The French Revolution - Volume 1

VIII.—Paris in the hands of the people.

Henceforth it is clear that no one is safe: neither the new militia nor the new authorities suffice to enforce respect for the law. "They did not dare," says Bailly,1255 "oppose the people who, eight days before this, had taken the Bastille."—In vain, after the last two murders, do Bailly and Lafayette indignantly threaten to withdraw; they are forced to remain; their protection, such as it is, is all that is left, and, if the National Guard is unable to prevent every murder, it prevents some of them. People live as they can under the constant expectation of fresh popular violence. "To every impartial man," says Malouet, "the Terror dates from the 14th of July".—On the 17th, before setting out for Paris, the King attends communion and makes his will in anticipation of assassination. From the 16th to the 18th, twenty personages of high rank, among others most of those on whose heads a price is set by the Palais-Royal, leave France: The Count d'Artois, Marshal de Broglie, the Princes de Condé, de Conti, de Lambesc, de Vaudemont, the Countess de Polignac, and the Duchesses de Polignac and de Guiche.—The day following the two murders, M. de Crosne, M. Doumer, M. Sureau, the most zealous and most valuable members of the committee on subsistence, all those appointed to make purchases and to take care of the storehouses, conceal themselves or fly. On the eve of the two murders, the notaries of Paris, being menaced with a riot, had to advance 45,000 francs which were promised to the workmen of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine; while the public treasury, almost empty, is drained of 30,000 livres per day to diminish the cost of bread.—Persons and possessions, great and small, private individuals and public functionaries, the Government itself, all is in the hands of the mob. "From this moment," says a deputy,1256 "liberty did not exist even in the National Assembly. . . France stood dumb before thirty factious persons. The Assembly became in their hands a passive instrument, which they forced to serve them in the execution of their projects."—They themselves do not lead, although they seem to lead. The great brute, which has taken the bit in its mouth, holds on to it, and it's plunging becomes more violent. Not only do both spurs which maddened it, I mean the desire for innovation and the daily scarcity of food, continue to prick it on. But also the political hornets which, increasing by thousands, buzz around its ears. And the license in which it revels for the first time, joined to the applause lavished upon it, urges it forward more violently each day. The insurrection is glorified. Not one of the assassins is sought out. It is against the conspiracy of Ministers that the Assembly institutes an inquiry. Rewards are bestowed upon the conquerors of the Bastille; it is declared that they have saved France. All honors are awarded to the people-to their good sense, their magnanimity, and their justice. Adoration is paid to this new sovereign: he is publicly and officially told, in the Assembly and by the press, that he possesses every virtue, all rights and all powers. If he spills blood it is inadvertently, on provocation, and always with an infallible instinct. Moreover, says a deputy, "this blood, was it so pure?" The greater number of people prefers the theories of their books to the experience of their eyes; they persist in the idyll, which they have fashioned for themselves. At the worst their dream, driven out from the present, takes refuge in the future. To-morrow, when the Constitution is complete, the people, made happy, will again become wise: let us endure the storm, which leads us on to so noble a harbor.

Meanwhile, beyond the King, inert and disarmed, beyond the Assembly, disobeyed or submissive, appears the real monarch, the people—that is to say, a crowd of a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand individuals gathered together at random, on an impulse, on an alarm, suddenly and irresistibly made legislators, judges, and executioners. A formidable power, undefined and destructive, on which no one has any hold, and which, with its mother, howling and misshapen Liberty, sits at the threshold of the Revolution like Milton's two specters at the gates of Hell.

1201 (return)
[ "Archives Nationales," H. 1453. Letter of M. Miron, lieutenant de police, April 26th; of M. Joly de Fleury, procureur-général, May 29th; of MM. Marchais and Berthier, April 18th and 27th, March 23rd, April 5th, May 5th.—Arthur Young, June 10th and 29th. "Archives Nationales," H. 1453 Letter of the sub-delegate of Montlhéry, April 14th.]

1202 (return)
[ "Archives Nationales," H. 1453. Letter of the sub-delegate Gobert, March 17th; of the officers of police, June 15th:—" On the 12th, 13th, 14th and 15th of March the inhabitants of Conflans generally rebelled against the game law in relation to the rabbit."]

1203 (return)
[ Montjoie, 2nd part, ch. XXI. p.14 (the first week in June). Montjoie is a party man; but he gives dates and details, and his testimony, when it is confirmed elsewhere, deserves, to be admitted.]

1204 (return)
[ Montjoie, 1st part, 92-101.—"Archives Nationales," H. 1453. Letter of the officer of police of Saint-Denis: "A good many workmen arrive daily from Lorraine as well as from Champagne," which increases the prices.]

1205 (return)
[ De Bezenval, "Mémoires," I.353. Cf. "The Ancient Regime," p.509.—Marmontel, II, 252 and following pages.—De Ferrières, I. 407.]

1206 (return)
[ Arthur Young, September 1st, 1788]

1207 (return)
[ Barrère, "Mémoires," I. 234.]

1208 (return)
[ See, in the National Library, the long catalogue of those which have survived.]

1209 (return)
[ Malouet, I. 255. Bailly, I. 43 (May 9th and 19th).—D'Hezecques, "Souvenirs d'un page de Louis XV." 293.—De Bezenval, I. 368.]

1210 (return)
[ Marmontel, II, 249.—Montjoie, 1st part, p. 92.—De Bezenval, I. 387: "These spies added that persons were seen exciting the tumult and were distributing money."]

1211 (return)
[ "Archives Nationales," Y.11441. Interrogatory of the Abbé Roy, May 5th.—Y.11033, Interrogatory (April 28th and May 4th) of twenty-three wounded persons brought to the Hôtel-Dieu—These two documents are of prime importance in presenting the true aspect of the insurrection; to these must be added the narrative of M. de Bezenval, who was commandant at this time with M. de Châtelet. Almost all other narratives are amplified or falsified through party bias.]

1212 (return)
[ De Ferrières, vol. III. note A. (justificatory explanation by Réveillon).]

1213 (return)
[ Bailly I. 25 (April 26th).]

1214 (return)
[ Hippeau, IV. 377 (Letters of M. Perrot, April 29th).]

1215 (return)
[ Letter to the King by an inhabitant of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine—"Do not doubt, sire, that our recent misfortunes are due to the dearness of bread"]

1216 (return)
[ Dampmartin, "Evénements qui se sont passés sous mes yeux," etc. I. 25: "We turned back and were held up by small bands of scoundrels, who insolently proposed to us to shout 'Vive Necker! Vive le Tiers-Etat!'" His two companions were knights of St. Louis, and their badges seemed an object of "increasing hatred." "The badge excited coarse mutterings, even on the part of persons who appeared superior to the agitators."]

1217 (return)
[ Dampmartin, ibid. i. 25: "I was dining this very day at the Hôtel d'Ecquevilly, in the Rue Saint-Louis." He leaves the house on foot and witnesses the disturbance. "Fifteen to Sixteen hundred wretches, the excrement of the nation, degraded by shameful vices, covered with rags, and gorged with brandy, presented the most disgusting and revolting spectacle. More than a hundred thousand persons of both sexes and of all ages and conditions interfered greatly with the operations of the troops. The firing soon commenced and blood flowed: two innocent persons were wounded near me."]

1218 (return)
[ De Goncourt, "La Société Française pendant la Révolution." Thirty-one gambling-houses are counted here, while a pamphlet of the day is entitled "Pétition des deux mill cent filles du Palais-Royal."]

1219 (return)
[ Montjoie, 2nd part, 144.—Bailly, II, 130.]

1220 (return)
[ Arthur Young, June 24th, 1789.—Montjoie, 2nd part, 69.]

1221 (return)
[ Arthur Young, June 9th, 24th, and 26th.—"La France libre," passim, by C. Desmoulins.]

1222 (return)
[ C. Desmoulins, letters to his father, and Arthur Young, June 9th.]

1223 (return)
[ Montjoie, 2nd part, 69, 77, 124, 144. C. Desmoulins, letter, of June 24th and the following days.]

1224 (return)
[ Etienne Dumont, "Souvenirs," p.72.—C. Desmoulins, letter of; June 24th.—Arthur Young, June 25th.—Buchez and Roux, II. 28.]

1225 (return)
[ Bailly, I. 227 and 179.—Monnier, "Recherches sur les causes," etc. I. 289, 291; II.61;—Malouet, I. 299; II. 10.—"Actes des Apôtres," V.43. (Letter of M. de Guillermy, July 31st, 1790).—Marmontel, I. 28: "The people came even into the Assembly, to encourage their partisans, to select and indicate their victims, and to terrify the feeble with the dreadful trial of open balloting."]

1226 (return)
[ Manuscript letters of M. Boullé, deputy, to the municipal authorities of Pontivy, from May 1st, 1789, to September 4th, 1790 (communicated by M. Rosenzweig, archivist at Vannes). June 16th, 1789: "The crowd gathered around the hall. . . was, during these days, from 3,000 to 4,000 persons."]

1227 (return)
[ Letters of M. Boullé, June 23rd. "How sublime the moment, that in which we enthusiastically bind ourselves to the country by a new oath!. . . . Why should this moment be selected by one of our number to dishonor himself? His name is now blasted throughout France. And the unfortunate man has children! Suddenly overwhelmed by public contempt he leaves, and falls fainting at the door, exclaiming, 'Ah! this will be my death!' I do not know what has become of him since. What is strange is, he had not behaved badly up to that time, and he voted for the Constitution."]

1228 (return)
[ De Ferrières, I. 168.—Malouet, I. 298 (according to him the faction did not number more than ten members),—idem II. 10.—Dumont, 250.]

1229 (return)
[ "Convention nationale" governed France from 21st September 1792 until Oct. 26th 1796. We distinguish between three different assemblies, "la Convention Girondine" 1792-93, "the Mountain," 1793-94 and "la Thermidorienne," from 1794-1795. (SR).]

1230 (return)
[ Declaration of June 23rd, article 15.]

1231 (return)
[ Montjoie, 2nd part, 118.—C. Desmoulins, letters of June 24th and the following days. A faithful narrative by M. de Sainte-Fère, formerly an officer in the French Guard, p.9.—De Bezenval, III, 413.—Buchez and Roux, II. 35.—"Souvenirs", by PASQUIER (Etienne-Dennis, duc), chancelier de France. in VI volumes, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893..]

1232 (return)
[ Peuchet ("Encyclopédie Méthodique," 1789, quoted by Parent Duchâtelet): "Almost all of the soldiers of the Guard belong to that class (the procurers of public women): many, indeed, only enlist in the corps that they may live at the expense of these unfortunates."]

1233 (return)
[ Gouverneur Morris, "Liberty is now the general cry; authority is a name and no longer a reality." (Correspondence with Washington, July 19th.)]

1234 (return)
[ Bailly. I. 302. "The King was very well-disposed; his measures were intended only to preserve order and the public peace. . . Du Châtelet was forced by facts to acquit M. de Bezenval of attempts against the people and the country."—Cf. Marmontel, IV. 183; Mounier, II, 40.]

1235 (return)
[ Desmoulins, letter of the 16th July. Buchez and Roux, II. 83.]

1236 (return)
[ Trial of the Prince de Lambesc (Paris, 1790), with the eighty-three depositions and the discussion of the testimony.—It is the crowd which began the attack. The troops fired in the air. But one man, a sieur Chauvel, was wounded slightly by the Prince de Lambesc. (Testimony of M. Carboire, p.84, and of Captain de Reinack, p. 101.) "M. le Prince de Lambesc, mounted on a gray horse with a gray saddle without holsters or pistols, had scarcely entered the garden when a dozen persons jumped at the mane and bridle of his horse and made every effort to drag him off. A small man in gray clothes fired at him with a pistol. . . . The prince tried hard to free himself, and succeeded by making his horse rear up and by flourishing his sword; without, however, up to this time, wounding any one. . . . He deposes that he saw the prince strike a man on the head with the flat of his saber who was trying to close the turning-bridge, which would have cut off the retreat of his troops The troops did no more than try to keep off the crowd which assailed them with stones, and even with firearms, from the top of the terraces."—The man who tried to close the bridge had seized the prince's horse with one hand; the wound he received was a scratch about 23 lines long, which was dressed and cured with a bandage soaked in brandy. All the details of the affair prove that the patience and humanity of the officer, were extreme. Nevertheless "on the following day, the 13th, some one posted a written placard on the crossing Bussy recommending the citizens of Paris to seize the prince and quarter him at once."—(Deposition of M. Cosson, p.114.)]

1237 (return)
[ Bailly, I. 3, 6.—Marmontel, IV. 310]

1238 (return)
[ Montjoie, part 3, 86. "I talked with those who guarded the château of the Tuileries. They did not belong to Paris. . . . A frightful physiognomy and hideous apparel." Montjoie, not to be trusted in many places, merits consultation for little facts of which he was an eye-witness.—Morellet, "Mémoires," I. 374.—Dusaulx, "L'oeuvre des sept jours," 352.—Revue Historique," March, 1876. Interrogatory of Desnot. His occupation during the 13th of July (published by Guiffrey).]

1239 (return)
[ Mathieu Dumas, "Mémoires," I. 531. "Peaceable people fled at the sight of these groups of strange, frantic vagabonds. Everybody closed their houses. . .. When I reached home, in the Saint-Denis quarter, several of these brigands caused great alarm by firing off guns in the air."]

1240 (return)
[ Dusaulx, 379.]

1241 (return)
[ Dusaulx, 359, 360, 361, 288, 336. "In effect their entreaties resembled commands, and, more than once, it was impossible to resist them."]

1242 (return)
[ Dusaulx, 447 (Deposition of the invalides).—"Revue Rétrospective," IV. 282 (Narrative of the commander of the thirty-two Swiss Guards).]

1243 (return)
[ Marmontel, IV. 317.]

1244 (return)
[ Dusaulx, 454. "The soldiers replied that they would accept whatever happened rather than cause the destruction of so great a number of their fellow-citizens."]

1245 (return)
[ Dusaulx, 447. The number of combatants, maimed, wounded, dead, and living, is 825.—Marmontel, IV. 320. "To the number of victors, which has been carried up to 800, people have been added who were never near the place."]

1246 (return)
[ "Memoires", by PASQUIER (Etienne-Dennis, duc, 1767-1862), chancelier de France. in VI volumes, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893. Vol. I. p.52. Pasquier was eye-witness. He leaned against the fence of the Beaumarchais garden and looked on, with mademoiselle Contat, the actress, at his side, who had left her carriage in the Place-Royale.—Marat, "L'ami du peuple," No. 530. "When an unheard-of conjunction of circumstances had caused the fall of the badly defended walls of the Bastille, under the efforts of a handful of soldiers and a troop of unfortunate creatures, most of them Germans and almost all provincials, the Parisians presented themselves the fortress, curiosity alone having led them there."]

1247 (return)
[ Narrative of the commander of the thirty-two Swiss.—Narrative of Cholat, wine-dealer, one of the victors.—Examination of Desnot (who cut off the head of M. de Launay).]

1248 (return)
[ Montjoie, part 3, 85.—Dusaulx, 355, 287, 368.]

1249 (return)
[ Nothing more. No Witness states that he had seen the pretended note to M. do Launay. According to Dusaulx, he could not have had either the time or the means to write it.]

1250 (return)
[ Bailly, II. 32, 74, 88, 90, 95, 108, 117, 137, 158, 174. "I gave orders which were neither obeyed nor listened to. . . . They gave me to understand that I was not safe." (July 15th.) "In these sad times one enemy and one calumnious report sufficed to excite the multitude. All who had formerly held power, all who had annoyed or restrained the insurrectionists, were sure of being arrested."]

1251 (return)
[ M. de Lafayette, "Mémoires," III. 264. Letter of July 16th, 1789. "I have already saved the lives of six persons whom they were hanging in different quarters."]

1252 (return)
[ Poujoulat. "Histoire de la Révolution Française," p.100 (with supporting documents). Procès-verbaux of the Provincial Assembly, lle-de-France (1787), p.127.]

1253 (return)
[ For instance: "He is severe with his peasants."—"He gives them no bread, and he wants them then to eat grass." "He wants them to eat grass like horses."—"He has said that they could very well eat hay, and that they are no better than horses."—The same story is found in many of the contemporary jacqueries.]

1254 (return)
[ Bailly, II. 108. "The people, less enlightened and as imperious as despots, recognize no positive signs of good administration but success."]

1255 (return)
[ Bailly, II, 108, 95.—Malouet, II, 14.]

1256 (return)
[ De Ferrières, I. 168.]

CHAPTER III.

I.—Anarchy from July 14th to October 6th, 1789

However bad a particular government may be, there is something still worse, and that is the suppression of all government. For, it is owing to government that human wills form a harmony instead of chaos. It serves society as the brain serves a living being. Incapable, inconsiderate, extravagant, engrossing, it often abuses its position, overstraining or misleading the body for which it should care, and which it should direct. But, taking all things into account, whatever it may do, more good than harm is done, for through it the body stands erect, marches on and guides its steps. Without it there is no organized deliberate action, serviceable to the whole body. In it alone do we find the comprehensive views, knowledge of the members of which it consists and of their aims, an idea of outward relationships, full and accurate information, in short, the superior intelligence which conceives what is best for the common interests, and adapts means to ends. If it falters and is no longer obeyed, if it is forced and pushed from without by a violent pressure, it ceases to control public affairs, and the social organization retrogrades by many steps. Through the dissolution of society, and the isolation of individuals, each man returns to his original feeble state, while power is vested in passing aggregates that like whirlwinds spring up from the human dust.—One may divine how this power, which the most competent find it difficult to apply properly, is exercised by bands of men springing out of nowhere. It is a matter of supplies, of their possessions, price and distribution. It is a matter of taxes, its proportion, apportionment and collection; of private property, its varieties, rights, and limitations It is a problem of public authority, its allocation and its limits; of all those delicate cogwheels which, working into each other, constitute the great economic, social, and political machine. Each band in its own canton lays its rude hands on the wheels within its reach. They wrench or break them haphazardly, under the impulse of the moment, heedless and indifferent to consequences, even when the reaction of to-morrow crushes them in the ruin that they cause to day. Thus do unchained Negroes, each pulling and hauling his own way, undertake to manage a ship of which they have just obtained mastery.—In such a state of things white men are hardly worth more than black ones. For, not only is the band, whose aim is violence, composed of those who are most destitute, most wildly enthusiastic, and most inclined to destructiveness and to license. But also, as this band tumultuously carries out its violent action, each individual the most brutal, the most irrational, and most corrupt, descends lower than himself, even to the darkness, the madness, and the savagery of the dregs of society. In fact, a man who in the interchange of blows, would resist the excitement of murder, and not use his strength like a savage, must be familiar with arms. He must be accustomed to danger, be cool-blooded, alive to the sentiment of honor, and above all, sensitive to that stern military code which, to the imagination of the soldier, ever holds out to him the provost's gibbet to which he is sure to rise, should he strike one blow too many. Should all these restraints, inward as well as outward, be wanting, the man plunges into insurrection. He is a novice in the acts of violence, which he carries out. He has no fear of the law, because he abolishes it. The action begun carries him further than he intended to go. Peril and resistance exasperate his anger. He catches the fever from contact with those who are fevered, and follows robbers who have become his comrades.1301 Add to this the clamors, the drunkenness, the spectacle of destruction, the nervous tremor of the body strained beyond its powers of endurance, and we can comprehend how, from the peasant, the laborer, and the bourgeois, pacified and tamed by an old civilization, we see all of a sudden spring forth the barbarian. Or still worse, the primitive animal, the grinning, sanguinary, wanton baboon, who giggles while he slays, and gambols over the ruin he has accomplished. Such is the actual government to which France is given up, and after eighteen months' experience, the best qualified, most judicious and profoundest observer of the Revolution will find nothing to compare it to but the invasion of the Roman Empire in the fourth century.1302 "The Huns, the Heruli, the Vandals, and the Goths will come neither from the north nor from the Black Sea; they are in our very midst."

II.—The provinces

When in a building the principal beam gives way, cracks follow and multiply, and the secondary joists fall in one by one for lack of the prop, which supported them. In a similar manner the authority of the King being broken, all the powers, which he delegated, fall to the ground.1303 Intendants, parliaments, military commands, grand provosts, administrative, judicial, and police functionaries in every province, and of every branch of the service, who maintain order and protect property, taught by the murder of M. de Launey, the imprisonment of M. de Besenval, the flight of Marshal de Broglie, the assassinations of Foullon and Bertier, know what it costs should they try to perform their duties. Should it be forgotten local insurrections intervene, and keep them in mind of it.

The officer in command in Burgundy is a prisoner at Dijon, with a guard at his door; and he is not allowed to speak with any one without permission, and without the presence of witnesses.1304 The Commandant of Caen is besieged in the old palace and capitulates. The Commandant of Bordeaux surrenders Château-Trompette with its guns and equipment. The Commandant at Metz, who remains firm, suffers the insults and the orders of the populace. The Commandant of Brittany wanders about his province "like a vagabond," while at Rennes his people, furniture, and plate are kept as pledges. As soon as he sets foot in Normandy he is surrounded, and a sentinel is placed at his door.—The Intendant of Besançon takes to flight; that of Rouen sees his dwelling sacked from top to bottom, and escapes amid the shouts of a mob demanding his head.—At Rennes, the Dean of the Parliament is arrested, maltreated, kept in his room with a guard over him, and then, although ill, sent out of the town under an escort.—At Strasbourg "thirty-six houses of magistrates are marked for pillage."1305—At Besançon, the President of the Parliament is constrained to let out of prison the insurgents arrested in a late out-break, and to publicly burn the whole of the papers belonging to the prosecution.—In Alsace, since the beginning of the troubles, the provosts were obliged to fly, the bailiffs and manorial judges hid themselves, the forest-inspectors ran away, and the houses of the guards were demolished. One man, sixty years of age, is outrageously beaten and marched about the village, the people, meanwhile, pulling out his hair; nothing remains of his dwelling but the walls and a portion of the roof. All his furniture and effects are broken up, burnt or stolen. He is forced to sign, along with his wife, an act by which he binds himself to refund all penalties inflicted by him, and to abandon all claims for damages for the injuries to which he has just been subjected.—In Franche-Comté the authorities dare not condemn delinquents, and the police do not arrest them; the military commandant writes that "crimes of every kind are on the increase, and that he has no means of punishing them." Insubordination is permanent in all the provinces; one of the provincial commissions states with sadness:

"When all powers are in confusion and annihilated, when public force no longer exists, when all ties are sundered, when every individual considers himself relieved from all kinds of obligation, when public authority no longer dares make itself felt, and it is a crime to have been clothed with it, what can be expected of our efforts to restore order?"1306

All that remains of this great demolished State is forty thousand groups of people, each separated and isolated, in towns and small market villages where municipal bodies, elected committees, and improvised National Guards strive to prevent the worst excesses.—But these local chiefs are novices; they are human, and they are timid. Chosen by acclamation they believe in popular rights; in the midst of riots they feel themselves in danger. Hence, they generally obey the crowd.

"Rarely," says one of the provincial commissions reports, "do the municipal authorities issue a summons; they allow the greatest excesses rather than enter upon prosecutions for which, sooner or later, they may be held responsible by their fellow-citizens. . . . Municipal bodies have no longer the power to resist anything."

Especially in the rural districts the mayor or syndic, who is a farmer, makes it his first aim to make no enemies, and would resign his place if it were to bring him any "unpleasantness" with it. His rule in the towns, and especially in large cities, is almost as lax and more precarious, because explosive material is accumulated here to a much larger extent, and the municipal officers, in their arm-chairs at the town-hall, sit over a mine which may explode at any time. To-morrow, perhaps, some resolution passed at a tavern in the suburbs, or some incendiary newspaper just received from Paris, will furnish the spark.—No other defense against the populace is at hand than the sentimental proclamations of the National Assembly, the useless presence of troops who stand by and look on, and the uncertain help of a National Guard which will arrive too late. Occasionally these townspeople, who are now the rulers, utter a cry of distress from under the hands of the sovereigns of the street who grasp them by the throat. At Puy-en-Velay,1307 a town of twenty thousand inhabitants, the présidial,1308 the committee of twenty-four commissioners, a body of two hundred dragoons, and eight hundred men of the guard of burgesses, are "paralyzed, and completely stupefied, by the vile populace. A mild treatment only increases its insubordination and insolence." This populace proscribes whomsoever it pleases, and six days ago a gibbet, erected by its hands, has announced to the new magistrates the fate that awaits them.

" What will become of us this winter," they exclaim, "in our impoverished country, where bread is not to be had! We shall be the prey of wild beasts!"

III.—Public feeling.—Famine

These people, in truth, are hungry, and, since the Revolution, their misery has increased. Around Puy-en-Velay the country is laid waste, and the soil broken up by a terrible tempest, a fierce hailstorm, and a deluge of rain. In the south, the crop proved to be moderate and even insufficient.

"To trace a picture of the condition of Languedoc," writes the intendant,1309 "would be to give an account of calamities of every description. The panic which prevails in all communities, and which is stronger than all laws, stops traffic, and would cause famine even in the midst of plenty. Commodities are enormously expensive, and there is a lack of cash. Communities are ruined by the enormous outlays to which they are exposed: The payment of the deputies to the seneschal's court, the establishment of the burgess guards, guardhouses for this militia, and the purchase of arms, uniforms, and outlays in forming communes and permanent councils. To this must be add the cost of the printing of all kinds, and the publication of trivial deliberations. Further the loss of time due to disturbances occasioned by these circumstances, and the utter stagnation of manufactures and of trade." All these causes combined "have reduced Languedoc to the last extremity."—In the Center, and in the North, where the crops are good, provisions are not less scarce, because wheat is not put in circulation, and is kept concealed.

"For five months," writes the municipal assembly of Louviers,1310 "not a farmer has made his appearance in the markets of this town. Such a circumstance was never known before, although, from time to time, high prices have prevailed to a considerable extent. On the contrary, the markets were always well supplied in proportion to the high price of grain."

In vain the municipality orders the surrounding forty-seven parishes to provide them with wheat. They pay no attention to the mandate; each for himself and each for his own house; the intendant is no longer present to compel local interests to give way to public interests.

"In the wheat districts around us," says a letter from one of the Burgundy towns, "we cannot rely on being able to make free purchases. Special regulations, supported by the civic guard, prevent grain from being sent out, and put a stop to its circulation. The adjacent markets are of no use to us. Not a sack of grain has been brought into our market for about eight months."

At Troyes, bread costs four sous per pound, at Bar-sur-Aube, and in the vicinity, four and a half sous per pound. The artisan who is out of work now earns twelve sous a day at the relief works, and, on going into the country, he sees that the grain crop is good. What conclusion can he come to but that the dearth is due to the monopolists, and that, if he should die of hunger, it would be because those scoundrels have starved him?—By virtue of this reasoning whoever has to do with these provisions, whether proprietor, farmer, merchant or administrator, all are considered traitors. It is plain that there is a plot against the people: the government, the Queen, the clergy, the nobles are all parties to it; and likewise the magistrates and the wealthy amongst the bourgeoisie and the rich. A rumor is current in the Ile-de-France that sacks of flour are thrown into the Seine, and that the cavalry horses are purposely made to eat unripe wheat in stalk. In Brittany, it is maintained that grain is exported and stored up abroad. In Touraine, it is certain that this or that wholesale dealer allows it to sprout in his granaries rather than sell it. At Troyes, a story prevails that another has poisoned his flour with alum and arsenic, commissioned to do so by the bakers.—Conceive the effect of suspicions like these upon a suffering multitude! A wave of hatred ascends from the empty stomach to the morbid brain. The people are everywhere in quest of their imaginary enemies, plunging forward with closed eyes no matter on whom or on what, not merely with all the weight of their mass, but with all the energy of their fury.