The French Revolution

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We must note moreover the decrepit condition into which a once
omnipotent Mother Society has fallen. Legendre flung her keys on the
Convention table, that Thermidor night; her President was guillotined
with Robespierre. The once mighty Mother came, some time after, with a
subdued countenance, begging back her keys: the keys were restored her;
but the strength could not be restored her; the strength had departed
forever. Alas, one's day is done. Vain that the Tribune in mid air
sounds as of old: to the general ear it has become a horror, and even a
weariness. By and by, Affiliation is prohibited: the mighty Mother sees
herself suddenly childless; mourns, as so hoarse a Rachel may.

The Revolutionary Committees, without Suspects to prey upon, perish
fast; as it were of famine. In Paris the whole Forty-eight of them are
reduced to Twelve, their Forty sous are abolished: yet a little while,
and Revolutionary Committees are no more. Maximum will be abolished; let
Sansculottism find food where it can. (24th December 1794, Moniteur, No.
97.) Neither is there now any Municipality; any centre at the Townhall.
Mayor Fleuriot and Company perished; whom we shall not be in haste to
replace. The Townhall remains in a broken submissive state; knows not
well what it is growing to; knows only that it is grown weak, and
must obey. What if we should split Paris into, say, a Dozen separate
Municipalities; incapable of concert! The Sections were thus rendered
safe to act with:--or indeed might not the Sections themselves be
abolished? You had then merely your Twelve manageable pacific Townships,
without centre or subdivision; (October 1795, Dulaure, viii. 454-6.)
and sacred right of Insurrection fell into abeyance!

So much is getting abolished; fleeting swiftly into the Inane. For
the Press speaks, and the human tongue; Journals, heavy and light, in
Philippic and Burlesque: a renegade Freron, a renegade Prudhomme, loud
they as ever, only the contrary way. And Ci-devants shew themselves,
almost parade themselves; resuscitated as from death-sleep; publish
what death-pains they have had. The very Frogs of the Marsh croak with
emphasis. Your protesting Seventy-three shall, with a struggle, be
emitted out of Prison, back to their seats; your Louvets, Isnards,
Lanjuinais, and wrecks of Girondism, recalled from their haylofts, and
caves in Switzerland, will resume their place in the Convention: (Deux
Amis, xiii. 3-39.) natural foes of Terror!

Thermidorian Talliens, and mere foes of Terror, rule in this Convention,
and out of it. The compressed Mountain shrinks silent more and more.
Moderatism rises louder and louder: not as a tempest, with threatenings;
say rather, as the rushing of a mighty organ-blast, and melodious
deafening Force of Public Opinion, from the Twenty-five million
windpipes of a Nation all in Committee of Mercy: which how shall any
detached body of individuals withstand?



Chapter 3.7.II.

La Cabarus.

How, above all, shall a poor National Convention, withstand it? In
this poor National Convention, broken, bewildered by long terror,
perturbations, and guillotinement, there is no Pilot, there is not now
even a Danton, who could undertake to steer you anywhither, in such
press of weather. The utmost a bewildered Convention can do, is to veer,
and trim, and try to keep itself steady: and rush, undrowned, before the
wind. Needless to struggle; to fling helm a-lee, and make 'bout ship! A
bewildered Convention sails not in the teeth of the wind; but is rapidly
blown round again. So strong is the wind, we say; and so changed;
blowing fresher and fresher, as from the sweet South-West; your
devastating North-Easters, and wild tornado-gusts of Terror, blown
utterly out! All Sansculottic things are passing away; all things are
becoming Culottic.

Do but look at the cut of clothes; that light visible Result,
significant of a thousand things which are not so visible. In winter
1793, men went in red nightcaps; Municipals themselves in sabots: the
very Citoyennes had to petition against such headgear. But now in this
winter 1794, where is the red nightcap? With the thing beyond the Flood.
Your monied Citoyen ponders in what elegantest style he shall dress
himself: whether he shall not even dress himself as the Free Peoples of
Antiquity. The more adventurous Citoyenne has already done it. Behold
her, that beautiful adventurous Citoyenne: in costume of the Ancient
Greeks, such Greek as Painter David could teach; her sweeping tresses
snooded by glittering antique fillet; bright-eyed tunic of the Greek
women; her little feet naked, as in Antique Statues, with mere sandals,
and winding-strings of riband,--defying the frost!

There is such an effervescence of Luxury. For your Emigrant Ci-devants
carried not their mansions and furnitures out of the country with them;
but left them standing here: and in the swift changes of property,
what with money coined on the Place de la Revolution, what with
Army-furnishings, sales of Emigrant Domain and Church Lands and
King's Lands, and then with the Aladdin's-lamp of Agio in a time of
Paper-money, such mansions have found new occupants. Old wine, drawn
from Ci-devant bottles, descends new throats. Paris has swept herself,
relighted herself; Salons, Soupers not Fraternal, beam once more with
suitable effulgence, very singular in colour. The fair Cabarus is come
out of Prison; wedded to her red-gloomy Dis, whom they say she treats
too loftily: fair Cabarus gives the most brilliant soirees. Round her is
gathered a new Republican Army, of Citoyennes in sandals; Ci-devants or
other: what remnants soever of the old grace survive, are rallied there.
At her right-hand, in this cause, labours fair Josephine the Widow
Beauharnais, though in straitened circumstances: intent, both of them,
to blandish down the grimness of Republican austerity, and recivilise
mankind.

Recivilise, as of old they were civilised: by witchery of the Orphic
fiddle-bow, and Euterpean rhythm; by the Graces, by the Smiles!
Thermidorian Deputies are there in those soirees; Editor Freron, Orateur
du Peuple; Barras, who has known other dances than the Carmagnole. Grim
Generals of the Republic are there; in enormous horse-collar neckcloth,
good against sabre-cuts; the hair gathered all into one knot, 'flowing
down behind, fixed with a comb.' Among which latter do we not recognise,
once more, the little bronzed-complexioned Artillery-Officer of Toulon,
home from the Italian Wars! Grim enough; of lean, almost cruel aspect:
for he has been in trouble, in ill health; also in ill favour, as a man
promoted, deservingly or not, by the Terrorists and Robespierre Junior.
But does not Barras know him? Will not Barras speak a word for him?
Yes,--if at any time it will serve Barras so to do. Somewhat forlorn
of fortune, for the present, stands that Artillery-Officer; looks, with
those deep earnest eyes of his, into a future as waste as the most.
Taciturn; yet with the strangest utterances in him, if you awaken
him, which smite home, like light or lightning:--on the whole, rather
dangerous? A 'dissociable' man? Dissociable enough; a natural terror and
horror to all Phantasms, being himself of the genus Reality! He stands
here, without work or outlook, in this forsaken manner;--glances
nevertheless, it would seem, at the kind glance of Josephine
Beauharnais; and, for the rest, with severe countenance, with open eyes
and closed lips, waits what will betide.

That the Balls, therefore, have a new figure this winter, we can see.
Not Carmagnoles, rude 'whirlblasts of rags,' as Mercier called them
'precursors of storm and destruction:' no, soft Ionic motions; fit for
the light sandal, and antique Grecian tunic! Efflorescence of Luxury has
come out: for men have wealth; nay new-got wealth; and under the Terror
you durst not dance except in rags. Among the innumerable kinds of
Balls, let the hasty reader mark only this single one: the kind they
call Victim Balls, Bals a Victime. The dancers, in choice costume, have
all crape round the left arm: to be admitted, it needs that you be a
Victime; that you have lost a relative under the Terror. Peace to the
Dead; let us dance to their memory! For in all ways one must dance.

It is very remarkable, according to Mercier, under what varieties of
figure this great business of dancing goes on. 'The women,' says he,
'are Nymphs, Sultanas; sometimes Minervas, Junos, even Dianas. In
light-unerring gyrations they swim there; with such earnestness of
purpose; with perfect silence, so absorbed are they. What is singular,'
continues he, 'the onlookers are as it were mingled with the
dancers; form as it were a circumambient element round the different
contre-dances, yet without deranging them. It is rare, in fact, that
a Sultana in such circumstances experience the smallest collision. Her
pretty foot darts down, an inch from mine; she is off again; she is as
a flash of light: but soon the measure recalls her to the point she set
out from. Like a glittering comet she travels her eclipse, revolving on
herself, as by a double effect of gravitation and attraction.' (Mercier,
Nouveau Paris, iii. 138, 153.) Looking forward a little way, into Time,
the same Mercier discerns Merveilleuses in 'flesh-coloured drawers' with
gold circlets; mere dancing Houris of an artificial Mahomet's-Paradise:
much too Mahometan. Montgaillard, with his splenetic eye, notes a no
less strange thing; that every fashionable Citoyenne you meet is in an
interesting situation. Good Heavens, every! Mere pillows and stuffing!
adds the acrid man;--such, in a time of depopulation by war and
guillotine, being the fashion. (Montgaillard, iv. 436-42.) No further
seek its merits to disclose.

Behold also instead of the old grim Tappe-durs of Robespierre, what new
street-groups are these? Young men habited not in black-shag Carmagnole
spencer, but in superfine habit carre or spencer with rectangular tail
appended to it; 'square-tailed coat,' with elegant antiguillotinish
specialty of collar; 'the hair plaited at the temples,' and knotted
back, long-flowing, in military wise: young men of what they call the
Muscadin or Dandy species! Freron, in his fondness names them Jeunesse
doree, Golden, or Gilt Youth. They have come out, these Gilt Youths, in
a kind of resuscitated state; they wear crape round the left arm, such
of them as were Victims. More they carry clubs loaded with lead; in an
angry manner: any Tappe-dur or remnant of Jacobinism they may fall
in with, shall fare the worse. They have suffered much: their friends
guillotined; their pleasures, frolics, superfine collars ruthlessly
repressed: 'ware now the base Red Nightcaps who did it! Fair Cabarus and
the Army of Greek sandals smile approval. In the Theatre Feydeau, young
Valour in square-tailed coat eyes Beauty in Greek sandals, and kindles
by her glances: Down with Jacobinism! No Jacobin hymn or demonstration,
only Thermidorian ones, shall be permitted here: we beat down Jacobinism
with clubs loaded with lead.

But let any one who has examined the Dandy nature, how petulant it is,
especially in the gregarious state, think what an element, in sacred
right of insurrection, this Gilt Youth was! Broils and battery; war
without truce or measure! Hateful is Sansculottism, as Death and Night.
For indeed is not the Dandy culottic, habilatory, by law of existence;
'a cloth-animal: one that lives, moves, and has his being in cloth?'--

So goes it, waltzing, bickering; fair Cabarus, by Orphic witchery,
struggling to recivilise mankind. Not unsuccessfully, we hear. What
utmost Republican grimness can resist Greek sandals, in Ionic motion,
the very toes covered with gold rings? (Ibid. Mercier, ubi supra.) By
degrees the indisputablest new-politeness rises; grows, with vigour. And
yet, whether, even to this day, that inexpressible tone of society known
under the old Kings, when Sin had 'lost all its deformity' (with or
without advantage to us), and airy Nothing had obtained such a local
habitation and establishment as she never had,--be recovered? Or even,
whether it be not lost beyond recovery? (De Stael, Considerations iii.
c. 10, &c.)--Either way, the world must contrive to struggle on.



Chapter 3.7.III.

Quiberon.


But indeed do not these long-flowing hair-queues of a Jeunesse Doree
in semi-military costume betoken, unconsciously, another still more
important tendency? The Republic, abhorrent of her Guillotine, loves her
Army.

And with cause. For, surely, if good fighting be a kind of honour, as it
is, in its season; and be with the vulgar of men, even the chief kind of
honour, then here is good fighting, in good season, if there ever was.
These Sons of the Republic, they rose, in mad wrath, to deliver her from
Slavery and Cimmeria. And have they not done it? Through Maritime Alps,
through gorges of Pyrenees, through Low Countries, Northward along the
Rhine-valley, far is Cimmeria hurled back from the sacred Motherland.
Fierce as fire, they have carried her Tricolor over the faces of all her
enemies;--over scarped heights, over cannon-batteries; down, as with
the Vengeur, into the dead deep sea. She has 'Eleven hundred thousand
fighters on foot,' this Republic: 'At one particular moment she had,' or
supposed she had, 'seventeen hundred thousand.' (Toulongeon, iii. c.
7; v. c. 10, p. 194.) Like a ring of lightning, they, volleying and
ca-ira-ing, begirdle her from shore to shore. Cimmerian Coalition of
Despots recoils; smitten with astonishment, and strange pangs.

Such a fire is in these Gaelic Republican men; high-blazing; which no
Coalition can withstand! Not scutcheons, with four degrees of nobility;
but ci-devant Serjeants, who have had to clutch Generalship out of the
cannon's throat, a Pichegru, a Jourdan, a Hoche, lead them on. They have
bread, they have iron; 'with bread and iron you can get to China.'--See
Pichegru's soldiers, this hard winter, in their looped and windowed
destitution, in their 'straw-rope shoes and cloaks of bass-mat,' how
they overrun Holland, like a demon-host, the ice having bridged all
waters; and rush shouting from victory to victory! Ships in the
Texel are taken by huzzars on horseback: fled is York; fled is the
Stadtholder, glad to escape to England, and leave Holland to fraternise.
(19th January, 1795, Montgaillard, iv. 287-311.) Such a Gaelic fire,
we say, blazes in this People, like the conflagration of grass and
dry-jungle; which no mortal can withstand--for the moment.

And even so it will blaze and run, scorching all things; and, from Cadiz
to Archangel, mad Sansculottism, drilled now into Soldiership, led on
by some 'armed Soldier of Democracy' (say, that Monosyllabic
Artillery-Officer), will set its foot cruelly on the necks of
its enemies; and its shouting and their shrieking shall fill the
world!--Rash Coalised Kings, such a fire have ye kindled; yourselves
fireless, your fighters animated only by drill-serjeants, messroom
moralities, and the drummer's cat! However, it is begun, and will
not end: not for a matter of twenty years. So long, this Gaelic fire,
through its successive changes of colour and character, will blaze over
the face of Europe, and afflict the scorch all men:--till it provoke all
men; till it kindle another kind of fire, the Teutonic kind, namely; and
be swallowed up, so to speak, in a day! For there is a fire comparable
to the burning of dry-jungle and grass; most sudden, high-blazing:
and another fire which we liken to the burning of coal, or even of
anthracite coal; difficult to kindle, but then which nothing will put
out. The ready Gaelic fire, we can remark further, and remark not in
Pichegrus only, but in innumerable Voltaires, Racines, Laplaces, no
less; for a man, whether he fight, or sing, or think, will remain
the same unity of a man,--is admirable for roasting eggs, in every
conceivable sense. The Teutonic anthracite again, as we see in Luthers,
Leibnitzes, Shakespeares, is preferable for smelting metals. How happy
is our Europe that has both kinds!--

But be this as it may, the Republic is clearly triumphing. In the spring
of the year Mentz Town again sees itself besieged; will again change
master: did not Merlin the Thionviller, 'with wild beard and look,' say
it was not for the last time they saw him there? The Elector of Mentz
circulates among his brother Potentates this pertinent query, Were it
not advisable to treat of Peace? Yes! answers many an Elector from the
bottom of his heart. But, on the other hand, Austria hesitates; finally
refuses, being subsidied by Pitt. As to Pitt, whoever hesitate, he,
suspending his Habeas-corpus, suspending his Cash-payments, stands
inflexible,--spite of foreign reverses; spite of domestic obstacles, of
Scotch National Conventions and English Friends of the People, whom he
is obliged to arraign, to hang, or even to see acquitted with jubilee: a
lean inflexible man. The Majesty of Spain, as we predicted, makes Peace;
also the Majesty of Prussia: and there is a Treaty of Bale. (5th
April, 1795, Montgaillard, iv. 319.) Treaty with black Anarchists and
Regicides! Alas, what help? You cannot hang this Anarchy; it is like to
hang you: you must needs treat with it.

Likewise, General Hoche has even succeeded in pacificating La Vendee.
Rogue Rossignol and his 'Infernal Columns' have vanished: by firmness
and justice, by sagacity and industry, General Hoche has done it. Taking
'Movable Columns,' not infernal; girdling-in the Country; pardoning the
submissive, cutting down the resistive, limb after limb of the Revolt
is brought under. La Rochejacquelin, last of our Nobles, fell in battle;
Stofflet himself makes terms; Georges-Cadoudal is back to Brittany,
among his Chouans: the frightful gangrene of La Vendee seems veritably
extirpated. It has cost, as they reckon in round numbers, the lives of
a Hundred Thousand fellow-mortals; with noyadings, conflagratings by
infernal column, which defy arithmetic. This is the La Vendee War.
(Histoire de la Guerre de la Vendee, par M. le Comte de Vauban, Memoires
de Madame de la Rochejacquelin, &c.)

Nay in few months, it does burst up once more, but once only:--blown
upon by Pitt, by our Ci-devant Puisaye of Calvados, and others. In the
month of July 1795, English Ships will ride in Quiberon roads.
There will be debarkation of chivalrous Ci-devants, of volunteer
Prisoners-of-war--eager to desert; of fire-arms, Proclamations,
clothes-chests, Royalists and specie. Whereupon also, on the Republican
side, there will be rapid stand-to-arms; with ambuscade marchings by
Quiberon beach, at midnight; storming of Fort Penthievre; war-thunder
mingling with the roar of the nightly main; and such a morning light as
has seldom dawned; debarkation hurled back into its boats, or into
the devouring billows, with wreck and wail;--in one word, a Ci-devant
Puisaye as totally ineffectual here as he was in Calvados, when he rode
from Vernon Castle without boots. (Deux Amis, xiv. 94-106; Puisaye,
Memoires, iii-vii.)

Again, therefore, it has cost the lives of many a brave man. Among whom
the whole world laments the brave Son of Sombreuil. Ill-fated family!
The father and younger son went to the guillotine; the heroic daughter
languishes, reduced to want, hides her woes from History: the elder son
perishes here; shot by military tribunal as an Emigrant; Hoche himself
cannot save him. If all wars, civil and other, are misunderstandings,
what a thing must right-understanding be!



Chapter 3.7.IV.

Lion not dead.

The Convention, borne on the tide of Fortune towards foreign Victory,
and driven by the strong wind of Public Opinion towards Clemency and
Luxury, is rushing fast; all skill of pilotage is needed, and more than
all, in such a velocity.

Curious to see, how we veer and whirl, yet must ever whirl round
again, and scud before the wind. If, on the one hand, we re-admit the
Protesting Seventy-Three, we, on the other hand, agree to consummate
the Apotheosis of Marat; lift his body from the Cordeliers Church, and
transport it to the Pantheon of Great Men,--flinging out Mirabeau to
make room for him. To no purpose: so strong blows Public Opinion! A
Gilt Youthhood, in plaited hair-tresses, tears down his Busts from
the Theatre Feydeau; tramples them under foot; scatters them, with
vociferation into the Cesspool of Montmartre. (Moniteur, du 25 Septembre
1794, du 4 Fevrier 1795.) Swept is his Chapel from the Place du
Carrousel; the Cesspool of Montmartre will receive his very dust.
Shorter godhood had no divine man. Some four months in this Pantheon,
Temple of All the Immortals; then to the Cesspool, grand Cloaca of
Paris and the World! 'His Busts at one time amounted to four thousand.'
Between Temple of All the Immortals and Cloaca of the World, how are
poor human creatures whirled!

Furthermore the question arises, When will the Constitution of
Ninety-three, of 1793, come into action? Considerate heads surmise, in
all privacy, that the Constitution of Ninety-three will never come into
action. Let them busy themselves to get ready a better.

Or, again, where now are the Jacobins? Childless, most decrepit, as we
saw, sat the mighty Mother; gnashing not teeth, but empty gums, against
a traitorous Thermidorian Convention and the current of things. Twice
were Billaud, Collot and Company accused in Convention, by a Lecointre,
by a Legendre; and the second time, it was not voted calumnious.
Billaud from the Jacobin tribune says, "The lion is not dead, he is only
sleeping." They ask him in Convention, What he means by the awakening
of the lion? And bickerings, of an extensive sort, arose in the
Palais-Egalite between Tappe-durs and the Gilt Youthhood; cries of "Down
with the Jacobins, the Jacoquins," coquin meaning scoundrel! The Tribune
in mid-air gave battle-sound; answered only by silence and uncertain
gasps. Talk was, in Government Committees, of 'suspending' the Jacobin
Sessions. Hark, there!--it is in Allhallow-time, or on the Hallow-eve
itself, month ci-devant November, year once named of Grace 1794, sad
eve for Jacobinism,--volley of stones dashing through our windows,
with jingle and execration! The female Jacobins, famed Tricoteuses with
knitting-needles, take flight; are met at the doors by a Gilt Youthhood
and 'mob of four thousand persons;' are hooted, flouted, hustled;
fustigated, in a scandalous manner, cotillons retrousses;--and vanish in
mere hysterics. Sally out ye male Jacobins! The male Jacobins sally out;
but only to battle, disaster and confusion. So that armed Authority
has to intervene: and again on the morrow to intervene; and suspend the
Jacobin Sessions forever and a day. (Moniteur, Seances du 10-12 Novembre
1794: Deux Amis, xiii. 43-49.) Gone are the Jacobins; into invisibility;
in a storm of laughter and howls. Their place is made a Normal School,
the first of the kind seen; it then vanishes into a 'Market of Thermidor
Ninth;' into a Market of Saint-Honore, where is now peaceable chaffering
for poultry and greens. The solemn temples, the great globe itself; the
baseless fabric! Are not we such stuff, we and this world of ours, as
Dreams are made of?

Maximum being abrogated, Trade was to take its own free course. Alas,
Trade, shackled, topsyturvied in the way we saw, and now suddenly let
go again, can for the present take no course at all; but only reel and
stagger. There is, so to speak, no Trade whatever for the time being.
Assignats, long sinking, emitted in such quantities, sink now with an
alacrity beyond parallel. "Combien?" said one, to a Hackney-coachman,
"What fare?" "Six thousand livres," answered he: some three hundred
pounds sterling, in Paper-money. (Mercier, ii. 94. '1st February, 1796:
at the Bourse of Paris, the gold louis,' of 20 francs in silver, 'costs
5,300 francs in assignats.' Montgaillard, iv. 419.) Pressure of Maximum
withdrawn, the things it compressed likewise withdraw. 'Two ounces of
bread per day' in the modicum allotted: wide-waving, doleful are the
Bakers' Queues; Farmers' houses are become pawnbrokers' shops.

One can imagine, in these circumstances, with what humour Sansculottism
growled in its throat, "La Cabarus;" beheld Ci-devants return dancing,
the Thermidor effulgence of recivilisation, and Balls in flesh-coloured
drawers. Greek tunics and sandals; hosts of Muscadins parading, with
their clubs loaded with lead;--and we here, cast out, abhorred, 'picking
offals from the street;' (Fantin Desodoards, Histoire de la Revolution,
vii. c. 4.) agitating in Baker's Queue for our two ounces of bread! Will
the Jacobin lion, which they say is meeting secretly 'at the Acheveche,
in bonnet rouge with loaded pistols,' not awaken? Seemingly not. Our
Collot, our Billaud, Barrere, Vadier, in these last days of March 1795,
are found worthy of Deportation, of Banishment beyond seas; and shall,
for the present, be trundled off to the Castle of Ham. The lion is
dead;--or writhing in death-throes!

Behold, accordingly, on the day they call Twelfth of Germinal (which
is also called First of April, not a lucky day), how lively are these
streets of Paris once more! Floods of hungry women, of squalid hungry
men; ejaculating: "Bread, Bread and the Constitution of Ninety-three!"
Paris has risen, once again, like the Ocean-tide; is flowing towards
the Tuileries, for Bread and a Constitution. Tuileries Sentries do their
best; but it serves not: the Ocean-tide sweeps them away; inundates the
Convention Hall itself; howling, "Bread, and the Constitution!"