III.--Direction of the current

     Direction of the current.—The people led by lawyers.—
     Theories and piques the sole surviving forces.—Suicide of
     the Ancient regime.

We are all well aware from which side the gale comes, and, to assure ourselves, we have merely to see how the reports of the Third-Estate are made up. The peasant is led by the man of the law, the petty attorney of the rural districts, the envious advocate and theorist. This one insists, in the report, on a statement being made in writing and at length of his local and personal grievances, his protest against taxes and deductions, his request to have his dog free of the clog, and his desire to own a gun to use against the wolves5419. Another one, who suggests and directs, envelopes all this in the language of the Rights of Man and that of the circular of Sieyès.

"For two months," writes a commandant in the South,5420 "inferior judges and lawyers, with which both town and country swarm, with a view to their election to the States-General, have been racing after the members of the Third-Estate, under the pretext of standing by them and of giving them information. . . They have striven to make them believe that, in the States-General, they alone would be masters and regulate all the affairs of the kingdom; that the Third-Estate, in selecting its deputies among men of the robe, would secure the might and the right to take the lead, to abolish nobility and to cancel all its rights and privileges; that nobility would no longer be hereditary; that all citizens, in deserving it, would be entitled to claim it; that, if the people elected them, they would have accorded to the Third-Estate whatever it desired, because the curates, belonging to the Third-Estate, having agreed to separate from the higher clergy and unite with them, the nobles and the clergy, united together, would have but one vote against two of the Third-Estate. . . . If the third—Estate had chosen sensible townspeople or merchants they would have combined without difficulty with the other two orders. But the assemblies of the bailiwicks and other districts were stuffed with men of the robe who had absorbed all opinions and striven to take precedence of the others, each, in his own behalf, intriguing and conspiring to be appointed a deputy."

"In Touraine," writes the intendant,5421 "most of the votes have been bespoken or begged for. Trusty agents, at the moment of voting, placed filled-in ballots in the hands of the voters, and put in their way, on reaching the taverns, every document and suggestion calculated to excite their imaginations and determine their choice for the gentry of the bar."

"In the sénéchausée of Lectoure, a number of parishes have not been designated or notified to send their reports or deputies to the district assembly. In those which were notified the lawyers, attorneys and notaries of the small neighboring towns have made up the list of grievances themselves without summoning the community. . . Exact copies of this single rough draft were made and sold at a high price to the councils of each country parish".—

This is an alarming symptom, one marking out in advance the road the Revolution is to take: The man of the people is indoctrinated by the advocate, the pikeman allowing himself to be led by the spokesman.5422

The effect of their combination is apparent the first year. In Franche-Comté5423 after consultation with a person named Rouget, the peasants of the Marquis de Chaila "determine to make no further payments to him, and to divide amongst themselves the product of the wood-cuttings." In his paper "the lawyer states that all the communities of the province have decided to do the same thing. . . His consultation is diffused to such an extent around the country that many of the communities are satisfied that they owe nothing more to the king nor to the seigniors. M. de Marnésia, deputy to the (National) Assembly, has arrived (here) to pass a few days at home on account of his health. He has been treated in the rudest and most scandalous manner; it was even proposed to conduct him back to Paris under guard. After his departure his chateau was attacked, the doors burst open and the walls of his garden pulled down. (And yet) no gentleman has done more for the people on his domain the M. le Marquis de Marnésia. . . Excesses of every kind are on the increase; I have constant complaints of the abuse which the national militia make of their arms, and which I cannot remedy." According to an utterance in the National Assembly the police imagines that it is to be disbanded and has therefore no desire to make enemies for itself. "The baillages are as timid as the police-forces; I send them business constantly, but no culprit is punished."—"No nation enjoys liberty so indefinite and so disastrous to honest people; it is absolutely against the rights of man to see oneself constantly liable to have his throat cut by the scoundrels who daily confound liberty with license."—In other words, the passions utilize the theory to justify themselves, and the theory appeal to passion to be carried out. For example, near Liancourt, the Duc de Larochefoucauld possessed an uncultivated area of ground; "at the commencement of the revolution,5424 the poor of the town declare that, as they form a part of the nation, untilled lands being national property, this belongs to them," and "with no other formality" they take possession of it, divide it up, plant hedges and clear it off. "This, says Arthur Young, shows the general disposition. . . . Pushed a little farther the consequences would not be slight for properties in this kingdom." Already, in the preceding year, near Rouen, the marauders, who cut down and sell the forests, declare, that "the people have the right to take whatever they require for their necessities." They have had the doctrine preached to them that they are sovereign, and they act as sovereigns. The condition of their intellects being given, nothing is more natural than their conduct. Several millions of savages are thus let loose by a few thousand windbags, the politics of the café finding an interpreter and ministrants in the mob of the streets. On the one hand brute force is at the service of the radical dogma. On the other hand radical dogma is at the service of brute force. And here, in disintegrated France, these are the only two valid powers remaining erect on the debris of the others.

5401 (return)
[ Necker, "De l'Administration des Finances," II. 422, 435.]

5402 (return)
[ The wages have in 1789 been estimated to be 7 sous 4 deniers of which 2 sous and 6 deniers would have to be paid for the bread. (Mercure de France, May 7, 1791.)]

5403 (return)
[ Aubertin, 345. Letter to the Comte de St. Germain (during the Seven Years War). "The soldier's hardships make one's heart bleed; he passes his days in a state of abject misery, despised and living like a chained dog to be used for combat."]

5404 (return)
[ De Tocqueville, 190, 191.]

5405 (return)
[ Archives nationales, H, 1591.]

5406 (return)
[ De Rochambeau, "Mémoires," I. 427.—D'Argenson, December 24, 1752. "30,000 men have been punished for desertion since the peace of 1748; this extensive desertion is attributed to the new drill which fatigues and disheartens the soldier, and especially the veterans."—Voltaire, "Dict. Phil.," article "Punishments." "I was amazed one day on seeing the list of deserters, for eight years amounting to 60,000."]

5407 (return)
[ Archives nationales, H, 554. (Letter of M. de Bertrand, intendant of Rennes, August 17, 1785).]

5408 (return)
[ Mercier, XI, 121.]

5409 (return)
[ Now we know better. The most healthy bread is the one in which some bran is left, such bran is not only good for the digestion but contains vitamins and minerals as well. (SR).]

5410 (return)
[ De Vaublanc, 149.]

5411 (return)
[ De Ségur, I, 20 (1767).]

5412 (return)
[ Augeard, "Mémoires," 165.]

5413 (return)
[ Horace Walpole, September 5, 1789.]

5414 (return)
[ Laboulaye, "De l'Administration française sous Louis XVI." (Revue des Cours littéraires, IV, 743).—Albert Babeau, I, 111. (Doléances et veux des corporations de Troyes).]

5415 (return)
[ De Tocqueville, 158.]

5416 (return)
[ Ibid. 304. (The words of Burke.)]

5417 (return)
[ Travels in France, I. 240, 263.]

5418 (return)
[ What an impression this view must have made on Lenin who sought, between 1906 and 1909 in Paris, the means and ways with which to re-create the French revolution in Russia. (SR.)]

5419 (return)
[ Beugnot, I. 115, 116.]

5420 (return)
[ Archives nationales, procès-verbaux and cahiers of the States-General, vol. XIII, p. 405. (Letter of the Marquis de Fodoas, commandant of Armagnac, to M. Necker, may 29, 1789.)]

5421 (return)
[ Ibid. Vol. CL, p. 174. ( Letter from the intendant of Tours of March 25, 1789.)]

5422 (return)
[ "Lenin deviated from Marx not in preaching the necessity for violent proletarian revolution, but by advocating the creation of an elite party of professional revolutionaries to hasten this end, and by arguing for the dictatorship of this party rather than the working class as a whole." The Guinness Encyclopedia page 269. (SR.)]

5423 (return)
[ Archives nationales, H, 784. (Letters of M. de Langeron, military commandant at Besançon, October 16 and 18, 1789). The consultation is annexed.]

5424 (return)
[ Arthur Young, I, 344.]