The French Revolution (Vol.1-3). Taine Hippolyte

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СКАЧАТЬ of the town market halls come to recommend the interests of the people to the bodies of electors, and to sing rhymes in honor of the Third-Estate. In the month of June pamphlets are in all hands; "even lackeys are poring over them at the gates of hotels." In the month of July, as the King is signing an order, a patriotic valet becomes alarmed and reads it over his shoulder.—There is no illusion here; it is not merely the bourgeoisie which ranges itself against the legal authorities and against the established regime. It is the entire people as well. The craftsmen, the shopkeepers and the domestics, workmen of every kind and degree, the mob underneath the people, the vagabonds, street rovers, and beggars, the whole multitude, which, bound down by anxiety for its daily bread, had never lifted its eyes to look at the great social order of which it is the lowest stratum, and the whole weight of which it bears.

III.—The Réveillon affair.

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Suddenly the people stirs, and the superposed scaffolding totters. It is the movement of a brute nature exasperated by want and maddened by suspicion.—Have paid hands, which are invisible goaded it on from beneath? Contemporaries are convinced of this, and it is probably the case.1210 But the uproar made around the suffering brute would alone suffice to make it shy, and explain its arousal.—On the 21st of April the Electoral Assemblies have begun in Paris; there is one in each quarter, one for the clergy, one for the nobles, and one for the Third-Estate. Every day, for almost a month, files of electors are seen passing along the streets. Those of the first degree continue to meet after having nominated those of the second: the nation must needs watch its mandatories and maintain its imprescriptible rights. If this exercise of their rights has been delegated to them, they still belong to the nation, and it reserves to itself the privilege of interposing when it pleases. A pretension of this kind travels fast; immediately after the Third-Estate of the Assemblies it reaches the Third-Estate of the streets. Nothing is more natural than the desire to lead one's leaders: the first time any dissatisfaction occurs, they lay hands on those who halt and make them march on as directed. On a Saturday, April 25th,1211 a rumor is current that Réveillon, an elector and manufacturer of wall-paper, Rue Saint-Antoine, and Lerat, a commissioner, have "spoken badly" at the Electoral Assembly of Sainte-Marguerite. To speak badly means to speak badly of the people. What has Réveillon said? Nobody knows, but popular imagination with its terrible powers of invention and precision, readily fabricates or welcomes a murderous phrase. He said that "a working-man with a wife and children could live on fifteen sous a day." Such a man is a traitor, and must be disposed of at once; "all his belongings must be put to fire and sword." The rumor, it must be noted, is false.1212 Réveillon pays his poorest workman twenty-five sous a day, he provides work for three hundred and fifty, and, in spite of a dull season the previous winter, he kept all on at the same rate of wages. He himself was once a workman, and obtained a medal for his inventions, and is benevolent and respected by all respectable persons.—All this avails nothing; bands of vagabonds and foreigners, who have just passed through the barriers, do not look so closely into matters, while the Journeymen, the carters, the cobblers, the masons, the braziers, and the stone-cutters whom they go to solicit in their lodgings are just as ignorant as they are. When irritation has accumulated, it breaks out haphazardly.

Just at this time the clergy of Paris renounce their privileges in way of imposts,1213 and the people, taking friends for adversaries, add in their invectives the name of the clergy to that of Réveillon. During the whole of the day, and also during the leisure of Sunday, the fermentation increases; on Monday the 27th, another day of idleness and drunkenness, the bands begin to move. Certain witnesses encounter one of these in the Rue Saint-Sévérin, "armed with clubs," and so numerous as to bar the passage. "Shops and doors are closed on all sides, and the people cry out, 'There's the revolt!'" The seditious crowd belch out curses and invectives against the clergy, "and, catching sight of an abbé, shout 'Priest!'" Another band parades an effigy of Réveillon decorated with the ribbon of the order of St. Michael, which undergoes the parody of a sentence and is burnt on the Place de Grève, after which they threaten his house. Driven back by the guard, they invade that of a manufacturer of saltpeter, who is his friend, and burn and smash his effects and furniture.1214 It is only towards midnight that the crowd is dispersed and the insurrection is supposed to have ended. On the following day it begins again with greater violence; for, besides the ordinary stimulants of misery1215 and the craving for license, they have a new stimulant in the idea of a cause to defend, the conviction that they are fighting "for the Third-Estate." In a cause like this each one should help himself; and all should help each other. "We should be lost," one of them exclaimed, "if we did not sustain each other." Strong in this belief, they sent deputations three times into the Faubourg Saint-Marceau to obtain recruits, and on their way, with uplifted clubs they enrol, willingly or unwillingly, all they encounter. Others, at the gate of Saint-Antoine, arrest people who are returning from the races, demanding of them if they are for the nobles or for the Third-Estate, and force women to descend from their vehicles and to cry "Vive le Tiers-Etat "1216. Meanwhile the crowd has increased before Réveillon's dwelling; the thirty men on guard are unable to resist; the house is invaded and sacked from top to bottom; the furniture, provisions, clothing, registers, wagons, even the poultry in the back-yard, all is cast into blazing bonfires lighted in three different places; five hundred louis d'or, the ready money, and the silver plate are stolen. Several roam through the cellars, drink liquor or varnish at haphazard until they fall down dead drunk or expire in convulsions. Against this howling horde, a corps of the watch, mounted and on foot, is seen approaching;1217 also a hundred cavalry of the "Royal Croats," the French Guards, and later on the Swiss Guards. "Tiles and chimneys are rained down on the soldiers," who fire back four files at a time. The rioters, drunk with brandy and rage, defend themselves desperately for several hours; more than two hundred are killed, and nearly three hundred are wounded; they are only put down by cannon, while the mob keeps active until far into the night.—Towards eight in the evening, in the rue Vieille-du-Temple, the Paris Guard continue to make charges in order to protect the doors which the miscreants try to force. Two doors are forced at half-past eleven o'clock in the Rue Saintonge and in the Rue de Bretagne, that of a pork-dealer and that of a baker. Even to this last wave of the outbreak which is subsiding we can distinguish the elements which have produced the insurrection, and which are about to produce the Revolution.—Starvation is one of these: in the Rue de Bretagne the band robbing the baker's shop carries bread off to the women staying at the corner of the Rue Saintonge.—Brigandage is another: in the middle of the night M. du Châtelet's spies, gliding alongside of a ditch, "see a group of ruffians" assembled beyond the Barrière du Trône, their leader, mounted on a little knoll, urging them to begin again; and the following days, on the highways, vagabonds are saying to each other, "We can do no more at Paris, because they are too sharp on the look-out; let us go to Lyons!" There are, finally, the patriots: on the evening of the insurrection, between the Pont-au-Change and the Pont-Marie, the half-naked ragamuffins, besmeared with dirt, bearing along their hand-barrows, are fully alive to their cause; they beg alms in a loud tone of voice, and stretch out their hats to the passers, saying, "Take pity on this poor Third-Estate!"—The starving, the ruffians, and the patriots, all form one body, and henceforth misery, crime, and public spirit unite to provide an ever-ready insurrection for the agitators who desire to raise one.

      IV.—The Palais-Royal.

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