The French Revolution

By Charles Edward Mallet

Historians have not yet determined where the French Revolution properly begins. But even warring schools agree that the object of that great movement, apart from its accidents and disappointed dreams, was to destroy the ancient society of Europe, which feudalism had founded and which time had warped, and to replace it by a more simple social system, based, as far as possible, on equality of rights. And therefore time can hardly be misspent in endeavouring to retrace some of the chief features of the old monarchy of France, at the moment when the feudal edifice was crumbling, and when the storm was gathering which was to sweep it away.
It was the pride of the later Bourbon kings to have accomplished the design, which Louis XI bequeathed to Richelieu, and Richelieu interpreted for Louis' successors, the substitution of a closely centralised despotism, for feudal and aristocratic institutions on the one hand, and for local and national liberties upon the other. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Librorium Editions
• Release date: Oct 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9782385743628

Book preview

The

French Revolution

BY

CHARLES EDWARD MALLET

Late of Balliol College, Oxford

Lecturer in History on the Staff of the Oxford University Extension

© 2023 Librorium Editions

ISBN : 9782385743628

CONTENTS

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

INTRODUCTORY

I have not attempted in this small volume to write a history of the French Revolution. The events of that dramatic narrative have been sketched by many hands and are to be found in a hundred histories. They hardly need retelling now. I have rather endeavoured, while taking for granted some knowledge of the story, to supply what handbooks generally have not space to give, and to collect in a convenient form some of the information, the suggestions and ideas which are to be found in larger books of comment and enquiry. Works like those of M. de Tocqueville, M. Taine, M. Michelet, M. Louis Blanc, and Professor Von Sybel are not always easily obtained. Their cost and their length alike render them inaccessible to those whom time and necessity compel to be superficial students. I have therefore tried to summarise to a certain extent what these and other writers tell us; to dwell on some economic and political aspects of French society before the Revolution; to explain the more obvious reasons why the Revolution came; to show why the men who made it, failed, in spite of all their fine enthusiasm, to attain the liberty which they so ardently desired, or to found the new order which they hoped to see in France; to describe how, by what arts and accidents, and owing to what deeper causes, an inconspicuous minority gradually grew into a victorious party, and assumed the direction of events; to point out in what way external circumstances kept the revolutionary fever up, and forced the Revolution forward, when the necessity for its advance seemed to many to be over, and its own authors wished it to pause; and to make clearer, if I could, to others, what has always been to me the mystery of the time, the real character and aims of the men who grasped the supreme power in 1793-4, who held it with such a combination of energy and folly, of heroism and crime, and who proceeded, through anarchy and terror, to experiment how social misery could be extinguished and universal felicity attained, by drastic philosophic remedies, applied by despots and enforced by death. History offers no problem of more surpassing interest, and none more perplexing or obscure.

I am not conscious of approaching the subject with a bias in favour of any party. I have no cause to plead for or against any individual or group of men. I have tried to read all sides, and to allow for those deep-rooted prejudices which seem to make most Frenchmen incapable of judging the event. But when, on the information before me, the facts seem clear, I have not hesitated to praise, or censure, or condemn. I will only add that I have considered very carefully the judgments which I have expressed, though I cannot hope that they will recommend themselves to all alike.

Books of this kind cannot well lay claim to much originality, and I do not pretend to have kept pace with the constantly accumulating literature, which the French press produces on this question every year. I have used freely the works of such modern writers as M. de Tocqueville, Mr. John Morley, Mr. Morse Stephens, and others, and my obligations to them are plain. On M. Taine's great work, too, I have drawn largely, and while allowing for bias in the author, and while fully admitting that M. Taine's method tends to destroy one's sense of proportion, and in some degree to give a blurred and exaggerated impression of the facts, still I cannot question the weight and value of the mass of information which he has collected, and no one can fairly overlook the lessons which it tells. Besides these books, I think I may say that I have read and consulted most of the materials in histories, memoirs, biographies, and elsewhere, which the many well-known French writers on the subject have supplied, and I have paid particular attention to the voluminous histories of M. Louis Blanc and of M. Mortimer-Ternaux, to the correspondence of Mirabeau and La Marck, to the memoirs and writings of Bailly, Ferrières, Mallet du Pan, Madame Roland, and M. de Pontécoulant, to the biographies of the great Jacobin leaders, especially those by M. Hamel and M. Robinet, and to the valuable and important works of M. Sorel, of Professor Schmidt, and of Professor Von Sybel. This list is not complete or comprehensive; but I hope it is enough to justify the opinions which I have formed.

At the end, I have given, in a short appendix, a list of well-known books upon the period, which may perhaps be of use to students, who wish to go more fully into the subject for themselves.

CHAPTER I.

The Condition of France in the Eighteenth Century.

Historians have not yet determined where the French Revolution properly begins. But even warring schools agree that the object of that great movement, apart from its accidents and disappointed dreams, was to destroy the ancient society of Europe, which feudalism had founded and which time had warped, and to replace it by a more simple social system, based, as far as possible, on equality of rights. And therefore time can hardly be misspent in endeavouring to retrace some of the chief features of the old monarchy of France, at the moment when the feudal edifice was crumbling, and when the storm was gathering which was to sweep it away.

It was the pride of the later Bourbon kings to have accomplished the design, which Louis XI bequeathed to Richelieu, and Richelieu interpreted for Louis' successors, the substitution of a closely centralised despotism, for feudal and aristocratic institutions on the one hand, and for local and national liberties upon the other. By the middle of the eighteenth century the triumph of this policy was complete. The relics of the older system, indeed, remained. A multitude of officials and authorities, with various and conflicting claims, still covered the country, recalling in their origin sometimes the customs of the Middle Ages, sometimes the necessities of the Crown, sometimes the earlier traditions of freedom. Many of the feudal seigneurs still claimed rights of jurisdiction and police. Cities and towns still boasted and obeyed their own municipal constitutions. The peasants of the country side were still summoned to the church-porch by the village-bell, to take part in the election of parish officials. A few noblemen still bore the name of governors of provinces. Independent authorities with ancient titles still pretended to deal with roads and with finance. The local Parlements, with their hereditary and independent judges, maintained their dignity as sovereign courts of justice, preserved the right of debating the edicts of the King, adopted an attitude of jealous watchfulness towards the Government and the Church, and exercised considerable administrative powers. In a few outlying provinces, termed the Pays d'État, and comprising, with some smaller districts, the ancient fiefs of Languedoc, Burgundy, Brittany, Artois and Béarn, annual assemblies, representing the nobles, clergy, and commons of the province, still displayed the theory of self-government and retained large taxative and administrative rights. The Church, with its vast resources and strong, corporate feeling, still, in many matters, asserted its independence of the State, administered its own affairs, fixed its own taxes, and claimed to monopolise public education and to guard public morals and their expression in the Press.

But amid the ruins of older institutions and the confusion of innumerable conflicting rights, a new system of administration had gradually grown up and had usurped all real authority in France. At its head stood the King's Council, with its centre at Versailles. The Council represented in all departments the monopoly of the State. It was a supreme court of justice, for it had power to over-rule the judgments of all ordinary courts. It was a supreme legislature, for the States-General, the ancient representative Parliament of France, had not been summoned since the early years of the seventeenth century, and the local judicial Parlements, though they could discuss the edicts of the Council, could not in the last resort resist them. It was supreme in all matters of administration and finance. It governed the country. It raised and assessed the taxes. In it one over-burdened minister, the Comptroller-General, assumed responsibility for all home affairs.

Under the Council, and responsible to it alone, there was stationed in each of the thirty-two provinces or 'generalities' of the kingdom one all-powerful agent called the Intendant. The Intendant was drawn, not from the nobility, but from the professional class. He superintended the collection and apportionment of all taxes which were not farmed out by the Council to financial companies. He decided in individual cases what remissions of taxes should be allowed. He was responsible under the Council for constructing highways and for all great public works[1]. He enforced the hated duty of the militia service. He maintained order with the help of the Maréchaussée or mounted police. He carried out the police regulations of the local authorities and the more imperious and comprehensive regulations issued from time to time by the Council. He possessed in exceptional cases large judicial powers. As the ordinary judges were independent of the Crown, the Council multiplied extraordinary tribunals and reserved for their consideration all suits in which the rights of the Crown were even remotely concerned. In such cases the Intendant acted as judge both in civil and in criminal matters, and from his judgment an appeal lay to the Council alone. This practice, once established, was of course extended and often abused in the interests of power, for the principles of the ordinary courts, the Intendants confessed, could 'never be reconciled with those of the Government.'

Besides this, the Intendant was a benefactor too. He repressed mendicity and arrested vagabonds. He distributed the funds, which, in the absence of any legal provision for the poor, and in the abandonment by the seigneurs of the old feudal duty of providing for their destitute dependents, the Council annually apportioned for the purpose. He controlled the charitable workshops which the Council annually set up. In times of scarcity it was he who must find food for the people, or, if food were not forthcoming, suppress the riots which the want of it provoked. In the country districts the Intendant dispensed his lofty patronage to farmers and encouraged agricultural improvements. In the villages, though the force of ancient custom still drew the inhabitants to village-meetings, these meetings could not be held without the Intendants leave; they retained only the academic privilege of debate; and when they elected their syndic and collector, they often elected merely the Intendant's nominees. Even in the towns which possessed municipal freedom, the Intendant constantly interfered in all matters of importance and in many little matters of detail, and the burghers protested their eager submission to 'all the commands of his Greatness.' In each of the provinces of France the Intendant represented the omnipotence and wielded the authority of Government; the commands which he received from the Comptroller-General he dictated in turn to a staff of agents termed Sub-Delegates, and dependent on him; and these Sub-Delegates, distributed through the different cantons of the province, carried out their Intendant's orders, assisted his designs, and were responsible only to their superior, as he was responsible to the Council at Versailles.

It is not difficult to see the evils of such a system. The excessive centralisation of the Government and the vast scope of its powers threw upon the Comptroller-General and his agents a heavy burden of detail. Reports and documents multiplied. The waste of time and effort was profuse. 'The administrative formalities,' declared the Council in one of its minutes, 'lead to infinite delays.' Any little local matter—the building of a shelter for the poor, the repairing of a corner of the village church—must be considered by the Minister at Versailles. No action could be taken until the Sub-Delegate had reported to the Intendant, the Intendant had reported to the Comptroller-General, and that harassed official—combining in his single person all the duties and perplexities which in England are distributed between the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Home Secretary, the Minister of Agriculture, the President of the Board of Trade, the President of the Local Government Board and the Chief Commissioner of Works—had personally attended to the matter, and had transmitted his decision through the Intendant to the Sub-Delegate again. Moreover, apart from its vexatious delays, the system was very liable to abuse. The power of the Government's agents was as extended as the power of the Government itself. Arrest and imprisonment were counted among their ordinary weapons. Armed with all the authority of the State, it was no wonder if they sometimes imitated its arbitrary ways, and failed to separate their private inclinations and their private grudges from the public needs.

Yet the action of the central Government in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries seems to have been often hesitating and rarely deliberately harsh. The letter of the law was often barbarous and rigid, where its administration was easy and lax. To criticism the Government was not indisposed to listen. Its intentions were amiable and were recognised as such. Any man above the rank of the lowest class could protest, if treated unjustly, and he could generally make his protest heard. The shadow of an older liberty had not quite departed from the face of France. It was only the lowest and most miserable class, which needed the means of resistance most, which had no means of resisting except by force. But beneficent as were the aims of the all-pervading State, its influence was blighting. Leaning always upon their Government, and taught to look to it for initiative, encouragement, protection in every department of life, the people of France forgot both the practices of public freedom and the value of private independence; and as the Bourbon despotism directly paved the way for revolution by levelling many of those inequalities which save a State, so it left the vast majority of Frenchmen devoid both of the political understanding and of the sense of personal responsibility, which the habit of self-government alone creates.

More fatal, however, to national prosperity, were the deep divisions which separated classes—divisions maintained and emphasized by privileges obviously unjust. The nobility, the clergy, the middle class, each formed a distinct order in the State, with its own defined rank and prerogatives. The nobles, who have been roughly estimated at about one hundred and forty thousand persons, formed a separate caste. All born noble remained noble, and not even younger sons descended into the ranks of the commons. The nobles owned perhaps a fifth part of the soil, and they retained the ancient rights attached to it, which had once been the reward of their feudal obligations, but which survived when those obligations had long ceased to be obeyed. Fines and dues, tolls and charges, the sole right of hunting, of shooting, of fishing, of keeping pigeons and doves, the privilege of maintaining the seigneurial mill and wine-press, the seigneurial slaughter-house and oven—helped to support the noble's dignity and to swell his income. The more his actual power departed, the more he clung to his hereditary rights. When the Government usurped his place as local ruler,