preparing for resistance.
In all likelihood, plans were also made for prison riots*.
* During a search made in prisons, significant amounts of money (864 thousand livres) were found in the prisoners, regardless of jewelry, so it was believed that the prisoners had only 1200 thousand livres of all sorts of valuables.
Then the revolutionary court immediately began to sentence 150 people to death, who were executed by detachments of 50, criminal and royalists, who were taken together to the scaffold.
We do not need to dwell on these executions.
Suffice it to say that from the date of the foundation of the Revolutionary Tribunal, i.e. from April 17, 1793, until the 22nd Prairie of the second year (June 10, 1794), i.e. in 14 months, 2,607 people were executed in Paris; but from the date of the introduction of the new law, from the 22nd Prairie (June 10), to the 9th Thermidor (July 27, 1794), the same court sent 1,351 people to execution in 46 days.
The Parisian people soon began to look with hatred at these carts, which brought dozens of people sentenced to the guillotine every day, and five executioners barely had time to empty the living cargo.
There were no more cemeteries in the city to bury these victims, and whenever new cemeteries were opened in the suburbs to bury the executed there, sharp protests arose among the population of these quarters.
Now the sympathies of the Parisian workers turned already to the executed, especially since the rich emigrated or hid in France itself and mostly the poor fell under the guillotine.
Indeed, of the 2,750 guillotined people whose social status Louis Blanc could establish, it turned out that only 650 people belonged to the well to do classes.
At that time, they even told each other in secret that a royalist, an agent of Baron Batz, was sitting on the Public Security Committee, who was pushing for executions in order to incite hatred against the republic.
One thing is certain, however, that each such batch of executed persons hastened the fall of the Jacobins.
There are things that state people do not understand.
Terror has stopped terrorizing.
"Intimidation" no longer intimidated, but only embittered.
LXVIII
THE NINTH THERMIDOR.
THE TRIUMPH OF REACTION
If Robespierre had many admirers who even went so far as to deify his hero, then he also had no shortage of enemies who deeply hated him.
These enemies used everything they could to arouse hostility towards him, attributing to him all the horrors of terror.
They also did not miss the opportunity to present him in a ridiculous light, involving him in the ridiculous stories of an old woman half mad on mysticism, Catherine Theo, whom her admirers called "the mother of the Lord".
But it was not personal enmity, of course, that caused the death of Robes Pierre.
Its fall was therefore inevitable because it represented a government system that was already heading for a fatal demise.
Having passed through its ascending time, which lasted until August or September 1793, the revolution has since entered its descending phase.
Now she was experiencing a phase of the Yakobin system of power, the best exponent of which was Robes Pierre.
But this system, having no future before it, could not escape.
Power inevitably had to pass to the "people of order and strong power", who were just waiting for an opportunity to put an end to the revolutionary "disorder"; they were waiting for the moment when they could overthrow the Montagnard terrorists without causing an uprising in Paris.
At that time, all the evil that came from the fact that the revolution in its economy was based on the enrichment of individuals was clearly identified.
The revolution must strive for the good of all, otherwise it will inevitably be crushed by those very people whom it will destroy at the expense of the whole people.
Whenever the revolution makes the transition of states from hand to hand, it should do it not for the benefit of individuals, but for the benefit of groups, communities embracing the whole people.
Meanwhile, the French Revolution did just the opposite.
The lands that she confiscated from the clergy and nobility, she gave to private people, while they had to go to rural and urban societies, because in the old days these lands belonged to the people and only because of historical violence became private property.
Since they came out of private ownership, they should have been returned to the people.
But, guided by state and bourgeois goals, the Constituent and Legislative Assemblies, and after them the Convention, having taken away the lands of the landowners, monasteries and churches and turned them into the state treasury, decided to sell them partly to individual peasants,but most of all to individual people from the middle class.
It is easy to imagine what a robbery began when these lands, which were worth from 10 to 15 billion francs, were put on sale in a few years on terms that were especially favorable for buyers, and the buyers had only to win the favor of the new local authorities in order to improve these conditions in every possible way.
Thus, "black gangs" of buyers and speculators were created on the ground, against which all the energy of the commissioners of the Convention was broken.
And then, little by little, the evil influence of these buyers, supported by all the speculators in Paris, the quartermasters of the army and local robbers, began to rise up to the Convention, where honest Montagnards were overcome by clever businessmen les profiteurs, as they were then called.
In fact, what could honest people oppose to these hordes of robbers.
Since the sections of Paris were paralyzed and the "rabid" were destroyed, who could the honest people from the "mountaineers" rely on?
The right were, of course, against them, and the center of the Convention already then received the characteristic nickname "swamps", or "belly"!
It was here that the clever businessmen who were "in order" sat.
The victory won by the troops of the republic on the 8th of Messidor (June 26) at Fleurus over the combined forces of the Austrians and the British and ended the campaign in northern France for this year, as well as the successes won by the republic in the Pyrenees from the Alps and on the Rhine, and, finally, the arrival in France of the transports with bread from America (and it was necessary to sacrifice the main warships) — these very successes became arguments in the mouths of the "moderates" against the revolution.
"What is the use of a revolutionary government now," they said, " since the war is ending?
It is time to put an end to the rule of revolutionary Committees and patriotic societies.
It's time to end the revolution and return to the legal order!"
But the terror that everyone attributed to Robespierre did not subside, but rather intensified.
On June 3 (June 21), Herman, the "commissioner for civil administrations, police and courts", submitted a report to the Committee of Public Safety, requesting permission to investigate conspiracies inside prisons, and in this report he threatened general beatings of prisoners, saying that "it may be necessary to suddenly clear the prisons."
The Committee of Public Safety allowed him to carry out such an investigation, and then terrible massacres began: dozens of men, women and teenagers were carried under the guillotine every morning by rows of wagons, and these massacres soon became more disgusting to the inhabitants of Paris than the September murders.
There was no end in sight to them, and they took place in the midst of balls, concerts and amusements of all kinds of the rich bourgeoisie.
Moreover, the executions were accompanied by all sorts of outrages and cuttings of the royalist youth, who were taking over the street more and more boldly every day.
Everyone felt that things could not continue like this, and the "smart ones" together with the royalists took advantage of this in the Convention.
The Dantonists, the Girondists, the members of the "swamp" closed their ranks and focused their efforts on one thing: to begin with, the overthrow of Robespierre and the end of terror!
And since the Committee of Public Safety managed to depersonalize the sections that had previously been the true centers of revolutionary popular movements, the structure of minds in Paris has fallen so low that the counter revolution could already hope for success.
In addition, 5 Thermidor (July 23) The General Council of the Commune, now headed by Claude Payan, a personal friend and according to the clone of Robespierre, he further undermined the authority of the Commune in the eyes of the people by making a decree that was completely unfair to the workers.
Despite the fact that the prices of all supplies have risen terribly due to the lowered exchange rate of banknotes, the Council of the Commune ordered to publish in all 48 sections of Paris the maximum wage established by the law on the maximum, which the workers had to be satisfied with.
The commune, in this way, was losing its last sympathies among the people.
As for the Committee of Public Safety, it was already unpopular in the sections, since, as we have seen, it destroyed their independence and appropriated to itself the right to arbitrarily appoint members of their committees.
The moment, therefore, was the most suitable to carry out a coup d'etat.
Robespierre hesitated.
He did nothing, and only on the 21st of Sidor (July 9) he opened his campaign against the conspirators.
A week before, he had already complained to the Jacobin Club about the war that was being waged against him personally.
He even attacked — slightly, however Barer; the same Barer, who up to that time had always been an obedient tool in the hands of his group when it was necessary to deal a strong blow to its rivals in the Convention.
Two days later, he decided to attack openly, also in the Jacobin Club, Fouche, the commissioner of the Convention, a terrorist, for his cruel behavior in Lyon.
He even achieved that the club decided to bring Fouche to its court.
On the 26th of Messidor (July 14), an open war began, since Fouche refused to appear at the court of the Jacobin Club and openly opposed Robespierre.
By attacking Barer, Robespierre thereby armed against himself two other members of the Committee of General Salvation from the extreme Republicans, Collot d'Herbois d'billot Varenne, as well as two powerful members of the Committee of General Security, Vadier and Vullan, who often saw Barer and acted together with him on cases of conspiracies in prisons.
Then all the influential members of the left in the Convention, i.e. Tallien, Barer, Vadier, Vullan, Billot Varenne, Collot d'Herbois, Fouche, feeling threatened, united against the" triumvirs " of the Ter Rorists, i.e. Robespierre, Saint Just and Couthon.
As for the moderates, Barras, Rover, Tiryon, Courtois, Bourdon, etc., who would like to get rid not only of Robespierre and Saint Just, but also of all the extreme Montagnards, i.e. also of Collot, Billot, Barer, Vadier, etc., they probably decided that it was better for the chal to concentrate the attack on the Robespierre group.
They understood that if they could cope with it, it would not be difficult for them to cope with the others.
A thunderstorm broke out at the Convention of Thermidor 8 (July 26, 1794).
It was not a surprise, since the Convention hall was packed with spectators.
Robespierre, in a very elaborate speech, attacked the Committee of Public Safety, accusing it of scheming against the Convention.
In this case, he defended himself and the Con Vent from slander.
He defended himself from the accusation of striving for dictatorship and did not spare his rivals, not even excluding Cambon: he spoke about him, as well as about Mallarm and Ramel, in words borrowed from the "rabid", i.e., he called them feuillants, arias, and cheats.
Everyone was waiting for the conclusions of his speech, and when he reached them, it became clear to everyone that in essence he was only demanding increased power for himself and his group.
No new views, no new program!
Before the Convention, there was simply a man of the government who demanded the strengthening of power in order to punish the enemies of his power.
"Where is the remedy for this evil?
— he said in his conclusion.
- Punish the traitors; appoint new people in the chancery of the Public Security Committee; purify
