The French Revolution by Thomas Carlyle (urban books to read TXT) 📖

grumbled. Thus they: girt in their tricolor sashes; Municipal note-paper in the one hand, fire-arms in other. They have their Agents out all over France; speaking in townhouses, market-places, highways and byways; agitating, urging to arm; all hearts tingling to hear. Great is the fire of Anti-Aristocrat eloquence: nay some, as Bibliopolic Momoro, seem to hint afar off at something which smells of Agrarian Law, and a surgery of the overswoln dropsical strong-box itself;—whereat indeed the bold Bookseller runs risk of being hanged, and Ex-Constituent Buzot has to smuggle him off. (Memoires de Buzot (Paris, 1823), p. 88.) Governing Persons, were they never so insignificant intrinsically, have for most part plenty of Memoir-writers; and the curious, in after-times, can learn minutely their goings out and comings in: which, as men always love to know their fellow-men in singular situations, is a comfort, of its kind.

Not so, with these Governing Persons, now in the Townhall! And yet what most original fellow-man, of the Governing sort, high-chancellor, king, kaiser, secretary of the home or the foreign department, ever shewed such a phasis as Clerk Tallien, Procureur Manuel, future Procureur Chaumette, here in this Sand-waltz of the Twenty-five millions, now do? O brother mortals,—thou Advocate Panis, friend of Danton, kinsman of Santerre; Engraver Sergent, since called Agate Sergent; thou Huguenin, with the tocsin in thy heart! But, as Horace says, they wanted the sacred memoir-

writer (sacro vate); and we know them not. Men bragged of August and its doings, publishing them in high places; but of this September none now or afterwards would brag. The September world remains dark, fuliginous, as Lapland witch-midnight;—from which, indeed, very strange shapes will evolve themselves.

Understand this, however: that incorruptible Robespierre is not wanting, now when the brunt of battle is past; in a stealthy way the seagreen man sits there, his feline eyes excellent in the twilight. Also understand this other, a single fact worth many: that Marat is not only there, but has a seat of honour assigned him, a tribune particuliere. How changed for Marat; lifted from his dark cellar into this luminous ‘peculiar tribune!’

All dogs have their day; even rabid dogs. Sorrowful, incurable Philoctetes Marat; without whom Troy cannot be taken! Hither, as a main element of the Governing Power, has Marat been raised. Royalist types, for we have ‘suppressed’ innumerable Durosoys, Royous, and even clapt them in prison,—

Royalist types replace the worn types often snatched from a People’s-Friend in old ill days. In our ‘peculiar tribune’ we write and redact: Placards, of due monitory terror; Amis-du-Peuple (now under the name of Journal de la Republique); and sit obeyed of men. ‘Marat,’ says one, ‘is the conscience of the Hotel-de-Ville.’ Keeper, as some call it, of the Sovereign’s Conscience;—which surely, in such hands, will not lie hid in a napkin!

Two great movements, as we said, agitate this distracted National mind: a rushing against domestic Traitors, a rushing against foreign Despots. Mad movements both, restrainable by no known rule; strongest passions of human nature driving them on: love, hatred; vengeful sorrow, braggart Nationality also vengeful,—and pale Panic over all! Twelve Hundred slain Patriots, do they not, from their dark catacombs there, in Death’s dumb-

shew, plead (O ye Legislators) for vengeance? Such was the destructive rage of these Aristocrats on the ever-memorable Tenth. Nay, apart from vengeance, and with an eye to Public Salvation only, are there not still, in this Paris (in round numbers) ‘thirty thousand Aristocrats,’ of the most malignant humour; driven now to their last trump-card?—Be patient, ye Patriots: our New High Court, ‘Tribunal of the Seventeenth,’ sits; each Section has sent Four Jurymen; and Danton, extinguishing improper judges, improper practices wheresoever found, is ‘the same man you have known at the Cordeliers.’ With such a Minister of Justice shall not Justice be done?—Let it be swift then, answers universal Patriotism; swift and sure!-

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One would hope, this Tribunal of the Seventeenth is swifter than most.

Already on the 21st, while our Court is but four days old, Collenot d’Angremont, ‘the Royal enlister’ (crimp, embaucheur) dies by torch-light.

For, lo, the great Guillotine, wondrous to behold, now stands there; the Doctor’s Idea has become Oak and Iron; the huge cyclopean axe ‘falls in its grooves like the ram of the Pile-engine,’ swiftly snuffing out the light of men?’ ‘Mais vous, Gualches, what have you invented?’ This?—Poor old Laporte, Intendant of the Civil List, follows next; quietly, the mild old man. Then Durosoy, Royalist Placarder, ‘cashier of all the Anti-

Revolutionists of the interior:’ he went rejoicing; said that a Royalist like him ought to die, of all days on this day, the 25th or Saint Louis’s Day. All these have been tried, cast,—the Galleries shouting approval; and handed over to the Realised Idea, within a week. Besides those whom we have acquitted, the Galleries murmuring, and have dismissed; or even have personally guarded back to Prison, as the Galleries took to howling, and even to menacing and elbowing. (Moore’s Journal, i. 159-168.) Languid this Tribunal is not.

Nor does the other movement slacken; the rushing against foreign Despots.

Strong forces shall meet in death-grip; drilled Europe against mad undrilled France; and singular conclusions will be tried.—Conceive therefore, in some faint degree, the tumult that whirls in this France, in this Paris! Placards from Section, from Commune, from Legislative, from the individual Patriot, flame monitory on all walls. Flags of Danger to Fatherland wave at the Hotel-de-Ville; on the Pont Neuf—over the prostrate Statues of Kings. There is universal enlisting, urging to enlist; there is tearful-boastful leave-taking; irregular marching on the Great North-

Eastern Road. Marseillese sing their wild To Arms, in chorus; which now all men, all women and children have learnt, and sing chorally, in Theatres, Boulevards, Streets; and the heart burns in every bosom: Aux Armes! Marchons!—Or think how your Aristocrats are skulking into covert; how Bertrand-Moleville lies hidden in some garret ‘in Aubry-le-boucher Street, with a poor surgeon who had known me;’ Dame de Stael has secreted her Narbonne, not knowing what in the world to make of him. The Barriers are sometimes open, oftenest shut; no passports to be had; Townhall Emissaries, with the eyes and claws of falcons, flitting watchful on all points of your horizon! In two words: Tribunal of the Seventeenth, busy under howling Galleries; Prussian Brunswick, ‘over a space of forty miles,’

with his war-tumbrils, and sleeping thunders, and Briarean ‘sixty-six thousand’ (See Toulongeon, Hist. de France. ii. c. 5.) right-hands,—

coming, coming!

O Heavens, in these latter days of August, he is come! Durosoy was not yet guillotined when news had come that the Prussians were harrying and ravaging about Metz; in some four days more, one hears that Longwi, our first strong-place on the borders, is fallen ‘in fifteen hours.’ Quick, therefore, O ye improvised Municipals; quick, and ever quicker!—The improvised Municipals make front to this also. Enrolment urges itself; and clothing, and arming. Our very officers have now ‘wool epaulettes;’ for it is the reign of Equality, and also of Necessity. Neither do men now monsieur and sir one another; citoyen (citizen) were suitabler; we even say thou, as ‘the free peoples of Antiquity did:’ so have Journals and the Improvised Commune suggested; which shall be well.

Infinitely better, meantime, could we suggest, where arms are to be found.

For the present, our Citoyens chant chorally To Arms; and have no arms!

Arms are searched for; passionately; there is joy over any musket.

Moreover, entrenchments shall be made round Paris: on the slopes of Montmartre men dig and shovel; though even the simple suspect this to be desperate. They dig; Tricolour sashes speak encouragement and well-speed-

ye. Nay finally ‘twelve Members of the Legislative go daily,’ not to encourage only, but to bear a hand, and delve: it was decreed with acclamation. Arms shall either be provided; or else the ingenuity of man crack itself, and become fatuity. Lean Beaumarchais, thinking to serve the Fatherland, and do a stroke of trade, in the old way, has commissioned sixty thousand stand of good arms out of Holland: would to Heaven, for Fatherland’s sake and his, they were come! Meanwhile railings are torn up; hammered into pikes: chains themselves shall be welded together, into pikes. The very coffins of the dead are raised; for melting into balls.

All Church-bells must down into the furnace to make cannon; all Church-

plate into the mint to make money. Also behold the fair swan-bevies of Citoyennes that have alighted in Churches, and sit there with swan-neck,—

sewing tents and regimentals! Nor are Patriotic Gifts wanting, from those that have aught left; nor stingily given: the fair Villaumes, mother and daughter, Milliners in the Rue St.Martin, give ‘a silver thimble, and a coin of fifteen sous (sevenpence halfpenny),’ with other similar effects; and offer, at least the mother does, to mount guard. Men who have not even a thimble, give a thimbleful,-were it but of invention. One Citoyen has wrought out the scheme of a wooden cannon; which France shall exclusively profit by, in the first instance. It is to be made of staves, by the coopers;—of almost boundless calibre, but uncertain as to strength! Thus they: hammering, scheming, stitching, founding, with all their heart and with all their soul. Two bells only are to remain in each Parish,—for tocsin and other purposes.

But mark also, precisely while the Prussian batteries were playing their briskest at Longwi in the North-East, and our dastardly Lavergne saw nothing for it but surrender,—south-westward, in remote, patriarchal La Vendee, that sour ferment about Nonjuring Priests, after long working, is ripe, and explodes: at the wrong moment for us! And so we have ‘eight thousand Peasants at Chatillon-sur-Sevre,’ who will not be ballotted for soldiers; will not have their Curates molested. To whom Bonchamps, Laroche-jaquelins, and Seigneurs enough, of a Royalist turn, will join themselves; with Stofflets and Charettes; with Heroes and Chouan Smugglers; and the loyal warmth of a simple people, blown into flame and fury by theological and seignorial bellows! So that there shall be fighting from behind ditches, death-volleys bursting out of thickets and ravines of rivers; huts burning, feet of the pitiful women hurrying to refuge with their children on their back; seedfields fallow, whitened with human bones;—‘eighty thousand, of all ages, ranks, sexes, flying at once across the Loire,’ with wail borne far on the winds: and, in brief, for years coming, such a suite of scenes as glorious war has not offered in these late ages, not since our Albigenses and Crusadings were over,—save indeed some chance Palatinate, or so, we might have to ‘burn,’ by way of exception. The ‘eight thousand at Chatillon’ will be got dispelled for the moment; the fire scattered, not extinguished. To the dints and bruises of outward battle there is to be added henceforth a deadlier internal gangrene.

This rising in La Vendee reports itself at Paris on Wednesday the 29th of August;—just as we had got our Electors elected; and, in spite of Brunswick’s and Longwi’s teeth, were hoping still to have a National Convention, if it pleased Heaven. But indeed, otherwise, this Wednesday is to be regarded as one of the notablest Paris had yet seen: gloomy tidings come successively, like Job’s messengers; are met by gloomy answers. Of Sardinia rising to invade the South-East, and Spain threatening the South, we do not speak. But are not the Prussians