The Psychology of Revolution Part 14

The dogma of equality had as its first consequence the proclamation of popular sovereignty by the bourgeoisie. This sovereignty remained otherwise highly theoretical during the whole Revolution.

The principle of authority was the lasting legacy of the Revolution. The two terms "liberty" and "fraternity" which accompany it in the republican device had never much influence.

We may even say that they had none during the Revolution and the Empire, but merely served to decorate men's speeches.

Their influence was hardly more considerable later. Fraternity was never practised and the peoples have never cared much for liberty. To-day our working-men have completely surrendered it to their unions.

To sum up: although the Republican motto has been little applied it has exerted a very great influence. Of the French Revolution practically nothing has remained in the popular mind but the three celebrated words which sum up its gospel, and which its armies spread over Europe.

BOOK II

THE RATIONAL, AFFECTIVE, MYSTIC, AND COLLECTIVE INFLUENCES ACTIVE DURING THE REVOLUTION

CHAPTER I

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CONSt.i.tUENT a.s.sEMBLY

1. Psychological Influences active during the French Revolution.

The genesis of the French Revolution, as well as its duration, was conditioned by elements of a rational, affective, mystic, and collective nature, each category of which was ruled by a different logic. It is, as I have said, because they have not been able to dissociate the respective influences of these factors that so many historians have interpreted this period so indifferently

The rational element usually invoked as an explanation exerted in reality but a very slight influence. It prepared the way for the Revolution, but maintained it only at the outset, while it was still exclusively middle-cla.s.s. Its action was manifested by many measures of the time, such as the proposals to reform the taxes, the suppression of the privileges of a useless n.o.bility, &c.

As soon as the Revolution reached the people, the influence of the rational elements speedily vanished before that of the affective and collective elements. As for the mystic elements, the foundation of the revolutionary faith, they made the army fanatical and propagated the new belief throughout the world.

We shall see these various elements as they appeared in events and in the psychology of individuals. Perhaps the most important was the mystic element. The Revolution cannot be clearly comprehended-we cannot repeat it too often-unless it is considered as the formation of a religious belief. What I have said elsewhere of all beliefs applies equally to the Revolution. Referring, for instance, to the chapter on the Reformation, the reader will see that it presents more than one a.n.a.logy with the Revolution.

Having wasted so much time in demonstrating the slight rational value of beliefs, the philosophers are to-day beginning to understand their function better. They have been forced to admit that these are the only factors which possess an influence sufficient to transform all the elements of a civilisation.

They impose themselves on men apart from reason and have the power to polarise men's thoughts and feelings in one direction. Pure reason had never such a power, for men were never impa.s.sioned by reason.

The religious form rapidly a.s.sumed by the Revolution explains its power of expansion and the prestige which it possessed and has retained.

Few historians have understood that this great monument ought to be regarded as the foundation of a new religion. The penetrating mind of Tocqueville, I believe, was the first to perceive as much.

"The French Revolution," he wrote, "was a political revolution which operated in the manner of and a.s.sumed something of the aspect of a religious revolution. See by what regular and characteristic traits it finally resembled the latter: not only did it spread itself far and wide like a religious revolution, but, like the latter, it spread itself by means of preaching and propaganda. A political revolution which inspires proselytes, which is preached as pa.s.sionately to foreigners as it is accomplished at home: consider what a novel spectacle was this."

The religious side of the Revolution being granted, the accompanying fury and devastation are easily explained. History shows us that such are always the accompaniments of the birth of religions. The Revolution was therefore certain to provoke the violence and intolerance the triumphant deities demand from their adepts. It overturned all Europe for twenty years, ruined France, caused the death of millions of men, and cost the country several invasions: but it is as a rule only at the cost of such catastrophes that a people can change its beliefs.

Although the mystic element is always the foundation of beliefs, certain affective and rational elements are quickly added thereto. A belief thus serves to group sentiments and pa.s.sions and interests which belong to the affective domain. Reason then envelops the whole, seeking to justify events in which, however, it played no part whatever.

At the moment of the Revolution every one, according to his aspirations, dressed the new belief in a different rational vesture. The peoples saw in it only the suppression of the religious and political despotisms and hierarchies under which they had so often suffered. Writers like Goethe and thinkers like Kant imagined that they saw in it the triumph of reason. Foreigners like Humboldt came to France "to breathe the air of liberty and to a.s.sist at the obsequies of despotism."

These intellectual illusions did not last long. The evolution of the drama soon revealed the true foundations of the dream.

2. Dissolution of the Ancien Regime. The a.s.sembling of the States General.

Before they are realised in action, revolutions are sketched out in men's thoughts. Prepared by the causes already studied, the French Revolution commenced in reality with the reign of Louis XVI. More discontented and censorious every day, the middle cla.s.ses added claim to claim. Everybody was calling for reform.

Louis XVI. thoroughly understood the utility of reform, but he was too weak to impose it on the clergy and the n.o.bility. He could not even retain his reforming ministers, Malesherbes and Turgot. What with famines and increased taxation, the poverty of all cla.s.ses increased, and the huge pensions drawn by the Court formed a shocking contrast to the general distress.

The notables convoked to attempt to remedy the financial situation refused a system of equal taxation, and granted only insignificant reforms which the Parliament did not even consent to register. It had to be dissolved. The provincial Parliaments made common cause with that of Paris, and were also dissolved. But they led opinion, and in all parts of France promoted the demand for a meeting of the States General, which had not been convoked for nearly two hundred years.

The decision was taken: 5,000,000 Frenchmen, of whom 100,000 were ecclesiastics and 150,000 n.o.bles, sent their representatives. There were in all 1,200 deputies, of whom 578 were of the Third Estate, consisting chiefly of magistrates, advocates, and physicians. Of the 300 deputies of the clergy, 200, of plebeian origin, threw in their lot with the Third Estate against the n.o.bility and clergy.

From the first sessions a psychological conflict broke out between the deputies of different social conditions and (therefore) different mentalities. The magnificent costumes of the privileged deputies contrasted in a humiliating fashion with the sombre fashions of the Third Estate.

At the first session the members of the n.o.bility and the clergy were covered, according to the prerogatives of their cla.s.s, before the king. Those of the Third Estate wished to imitate them, but the privileged members protested. On the following day more protests of wounded self-love were heard. The deputies of the Third Estate invited those of the n.o.bility and the clergy who were sitting in separate halls to join them for the verification of their powers. The n.o.bles refused. The negotiations lasted more than a month. Finally, the deputies of the Third Estate, on the proposition of the Abbe Sieyes, considering that they represented 95 per cent. of the nation, declared themselves const.i.tuted as a National a.s.sembly. From that moment the Revolution pursued its course.

3. The Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly.

The power of a political a.s.sembly resides, above all, in the weakness of its adversaries. Astonished by the slight resistance encountered, and carried away by the ascendancy of a handful of orators, the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, from its earliest sessions, spoke and acted as a sovereign body. Notably it arrogated to itself the power of decreeing imposts, a serious encroachment upon the prerogatives of the royal power.

The resistance of Louis XVI. was feeble enough. He simply had the hall in which the States a.s.sembled closed. The deputies then met in the hall of the tennis-court, and took the oath that they would not separate until the Const.i.tution of the kingdom was an established fact.

The majority of the deputies of the clergy went with them. The king revoked the decision of the a.s.sembly, and ordered the deputies to retire. The Marquis de Dreux-Breze, the Grand Master of Ceremonies, having invited them to obey the order of the sovereign, the President of the a.s.sembly declared "that the nation a.s.sembled cannot receive orders," and Mirabeau replied to the envoy of the sovereign that, being united by the will of the people, the a.s.sembly would only withdraw at the point of the bayonet. Again the king gave way.

On the 9th of June the meeting of deputies took the t.i.tle of the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly. For the first time in centuries the king was forced to recognise the existence of a new power, formerly ignored-that of the people, represented by its elected representatives. The absolute monarchy was no more.

Feeling himself more and more seriously threatened, Louis XVI. summoned to Versailles a number of regiments composed of foreign mercenaries. The a.s.sembly demanded the withdrawal of the troops.

The king refused, and dismissed Necker, replacing him by the Marshal de Broglie, reputed to be an extremely authoritative person.

But the a.s.sembly had able supporters. Camille Desmoulins and others harangued the crowd in all directions, calling it to the defence of liberty. They sounded the tocsin, organised a militia of 12,000 men, took muskets and cannon from the Invalides, and on the 14th of July the armed bands marched upon the Bastille. The fortress, barely defended, capitulated in a few hours. Seven prisoners were found within it, of whom one was an idiot and four were accused of forgery.

The Bastille, the prison of many victims of arbitrary power, symbolised the royal power to many minds; but the people who demolished it had not suffered by it. Scarcely any but members of the n.o.bility were imprisoned there.

The influence exercised by the taking of this fortress has continued to our days. Serious historians like M. Rambaud a.s.sure us that "the taking of the Bastille is a culminating fact in the history, not of France only but of all Europe, and inaugurates a new epoch in the history of the world."

Such credulity is a little excessive. The importance of the event lay simply in the psychological fact that for the first time the people received an obvious proof of the weakness of an authority which had lately been formidable.

When the principle of authority is injured in the public mind it dissolves very rapidly. What might not one demand of a king who could not defend his princ.i.p.al fortress against popular attacks? The master regarded as all-powerful had ceased to be so.

The taking of the Bastille was the beginning of one of those phenomena of mental contagion which abound in the history of the Revolution. The foreign mercenary troops, although they could scarcely be interested in the movement, began to show symptoms of mutiny. Louis XVI. was reduced to accepting their disbandment. He recalled Necker, went to the Hotel de Ville, sanctioned by his presence the accomplished facts, and accepted from La Fayette, commandant of the National Guard, the new c.o.c.kade of red, white, and blue which allied the colours of Paris to those of the king.

Although the riot which ended in the taking of the Bastille can by no means be regarded as "a culminating fact in history," it does mark the precise moment of the commencement of popular government. The armed people thenceforth intervened daily in the deliberations of the revolutionary a.s.semblies, and seriously influenced their conduct.

This intervention of the people in conformity with the dogma of its sovereignty has provoked the respectful admiration of many historians of the Revolution. Even a superficial study of the psychology of crowds would speedily have shown them that the mystic ent.i.ty which they call the people was merely translating the will of a few leaders. It is not correct to say that the people took the Bastille, attacked the Tuileries, invaded the Convention, &c., but that certain leaders-generally by means of the clubs-united armed bands of the populace, which they led against the Bastille, the Tuileries, &c. During the Revolution the same crowds attacked or defended the most contrary parties, according to the leaders who happened to be at their heads. A crowd never has any opinion but that of its leaders.

Example const.i.tuting one of the most potent forms of suggestion, the taking of the Bastille was inevitably followed by the destruction of other fortresses. Many chateaux were regarded as so many little Bastilles, and in order to imitate the Parisians who had destroyed theirs the peasants began to burn them. They did so with the greater fury because the seigneurial homes contained the t.i.tles of feudal dues. It was a species of Jacquerie.

The Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, so proud and haughty towards the king, was, like all the revolutionary a.s.semblies which followed it, extremely pusillanimous before the people.

Hoping to put an end to the disorders of the night of August 4th, it voted, on the proposition of a member of the n.o.bility, the Comte de Noailles, the abolition of seigneurial rights. Although this measure suppressed at one stroke the privileges of the n.o.bles, it was voted with tears and embracings. Such accesses of sentimental enthusiasm are readily explained when we recall how contagious emotion is in a crowd, above all in an a.s.sembly oppressed by fear.

If the renunciation of their rights had been effected by the n.o.bility a few years earlier, the Revolution would doubtless have been avoided, but it was now too late. To give way only when one is forced to do so merely increases the demands of those to whom one yields. In politics one should always look ahead and give way long before one is forced to do so.

Louis XVI. hesitated for two months to ratify the decisions voted by the a.s.sembly on the night of the 4th of August. He had retired to Versailles. The leaders sent thither a band of 7,000 or 8,000 men and women of the people, a.s.suring them that the royal residence contained great stores of bread. The railings of the palace were forced, some of the bodyguard were killed, and the king and all his family were led back to Paris in the midst of a shrieking crowd, many of whom bore on the ends of their pikes the heads of the soldiers ma.s.sacred. The dreadful journey lasted six hours. These events const.i.tuted what are known as the "days" of October.

The popular power increased, and in reality the king, like the whole a.s.sembly, was henceforth in the hands of the people-that is, at the mercy of the clubs and their leaders. This popular power was to prevail for nearly ten years, and the Revolution was to be almost entirely its work.