The Psychology of Revolution Part 18

"A robust faith," writes one of the great admirers of the Revolution, M. Rambaud, "sustained the Convention in this labour; it believed firmly that when it had formulated in a law the principles of the Revolution its enemies would be confounded, or, still better, converted, and that the advent of justice would disarm the insurgents."

During its lifetime the Convention drafted two Const.i.tutions- that of 1793, or the year I., and that of 1795, or the year III. The first was never applied, an absolute dictatorship very soon replacing it; the second created the Directory.

The Convention contained a large number of lawyers and men of affairs, who promptly comprehended the impossibility of government by means of a large a.s.sembly. They soon divided the Convention into small committees, each of which had an independent existence-business committees, committees of legislation, finance, agriculture, arts, &c. These committees prepared the laws which the a.s.sembly usually voted with its eyes closed.

Thanks to them, the work of the Convention was not purely destructive. They drafted many very useful measures, creating important colleges, establishing the metric system, &c. The majority of the members of the a.s.sembly, as we have already seen, took refuge in these committees in order to evade the political conflict which would have endangered their heads.

Above the business committees, which had nothing to do with politics, was the Committee of Public Safety, inst.i.tuted in April, 1793, and composed of nine members. Directed at first by Danton, and in the July of the same year by Robespierre, it gradually absorbed all the powers of government, including that of giving orders to ministers and generals. Carnot directed the operations of the war, Cambon the finances, and Saint-Just and Collot-d'Herbois the general policy.

Although the laws voted by the technical committees were often very wise, and const.i.tuted the lasting work of the Convention, those which the a.s.sembly voted in a body under the threats of the delegations which invaded it were manifestly ridiculous.

Among these laws, which were not greatly in the interests of the public or of the Convention itself, were the law of the maximum, voted in September, 1793, which pretended to fix the price of provisions, and which merely established a continual dearth; the destruction of the royal tombs at Saint-Denis; the trial of the queen, the systematic devastation of the Vendee by fire, the establishment of the Revolutionary Tribunal, &c.

The Terror was the chief means of government during the Convention. Commencing in September, 1793, it reigned for six months-that is, until the death of Robespierre. Vainly did certain Jacobins- Danton, Camille Desmoulins, Herault de Sech.e.l.les, &c.-propose that clemency should be given a trial. The only result of this proposition was that its authors were sent to the scaffold. It was merely the la.s.situde of the public that finally put an end to this shameful period.

The successive struggles of the various parties in the Convention and its tendency towards extremes eliminated one by one the men of importance who had once played their part therein. Finally it fell under the exclusive domination of Robespierre. While the Convention was disorganising and ravaging France, the armies were winning brilliant victories. They had seized the left bank of the Rhine, Belgium, and Holland. The treaty of Basle ratified these conquests.

We have already mentioned, and we shall return to the matter again, that the work of the armies must be considered absolutely apart from that of the Convention. Contemporaries understood this perfectly, but to-day it is often forgotten.

When the Convention was dissolved, in 1795, after lasting for three years, it was regarded with universal distrust. The perpetual plaything of popular caprice, it had not succeeded in pacifying France, but had plunged her into anarchy. The general opinion respecting the Convention is well summed up in a letter written in July, 1799, by the Swedish charge d'affaires, Baron Drinkmann: "I venture to hope that no people will ever be governed by the will of more cruel and imbecile scoundrels than those that have ruled France since the beginning of her new liberty."

3. The End of the Convention. The Beginnings of the Directory.

At the end of its existence, the Convention, always trusting to the power of formulae, drafted a new Const.i.tution, that of the year III., intended to replace that of 1793, which had never been put into execution. The legislative power was to be shared by a so-called Council of Ancients composed of 150 members, and a council of deputies numbering 500. The executive power was confided to a Directory of five members, who were appointed by the Ancients upon nomination by the Five Hundred, and renewed every year by the election of one of their number. It was specified that two-thirds of the members of the new a.s.sembly should be chosen from among the deputies of the Convention. This prudent measure was not very efficacious, as only ten departments remained faithful to the Jacobins.

To avoid the election of royalists, the Convention had decided to banish all emigres in perpetuity.

The announcement of this Const.i.tution did not produce the antic.i.p.ated effect upon the public. It had no effect upon the popular riots, which continued. One of the most important was that which threatened the Convention on the 5th of October, 1795.

The leaders hurled a veritable army upon the a.s.sembly. Before such provocation, the Convention finally decided to defend itself, and sent for troops, entrusting the command to Barras.

Bonaparte, who was then beginning to emerge from obscurity, was entrusted with the task of repression. With such a leader action was swift and energetic. Vigorously pounded with ball near the church at St. Roch, the insurgents fled, leaving some hundreds of dead on the spot.

This action, which displayed a firmness to which the Convention was little habituated, was only due to the celerity of the military operations, for while these were being carried out the insurgents had sent delegates to the a.s.sembly, which, as usual, showed itself quite ready to yield to them.

The repression of this riot const.i.tuted the last important act of the Convention. On the 26th of October, 1795, it declared its mission terminated, and gave way to the Directory.

We have already laid stress upon some of the psychological lessons furnished by the government of the Convention. One of the most striking of these is the impotence of violence to dominate men's minds in permanence.

Never did any Government possess such formidable means of action, yet in spite of the permanent guillotine, despite the delegates sent with the guillotine into the provinces, despite its Draconian laws, the Convention had to struggle perpetually against riots, insurrections, and conspiracies. The cities, the departments, and the faubourgs of Paris were continually rising in revolt, although heads were falling by the thousand.

This a.s.sembly, which thought itself sovereign, fought against the invincible forces which were fixed in men's minds, and which material constraint was powerless to overcome. Of these hidden motive forces it never understood the power, and it struggled against them in vain. In the end the invisible forces triumphed.

CHAPTER V

INSTANCES OF REVOLUTIONARY VIOLENCE

1. Psychological Causes of Revolutionary Violence.

We have shown in the course of the preceding chapters that the revolutionary theories const.i.tuted a new faith.

Humanitarian and sentimental, they exalted liberty and fraternity. But, as in many religions, we can observe a complete contradiction between doctrine and action. In practice no liberty was tolerated, and fraternity was quickly replaced by frenzied ma.s.sacres.

This opposition between principles and conduct results from the intolerance which accompanies all beliefs. A religion may be steeped in humanitarianism and forbearance, but its sectaries will always want to impose it on others by force, so that violence is the inevitable result.

The cruelties of the Revolution were thus the inherent results of the propagation of the new dogmas. The Inquisition, the religious wars of France, St. Bartholomew's Day, the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the "Dragonnades," the persecution of the Jansenists, &c., belonged to the same family as the Terror and derived from the same psychological sources.

Louis XIV. was not a cruel king, yet under the impulse of his faith he drove hundreds of thousands of Protestants out of France, after first shooting down a considerable number and sending others to the galleys.

The methods of persuasion adopted by all believers are by no means a consequence of their fear of the dissentient opposition. Protestants and Jansenists were anything but dangerous under Louis XIV. Intolerance arises above all from the indignation experienced by a mind which is convinced that it possesses the most dazzling verities against the men who deny those truths, and who are surely not acting in good faith. How can one support error when one has the necessary strength to wipe it out?

Thus have reasoned the believers of all ages. Thus reasoned Louis XIV. and the men of the Terror. These latter also were convinced that they were in possession of absolute truths, which they believed to be obvious, and whose triumph was certain to regenerate humanity. Could they be more tolerant toward their adversaries than the Church and the kings of France had been toward heretics?

We are forced to believe that terror is a method which all believers regard as a necessity, since from the beginning of the ages religious codes have always been based upon terror. To force men to observe their prescriptions, believers have sought to terrify them with threats of an eternal h.e.l.l of torments.

The apostles of the Jacobin belief behaved as their fathers had done, and employed the same methods. If similar events occurred again we should see identical actions repeated. If a new belief-Socialism, for example-were to triumph to-morrow, it would be led to employ methods of propaganda like those of the Inquisition and the Terror.

But were we to regard the Jacobin Terror solely as the result of a religious movement, we should not completely apprehend it. Around a triumphant religious belief, as we saw in the case of the Reformation, gather a host of individual interests which are dependent on that belief. The Terror was directed by a few fanatical apostles, but beside this small number of ardent proselytes, whose narrow minds dreamed of regenerating the world, were great numbers of men who lived only to enrich themselves. They rallied readily around the first victorious leader who promised to enable them to enjoy the results of their pillage.

"The Terrorists of the Revolution," writes Albert Sorel, "resorted to the Terror because they wished to remain in power, and were incapable of doing so by other means. They employed it for their own salvation, and after the event they stated that their motive was the salvation of the State. Before it became a system it was a means of government, and the system was only invented to justify the means."

We may thus fully agree with the following verdict on the Terror, written by Emile Ollivier in his work on the Revolution: "The Terror was above all a Jacquerie, a regularised pillage, the vastest enterprise of theft that any a.s.sociation of criminals has ever organised."

2. The Revolutionary Tribunals.

The Revolutionary Tribunals const.i.tuted the princ.i.p.al means of action of the Terror. Besides that of Paris, created at the instigation of Danton, and which a year afterwards sent its founder to the guillotine, France was covered with such tribunals.

"One hundred and seventy-eight tribunals," says Taine, "of which 40 were perambulant, p.r.o.nounced death sentences in all parts of the country, which were carried out instantly on the spot. Between the 16th of April, 1793, and the 9th of Thermidor in the year II. that of Paris guillotined 2,625 persons, and the provincial judges worked as hard as those of Paris. In the little town of Orange alone 331 persons were guillotined. In the city of Arras 299 men and 93 women were guillotined... . In the city of Lyons alone the revolutionary commissioner admitted to 1,684 executions... . The total number of these murders has been put at 17,000, among whom were 1,200 women, of whom a number were octogenarians."

Although the Revolutionary Tribunal of Paris claimed only 2,625 victims, it must not be forgotten that all the suspects had already been summarily ma.s.sacred during the "days" of September.

The Revolutionary Tribunal of Paris, a mere instrument of the Committee of Public Safety, limited itself in reality, as Fouquier-Tinville justly remarked during his trial, to executing its orders. It surrounded itself at first with a few legal forms which did not long survive. Interrogatory, defence, witnesses- all were finally suppressed. Moral proof-that is, mere suspicion-sufficed to procure condemnation. The president usually contented himself with putting a vague question to the accused. To work more rapidly still, Fouquier-Tinville proposed to have the guillotine installed on the same premises as the Tribunal.

This Tribunal sent indiscriminately to the scaffold all the accused persons arrested by reason of party hatred, and very soon, in the hands of Robespierre, it const.i.tuted an instrument of the bloodiest tyranny. When Danton, one of its founders, became its victim, he justly asked pardon of G.o.d and men, before mounting the scaffold for having a.s.sisted to create such a Tribunal.

Nothing found mercy before it: neither the genius of Lavoisier, nor the gentleness of Lucile Desmoulins, nor the merit of Malesherbes. "So much talent," said Benjamin Constant, "ma.s.sacred by the most cowardly and brutish of men!"

To find any excuse for the Revolutionary Tribunal, we must return to our conception of the religious mentality of the Jacobins, who founded and directed it. It was a piece of work comparable in its spirit and its aim to the Inquisition. The men who furnished its victims-Robespierre, Saint-Just, and Couthon-believed themselves the benefactors of the human race in suppressing all infidels, the enemies of the faith that was to regenerate the earth.

The executions during the Terror did not affect the members of the aristocracy only, since 4,000 peasants and 3,000 working-men were guillotined.

Given the emotion produced in Paris in our days by a capital execution, one might suppose that the execution of so many persons at one time would produce a very great emotion. But habit had so dulled sensibility that people paid but little attention to the matter at last. Mothers would take their children to see people guillotined as to-day they take them to the marionette theatre.

The daily spectacle of executions made the men of the time very indifferent to death. All mounted the scaffold with perfect tranquillity, the Girondists singing the Ma.r.s.eillaise as they climbed the steps.

This resignation resulted from the law of habitude, which very rapidly dulls emotion. To judge by the fact that royalist risings were taking place daily, the prospect of the guillotine no longer terrified men. Things happened as though the Terror terrorised no one. Terror is an efficacious psychological process so long as it does not last. The real terror resides far more in threats than in their realisation.

3. The Terror in the Provinces.