The French Revolution

T >> Thomas Carlyle >> The French Revolution


It is true, in a time of external Peace, when there is no fighting but
only drilling, this question, How you rise from the ranks, may seem
theoretical rather. But in reference to the Rights of Man it is
continually practical. The soldier has sworn to be faithful not to the
King only, but to the Law and the Nation. Do our commanders love the
Revolution? ask all soldiers. Unhappily no, they hate it, and love the
Counter-Revolution. Young epauletted men, with quality-blood in
them, poisoned with quality-pride, do sniff openly, with indignation
struggling to become contempt, at our Rights of Man, as at some
newfangled cobweb, which shall be brushed down again. Old officers, more
cautious, keep silent, with closed uncurled lips; but one guesses what
is passing within. Nay who knows, how, under the plausiblest word of
command, might lie Counter-Revolution itself, sale to Exiled Princes
and the Austrian Kaiser: treacherous Aristocrats hoodwinking the
small insight of us common men?--In such manner works that general
raw-material of grievance; disastrous; instead of trust and reverence,
breeding hate, endless suspicion, the impossibility of commanding
and obeying. And now when this second more tangible grievance has
articulated itself universally in the mind of the common man: Peculation
of his Pay! Peculation of the despicablest sort does exist, and has
long existed; but, unless the new-declared Rights of Man, and all rights
whatsoever, be a cobweb, it shall no longer exist.

The French Military System seems dying a sorrowful suicidal death. Nay
more, citizen, as is natural, ranks himself against citizen in this
cause. The soldier finds audience, of numbers and sympathy unlimited,
among the Patriot lower-classes. Nor are the higher wanting to the
officer. The officer still dresses and perfumes himself for such sad
unemigrated soiree as there may still be; and speaks his woes,--which
woes, are they not Majesty's and Nature's? Speaks, at the same time,
his gay defiance, his firm-set resolution. Citizens, still more
Citizenesses, see the right and the wrong; not the Military System alone
will die by suicide, but much along with it. As was said, there is yet
possible a deepest overturn than any yet witnessed: that deepest upturn
of the black-burning sulphurous stratum whereon all rests and grows!

But how these things may act on the rude soldier-mind, with its military
pedantries, its inexperience of all that lies off the parade-ground;
inexperience as of a child, yet fierceness of a man and vehemence of
a Frenchman! It is long that secret communings in mess-room and
guard-room, sour looks, thousandfold petty vexations between commander
and commanded, measure every where the weary military day. Ask Captain
Dampmartin; an authentic, ingenious literary officer of horse; who loves
the Reign of Liberty, after a sort; yet has had his heart grieved to the
quick many times, in the hot South-Western region and elsewhere; and
has seen riot, civil battle by daylight and by torchlight, and anarchy
hatefuller than death. How insubordinate Troopers, with drink in their
heads, meet Captain Dampmartin and another on the ramparts, where there
is no escape or side-path; and make military salute punctually, for we
look calm on them; yet make it in a snappish, almost insulting manner:
how one morning they 'leave all their chamois shirts' and superfluous
buffs, which they are tired of, laid in piles at the Captain's doors;
whereat 'we laugh,' as the ass does, eating thistles: nay how they 'knot
two forage-cords together,' with universal noisy cursing, with evident
intent to hang the Quarter-master:--all this the worthy Captain,
looking on it through the ruddy-and-sable of fond regretful memory, has
flowingly written down. (Dampmartin, Evenemens, i. 122-146.) Men growl
in vague discontent; officers fling up their commissions, and emigrate
in disgust.

Or let us ask another literary Officer; not yet Captain; Sublieutenant
only, in the Artillery Regiment La Fere: a young man of twenty-one; not
unentitled to speak; the name of him is Napoleon Buonaparte. To such
height of Sublieutenancy has he now got promoted, from Brienne School,
five years ago; 'being found qualified in mathematics by La Place.'
He is lying at Auxonne, in the West, in these months; not sumptuously
lodged--'in the house of a Barber, to whose wife he did not pay the
customary degree of respect;' or even over at the Pavilion, in a
chamber with bare walls; the only furniture an indifferent 'bed without
curtains, two chairs, and in the recess of a window a table covered with
books and papers: his Brother Louis sleeps on a coarse mattrass in an
adjoining room.' However, he is doing something great: writing his first
Book or Pamphlet,--eloquent vehement Letter to M. Matteo Buttafuoco,
our Corsican Deputy, who is not a Patriot but an Aristocrat, unworthy
of Deputyship. Joly of Dole is Publisher. The literary Sublieutenant
corrects the proofs; 'sets out on foot from Auxonne, every morning at
four o'clock, for Dole: after looking over the proofs, he partakes of
an extremely frugal breakfast with Joly, and immediately prepares for
returning to his Garrison; where he arrives before noon, having thus
walked above twenty miles in the course of the morning.'

This Sublieutenant can remark that, in drawing-rooms, on streets, on
highways, at inns, every where men's minds are ready to kindle into a
flame. That a Patriot, if he appear in the drawing-room, or amid a
group of officers, is liable enough to be discouraged, so great is the
majority against him: but no sooner does he get into the street, or
among the soldiers, than he feels again as if the whole Nation were with
him. That after the famous Oath, To the King, to the Nation and Law,
there was a great change; that before this, if ordered to fire on the
people, he for one would have done it in the King's name; but that after
this, in the Nation's name, he would not have done it. Likewise that the
Patriot officers, more numerous too in the Artillery and Engineers than
elsewhere, were few in number; yet that having the soldiers on their
side, they ruled the regiment; and did often deliver the Aristocrat
brother officer out of peril and strait. One day, for example, 'a member
of our own mess roused the mob, by singing, from the windows of our
dining-room, O Richard, O my King; and I had to snatch him from their
fury.' (Norvins, Histoire de Napoleon, i. 47; Las Cases, Memoires
translated into Hazlitt's Life of Napoleon, i. 23-31.)

All which let the reader multiply by ten thousand; and spread it with
slight variations over all the camps and garrisons of France. The French
Army seems on the verge of universal mutiny.

Universal mutiny! There is in that what may well make Patriot
Constitutionalism and an august Assembly shudder. Something behoves to
be done; yet what to do no man can tell. Mirabeau proposes even that the
Soldiery, having come to such a pass, be forthwith disbanded, the whole
Two Hundred and Eighty Thousands of them; and organised anew. (Moniteur,
1790. No. 233.) Impossible this, in so sudden a manner! cry all men. And
yet literally, answer we, it is inevitable, in one manner or another.
Such an Army, with its four-generation Nobles, its Peculated Pay, and
men knotting forage cords to hang their quartermaster, cannot subsist
beside such a Revolution. Your alternative is a slow-pining chronic
dissolution and new organization; or a swift decisive one; the agonies
spread over years, or concentrated into an hour. With a Mirabeau for
Minister or Governor the latter had been the choice; with no Mirabeau
for Governor it will naturally be the former.



Chapter 2.2.III.

Bouille at Metz.

To Bouille, in his North-Eastern circle, none of these things are
altogether hid. Many times flight over the marches gleams out on him as
a last guidance in such bewilderment: nevertheless he continues here:
struggling always to hope the best, not from new organisation but from
happy Counter-Revolution and return to the old. For the rest it is clear
to him that this same National Federation, and universal swearing and
fraternising of People and Soldiers, has done 'incalculable mischief.'
So much that fermented secretly has hereby got vent and become open:
National Guards and Soldiers of the line, solemnly embracing one another
on all parade-fields, drinking, swearing patriotic oaths, fall into
disorderly street-processions, constitutional unmilitary exclamations
and hurrahings. On which account the Regiment Picardie, for one, has to
be drawn out in the square of the barracks, here at Metz, and sharply
harangued by the General himself; but expresses penitence. (Bouille,
Memoires, i. 113.)

Far and near, as accounts testify, insubordination has begun grumbling
louder and louder. Officers have been seen shut up in their mess-rooms;
assaulted with clamorous demands, not without menaces. The insubordinate
ringleader is dismissed with 'yellow furlough,' yellow infamous thing
they call cartouche jaune: but ten new ringleaders rise in his stead,
and the yellow cartouche ceases to be thought disgraceful. 'Within a
fortnight,' or at furthest a month, of that sublime Feast of Pikes, the
whole French Army, demanding Arrears, forming Reading Clubs, frequenting
Popular Societies, is in a state which Bouille can call by no name
but that of mutiny. Bouille knows it as few do; and speaks by dire
experience. Take one instance instead of many.

It is still an early day of August, the precise date now undiscoverable,
when Bouille, about to set out for the waters of Aix la Chapelle, is
once more suddenly summoned to the barracks of Metz. The soldiers stand
ranked in fighting order, muskets loaded, the officers all there on
compulsion; and require, with many-voiced emphasis, to have their
arrears paid. Picardie was penitent; but we see it has relapsed: the
wide space bristles and lours with mere mutinous armed men. Brave
Bouille advances to the nearest Regiment, opens his commanding lips to
harangue; obtains nothing but querulous-indignant discordance, and the
sound of so many thousand livres legally due. The moment is trying;
there are some ten thousand soldiers now in Metz, and one spirit seems
to have spread among them.

Bouille is firm as the adamant; but what shall he do? A German Regiment,
named of Salm, is thought to be of better temper: nevertheless Salm too
may have heard of the precept, Thou shalt not steal; Salm too may know
that money is money. Bouille walks trustfully towards the Regiment de
Salm, speaks trustful words; but here again is answered by the cry
of forty-four thousand livres odd sous. A cry waxing more and more
vociferous, as Salm's humour mounts; which cry, as it will produce
no cash or promise of cash, ends in the wide simultaneous whirr of
shouldered muskets, and a determined quick-time march on the part of
Salm--towards its Colonel's house, in the next street, there to seize
the colours and military chest. Thus does Salm, for its part; strong in
the faith that meum is not tuum, that fair speeches are not forty-four
thousand livres odd sous.

Unrestrainable! Salm tramps to military time, quick consuming the way.
Bouille and the officers, drawing sword, have to dash into double quick
pas-de-charge, or unmilitary running; to get the start; to station
themselves on the outer staircase, and stand there with what of
death-defiance and sharp steel they have; Salm truculently coiling
itself up, rank after rank, opposite them, in such humour as we can
fancy, which happily has not yet mounted to the murder-pitch. There will
Bouille stand, certain at least of one man's purpose; in grim calmness,
awaiting the issue. What the intrepidest of men and generals can do is
done. Bouille, though there is a barricading picket at each end of
the street, and death under his eyes, contrives to send for a Dragoon
Regiment with orders to charge: the dragoon officers mount; the dragoon
men will not: hope is none there for him. The street, as we say,
barricaded; the Earth all shut out, only the indifferent heavenly Vault
overhead: perhaps here or there a timorous householder peering out of
window, with prayer for Bouille; copious Rascality, on the pavement,
with prayer for Salm: there do the two parties stand;--like chariots
locked in a narrow thoroughfare; like locked wrestlers at a dead-grip!
For two hours they stand; Bouille's sword glittering in his hand,
adamantine resolution clouding his brows: for two hours by the clocks of
Metz. Moody-silent stands Salm, with occasional clangour; but does not
fire. Rascality from time to time urges some grenadier to level his
musket at the General; who looks on it as a bronze General would; and
always some corporal or other strikes it up.

In such remarkable attitude, standing on that staircase for two hours,
does brave Bouille, long a shadow, dawn on us visibly out of the
dimness, and become a person. For the rest, since Salm has not shot him
at the first instant, and since in himself there is no variableness, the
danger will diminish. The Mayor, 'a man infinitely respectable,'
with his Municipals and tricolor sashes, finally gains entrance;
remonstrates, perorates, promises; gets Salm persuaded home to its
barracks. Next day, our respectable Mayor lending the money, the
officers pay down the half of the demand in ready cash. With which
liquidation Salm pacifies itself, and for the present all is hushed up,
as much as may be. (Bouille, i. 140-5.)

Such scenes as this of Metz, or preparations and demonstrations
towards such, are universal over France: Dampmartin, with his knotted
forage-cords and piled chamois jackets, is at Strasburg in the
South-East; in these same days or rather nights, Royal Champagne is
'shouting Vive la Nation, au diable les Aristocrates, with some thirty
lit candles,' at Hesdin, on the far North-West. "The garrison of
Bitche," Deputy Rewbell is sorry to state, "went out of the town, with
drums beating; deposed its officers; and then returned into the town,
sabre in hand." (Moniteur (in Hist. Parl. vii. 29).) Ought not a
National Assembly to occupy itself with these objects? Military France
is everywhere full of sour inflammatory humour, which exhales itself
fuliginously, this way or that: a whole continent of smoking flax;
which, blown on here or there by any angry wind, might so easily start
into a blaze, into a continent of fire!

Constitutional Patriotism is in deep natural alarm at these things. The
august Assembly sits diligently deliberating; dare nowise resolve, with
Mirabeau, on an instantaneous disbandment and extinction; finds that a
course of palliatives is easier. But at least and lowest, this grievance
of the Arrears shall be rectified. A plan, much noised of in those days,
under the name 'Decree of the Sixth of August,' has been devised for
that. Inspectors shall visit all armies; and, with certain elected
corporals and 'soldiers able to write,' verify what arrears and
peculations do lie due, and make them good. Well, if in this way
the smoky heat be cooled down; if it be not, as we say, ventilated
over-much, or, by sparks and collision somewhere, sent up!



Chapter 2.2.IV.

Arrears at Nanci.

We are to remark, however, that of all districts, this of Bouille's
seems the inflammablest. It was always to Bouille and Metz that
Royalty would fly: Austria lies near; here more than elsewhere must
the disunited People look over the borders, into a dim sea of Foreign
Politics and Diplomacies, with hope or apprehension, with mutual
exasperation.

It was but in these days that certain Austrian troops, marching
peaceably across an angle of this region, seemed an Invasion realised;
and there rushed towards Stenai, with musket on shoulder, from all the
winds, some thirty thousand National Guards, to inquire what the matter
was. (Moniteur, Seance du 9 Aout 1790.) A matter of mere diplomacy it
proved; the Austrian Kaiser, in haste to get to Belgium, had bargained
for this short cut. The infinite dim movement of European Politics waved
a skirt over these spaces, passing on its way; like the passing shadow
of a condor; and such a winged flight of thirty thousand, with mixed
cackling and crowing, rose in consequence! For, in addition to all, this
people, as we said, is much divided: Aristocrats abound; Patriotism has
both Aristocrats and Austrians to watch. It is Lorraine, this region;
not so illuminated as old France: it remembers ancient Feudalisms; nay,
within man's memory, it had a Court and King of its own, or indeed the
splendour of a Court and King, without the burden. Then, contrariwise,
the Mother Society, which sits in the Jacobins Church at Paris, has
Daughters in the Towns here; shrill-tongued, driven acrid: consider how
the memory of good King Stanislaus, and ages of Imperial Feudalism, may
comport with this New acrid Evangel, and what a virulence of discord
there may be! In all which, the Soldiery, officers on one side, private
men on the other, takes part, and now indeed principal part; a Soldiery,
moreover, all the hotter here as it lies the denser, the frontier
Province requiring more of it.

So stands Lorraine: but the capital City, more especially so. The
pleasant City of Nanci, which faded Feudalism loves, where King
Stanislaus personally dwelt and shone, has an Aristocrat Municipality,
and then also a Daughter Society: it has some forty thousand divided
souls of population; and three large Regiments, one of which is Swiss
Chateau-Vieux, dear to Patriotism ever since it refused fighting, or
was thought to refuse, in the Bastille days. Here unhappily all evil
influences seem to meet concentered; here, of all places, may jealousy
and heat evolve itself. These many months, accordingly, man has been set
against man, Washed against Unwashed; Patriot Soldier against Aristocrat
Captain, ever the more bitterly; and a long score of grudges has been
running up.

Nameable grudges, and likewise unnameable: for there is a punctual
nature in Wrath; and daily, were there but glances of the eye, tones
of the voice, and minutest commissions or omissions, it will jot down
somewhat, to account, under the head of sundries, which always swells
the sum-total. For example, in April last, in those times of preliminary
Federation, when National Guards and Soldiers were every where swearing
brotherhood, and all France was locally federating, preparing for the
grand National Feast of Pikes, it was observed that these Nanci Officers
threw cold water on the whole brotherly business; that they first hung
back from appearing at the Nanci Federation; then did appear, but in
mere redingote and undress, with scarcely a clean shirt on; nay that one
of them, as the National Colours flaunted by in that solemn moment, did,
without visible necessity, take occasion to spit. (Deux Amis, v. 217.)

Small 'sundries as per journal,' but then incessant ones! The Aristocrat
Municipality, pretending to be Constitutional, keeps mostly quiet; not
so the Daughter Society, the five thousand adult male Patriots of the
place, still less the five thousand female: not so the young, whiskered
or whiskerless, four-generation Noblesse in epaulettes; the grim Patriot
Swiss of Chateau-Vieux, effervescent infantry of Regiment du Roi, hot
troopers of Mestre-de-Camp! Walled Nanci, which stands so bright and
trim, with its straight streets, spacious squares, and Stanislaus'
Architecture, on the fruitful alluvium of the Meurthe; so bright, amid
the yellow cornfields in these Reaper-Months,--is inwardly but a den of
discord, anxiety, inflammability, not far from exploding. Let Bouille
look to it. If that universal military heat, which we liken to a vast
continent of smoking flax, do any where take fire, his beard, here in
Lorraine and Nanci, may the most readily of all get singed by it.

Bouille, for his part, is busy enough, but only with the general
superintendence; getting his pacified Salm, and all other still
tolerable Regiments, marched out of Metz, to southward towns and
villages; to rural Cantonments as at Vic, Marsal and thereabout, by
the still waters; where is plenty of horse-forage, sequestered
parade-ground, and the soldier's speculative faculty can be stilled
by drilling. Salm, as we said, received only half payment of arrears;
naturally not without grumbling. Nevertheless that scene of the drawn
sword may, after all, have raised Bouille in the mind of Salm; for men
and soldiers love intrepidity and swift inflexible decision, even when
they suffer by it. As indeed is not this fundamentally the quality of
qualities for a man? A quality which by itself is next to nothing,
since inferior animals, asses, dogs, even mules have it; yet, in due
combination, it is the indispensable basis of all.

Of Nanci and its heats, Bouille, commander of the whole, knows nothing
special; understands generally that the troops in that City are perhaps
the worst. (Bouille, i. c. 9.) The Officers there have it all, as they
have long had it, to themselves; and unhappily seem to manage it ill.
'Fifty yellow furloughs,' given out in one batch, do surely betoken
difficulties. But what was Patriotism to think of certain light-fencing
Fusileers 'set on,' or supposed to be set on, 'to insult the
Grenadier-club,' considerate speculative Grenadiers, and that
reading-room of theirs? With shoutings, with hootings; till the
speculative Grenadier drew his side-arms too; and there ensued battery
and duels! Nay more, are not swashbucklers of the same stamp 'sent out'
visibly, or sent out presumably, now in the dress of Soldiers to pick
quarrels with the Citizens; now, disguised as Citizens, to pick quarrels
with the Soldiers? For a certain Roussiere, expert in fence, was taken
in the very fact; four Officers (presumably of tender years) hounding
him on, who thereupon fled precipitately! Fence-master Roussiere, haled
to the guardhouse, had sentence of three months' imprisonment: but
his comrades demanded 'yellow furlough' for him of all persons; nay,
thereafter they produced him on parade; capped him in paper-helmet
inscribed, Iscariot; marched him to the gate of City; and there sternly
commanded him to vanish for evermore.

On all which suspicions, accusations and noisy procedure, and on enough
of the like continually accumulating, the Officer could not but look
with disdainful indignation; perhaps disdainfully express the same in
words, and 'soon after fly over to the Austrians.'

So that when it here as elsewhere comes to the question of Arrears,
the humour and procedure is of the bitterest: Regiment Mestre-de-Camp
getting, amid loud clamour, some three gold louis a-man,--which have,
as usual, to be borrowed from the Municipality; Swiss Chateau-Vieux
applying for the like, but getting instead instantaneous courrois, or
cat-o'-nine-tails, with subsequent unsufferable hisses from the women
and children; Regiment du Roi, sick of hope deferred, at length seizing
its military chest, and marching it to quarters, but next day marching
it back again, through streets all struck silent:--unordered paradings
and clamours, not without strong liquor; objurgation, insubordination;
your military ranked Arrangement going all (as the Typographers say of
set types, in a similar case) rapidly to pie! (Deux Amis, v. c. 8.) Such
is Nanci in these early days of August; the sublime Feast of Pikes not
yet a month old.

Constitutional Patriotism, at Paris and elsewhere, may well quake at
the news. War-Minister Latour du Pin runs breathless to the National
Assembly, with a written message that 'all is burning, tout brule, tout
presse.' The National Assembly, on spur of the instant, renders such
Decret, and 'order to submit and repent,' as he requires; if it will
avail any thing. On the other hand, Journalism, through all its throats,
gives hoarse outcry, condemnatory, elegiac-applausive. The Forty-eight
Sections, lift up voices; sonorous Brewer, or call him now Colonel
Santerre, is not silent, in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. For, meanwhile,
the Nanci Soldiers have sent a Deputation of Ten, furnished
with documents and proofs; who will tell another story than the
'all-is-burning' one. Which deputed Ten, before ever they reach the
Assembly Hall, assiduous Latour du Pin picks up, and on warrant of Mayor
Bailly, claps in prison! Most unconstitutionally; for they had officers'
furloughs. Whereupon Saint-Antoine, in indignant uncertainty of the
future, closes its shops. Is Bouille a traitor then, sold to Austria?
In that case, these poor private sentinels have revolted mainly out of
Patriotism?

New Deputation, Deputation of National Guardsmen now, sets forth from
Nanci to enlighten the Assembly. It meets the old deputed Ten returning,
quite unexpectedly unhanged; and proceeds thereupon with better
prospects; but effects nothing. Deputations, Government Messengers,
Orderlies at hand-gallops, Alarms, thousand-voiced Rumours, go vibrating
continually; backwards and forwards,--scattering distraction. Not till
the last week of August does M. de Malseigne, selected as Inspector, get
down to the scene of mutiny; with Authority, with cash, and 'Decree of
the Sixth of August.' He now shall see these Arrears liquidated, justice
done, or at least tumult quashed.