The French Revolution

T >> Thomas Carlyle >> The French Revolution


France, as we say, has once more done what it could: fervid men have
come together from wide separation; for strange issues. Fiery Max Isnard
is come, from the utmost South-East; fiery Claude Fauchet, Te-Deum
Fauchet Bishop of Calvados, from the utmost North-West. No Mirabeau now
sits here, who had swallowed formulas: our only Mirabeau now is
Danton, working as yet out of doors; whom some call 'Mirabeau of the
Sansculottes.'

Nevertheless we have our gifts,--especially of speech and logic. An
eloquent Vergniaud we have; most mellifluous yet most impetuous of
public speakers; from the region named Gironde, of the Garonne: a
man unfortunately of indolent habits; who will sit playing with your
children, when he ought to be scheming and perorating. Sharp bustling
Guadet; considerate grave Censonne; kind-sparkling mirthful young Ducos;
Valaze doomed to a sad end: all these likewise are of that Gironde,
or Bourdeaux region: men of fervid Constitutional principles; of quick
talent, irrefragable logic, clear respectability; who will have the
Reign of Liberty establish itself, but only by respectable methods.
Round whom others of like temper will gather; known by and by as
Girondins, to the sorrowing wonder of the world. Of which sort note
Condorcet, Marquis and Philosopher; who has worked at much, at Paris
Municipal Constitution, Differential Calculus, Newspaper Chronique de
Paris, Biography, Philosophy; and now sits here as two-years Senator:
a notable Condorcet, with stoical Roman face, and fiery heart; 'volcano
hid under snow;' styled likewise, in irreverent language, 'mouton
enrage,' peaceablest of creatures bitten rabid! Or note, lastly,
Jean-Pierre Brissot; whom Destiny, long working noisily with him, has
hurled hither, say, to have done with him. A biennial Senator he too;
nay, for the present, the king of such. Restless, scheming, scribbling
Brissot; who took to himself the style de Warville, heralds know not
in the least why;--unless it were that the father of him did, in an
unexceptionable manner, perform Cookery and Vintnery in the Village of
Ouarville? A man of the windmill species, that grinds always, turning
towards all winds; not in the steadiest manner.

In all these men there is talent, faculty to work; and they will do it:
working and shaping, not without effect, though alas not in marble, only
in quicksand!--But the highest faculty of them all remains yet to be
mentioned; or indeed has yet to unfold itself for mention: Captain
Hippolyte Carnot, sent hither from the Pas de Calais; with his cold
mathematical head, and silent stubbornness of will: iron Carnot,
far-planning, imperturbable, unconquerable; who, in the hour of need,
shall not be found wanting. His hair is yet black; and it shall grow
grey, under many kinds of fortune, bright and troublous; and with iron
aspect this man shall face them all.

Nor is Cote Droit, and band of King's friends, wanting: Vaublanc, Dumas,
Jaucourt the honoured Chevalier; who love Liberty, yet with Monarchy
over it; and speak fearlessly according to that faith;--whom the
thick-coming hurricanes will sweep away. With them, let a new military
Theodore Lameth be named;--were it only for his two Brothers' sake, who
look down on him, approvingly there, from the Old-Constituents' Gallery.
Frothy professing Pastorets, honey-mouthed conciliatory Lamourettes,
and speechless nameless individuals sit plentiful, as Moderates, in the
middle. Still less is a Cote Gauche wanting: extreme Left; sitting on
the topmost benches, as if aloft on its speculatory Height or Mountain,
which will become a practical fulminatory Height, and make the name of
Mountain famous-infamous to all times and lands.

Honour waits not on this Mountain; nor as yet even loud dishonour. Gifts
it boasts not, nor graces, of speaking or of thinking; solely this one
gift of assured faith, of audacity that will defy the Earth and
the Heavens. Foremost here are the Cordelier Trio: hot Merlin from
Thionville, hot Bazire, Attorneys both; Chabot, disfrocked Capuchin,
skilful in agio. Lawyer Lacroix, who wore once as subaltern the single
epaulette, has loud lungs and a hungry heart. There too is Couthon,
little dreaming what he is;--whom a sad chance has paralysed in the
lower extremities. For, it seems, he sat once a whole night, not warm in
his true love's bower (who indeed was by law another's), but sunken to
the middle in a cold peat-bog, being hunted out; quaking for his life,
in the cold quaking morass; (Dumouriez, ii. 370.) and goes now on
crutches to the end. Cambon likewise, in whom slumbers undeveloped such
a finance-talent for printing of Assignats; Father of Paper-money; who,
in the hour of menace, shall utter this stern sentence, 'War to the
Manorhouse, peace to the Hut, Guerre aux Chateaux, paix aux Chaumieres!'
(Choix de Rapports, xi. 25.) Lecointre, the intrepid Draper of
Versailles, is welcome here; known since the Opera-Repast and
Insurrection of Women. Thuriot too; Elector Thuriot, who stood in the
embrasures of the Bastille, and saw Saint-Antoine rising in mass; who
has many other things to see. Last and grimmest of all note old Ruhl,
with his brown dusky face and long white hair; of Alsatian Lutheran
breed; a man whom age and book-learning have not taught; who, haranguing
the old men of Rheims, shall hold up the Sacred Ampulla (Heaven-sent,
wherefrom Clovis and all Kings have been anointed) as a mere worthless
oil-bottle, and dash it to sherds on the pavement there; who,
alas, shall dash much to sherds, and finally his own wild head, by
pistol-shot, and so end it.

Such lava welters redhot in the bowels of this Mountain; unknown to the
world and to itself! A mere commonplace Mountain hitherto; distinguished
from the Plain chiefly by its superior barrenness, its baldness of look:
at the utmost it may, to the most observant, perceptibly smoke. For as
yet all lies so solid, peaceable; and doubts not, as was said, that
it will endure while Time runs. Do not all love Liberty and the
Constitution? All heartily;--and yet with degrees. Some, as Chevalier
Jaucourt and his Right Side, may love Liberty less than Royalty, were
the trial made; others, as Brissot and his Left Side, may love it more
than Royalty. Nay again of these latter some may love Liberty more than
Law itself; others not more. Parties will unfold themselves; no mortal
as yet knows how. Forces work within these men and without: dissidence
grows opposition; ever widening; waxing into incompatibility and
internecine feud: till the strong is abolished by a stronger; himself in
his turn by a strongest! Who can help it? Jaucourt and his Monarchists,
Feuillans, or Moderates; Brissot and his Brissotins, Jacobins, or
Girondins; these, with the Cordelier Trio, and all men, must work what
is appointed them, and in the way appointed them.

And to think what fate these poor Seven Hundred and Forty-five are
assembled, most unwittingly, to meet! Let no heart be so hard as not to
pity them. Their soul's wish was to live and work as the First of the
French Parliaments: and make the Constitution march. Did they not, at
their very instalment, go through the most affecting Constitutional
ceremony, almost with tears? The Twelve Eldest are sent solemnly to
fetch the Constitution itself, the printed book of the Law. Archivist
Camus, an Old-Constituent appointed Archivist, he and the Ancient
Twelve, amid blare of military pomp and clangour, enter, bearing the
divine Book: and President and all Legislative Senators, laying
their hand on the same, successively take the Oath, with cheers and
heart-effusion, universal three-times-three. (Moniteur, Seance du 4
Octobre 1791.) In this manner they begin their Session. Unhappy mortals!
For, that same day, his Majesty having received their Deputation
of welcome, as seemed, rather drily, the Deputation cannot but feel
slighted, cannot but lament such slight: and thereupon our cheering
swearing First Parliament sees itself, on the morrow, obliged to explode
into fierce retaliatory sputter, of anti-royal Enactment as to how
they, for their part, will receive Majesty; and how Majesty shall not
be called Sire any more, except they please: and then, on the following
day, to recal this Enactment of theirs, as too hasty, and a mere sputter
though not unprovoked.

An effervescent well-intentioned set of Senators; too combustible, where
continual sparks are flying! Their History is a series of sputters and
quarrels; true desire to do their function, fatal impossibility to
do it. Denunciations, reprimandings of King's Ministers, of traitors
supposed and real; hot rage and fulmination against fulminating
Emigrants; terror of Austrian Kaiser, of 'Austrian Committee' in the
Tuileries itself: rage and haunting terror, haste and dim desperate
bewilderment!--Haste, we say; and yet the Constitution had provided
against haste. No Bill can be passed till it have been printed, till
it have been thrice read, with intervals of eight days;--'unless
the Assembly shall beforehand decree that there is urgency.' Which,
accordingly, the Assembly, scrupulous of the Constitution, never omits
to do: Considering this, and also considering that, and then that other,
the Assembly decrees always 'qu'il y a urgence;' and thereupon 'the
Assembly, having decreed that there is urgence,' is free to decree--what
indispensable distracted thing seems best to it. Two thousand and odd
decrees, as men reckon, within Eleven months! (Montgaillard, iii.
1. 237.) The haste of the Constituent seemed great; but this is
treble-quick. For the time itself is rushing treble-quick; and they
have to keep pace with that. Unhappy Seven Hundred and Forty-five:
true-patriotic, but so combustible; being fired, they must needs fling
fire: Senate of touchwood and rockets, in a world of smoke-storm, with
sparks wind-driven continually flying!

Or think, on the other hand, looking forward some months, of that scene
they call Baiser de Lamourette! The dangers of the country are now grown
imminent, immeasurable; National Assembly, hope of France, is divided
against itself. In such extreme circumstances, honey-mouthed Abbe
Lamourette, new Bishop of Lyons, rises, whose name, l'amourette,
signifies the sweetheart, or Delilah doxy,--he rises, and, with pathetic
honied eloquence, calls on all august Senators to forget mutual griefs
and grudges, to swear a new oath, and unite as brothers. Whereupon they
all, with vivats, embrace and swear; Left Side confounding itself with
Right; barren Mountain rushing down to fruitful Plain, Pastoret into the
arms of Condorcet, injured to the breast of injurer, with tears; and all
swearing that whosoever wishes either Feuillant Two-Chamber Monarchy
or Extreme-Jacobin Republic, or any thing but the Constitution and that
only, shall be anathema marantha. (Moniteur, Seance du 6 Juillet 1792.)
Touching to behold! For, literally on the morrow morning, they must
again quarrel, driven by Fate; and their sublime reconcilement is called
derisively Baiser de L'amourette, or Delilah Kiss.

Like fated Eteocles-Polynices Brothers, embracing, though in vain;
weeping that they must not love, that they must hate only, and die by
each other's hands! Or say, like doomed Familiar Spirits; ordered, by
Art Magic under penalties, to do a harder than twist ropes of sand: 'to
make the Constitution march.' If the Constitution would but march! Alas,
the Constitution will not stir. It falls on its face; they tremblingly
lift it on end again: march, thou gold Constitution! The Constitution
will not march.--"He shall march, by--!" said kind Uncle Toby, and even
swore. The Corporal answered mournfully: "He will never march in this
world."

A constitution, as we often say, will march when it images, if not the
old Habits and Beliefs of the Constituted; then accurately their Rights,
or better indeed, their Mights;--for these two, well-understood, are
they not one and the same? The old Habits of France are gone: her new
Rights and Mights are not yet ascertained, except in Paper-theorem;
nor can be, in any sort, till she have tried. Till she have measured
herself, in fell death-grip, and were it in utmost preternatural spasm
of madness, with Principalities and Powers, with the upper and the
under, internal and external; with the Earth and Tophet and the very
Heaven! Then will she know.--Three things bode ill for the marching of
this French Constitution: the French People; the French King; thirdly
the French Noblesse and an assembled European World.



Chapter 2.5.III.

Avignon.

But quitting generalities, what strange Fact is this, in the far
South-West, towards which the eyes of all men do now, in the end of
October, bend themselves? A tragical combustion, long smoking and
smouldering unluminous, has now burst into flame there.

Hot is that Southern Provencal blood: alas, collisions, as was once
said, must occur in a career of Freedom; different directions will
produce such; nay different velocities in the same direction will! To
much that went on there History, busied elsewhere, would not specially
give heed: to troubles of Uzez, troubles of Nismes, Protestant and
Catholic, Patriot and Aristocrat; to troubles of Marseilles, Montpelier,
Arles; to Aristocrat Camp of Jales, that wondrous real-imaginary Entity,
now fading pale-dim, then always again glowing forth deep-hued (in the
Imagination mainly);--ominous magical, 'an Aristocrat picture of war
done naturally!' All this was a tragical deadly combustion, with
plot and riot, tumult by night and by day; but a dark combustion, not
luminous, not noticed; which now, however, one cannot help noticing.

Above all places, the unluminous combustion in Avignon and the Comtat
Venaissin was fierce. Papal Avignon, with its Castle rising sheer
over the Rhone-stream; beautifullest Town, with its purple vines
and gold-orange groves: why must foolish old rhyming Rene, the last
Sovereign of Provence, bequeath it to the Pope and Gold Tiara, not
rather to Louis Eleventh with the Leaden Virgin in his hatband? For good
and for evil! Popes, Anti-popes, with their pomp, have dwelt in that
Castle of Avignon rising sheer over the Rhone-stream: there Laura
de Sade went to hear mass; her Petrarch twanging and singing by the
Fountain of Vaucluse hard by, surely in a most melancholy manner. This
was in the old days.

And now in these new days, such issues do come from a squirt of the pen
by some foolish rhyming Rene, after centuries, this is what we have:
Jourdan Coupe-tete, leading to siege and warfare an Army, from three
to fifteen thousand strong, called the Brigands of Avignon; which title
they themselves accept, with the addition of an epithet, 'The brave
Brigands of Avignon!' It is even so. Jourdan the Headsman fled hither
from that Chatelet Inquest, from that Insurrection of Women; and began
dealing in madder; but the scene was rife in other than dye-stuffs; so
Jourdan shut his madder shop, and has risen, for he was the man to do
it. The tile-beard of Jourdan is shaven off; his fat visage has got
coppered and studded with black carbuncles; the Silenus trunk is
swollen with drink and high living: he wears blue National uniform with
epaulettes, 'an enormous sabre, two horse-pistols crossed in his belt,
and other two smaller, sticking from his pockets;' styles himself
General, and is the tyrant of men. (Dampmartin, Evenemens, i. 267.)
Consider this one fact, O Reader; and what sort of facts must have
preceded it, must accompany it! Such things come of old Rene; and of the
question which has risen, Whether Avignon cannot now cease wholly to be
Papal and become French and free?

For some twenty-five months the confusion has lasted. Say three months
of arguing; then seven of raging; then finally some fifteen months now
of fighting, and even of hanging. For already in February 1790, the
Papal Aristocrats had set up four gibbets, for a sign; but the People
rose in June, in retributive frenzy; and, forcing the public Hangman to
act, hanged four Aristocrats, on each Papal gibbet a Papal Haman. Then
were Avignon Emigrations, Papal Aristocrats emigrating over the Rhone
River; demission of Papal Consul, flight, victory: re-entrance of
Papal Legate, truce, and new onslaught; and the various turns of war.
Petitions there were to National Assembly; Congresses of Townships;
three-score and odd Townships voting for French Reunion, and the
blessings of Liberty; while some twelve of the smaller, manipulated by
Aristocrats, gave vote the other way: with shrieks and discord! Township
against Township, Town against Town: Carpentras, long jealous of
Avignon, is now turned out in open war with it;--and Jourdan Coupe-tete,
your first General being killed in mutiny, closes his dye-shop; and does
there visibly, with siege-artillery, above all with bluster and tumult,
with the 'brave Brigands of Avignon,' beleaguer the rival Town, for two
months, in the face of the world!

Feats were done, doubt it not, far-famed in Parish History; but to
Universal History unknown. Gibbets we see rise, on the one side and on
the other; and wretched carcasses swinging there, a dozen in the row;
wretched Mayor of Vaison buried before dead. (Barbaroux, Memoires, p.
26.) The fruitful seedfield, lie unreaped, the vineyards trampled down;
there is red cruelty, madness of universal choler and gall. Havoc and
anarchy everywhere; a combustion most fierce, but unlucent, not to be
noticed here!--Finally, as we saw, on the 14th of September last, the
National Constituent Assembly, having sent Commissioners and heard them;
(Lescene Desmaisons: Compte rendu a l'Assemblee Nationale, 10 Septembre
1791 (Choix des Rapports, vii. 273-93).) having heard Petitions, held
Debates, month after month ever since August 1789; and on the whole
'spent thirty sittings' on this matter, did solemnly decree that Avignon
and the Comtat were incorporated with France, and His Holiness the Pope
should have what indemnity was reasonable.

And so hereby all is amnestied and finished? Alas, when madness of
choler has gone through the blood of men, and gibbets have swung on this
side and on that, what will a parchment Decree and Lafayette Amnesty do?
Oblivious Lethe flows not above ground! Papal Aristocrats and Patriot
Brigands are still an eye-sorrow to each other; suspected, suspicious,
in what they do and forbear. The august Constituent Assembly is gone but
a fortnight, when, on Sunday the Sixteenth morning of October 1791, the
unquenched combustion suddenly becomes luminous! For Anti-constitutional
Placards are up, and the Statue of the Virgin is said to have shed
tears, and grown red. (Proces-verbal de la Commune d'Avignon, &c. in
Hist. Parl. xii. 419-23.) Wherefore, on that morning, Patriot l'Escuyer,
one of our 'six leading Patriots,' having taken counsel with his
brethren and General Jourdan, determines on going to Church, in company
with a friend or two: not to hear mass, which he values little; but to
meet all the Papalists there in a body, nay to meet that same weeping
Virgin, for it is the Cordeliers Church; and give them a word of
admonition. Adventurous errand; which has the fatallest issue! What
L'Escuyer's word of admonition might be no History records; but the
answer to it was a shrieking howl from the Aristocrat Papal worshippers,
many of them women. A thousand-voiced shriek and menace; which as
L'Escuyer did not fly, became a thousand-handed hustle and jostle; a
thousand-footed kick, with tumblings and tramplings, with the pricking
of semstresses stilettos, scissors, and female pointed instruments.
Horrible to behold; the ancient Dead, and Petrarchan Laura, sleeping
round it there; (Ugo Foscolo, Essay on Petrarch, p. 35.) high Altar and
burning tapers looking down on it; the Virgin quite tearless, and of the
natural stone-colour!--L'Escuyer's friend or two rush off, like Job's
Messengers, for Jourdan and the National Force. But heavy Jourdan will
seize the Town-Gates first; does not run treble-fast, as he might:
on arriving at the Cordeliers Church, the Church is silent, vacant;
L'Escuyer, all alone, lies there, swimming in his blood, at the foot of
the high Altar; pricked with scissors; trodden, massacred;--gives one
dumb sob, and gasps out his miserable life for evermore.

Sight to stir the heart of any man; much more of many men, self-styled
Brigands of Avignon! The corpse of L'Escuyer, stretched on a bier,
the ghastly head girt with laurel, is borne through the streets; with
many-voiced unmelodious Nenia; funeral-wail still deeper than it is
loud! The copper-face of Jourdan, of bereft Patriotism, has grown black.
Patriot Municipality despatches official Narrative and tidings to Paris;
orders numerous or innumerable arrestments for inquest and perquisition.
Aristocrats male and female are haled to the Castle; lie crowded in
subterranean dungeons there, bemoaned by the hoarse rushing of the
Rhone; cut out from help.

So lie they; waiting inquest and perquisition. Alas! with a Jourdan
Headsman for Generalissimo, with his copper-face grown black, and armed
Brigand Patriots chanting their Nenia, the inquest is likely to be
brief. On the next day and the next, let Municipality consent or not, a
Brigand Court-Martial establishes itself in the subterranean stories of
the Castle of Avignon; Brigand Executioners, with naked sabre, waiting
at the door, for a Brigand verdict. Short judgment, no appeal! There is
Brigand wrath and vengeance; not unrefreshed by brandy. Close by is the
Dungeon of the Glaciere, or Ice-Tower: there may be deeds done--? For
which language has no name!--Darkness and the shadow of horrid cruelty
envelopes these Castle Dungeons, that Glaciere Tower: clear only that
many have entered, that few have returned. Jourdan and the Brigands,
supreme now over Municipals, over all Authorities Patriot or Papal,
reign in Avignon, waited on by Terror and Silence.

The result of all which is that, on the 15th of November 1791, we behold
Friend Dampmartin, and subalterns beneath him, and General Choisi above
him, with Infantry and Cavalry, and proper cannon-carriages rattling in
front, with spread banners, to the sound of fife and drum, wend, in a
deliberate formidable manner, towards that sheer Castle Rock, towards
those broad Gates of Avignon; three new National-Assembly Commissioners
following at safe distance in the rear. (Dampmartin, i. 251-94.)
Avignon, summoned in the name of Assembly and Law, flings its Gates wide
open; Choisi with the rest, Dampmartin and the Bons Enfans, 'Good Boys
of Baufremont,' so they name these brave Constitutional Dragoons, known
to them of old,--do enter, amid shouts and scattered flowers. To the joy
of all honest persons; to the terror only of Jourdan Headsman and the
Brigands. Nay next we behold carbuncled swollen Jourdan himself shew
copper-face, with sabre and four pistols; affecting to talk high:
engaging, meanwhile, to surrender the Castle that instant. So the Choisi
Grenadiers enter with him there. They start and stop, passing that
Glaciere, snuffing its horrible breath; with wild yell, with cries of
"Cut the Butcher down!"--and Jourdan has to whisk himself through secret
passages, and instantaneously vanish.

Be the mystery of iniquity laid bare then! A Hundred and Thirty Corpses,
of men, nay of women and even children (for the trembling mother,
hastily seized, could not leave her infant), lie heaped in that
Glaciere; putrid, under putridities: the horror of the world. For three
days there is mournful lifting out, and recognition; amid the cries and
movements of a passionate Southern people, now kneeling in prayer, now
storming in wild pity and rage: lastly there is solemn sepulture, with
muffled drums, religious requiem, and all the people's wail and tears.
Their Massacred rest now in holy ground; buried in one grave.

And Jourdan Coupe-tete? Him also we behold again, after a day or two:
in flight, through the most romantic Petrarchan hill-country; vehemently
spurring his nag; young Ligonnet, a brisk youth of Avignon, with Choisi
Dragoons, close in his rear! With such swollen mass of a rider no nag
can run to advantage. The tired nag, spur-driven, does take the River
Sorgue; but sticks in the middle of it; firm on that chiaro fondo di
Sorga; and will proceed no further for spurring! Young Ligonnet dashes
up; the Copper-face menaces and bellows, draws pistol, perhaps even
snaps it; is nevertheless seized by the collar; is tied firm, ancles
under horse's belly, and ridden back to Avignon, hardly to be saved from
massacre on the streets there. (Dampmartin, ubi supra.)

Such is the combustion of Avignon and the South-West, when it becomes
luminous! Long loud debate is in the august Legislative, in the
Mother-Society as to what now shall be done with it. Amnesty, cry
eloquent Vergniaud and all Patriots: let there be mutual pardon and
repentance, restoration, pacification, and if so might any how be, an
end! Which vote ultimately prevails. So the South-West smoulders and
welters again in an 'Amnesty,' or Non-remembrance, which alas cannot
but remember, no Lethe flowing above ground! Jourdan himself remains
unchanged; gets loose again as one not yet gallows-ripe; nay, as we
transciently discern from the distance, is 'carried in triumph through
the cities of the South.' (Deux Amis vii. (Paris, 1797), pp. 59-71.)
What things men carry!