3164 (return)
[ Madame Roland,
"Lettres autographes, etc.," Sept. 5, 1792. "We are here under the knives
of Marat and Robespierre. These fellows are striving to excite the people
and turn them against the National Assembly and the council. They have
organized a Star Chamber and they have a small army under pay, aided by
what they found or stole in the palace and elsewhere, or by supplies
purchased by Danton, who is underhandedly the chieftain of this horde."—Dusaulx,
"Mémoires," 441. "On the following day (Sept. 3) I went to see one of the
most estimated personalities at this epoch. 'You know,' said I to him,
'what is going on?'—'Very well; but keep quiet; it will soon be
over. A little more blood is still necessary.'—I saw others who
explained themselves much more definitely. "—Mortimer-Ternaux, II.
445.]
3165 (return)
[ Madame de Staël,
"Considérations sur la Révolution Française," 3rd part, ch. X.]
3166 (return)
[ Prudhomme, "Les
Révolutions de Paris" (number for Sept. 22). At one of the last sessions
of the commune "M. Panis spoke of Marat as of a prophet, another Siméon
Stylite. 'Marat,' said he, 'remained six weeks sitting on one thigh in a
dungeon.' "—Barbaroux, 64.]
3167 (return)
[ Weber, II. 348.
Collot dwells at length, "in cool-blooded gaiety," on the murder of Madame
de Lamballe and on the abominations to which her corpse was subjected. "He
added, with a sigh of regret, that if he had been consulted he would have
had the head of Madame de Lamballe served in a covered dish for the
queen's supper."]
3168 (return)
[ On the part played by
Robespierre and his presence constantly at the Commune see Granier de
Cassagnac, II. 55.—Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 205. Speech by Robespierre
at the commune, Sept. 1: "No one dares name the traitors. Well, I give
their names for the safety of the people: I denounce the libertycide
Brissot, the Girondist factionists, the rascally commission of the
Twenty-One in the National Assembly; I denounce them for having sold
France to Brunswick, and for having taken in advance the reward for their
dastardly act." On the 2nd of September he repeats his denunciation, and
consequently on that day warrants are issued by the committee of
supervision against thirty deputies and against Brissot and Roland
(Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 216, 247).]
3169 (return)
[ "Procès-verbaux de la
Commune," Aug. 30.—Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 217 (resolutions of the
sections Poissonnière and Luxembourg).—Granier de Cassagnac, II. 104
(adhesion of the sections Mauconseil, Louvre, and Quinze-Vingt).]
3170 (return)
[ Granier de Cassagnac,
II. 156.]
3171 (return)
[ Mortimer-Ternaux,
III. 265.—Granier de Cassagnac, XII. 402. (The other five judges
were also members of the commune.)]
3172 (return)
[ Granier de Cassagnac,
II. 313. Register of the General Assembly of the sans-culottes, section,
Sept. 2.—"Mémoires sur les journées de Septembre," 151 (declaration
of Jourdan).]
3173 (return)
[ "Mémoires sur les
journées de Septembre," narrative of Abbé Sicard, 111.]
3174 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XVIII. 109, 178. ("La vérite tout entière," by Méhée, Jr.)—Narrative
of Abbé Sicard, 132, 134.]
3175 (return)
[ Granier de Cassagnac,
II. 92, 93.—On the presence and complicity of Santerre. Ibid,
89-99.]
3176 (return)
[ Mortimer-Ternaux,
III. 277 and 299 (Sept. 3).—Granier de Cassagnac, II. 257. A
commissary of the section of the Quatre-Nations states in his report that
"the section authorized them to pay expenses out of the affair."—Declaration
of Jourdan, 151.—Lavalette, "Mémoires," I. 91. The initiative of the
commune is further proved by the following detail: "Towards five o'clock
(Sept. 2) city officials on horseback, carrying a flag, rode through the
streets crying: 'To arms! To arms!' They added: 'The enemy is coming; you
are all lost; the city will be burnt and given up to pillage. Have no fear
of the traitors or conspirators behind your backs. They are in the hands
of the patriots, and before you leave the thunderbolt of national justice
will fall on them!"—Buchez et Roux, XXVIII. 105. Letter of Chevalier
Saint-Dizier, member of the first committee of supervision, Sept. 10.
"Marat, Duplain, Fréron, etc., generally do no more in their supervision
of things than wreak private vengeance... Marat states openly that 40,000
heads must still be knocked off to ensure the success of the revolution."]
3177 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XVIII. 146. "Ma Résurrection," by Mathon de la Varenne. "The evening
before half-intoxicated women said publicly on the Feuillants terrace:
'To-morrow is the day when their souls will be turned inside out in the
prisons."]
3178 (return)
[ "Mémoires sur les
journées de Septembre. Mon agonie," by Journiac de Saint-Méard.—Madame
de la Fausse-Landry, 72. The 29th of August she obtained permission to
join her uncle in prison: "M. Sergent and others told me that I was acting
imprudently; that the prisons were not safe."]
3179 (return)
[ Granier de Cassagnac,—II.
27. According to Roch Marcandier their number "did not exceed 300."
According to Louvet there were "200, and perhaps not that number."
According to Brissot, the massacres were committed by about "a hundred
unknown brigands."—Pétion, at La Force (Ibid., 75), on September 6,
finds only about a dozen executioners. According to Madame Roland (II.
35), "there were not fifteen at the Abbaye." Lavalette the first day finds
only about fifty killers at the La Force prison.]
3180 (return)
[ Mathon de la Varenne,
ibid., 137.]
3181 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux, XVII.
183 (session of the Jacobin Club, Aug. 27). Speech by a federate from
Tarn.—Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 126.]
3182 (return)
[ Sicard, 80.—Méhée,
187.—Weber, II. 279.—Cf., in Journiac de Saint-Méard, his
conversation with a Provençal.—Rétif de la Bretonne, "Les Nuits de
Paris," 375. "About 2 o'clock in the morning (Sept. 3) I heard a troop of
cannibals passing under my window, none of whom appeared to have the
Parisian accent; they were all strangers."]
3183 (return)
[ Granier de Cassagnac,
II. 164, 502.—Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 530.—Maillard's assessors
at the Abbaye were a watchmaker living in the Rue Childebert, a
fruit-dealer in the Rue Mazarine, a keeper of a public house in the Rue du
Four-Saint-Germain, a journeyman hatter in the Rue Sainte-Marguerite, and
two others whose occupation is not mentioned.—On the composition of
the tribunal at La Force, Cf. Journiac de Saint-Méard, 120, and Weber, II.
261.]
3184 (return)
[ Granier de Cassagnac,
II. 507 (on Damiens), 513 (on L'empereur).—Meillan, 388 (on Laforet
and his wife, old-clothes dealers on the Quai du Louvre, who on the 31st
of May prepare for a second blow, and calculate this time on having for
their share the pillaging of fifty houses).]
3185 (return)
[ Sicard, 98]
3186 (return)
[ De Ferrières (Ed.
Berville et Barrière), III. 486.—Rétif de la Bretonne, 381. At the
end of the Rue des Ballets a prisoner had just been killed, while the next
one slipped through the railing and escaped. "A man not belonging to the
butchers, but one of those thoughtless machines of which there are so
many, interposed his pike and stopped him... The poor fellow was arrested
by his pursuers and massacred. The pikeman coolly said to us: 'I couldn't
know they wanted to kill him.'"]
3187 (return)
[ Granier de Cassagnac,
II. 511.]
3188 (return)
[ The judges and
slaughterers at the Abbaye, discovered in the trial of the year IV.,
almost all lived in the neighborhood, in the rues Dauphine, de Nevers,
Guégénaud, de Bussy, Childebert, Taranne, de l'Egoût, du Vieux Colombier,
de l'Echaudé-Saint-Benoit, du Four-Saint-Germain, etc.]
3189 (return)
[ Sicard, 86, 87, 101.—Jourdan,
123. "The president of the committee of supervision replied to me that these
were very honest persons; that on the previous evening or the evening
before that, one of them, in a shirt and wooden shoes, presented himself
before their committee all covered with blood, bringing with him in his
hat twenty-five louis in gold, which he had found on the person of a man
he had killed."—Another instance of probity may be found in the
"Procès-verbaux du conseil-général de la Commune de Versailles," 367, 371.—On
the following day, Sept. 3, robberies commence and go on increasing.]
3190 (return)
[ Méhée, 179. "'Would
you believe that I have earned only twenty-four francs?' said a baker's
boy armed with a club. 'I killed more than forty for my share.'"]
3191 (return)
[ Granier de Cassagnac.
II. 153.—Cf. Ibid., 202-209, details on the meals of the workmen and
on the more delicate repast of Maillard and his assistants.]
3192 (return)
[ Mortimer-Ternaux,
III. 175-176.—Granier de Cassagnac. II. 84.——Jourdan,
222.—Méhée, 179. "At midnight they came back swearing, cursing, and
foaming with rage, threatening to cut the throats of the committee in a
body if they were not instantly paid."]
3193 (return)
[ Mortimer-Ternaux,
III. 320. Speech by Pétion on the charges preferred against Robespierre.]
3194 (return)
[ Mathon de la Varenne,
156.—Journiac de Saint-Méard, 129.—Moore, 267.]
3195 (return)
[ Journiac de
Saint-Méard, 115.]
3196 (return)
[ Weber, II. 265.—Journiac
de Saint-Méard, 129.—Mathon de la Varenne, 155.]
3197 (return)
[ Moore, 267.—Cf.
Malouet, II. 240. Malouet, on the evening of Sept. 1, was at his
sister-in-law's; there is a domiciliary visit at midnight; she faints on
hearing the patrol mount the stairs. "I begged them not to enter the
drawing-room, so as not to disturb the poor sufferer. The sight of a woman
in a swoon and pleasing in appearance affected them, and they at once
withdrew, leaving me alone with her."—Beaulieu, "Essais," I. 108.
(Regarding the two Abbaye butchers he meets in the house of
Journiac-de-Saint-Méard, and who chat with him while issuing him with a
safe-conduct): "What struck me was to detect generous sentiments through
their ferocity, those of men determined to protect any one whose cause
they adopted."]
3198 (return)
[ Weber, II. 265, 348.]
3199 (return)
[ Sicard, 101.
Billaud-Varennes, addressing the slaughterers.—Ibid.75. "Greater
power," replied a member of the committee of supervision, "what are you
thinking of? To give you greater power would be limiting those you have
already. Have you forgotten that you are sovereigns? That the sovereignty
of the people is confided to you, and that you are now in full exercise of
it?"]
31100 (return)
[ Méhée, 171.]
31101 (return)
[ Sicard, 81. At the
beginning the Marseilles men themselves were averse to striking the
disarmed, and exclaimed to the crowd: "Here, take our swords and pikes and
kill the monsters!"]
31102 (return)
[ Macbeth by
Shakespeare: "I have supped full with horrors."]
31103 (return)
[ Observe children
drowning a dog or killing a snake. Tenacity of life irritates them, as if
it were a rebellion against their despotism, the effect of which is to
render them only the more violent against their victim.]
31104 (return)
[ One may recall to
mind the effect of bull-fights, also the irresistible fascination which
Saint-Augustin experienced on first hearing the death-cry of a gladiator
in the amphitheater.]
31105 (return)
[ Mortimer-Ternaux,
III. 131. Trial of the September actors; the judge's summing up. "The
third and forty-sixth witnesses stated that they saw Monneuse (member of
the commune) go to and come from la Force, express his delight at those
sad events that had just occurred, acting very immorally in relation
thereto, adding that there was violin playing in his presence, and that
his colleague danced."—Sicard, 88.]
31106 (return)
[ Sicard, 87, 91.
This expression by a wine-merchant, who wants the custom of the murderers.—Granier
de Cassagnac, II. 197-200. The original bills for wine, straw, and lights
have been found.]
31107 (return)
[ Sicard, 91.—Maton
de la Varenne, 150.]
31108 (return)
[ Mathon de la
Varenne, 154. A man from the suburbs said to him (Mathon is an advocate):
"All right, Monsieur Fine-skin; I shall treat myself to a glass of your
blood."]
31109 (return)
[ Rétif de la
Bretonne, "Les Nuits de Paris," 9th night, p.388. "She screamed horribly,
whilst the brigands amused themselves with their disgraceful acts. Her
body even after death was not exempt. These people had heard that she had
been beautiful."]
31110 (return)
[ Prudhomme, "Les
Révolutions de Paris," number for Sept. 8, 1792. "The people subjected the
flower-girl of the Palais-Royal to the law of retaliation."—Granier
de Cassagnac, II. 329. According to the bulletin of the revolutionary
tribunal, number for Sept. 3.—Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 291. Deposition
of the caretaker's office of the Conciergerie prison.—Buchez et
Roux, XVII.198. "Histoire des hommes de proi," by Roch Marcandier.]
31111 (return)
[ Mortimer-Ternaux
III, 257. Trial of the September murderers; deposition of Roussel.—Ib.,
628.]
31112 (return)
[ Deposition of the
woman Millet, ibid., 63.—Weber, II. 350.——Roch
Marcandier, 197, 198.—Rétif de la Bretonne, 381.]
31113 (return)
[ Deposition of the
woman Millet, ibid., 63.—Weber, II. 350.——Roch
Marcandier, 197, 198.—Rétif de la Bretonne, 381.]
31114 (return)
[ On this mechanical
and murderous action Cf: Dusaulx, "Mémoires," 440. He addresses the
bystanders in favor of the prisoners, and, affected by his words, they
hold out their hands to him. "But before this the executioners had struck
me on the cheeks with the points of their pikes, from which hung pieces of
flesh. Others wanted to cut off my head, which would have been done if two
gendarmes had not kept them back."]
31115 (return)
[ Jourdan, 219.]
31116 (return)
[ Méhée, 179.]
31117 (return)
[ Mortimer-Ternaux,
III. 558. The same idea is found among the federates and Parisians
composing the company of the Egalité, which brought the Orleans prisoners
to Versailles and then murdered them. They explain their conduct by saying
that they "hoped to put an end to the excessive expenditure to which the
French empire was subject through the prolonged detention of
conspirators."]
31118 (return)
[ Rétif de la
Bretonne, 388.]
31119 (return)
[ Méhée, 177.]
31120 (return)
[ Prudhomme, "Les
Crimes de la Révolution." III. 272.]
31121 (return)
[ Rétif de la
Bretonne, 388. There were two sorts of women at the Salpétrière, those who
were banded and young girls brought in the prison. Hence the two
alternatives.]
31122 (return)
[ Mortimer-Ternaux,
III. 295. See list of names, ages, and occupations.]
31123 (return)
[ Barthélemy Maurice,
"Histoire politique and anecdotique des prisons de la Seine," 329.]
31124 (return)
[ Mortimer-Ternaux,
III. 295. See list of names, ages, and occupations.]
31125 (return)
[ The Encyclopedia
"QUID" (ROBERT LAFONT, PARIS 1998) advises us that the number of victims
killed with "cold steel and clubs" etc total 1395 persons. The total
number of French victims due to the Revolution is considered to be between
600,000 and 800,000 dead. (SR)]
31126 (return)
[ Mortimer-Ternaux,
III. 399, 592, 602-606.—"Procès-verbal des 8, 9, 10 Septembre,
extrait des registres de la municipalité de Versailles." (In the "Mémoires
sur les journées de Septembre"), p. 358 and following pages.—Granier
de Cassagnac, II. 483. Bonnet's exploit at Orleans, pointed out to
Fournier, Sept. I. Fournier replies: "In God's name, I am not to be
ordered; when the bloody beggars have had their heads cut off the trial
may be held later!"]
31127 (return)
[ Roch Marcandier,
210. Speech by Lazowski to the section of Finistère, fauborg
Saint-Marceau. Lazowski had, in addition, set free the assassins of the
mayor of Etampes, and laid their manacles on the bureau table.]
31128 (return)
[ Malouet, II. 243
(Sept. 2).—Moniteur, XIII. 48 (session of Sept. 27, 1792). We see in
the speech of Panis that analogous scenes took place in the committee of
supervision. "Imagine our situation. We were surrounded by citizens
irritated against the treachery of the court. We were told: 'Here is an
aristocrat who is going to fly; you must stop him, or your yourselves are
traitors!' Pistols were pointed at us and we found ourselves obliged to
sign warrants, not so much for our own safety as for that of the persons
denounced."]
31129 (return)
[ Granier de
Cassagnac, II. 258.—Prudhomme, "Les Crimes de la Révolution," III.
272.—Mortimer-Ternaux, III. 631.—De Ferrière, III. 391.—(The
expression quoted was recorded by Rétif de la Bretonne.)]
31130 (return)
[ That is how to do
it, must any anarchist or hopeful revolutionary have thought, upon reading
Taine's livid description.-But also: "Do not let the bourgeois read this,
it might scare them and make our task more difficult." (SR).]
31131 (return)
[ Moniteur, XIII.
698, 698 (numbers for Sept. 15 and 16). Ibid., Letter of Roland, 701; of
Pétion, 711.—Buchez et Roux, XVIII. 33. 34.—Prudhomme's
journal contains an engraving of this subject (Sept. 14)—"An
Englishman admitted to the bar of the house denounces to the National
Assembly a robbery committed in a house occupied by him at Chaillot by two
bailiffs and their satellites. The robbery consisted of twelve louis, five
guineas, five thousand pounds in assignats, and several other objects."
The courts before which he appeared did not dare take up his case (Buchez
et Roux, XVII. P. 1, Sept. 18).]
31132 (return)
[ Buchez et Roux,
XVII. 461.—Prudhomme, "Les Révolutions de Paris," number for Sept.
22, 1792.]
31133 (return)
[ Moniteur, XIII. 711
(session of Sept. 16). Letter of Roland to the National Assembly.—Buchez
et Roux, XVIII. 42.—Moniteur, XIII. 731 (session of Sept. 17).
Speech by Pétion: "Yesterday there was some talk of again visiting the
prisons, and particularly the Conciergerie."]
31134 (return)
[ Perhaps Mao read
this and later coined his famous slogan "that all political power emanates
from the barrels of guns." (SR).]
31135 (return)
[ "Archives
Nationales," II. 58 to 76. Official reports of the Paris electoral
assembly.—Robespierre is elected the twelfth (Sept. 5), then Danton
and Collot d'Herbois (Sept. 6) then Manuel and Billaud-Varennes (Sept. 7),
next C. Desmoulins (Sept. 8), Marat (Sept. 9) etc.—Mortimer-Ternaux,
IV. 35 (act passed by the commune at the instigation of Robespierre for
the regulation of electoral operations).—Louvet, "Mémoires." Louvet,
in the electoral assembly asks to be heard on the candidacy of Marat, but
is unsuccessful. "On going out I was surrounded by those men with big
clubs and sabers by whom the future dictator was always attended,
Robespierre's body-guard. They threatened me and told me in very concise
terms: 'Before long you shall have your turn. This is the freedom of that
assembly in which one declared his vote under a dagger pointed at him."']
31136 (return)
[ In reading this all
socialist and communists and other potential manipulators of democracy
would have taken and will continue to take note. Once the hidden
combination can manage to invest all the different, in theory opponent,
parties with their own men, an eternal control by a hidden mafia can now
take place. (SR).]
31137 (return)
[ Such procedures set
a precedence for 200 years of 'guided democracy' in many trade unions and
elsewhere. (SR).]
In the departments, it is by hundreds that we enumerate days like the 20th of June, August 10, September 2. The body has its epidemic, its contagious diseases; the mind has the same; the revolutionary malady is one of them. It appears throughout the country at the same time; each infected point infects others. In each city, in each borough, the club is a Center of inflammation which disorganizes the sound parts; and the example of each disorganized Center spreads afar like contagious fumes.3201 Everywhere the same fever, delirium, and convulsions mark the presence of the same virus. That virus is the Jacobin dogma. By virtue of the Jacobin dogma, theft, usurpation, murder, take on the guise of political philosophy, and the gravest crimes against persons, against public or private property, become legitimate; for they are the acts of the legitimate supreme power, the power that has the public welfare in its keeping.
That each Jacobin band should be invested with the local dictatorship in its own canton is, according to the Jacobins, a natural right. It becomes the written law from the day that the National Assembly declares the country in danger. "From that date," says their most widely read Journal,3202 and by the mere fact of that declaration, "the people of France are assembled and insurgent. They have repossessed themselves of the sovereign power." Their magistrates, their deputies, all constituted authorities, return to nothingness, their essential state. And you, temporary and revocable representatives, "you are nothing but presiding officers for the people; you have nothing to do but to collect their votes, and to announce the result when these shall have been cast with due solemnity."—Nor is this the theory of the Jacobins only; it is also official theory. The National Assembly approves of the insurrection, recognizes the Commune, keeps in the background, abdicates as far as possible, and only remains provisionally in office in order that the place may not be left vacant. It abstains from exercising power, even to provide its own successors; it merely "invites" the French people to organize a national convention; it confesses that it has "no right to put the exercise of sovereign power under binding rules"; it does no more than "indicate to citizens" the rules for the elections "to which it invites them to conform." Meanwhile it is subject to the will of the sovereign people, then so-called; it dares not resist their crimes; it interferes with assassins only by entreaties.—Much more; it authorizes them, either by ministerial signature or counter-signature, to begin their work elsewhere. Roland has signed Fournier's commission to Orleans; Danton has sent the circular of Marat over all France. To reconstruct the departments the council of ministers sends the most infuriated members of the Commune and the party, Chaumette, Fréron, Westerman, Auduoin, Huguenin, Momoro, Couthon, Billaud-Varennes,3204 and others still more tainted and brutal, who preach the purest Jacobin doctrine. "They announce openly3205 that laws no longer exist; that since the people are sovereign, every one is master; that each fraction of the nation can take such measures as suit it, in the name of the country's safety; that they have the right to tax corn, to seize it in the laborer's fields, to cut off the heads of the farmers who refuse to bring their grain to market." At Lisieux, agrarian law is preached by Fufour and Momoro. At Douai, other preachers from Paris say to the popular club, "Prepare scaffolds; let the walls of the city bristle with gallows, and hang upon them every man who does not accept our opinions."—Nothing is more logical, more in conformity with their principles. The journals, deducing their consequences, explain to the people the use they ought to make of their reconquered sovereignty.3206 "Under the present circumstances, community of property is the law; everything belongs to everybody." Besides, "an equalizing of fortunes must be brought about, a leveling, which shall abolish the vicious principle of the domination of the rich over the poor." This reform is all the more pressing because "the people, the real sovereign people, have nearly as many enemies as there are proprietors, large merchants, financiers, and wealthy men. In a time of revolution, we must regard all men who have more than enough as the enemies, secret or avowed, of popular government." Therefore, "let the people of each commune, before they quit their homes" for the army, "put all those who are suspected of not loving liberty in a secure place, and under the safe-keeping of the law; let them be kept shut up until war is over; let them be guarded with pikes," and let each one of their guardians receive thirty sous per day.
* As for the partisans of the fallen government, the members of the Paris directory, "with Roederer and Blondel at their head,"
* as for the general officers, "with Lafayette and d'Affry at their head,"
* as for "the critical deputies of the Constituent Assembly, with Barnave and Lameth at their head,"
* as for the Feuillant deputies of the Legislative Assembly, "with Ramond and Jaucourt at their head,"3207
* as for "all those who consented to soil their hands with the profits of the civil list,"
* as for "the 40,000 hired assassins who were gathered at the palace on the night of August 9-10,
they are all (say the Jacobins) furious monsters, who ought to be strangled to the last one. People! you have risen to your feet; stand firm until not one of these conspirators remains alive. Your humanity requires you for once to show yourselves inexorable. Strike terror to the wicked. The proscriptions which we impose on you as a duty, are the sacred wrath of your country."
There is no mistaking this; it is a tocsin sounding against all the powers that be, against all social superiority, against priests and nobles, proprietors, capitalists, the leaders of business and industry; it is sounding, in short, against the whole élite of France, whether of old or recent origin. The Jacobins of Paris, by their journals, their examples, their missionaries, give the signal; and in the provinces their kindred spirits, imbued with the same principles, only wait the summons to hurl themselves forward.