The French Revolution

T >> Thomas Carlyle >> The French Revolution


The amende honorable, what 'legal apology' you will, to God:--but not,
if D'Aiguillon can help it, to man. Dubarry still hovers in his
mansion at Ruel; and while there is life, there is hope. Grand-Almoner
Roche-Aymon, accordingly (for he seems to be in the secret), has
no sooner seen his pyxes and gear repacked, then he is stepping
majestically forth again, as if the work were done! But King's Confessor
Abbe Moudon starts forward; with anxious acidulent face, twitches him by
the sleeve; whispers in his ear. Whereupon the poor Cardinal must turn
round; and declare audibly; "That his Majesty repents of any subjects of
scandal he may have given (a pu donner); and purposes, by the strength
of Heaven assisting him, to avoid the like--for the future!" Words
listened to by Richelieu with mastiff-face, growing blacker; answered
to, aloud, 'with an epithet,'--which Besenval will not repeat. Old
Richelieu, conqueror of Minorca, companion of Flying-Table orgies,
perforator of bedroom walls, (Besenval, i. 159-172. Genlis; Duc de
Levis, &c.) is thy day also done?

Alas, the Chapel organs may keep going; the Shrine of Sainte Genevieve
be let down, and pulled up again,--without effect. In the evening the
whole Court, with Dauphin and Dauphiness, assist at the Chapel: priests
are hoarse with chanting their 'Prayers of Forty Hours;' and the heaving
bellows blow. Almost frightful! For the very heaven blackens; battering
rain-torrents dash, with thunder; almost drowning the organ's voice: and
electric fire-flashes make the very flambeaux on the altar pale. So that
the most, as we are told, retired, when it was over, with hurried steps,
'in a state of meditation (recueillement),' and said little or nothing.
(Weber, Memoires concernant Marie-Antoinette (London, 1809), i. 22.)

So it has lasted for the better half of a fortnight; the Dubarry gone
almost a week. Besenval says, all the world was getting impatient que
cela finit; that poor Louis would have done with it. It is now the 10th
of May 1774. He will soon have done now.

This tenth May day falls into the loathsome sick-bed; but dull,
unnoticed there: for they that look out of the windows are quite
darkened; the cistern-wheel moves discordant on its axis; Life, like a
spent steed, is panting towards the goal. In their remote apartments,
Dauphin and Dauphiness stand road-ready; all grooms and equerries booted
and spurred: waiting for some signal to escape the house of pestilence.
(One grudges to interfere with the beautiful theatrical 'candle,' which
Madame Campan (i. 79) has lit on this occasion, and blown out at the
moment of death. What candles might be lit or blown out, in so large an
Establishment as that of Versailles, no man at such distance would like
to affirm: at the same time, as it was two o'clock in a May Afternoon,
and these royal Stables must have been some five or six hundred yards
from the royal sick-room, the 'candle' does threaten to go out in spite
of us. It remains burning indeed--in her fantasy; throwing light on much
in those Memoires of hers.) And, hark! across the Oeil-de-Boeuf, what
sound is that; sound 'terrible and absolutely like thunder'? It is
the rush of the whole Court, rushing as in wager, to salute the new
Sovereigns: Hail to your Majesties! The Dauphin and Dauphiness are King
and Queen! Over-powered with many emotions, they two fall on their knees
together, and, with streaming tears, exclaim, "O God, guide us, protect
us; we are too young to reign!"--Too young indeed.

Thus, in any case, 'with a sound absolutely like thunder,' has the
Horologe of Time struck, and an old Era passed away. The Louis that was,
lies forsaken, a mass of abhorred clay; abandoned 'to some poor persons,
and priests of the Chapelle Ardente,'--who make haste to put him 'in two
lead coffins, pouring in abundant spirits of wine.' The new Louis with
his Court is rolling towards Choisy, through the summer afternoon: the
royal tears still flow; but a word mispronounced by Monseigneur d'Artois
sets them all laughing, and they weep no more. Light mortals, how ye
walk your light life-minuet, over bottomless abysses, divided from you
by a film!

For the rest, the proper authorities felt that no Funeral could be too
unceremonious. Besenval himself thinks it was unceremonious enough. Two
carriages containing two noblemen of the usher species, and a Versailles
clerical person; some score of mounted pages, some fifty palfreniers;
these, with torches, but not so much as in black, start from Versailles
on the second evening with their leaden bier. At a high trot they start;
and keep up that pace. For the jibes (brocards) of those Parisians, who
stand planted in two rows, all the way to St. Denis, and 'give vent to
their pleasantry, the characteristic of the nation,' do not tempt one
to slacken. Towards midnight the vaults of St. Denis receive their
own; unwept by any eye of all these; if not by poor Loque his neglected
Daughter's, whose Nunnery is hard by.

Him they crush down, and huddle under-ground, in this impatient way; him
and his era of sin and tyranny and shame; for behold a New Era is come;
the future all the brighter that the past was base.



BOOK 1.II.

THE PAPER AGE


Chapter 1.2.I.

Astraea Redux.

A paradoxical philosopher, carrying to the uttermost length that
aphorism of Montesquieu's, 'Happy the people whose annals are tiresome,'
has said, 'Happy the people whose annals are vacant.' In which saying,
mad as it looks, may there not still be found some grain of reason? For
truly, as it has been written, 'Silence is divine,' and of Heaven; so
in all earthly things too there is a silence which is better than any
speech. Consider it well, the Event, the thing which can be spoken of
and recorded, is it not, in all cases, some disruption, some solution of
continuity? Were it even a glad Event, it involves change, involves loss
(of active Force); and so far, either in the past or in the present, is
an irregularity, a disease. Stillest perseverance were our blessedness;
not dislocation and alteration,--could they be avoided.

The oak grows silently, in the forest, a thousand years; only in the
thousandth year, when the woodman arrives with his axe, is there heard
an echoing through the solitudes; and the oak announces itself when,
with a far-sounding crash, it falls. How silent too was the planting of
the acorn; scattered from the lap of some wandering wind! Nay, when
our oak flowered, or put on its leaves (its glad Events), what shout of
proclamation could there be? Hardly from the most observant a word of
recognition. These things befell not, they were slowly done; not in an
hour, but through the flight of days: what was to be said of it? This
hour seemed altogether as the last was, as the next would be.

It is thus everywhere that foolish Rumour babbles not of what was done,
but of what was misdone or undone; and foolish History (ever, more or
less, the written epitomised synopsis of Rumour) knows so little
that were not as well unknown. Attila Invasions, Walter-the-Penniless
Crusades, Sicilian Vespers, Thirty-Years Wars: mere sin and misery; not
work, but hindrance of work! For the Earth, all this while, was yearly
green and yellow with her kind harvests; the hand of the craftsman, the
mind of the thinker rested not: and so, after all, and in spite of all,
we have this so glorious high-domed blossoming World; concerning which,
poor History may well ask, with wonder, Whence it came? She knows so
little of it, knows so much of what obstructed it, what would have
rendered it impossible. Such, nevertheless, by necessity or foolish
choice, is her rule and practice; whereby that paradox, 'Happy the
people whose annals are vacant,' is not without its true side.

And yet, what seems more pertinent to note here, there is a stillness,
not of unobstructed growth, but of passive inertness, and symptom of
imminent downfall. As victory is silent, so is defeat. Of the opposing
forces the weaker has resigned itself; the stronger marches on,
noiseless now, but rapid, inevitable: the fall and overturn will not be
noiseless. How all grows, and has its period, even as the herbs of the
fields, be it annual, centennial, millennial! All grows and dies, each
by its own wondrous laws, in wondrous fashion of its own; spiritual
things most wondrously of all. Inscrutable, to the wisest, are these
latter; not to be prophesied of, or understood. If when the oak stands
proudliest flourishing to the eye, you know that its heart is sound, it
is not so with the man; how much less with the Society, with the Nation
of men! Of such it may be affirmed even that the superficial aspect,
that the inward feeling of full health, is generally ominous. For indeed
it is of apoplexy, so to speak, and a plethoric lazy habit of body, that
Churches, Kingships, Social Institutions, oftenest die. Sad, when such
Institution plethorically says to itself, Take thy ease, thou hast goods
laid up;--like the fool of the Gospel, to whom it was answered, Fool,
this night thy life shall be required of thee!

Is it the healthy peace, or the ominous unhealthy, that rests on France,
for these next Ten Years? Over which the Historian can pass lightly,
without call to linger: for as yet events are not, much less
performances. Time of sunniest stillness;--shall we call it, what all
men thought it, the new Age of God? Call it at least, of Paper; which
in many ways is the succedaneum of Gold. Bank-paper, wherewith you
can still buy when there is no gold left; Book-paper, splendent with
Theories, Philosophies, Sensibilities,--beautiful art, not only of
revealing Thought, but also of so beautifully hiding from us the want
of Thought! Paper is made from the rags of things that did once exist;
there are endless excellences in Paper.--What wisest Philosophe, in this
halcyon uneventful period, could prophesy that there was approaching,
big with darkness and confusion, the event of events? Hope ushers in a
Revolution,--as earthquakes are preceded by bright weather. On the
Fifth of May, fifteen years hence, old Louis will not be sending for
the Sacraments; but a new Louis, his grandson, with the whole pomp of
astonished intoxicated France, will be opening the States-General.

Dubarrydom and its D'Aiguillons are gone forever. There is a young,
still docile, well-intentioned King; a young, beautiful and bountiful,
well-intentioned Queen; and with them all France, as it were, become
young. Maupeou and his Parlement have to vanish into thick night;
respectable Magistrates, not indifferent to the Nation, were it only
for having been opponents of the Court, can descend unchained from their
'steep rocks at Croe in Combrailles' and elsewhere, and return singing
praises: the old Parlement of Paris resumes its functions. Instead of a
profligate bankrupt Abbe Terray, we have now, for Controller-General, a
virtuous philosophic Turgot, with a whole Reformed France in his
head. By whom whatsoever is wrong, in Finance or otherwise, will be
righted,--as far as possible. Is it not as if Wisdom herself were
henceforth to have seat and voice in the Council of Kings? Turgot has
taken office with the noblest plainness of speech to that effect; been
listened to with the noblest royal trustfulness. (Turgot's Letter:
Condorcet, Vie de Turgot (Oeuvres de Condorcet, t. v.), p. 67. The date
is 24th August, 1774.) It is true, as King Louis objects, "They say he
never goes to mass;" but liberal France likes him little worse for that;
liberal France answers, "The Abbe Terray always went." Philosophism
sees, for the first time, a Philosophe (or even a Philosopher) in
office: she in all things will applausively second him; neither will
light old Maurepas obstruct, if he can easily help it.

Then how 'sweet' are the manners; vice 'losing all its deformity;'
becoming decent (as established things, making regulations for
themselves, do); becoming almost a kind of 'sweet' virtue! Intelligence
so abounds; irradiated by wit and the art of conversation. Philosophism
sits joyful in her glittering saloons, the dinner-guest of Opulence
grown ingenuous, the very nobles proud to sit by her; and preaches,
lifted up over all Bastilles, a coming millennium. From far Ferney,
Patriarch Voltaire gives sign: veterans Diderot, D'Alembert have
lived to see this day; these with their younger Marmontels, Morellets,
Chamforts, Raynals, make glad the spicy board of rich ministering
Dowager, of philosophic Farmer-General. O nights and suppers of the
gods! Of a truth, the long-demonstrated will now be done: 'the Age
of Revolutions approaches' (as Jean Jacques wrote), but then of happy
blessed ones. Man awakens from his long somnambulism; chases the
Phantasms that beleagured and bewitched him. Behold the new morning
glittering down the eastern steeps; fly, false Phantasms, from its
shafts of light; let the Absurd fly utterly forsaking this lower
Earth for ever. It is Truth and Astraea Redux that (in the shape of
Philosophism) henceforth reign. For what imaginable purpose was man
made, if not to be 'happy'? By victorious Analysis, and Progress of the
Species, happiness enough now awaits him. Kings can become philosophers;
or else philosophers Kings. Let but Society be once rightly
constituted,--by victorious Analysis. The stomach that is empty shall be
filled; the throat that is dry shall be wetted with wine. Labour itself
shall be all one as rest; not grievous, but joyous. Wheatfields, one
would think, cannot come to grow untilled; no man made clayey, or made
weary thereby;--unless indeed machinery will do it? Gratuitous Tailors
and Restaurateurs may start up, at fit intervals, one as yet sees not
how. But if each will, according to rule of Benevolence, have a care
for all, then surely--no one will be uncared for. Nay, who knows but,
by sufficiently victorious Analysis, 'human life may be indefinitely
lengthened,' and men get rid of Death, as they have already done of
the Devil? We shall then be happy in spite of Death and the Devil.--So
preaches magniloquent Philosophism her Redeunt Saturnia regna.

The prophetic song of Paris and its Philosophes is audible enough in
the Versailles Oeil-de-Boeuf; and the Oeil-de-Boeuf, intent chiefly on
nearer blessedness, can answer, at worst, with a polite "Why not?" Good
old cheery Maurepas is too joyful a Prime Minister to dash the world's
joy. Sufficient for the day be its own evil. Cheery old man, he cuts his
jokes, and hovers careless along; his cloak well adjusted to the wind,
if so be he may please all persons. The simple young King, whom a
Maurepas cannot think of troubling with business, has retired into the
interior apartments; taciturn, irresolute; though with a sharpness of
temper at times: he, at length, determines on a little smithwork; and
so, in apprenticeship with a Sieur Gamain (whom one day he shall have
little cause to bless), is learning to make locks. (Campan, i. 125.)
It appears further, he understood Geography; and could read English.
Unhappy young King, his childlike trust in that foolish old Maurepas
deserved another return. But friend and foe, destiny and himself have
combined to do him hurt.

Meanwhile the fair young Queen, in her halls of state, walks like a
goddess of Beauty, the cynosure of all eyes; as yet mingles not with
affairs; heeds not the future; least of all, dreads it. Weber and Campan
(Ib. i. 100-151. Weber, i. 11-50.) have pictured her, there within the
royal tapestries, in bright boudoirs, baths, peignoirs, and the Grand
and Little Toilette; with a whole brilliant world waiting obsequious on
her glance: fair young daughter of Time, what things has Time in store
for thee! Like Earth's brightest Appearance, she moves gracefully,
environed with the grandeur of Earth: a reality, and yet a magic vision;
for, behold, shall not utter Darkness swallow it! The soft young heart
adopts orphans, portions meritorious maids, delights to succour the
poor,--such poor as come picturesquely in her way; and sets the fashion
of doing it; for as was said, Benevolence has now begun reigning. In
her Duchess de Polignac, in Princess de Lamballe, she enjoys something
almost like friendship; now too, after seven long years, she has a
child, and soon even a Dauphin, of her own; can reckon herself, as
Queens go, happy in a husband.

Events? The Grand events are but charitable Feasts of Morals (Fetes des
moeurs), with their Prizes and Speeches; Poissarde Processions to the
Dauphin's cradle; above all, Flirtations, their rise, progress, decline
and fall. There are Snow-statues raised by the poor in hard winter to
a Queen who has given them fuel. There are masquerades, theatricals;
beautifyings of little Trianon, purchase and repair of St. Cloud;
journeyings from the summer Court-Elysium to the winter one. There
are poutings and grudgings from the Sardinian Sisters-in-law (for the
Princes too are wedded); little jealousies, which Court-Etiquette can
moderate. Wholly the lightest-hearted frivolous foam of Existence; yet
an artfully refined foam; pleasant were it not so costly, like that
which mantles on the wine of Champagne!

Monsieur, the King's elder Brother, has set up for a kind of wit; and
leans towards the Philosophe side. Monseigneur d'Artois pulls the mask
from a fair impertinent; fights a duel in consequence,--almost drawing
blood. (Besenval, ii. 282-330.) He has breeches of a kind new in this
world;--a fabulous kind; 'four tall lackeys,' says Mercier, as if he
had seen it, 'hold him up in the air, that he may fall into the garment
without vestige of wrinkle; from which rigorous encasement the same
four, in the same way, and with more effort, must deliver him at night.'
(Mercier, Nouveau Paris, iii. 147.) This last is he who now, as a gray
time-worn man, sits desolate at Gratz; (A.D. 1834.) having winded up
his destiny with the Three Days. In such sort are poor mortals swept and
shovelled to and fro.



Chapter 1.2.II.

Petition in Hieroglyphs.

With the working people, again it is not so well. Unlucky! For there are
twenty to twenty-five millions of them. Whom, however, we lump together
into a kind of dim compendious unity, monstrous but dim, far off, as the
canaille; or, more humanely, as 'the masses.' Masses, indeed: and yet,
singular to say, if, with an effort of imagination, thou follow them,
over broad France, into their clay hovels, into their garrets and
hutches, the masses consist all of units. Every unit of whom has his own
heart and sorrows; stands covered there with his own skin, and if you
prick him he will bleed. O purple Sovereignty, Holiness, Reverence;
thou, for example, Cardinal Grand-Almoner, with thy plush covering of
honour, who hast thy hands strengthened with dignities and moneys, and
art set on thy world watch-tower solemnly, in sight of God, for such
ends,--what a thought: that every unit of these masses is a miraculous
Man, even as thyself art; struggling, with vision, or with blindness,
for his infinite Kingdom (this life which he has got, once only, in the
middle of Eternities); with a spark of the Divinity, what thou callest
an immortal soul, in him!

Dreary, languid do these struggle in their obscure remoteness; their
hearth cheerless, their diet thin. For them, in this world, rises no Era
of Hope; hardly now in the other,--if it be not hope in the gloomy rest
of Death, for their faith too is failing. Untaught, uncomforted, unfed!
A dumb generation; their voice only an inarticulate cry: spokesman,
in the King's Council, in the world's forum, they have none that finds
credence. At rare intervals (as now, in 1775), they will fling down
their hoes and hammers; and, to the astonishment of thinking mankind,
(Lacretelle, France pendant le 18me Siecle, ii. 455. Biographie
Universelle, para Turgot (by Durozoir).) flock hither and thither,
dangerous, aimless; get the length even of Versailles. Turgot is
altering the Corn-trade, abrogating the absurdest Corn-laws; there is
dearth, real, or were it even 'factitious;' an indubitable scarcity of
bread. And so, on the second day of May 1775, these waste multitudes
do here, at Versailles Chateau, in wide-spread wretchedness, in sallow
faces, squalor, winged raggedness, present, as in legible hieroglyphic
writing, their Petition of Grievances. The Chateau gates have to be
shut; but the King will appear on the balcony, and speak to them. They
have seen the King's face; their Petition of Grievances has been, if not
read, looked at. For answer, two of them are hanged, 'on a new gallows
forty feet high;' and the rest driven back to their dens,--for a time.

Clearly a difficult 'point' for Government, that of dealing with these
masses;--if indeed it be not rather the sole point and problem
of Government, and all other points mere accidental crotchets,
superficialities, and beatings of the wind! For let Charter-Chests, Use
and Wont, Law common and special say what they will, the masses count to
so many millions of units; made, to all appearance, by God,--whose Earth
this is declared to be. Besides, the people are not without ferocity;
they have sinews and indignation. Do but look what holiday old Marquis
Mirabeau, the crabbed old friend of Men, looked on, in these same years,
from his lodging, at the Baths of Mont d'Or: 'The savages descending
in torrents from the mountains; our people ordered not to go out. The
Curate in surplice and stole; Justice in its peruke; Marechausee sabre
in hand, guarding the place, till the bagpipes can begin. The dance
interrupted, in a quarter of an hour, by battle; the cries, the
squealings of children, of infirm persons, and other assistants, tarring
them on, as the rabble does when dogs fight: frightful men, or rather
frightful wild animals, clad in jupes of coarse woollen, with large
girdles of leather studded with copper nails; of gigantic stature,
heightened by high wooden-clogs (sabots); rising on tiptoe to see the
fight; tramping time to it; rubbing their sides with their elbows: their
faces haggard (figures haves), and covered with their long greasy hair;
the upper part of the visage waxing pale, the lower distorting itself
into the attempt at a cruel laugh and a sort of ferocious impatience.
And these people pay the taille! And you want further to take their salt
from them! And you know not what it is you are stripping barer, or
as you call it, governing; what by the spurt of your pen, in its
cold dastard indifference, you will fancy you can starve always with
impunity; always till the catastrophe come!--Ah Madame, such Government
by Blindman's-buff, stumbling along too far, will end in the General
Overturn (culbute generale). (Memoires de Mirabeau, ecrits par Lui-meme,
par son Pere, son Oncle et son Fils Adoptif (Paris, 34-5), ii.186.)

Undoubtedly a dark feature this in an Age of Gold,--Age, at least,
of Paper and Hope! Meanwhile, trouble us not with thy prophecies, O
croaking Friend of Men: 'tis long that we have heard such; and still the
old world keeps wagging, in its old way.



Chapter 1.2.III.

Questionable.

Or is this same Age of Hope itself but a simulacrum; as Hope too often
is? Cloud-vapour with rainbows painted on it, beautiful to see, to sail
towards,--which hovers over Niagara Falls? In that case, victorious
Analysis will have enough to do.

Alas, yes! a whole world to remake, if she could see it; work for
another than she! For all is wrong, and gone out of joint; the inward
spiritual, and the outward economical; head or heart, there is no
soundness in it. As indeed, evils of all sorts are more or less of kin,
and do usually go together: especially it is an old truth, that wherever
huge physical evil is, there, as the parent and origin of it, has
moral evil to a proportionate extent been. Before those five-and-twenty
labouring Millions, for instance, could get that haggardness of face,
which old Mirabeau now looks on, in a Nation calling itself Christian,
and calling man the brother of man,--what unspeakable, nigh infinite
Dishonesty (of seeming and not being) in all manner of Rulers, and
appointed Watchers, spiritual and temporal, must there not, through long
ages, have gone on accumulating! It will accumulate: moreover, it will
reach a head; for the first of all Gospels is this, that a Lie cannot
endure for ever.

In fact, if we pierce through that rosepink vapour of Sentimentalism,
Philanthropy, and Feasts of Morals, there lies behind it one of the
sorriest spectacles. You might ask, What bonds that ever held a human
society happily together, or held it together at all, are in force here?
It is an unbelieving people; which has suppositions, hypotheses, and
froth-systems of victorious Analysis; and for belief this mainly, that
Pleasure is pleasant. Hunger they have for all sweet things; and the law
of Hunger; but what other law? Within them, or over them, properly none!

Their King has become a King Popinjay; with his Maurepas Government,
gyrating as the weather-cock does, blown about by every wind. Above
them they see no God; or they even do not look above, except with
astronomical glasses. The Church indeed still is; but in the most
submissive state; quite tamed by Philosophism; in a singularly short
time; for the hour was come. Some twenty years ago, your Archbishop
Beaumont would not even let the poor Jansenists get buried: your Lomenie
Brienne (a rising man, whom we shall meet with yet) could, in the name
of the Clergy, insist on having the Anti-protestant laws, which condemn
to death for preaching, 'put in execution.' (Boissy d'Anglas, Vie de
Malesherbes, i. 15-22.) And, alas, now not so much as Baron Holbach's
Atheism can be burnt,--except as pipe-matches by the private speculative
individual. Our Church stands haltered, dumb, like a dumb ox; lowing
only for provender (of tithes); content if it can have that; or, dumbly,
dully expecting its further doom. And the Twenty Millions of 'haggard
faces;' and, as finger-post and guidance to them in their dark struggle,
'a gallows forty feet high'! Certainly a singular Golden Age; with
its Feasts of Morals, its 'sweet manners,' its sweet institutions
(institutions douces); betokening nothing but peace among men!--Peace?
O Philosophe-Sentimentalism, what hast thou to do with peace, when thy
mother's name is Jezebel? Foul Product of still fouler Corruption, thou
with the corruption art doomed!