274

PRICES OF COMMODITIES IN PARIS-ASSIGNATS.

[1793.

There is much to do in this mad world of France in which all the ordinary relations of social life are overthrown. The whole state machinery is out of gear, and nevertheless it must work. Oiling the wheels and cranks will be useless, so they must be moved by main strength. "The effects of fear alone" will do a great deal. But fear will not give the people food, when the interruption of commercial dealings, by the utter want of confidence between seller and buyer, keeps food out of the markets. In 1792 Paris had been provisioned with grain and flour, not in the ordinary course of demand and supply, but by the municipality. The loss to the government upon this year's transactions was enormous. In February, 1793, it was reported to the Convention that the price of bread must either be raised by the municipality, or an extraordinary tax must be levied, to keep down the price of bread. The Convention granted the tax, to be levied upon an ascending scale upon property, moveable and immoveable. The municipality, however, could not keep down prices, even by buying in the dearest market and selling in the cheapest. The farmers kept their grain in their barns; the merchants kept their sugar in their warehouses; the soap-boilers made no stock to supply the retailers. They did not like the coin in which they were to be paid in exchange for their commodities. When the National Assembly and the National Convention had declared the domains of the church and the estates of the emigrants to be public property, they put into circulation a new species of Paper-Money, estimated upon the supposed value of that property, denominated Assignats, the holders of them being assignees of so much of the property thus represented. Lands and houses might be bought, and were largely bought, by the holders of assignats, but they were not otherwise convertible. As a necessary consequence the value of this paper-money fluctuated according to the belief in the permanency of the Revolution; and in the same way the purchasers of the confiscated property became fewer and fewer when the hope of a constitutional monarchy had passed away, and France was governed in a great degree by the Jacobin Clubs. But the more decided was the depreciation of the Assignats the more unlimited was their issue by the Convention. As an inevitable consequence the nominal price of every article of subsistence and household necessity was prodigiously increased. Sugar, coffee, candles, soap, were doubled in price. The wages of labour remained stationary; for there was a superabundance of labour through the general interruption to production and exchange. The washerwomen of Paris go to the Convention to say that soap is so dear that their trade will be at an end. We want soap and bread, cry the poor blanchisseuses of the Seine. Commissioners of the Sections superintend the distribution of loaves to those who can pay. Furious women surround the grocers' shops, demanding sugar. The terrified grocers roll their sugar-hogsheads into the streets, and the citizenesses weigh it out at twenty-two sous a pound. Some paid; some helped themselves without paying; and the pallid shop-keepers helplessly looked on; for had not Marat, the friend of the people, said in his journal of the 25th of February that there would be an end of high prices if a few shops were pillaged, and a few shopkeepers hanged at their own doors? The shopkeepers, however, brought out their stores when their price was tendered in metallic currency. The Convention had its strong remedy against the unpatriotic bourgeoisie. It decreed that whoever exchanged gold or silver for

1793.]

PLUNDER OF THE SHOPS-LAW OF MAXIMUM.

275

a higher amount in assignats than their nominal value, and whoever stipulated for a different price of commodities if paid in paper or in specie, should be subjected to six years' imprisonment. The final step in this direction was to fix a maximum of price upon all agricultural produce and upon all merchandize. The system was extended from Paris to the departments, with the certain results of the ruin and misery which follow every violation of economical laws. And yet amidst this total derangement of the ordinary principles of social intercourse, the people lost no faith in their Republic. They were stirred up to the belief that their miseries were not the result of natural causes, but were produced by the intrigues of the aristocrats, aided by the gold of Pitt. Marat, who had excited the plunder of the shops, was in

vain denounced by a small majority in the Convention, who foresaw the quick approach of the reign of anarchy and bloodshed. The Mountain was gradually deriving new strength from the hunger and violence of the populace. "The people can do no wrong," said Robespierre. Danton, who had manifested many indications of disgust at the proceedings of the extreme democratic faction, was carried away by their ascendency, and supported the establishment of the Revolutionary Tribunal. Its scaffolds were quickly set up. Sansculottism soon became supreme. Misery fell upon all classes, and especially upon those who depended upon the wages of industry. But every Parisian, rich or poor, trembled and obeyed; and the provinces, for the greater part, did the same, for Paris ruled France. Most Frenchmen were ready to defend their country against the foreigner, and to maintain any form of revolutionary government, however oppressive, in preference to the restoration of the ancient order of things which had been destroyed. Their fanaticism was stimulated by arts not wholly unlike the delusion practised upon the Kaffir tribes in 1857, who were persuaded by their chief to destroy their cattle and corn, that, rendered desperate by want, they might rush to a war which would sweep the British colonists from the land. The Assignats and the Law of Maximum produced the same desperation in France. The Jacobin leaders knew perfectly well what would be the consequences of their insane decrees. They traded on the despair of the people.

276

FORCED LEVY OF TROOPS-LA VENDÉE.

[1793.

"The Jacobin Revolution," wrote Burke, "is carried on by men of no rank, of no consideration; of wild savage minds, full of levity, arrogance, and presumption; without morals, without probity, without prudence. What have they then to supply their innumerable defects, and to make them terrible even to the firmest minds? One thing, and one thing only—but that thing is worth a thousand-they have energy." ""* This energy was put forth in the formation of Revolutionary Committees, which were to reject all the ordinary principles of justice and mercy; and in desperate conflicts with those natural laws by which the exchanges of mankind are regulated. But the greater the domestic miseries of France, the readier were its population to turn from peaceful pursuits to the excitement of war. The Convention, on the 10th of March, decreed a forced levy of three hundred thousand men. This decree few dared to disobey, and many submitted to it without reluctance, and even with patriotic ardour. There was a remarkable exception in the district of La Vendée, in which singular country an insurrectionary spirit was developed in the population, when their priests were ejected and the king had perished on the scaffold. When the peasantry were about to be dragged from their homes to serve in the armies of the Revolution, this spirit broke out into open violence against the republican authorities. In La Vendée the zeal of Loyalty and Religion came into open conflict with the passions excited under the names of the Rights of Man and the Age of Reason.

In the British Parliament, on the 17th of June, Mr. Fox proposed an elaborate Address to the Crown, the object of which was to make it the most earnest and solemn request of the Commons, that his majesty would employ the earliest measures for the re-establishment of peace with France. The proposition was rejected by the very large majority that the ministry now commanded. In the course of his speech Mr. Fox contended, in answer to the question which had been often asked, "whether we were to treat with France in its present state," that we ought to treat, and ultimately must treat, with whoever had the government in their hands, with him or them, be he or they whom they might. "Good God," cried the orator, "what was there in their proceedings that made us look for an established government among them? . . . . . Let them suffer the penalties of their own injustice; -let them suffer the miseries arising from their own confusion. Why were the people of England to suffer because the people of France were unjust ?" The reply of Mr. Pitt was not easy to controvert. "Where is our security for the performance of a treaty, where we have neither the good faith of a nation, nor the responsibility of a monarch? The moment that the mob of Paris becomes under the influence of a new leader, mature deliberations are reversed, the most solemn engagements are retracted, our free will is altogether controlled by force. ... Should we treat with Marat, before we had finished the negotiation he might again have descended to the dregs of the people from whom he sprung, and have given place to a more desperate villain." At this precise point of time it was no figure of speech for Mr. Pitt to refer to Marat as the representative of the executive power in France. “Let us consider," said Mr. Burke in the same debate, "the possibility of

"Policy of the Allies."

"Parliamentary History," vol. xxx. col. 994-1018.

INSURRECTION AGAINST THE GIRONDIN DEPUTIES.

277

1793.] negotiation." The minister Le Brun is in gaol. The minister Clavière is not to be found. "Would you have recourse to Roland? Why, he is not only in gaol, but also his wife along with him, who is said to be the real minister Brissot is likewise in gaol, bearing a repetition of that sort

of misfortune to which it is hoped that habit may reconcile him. Pay your addresses to Egalité, and you will find him in his dungeon at Marseilles. There then only remains my celebrated friend, the mild and merciful Marat."

The Girondins, on whose authority in the Convention rested the only hope of a stable government in France,-a government not founded upon the supremacy of the rabble,-had fallen, never to rise again, on the 2nd of June. They then became wanderers in the provinces, or prisoners in the dungeons of Paris. They had relied upon their patriotic eloquence and their republican virtue. They would hold no communion with the movers of insurrection and massacre; and they found the terrible earnestness of ignorant ruffianism too strong for respectable philosophy. Their majority in the Convention availed them nothing; for that Assembly had come into open conflict with the physical force of Paris, hounded on by the Jacobin Club, when the idol of the populace, Marat, was sent for trial before the Revolutionary Tribunal. As more prudent men than the Girondins might have expected, the sanguinary demagogue was acquitted; and he was carried,-as a successful candidate was formerly chaired in England-upon the shoulders of the mob, to the hall of the Convention, amidst the cry of "Death to the Girondins." Robespierre, between whom and Marat there was mutual hatred, saw that in giving his support to this "friend of the people," whose mode of testifying his friendship was to excite to plunder and butchery, he was using an instrument for the destruction of the only party that had the confidence of the middle classes. He denounced the Girondins in the Convention as men who had wished to save the tyrant Louis, and had conspired with the traitor Dumouriez. The Commune of Paris had obtained a power which was opposed to all steady government, and the Girondins tried to bring them under the control of a Commission of Twelve appointed by the Convention. The mob was roused to that fury which never waits to inquire and to reflect,

278

ASSASSINATION OF MARAT BY CHARLOTTE CORDAY.

[1793.

when victims are pointed out for its vengeance. On the 31st of May the mob declared itself in a state of permanent insurrection-a phrase which indicated that the ordinary operations of justice were suspended, in the same way that martial law supersedes the accustomed course of legal authority. On the 2nd of June, the Convention was surrounded by an armed force, whose decrees were to be pronounced by a hundred pieces of artillery. Resistance was in vain. Twenty-two of the Girondin leaders were conducted to prison. Many of their friends escaped to the provinces. Some who had fled from the guillotine died by their own hands. The political existence of the party was at an end.

For the most odious of the assassins of the anarchical republic there was the vengeance of assassination also in store. The story of Charlotte Corday has been told by Lamartine with a power of picturesque narrative which few have equalled. The naked facts can only be related by ourselves. In the city of Caen resided, in 1793, a grand-daughter of the great tragic poet, Corneille. She was an enthusiast, devoted to those ideas of the new philosophy which she had derived from her father, and from the secret study of Rousseau in the convent in which she had passed her girlhood. Some of the proscribed Girondins had come to reside in Normandy; and from their eloquent invectives against the terrorists who were degrading the cause of the revolution by their crimes, she derived, in common with her neighbours, a hatred of Marat as the personification of all that was atrocious in the rulers of the populace. Pétion, Barbaroux, with many others of the fugitive deputies called up this disgust towards the ruling faction of Paris, by their oratory and their proclamations. Formidable bands of young men enrolled themselves to march to Paris, in order to rescue liberty from the assaults of anarchy. Amongst the number of these volunteers was one who aspired to Charlotte's love, but with a timid reserve. Her enthusiasm suggested that she had a higher call of duty than the indulgence of a feeling suited to more tranquil times. She felt that if the ferocity which now guided the Revolution was not arrested, her province, and the neighbouring districts now in insurrection, would become the scene of the most terrible carnage. She took her resolution. If Marat should fall there might be hope for the Republic. She travelled to Paris, which she entered on the 11th of July. With some difficulty she obtained admission to the mean lodging of Marat, on the evening of the 13th. She found him in a bath; and there she slew him. When examined, she said that she saw civil war ready to devastate France; that she deemed Marat to be the chief cause of the public calamities; and that she sacrificed her life, in taking his, to save her country. Her execution quickly followed. The wretch whom she had murdered was decreed a public funeral in the Pantheon. Danton pronounced his eulogy as "the divine Marat."