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

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      II.—Passion Supreme.

       Table of Contents

      Dread of hunger its most acute form.—The non-circulation of

       grain.—Intervention and usurpations of the electoral

       assemblies.—The rural code in Nivernais.—The four central

       provinces in 1790.—Why high prices are kept up.—Anxiety

       and insecurity.—Stagnation of the grain market.—The

       departments near Paris in 1791.—The supply and price of

       grain regulated by force.—The mobs in 1792.—Village armies

       of Eure and of the lower Seine and of Aisne.—Aggravation of

       the disorder after August 10th.—The dictatorship of

       unbridled instinct.—Its practical and political expedients.

      Passions of this stamp are the product of human cultivation, and break loose only within narrow bounds. Another passion exists which is neither historic nor local, but natural and universal, the most indomitable, most imperious, and most formidable of all, namely, the fear of hunger. There is no such thing with this passion as delay, or reflection, or looking beyond itself. Each commune or canton wants its bread, and a sure and unlimited supply of it. Our neighbor may provide for himself as best he can, but let us look out for ourselves first and then for other people. Each group of people, accordingly, through its own decrees, or by main force, keeps for itself whatever subsistence it possesses, or takes from others the subsistence which it does not possess. ii

At the end of 1789,3210 "Roussillon refuses aid to Languedoc; Upper Languedoc to the rest of the province, and Burgundy to Lyonnais; Dauphiny shuts herself up, and Normandy retains the wheat purchased for the relief of Paris." At Paris, sentinels are posted at the doors of all the bakers; on the 21st of October one of the latter is hung, and his head is borne about on a pike. On the 27th of October, at Vernon, a corn-merchant named Planter, who the preceding winter had supported the poor for six leagues around, has to take his turn. At the present moment the people do not forgive him for having sent flour to Paris, and he is hung twice, but is saved through the breaking of the rope each time.—It is only by force and under an escort that it is possible to insure the arrival of grain in a town; the excited people or the National Guards constantly seize it on its passage. In Normandy the militia of Caen stops wheat on the highways which is destined for Harcourt and elsewhere.3211 In Brittany, Auray and Vannes retain the convoys for Nantes, and Lannion those for Brest. Brest having attempted to negotiate, its commissioners are seized, and, with knives at their throats, are forced to sign a renunciation, pure and simple, of the grain which they have paid for, and they are led out of Lannion and stoned on the way. Eighteen hundred men, consequently, leave Brest with four cannon, and go to recover their property with their guns loaded. These are the customs prevalent during the great famines of feudal times; and, from one end of France to the other, to say nothing of the out-breaks of the famished in the large towns, similar outrages or attempts at recovery are constantly occurring.—" The armed population of Nantua, Saint-Claude, and Septmoncel," says a dispatch,3212 "have again cut off provisions from the Gex region; there is no wheat coming there from any direction, all the roads being guarded. Without the aid of the government of Geneva, which is willing to lend to this region eight hundred Cuttings of wheat, we should either die of starvation or be compelled to take grain by force from the municipalities which keep it to themselves." Narbonne starves Toulon; the navigation of the Languedoc canal is intercepted; the people on its banks repulse two companies of soldiers, burn a large building, and want to destroy the canal itself." Boats are stopped, wagons are pillaged, bread is forcibly lowered in price, stones are thrown and guns discharged; the populace contend with the National Guard, peasants with townsmen, purchasers with dealers, artisans and laborers with farmers and land-owners, at Castelnaudary, Niort, Saint-Etienne, in Aisne, in Pas-de-Calais, and especially along the line stretching from Montbrison to Angers—that is to say, for almost the whole of the extent of the vast basin of the Loire—such is the spectacle presented by the year 1790.—And yet the crop has not been a bad one. But there is no circulation of grain. Each petty center has formed a league for the monopoly of food; and hence the fasting of others and the convulsions of the entire body are the first effects of the unbridled freedom which the Constitution and circumstances have conferred on each local group.

"We are told to assemble, vote, and elect men that will attend to our business; let us attend to it ourselves. We have had enough of talk and hypocrisy. Bread at two sous, and let us go after wheat where it can be found!" Such is the reasoning of the peasantry, and, in Nivernais, Bourbonnais, Berri, and Touraine, electoral gatherings are the firebrands of the insurrections.3213 At Saint-Sauge, "the first work of the primary meeting is to oblige the municipal officers to fix the price of wheat under the penalty of being decapitated." At Saint-Géran the same course is taken with regard to bread, wheat, and meat; at Châtillon-en-Bayait it is done with all supplies, and always a third or a half under the market price, without mentioning other exactions.—They come by degrees to the drafting of a tariff for all the valuables they know, proclaiming the maximum price which an article may reach, and so establishing a complete code of rural and social economy. We see in the turbulent and spasmodic wording of this instrument their dispositions and sentiments, as in a mirror.3214 It is the program of villagers. Its diverse articles, save local variations, must be executed, now one СКАЧАТЬ