 CHAPTER 24 THE BEBEUF CONSPIRICY AND END OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION The insurrection of Vendee-Mierre gave a slight check to the reaction which had, up to this time, gone unimpeded. The majority of the convention, much as they dreaded a return of real revolutionary government, were too much involved politically and economically in the revolution to be able to tolerate a complete relapse to the old regime. What they desired was a plutocratic republic in which money should take the place of privilege and a wealthy middle class succeed to the power of the old noblesse and the crown. And the new constitution with its Council of Five Hundred, its Senate of Ancients, its Directorate, its property qualification, and its indirect suffrage seemed admirably calculated to ensure this end. On the 26th of October, the National Convention proclaimed itself dissolved after an existence of three years and a month and the elections were held, and the directory established shortly after. One result of the events of the 5th October, 13th Vendee-Mierre, was not unnaturally a greater toleration of the popular party, many of whom had taken up arms on the last mentioned date against the common enemy, the royalists. The Democrats established a club for purposes of political discussion at the Pantheon, which was for some time unmolested by the new government, Viz, the directory. The leader of the club was Grecus Bebeuf, who obtained the title, Tribune of the People. He had occupied an obscure government post during the terror, but had not hitherto played any important part in the revolution. The society of the Pantheon grew daily in numbers and with it grew the influence of Bebeuf. The members at length ventured to repair to their meeting place in arms, and whispers of a projected insurrection soon made themselves heard. The directory thereupon became alarmed and on the 26th of February, 1796, 8th Vantos, 4, peremptorily closed the Pantheon and forbade any further meetings of the club. The followers of Bebeuf among whom were the remnant of the old commune and committees, and of course all the old Jacobin, then resorted to direct conspiracy and managed to win over the legion of police, but here again they were outwitted by the directory, which immediately disarmed and disbanded this body. The Bebeufists, as they were called, now assembled secretly in a place they named the Temple of Reason and concerted measures for an organized insurrection and attack on the governing bodies. They succeeded in rallying in a short time most of the revolutionary elements of France. It was now agreed to form a new convention of which the nucleus was to be such a remnant of the old mountain as death, prescription and desertion had left. Armed bands were suddenly to march from several points concentrically upon the directory and councils. The Bebeufists believed themselves sure of the military stationed at the Camp of Grenel and an officer named Grisel was in their confidence. Everything was arranged up to the night of the projected movement. Two placards were about to be posted up, one bearing the words Constitution of 1793, Liberty, Equality and General Happiness, the other the motto, those who usurp supreme power ought to be put to death by free men, and the signal was agreed upon for action when the chiefs were suddenly surprised and arrested in their council chamber May 10th. They had been betrayed by Grisel. Bebeuf while in prison wrote to the director suggesting a compromise. He was, nevertheless, with the other leaders sent before the new High Court of Vendôme. On the 7th of September following while they were still awaiting their trial their followers to the number of some hundreds made an armed attack on the Luxembourg, the palace of the directors, but were repulsed by the guards placed there for its defense. They then proceeded to the Camp of Grenel in the hope of raising the military in which they were again unsuccessful, being met by determined resistance. A sharp skirmish followed ending in the complete route of the insurgents who left a large number of dead on the field. This was the last attempt of the democracy to recover its position. Almost all the leaders and organizers of the Bebeuf movement were executed by the sentence of military commissions and numbers of other persons were imprisoned and exiled. Bebeuf himself endarté the late secretary of Lebon after acquitting themselves during their trial in a manly manner, fully avowing their principles, stabbed themselves to death with daggers on hearing their sentence. The objects of Bebeuf and his followers were definitely and frankly communistic, which cannot be said of any other of the revolutionary parties. Bebeuf himself, who by the side of Marat, Chomet, Cloutes and Pache, may be regarded as one of the noblest and most disinterested of all the leaders of the time, if in his theoretical scheme he was the first of the utopian socialists also forestalled in his notion of the necessity of taking possession of the political power, one of the foremost principles of the modern socialist movement. With the final extinction of the party of Bebeuf in September 1796, after which the French democracy never again rallied, the French revolution as a distinctive end in history may be considered to come to an end. From the meeting of the state's general in May 1789, to the date just mentioned, was only a little more than seven years, but what an experience France and Europe had passed through. Since Camille des Moulins delivered his famous harangue in the Palais-Royale Gardens on that July day in 89, when revolutionary ardor seemed so single in its purpose, how many parties had been consumed, how many enthousiasms had been burned out. With the forlorn attempt of the Bebevistes on Grinnell, revolutionary fervor gassed its last breath. The bourgeois had conquered. The day of the proletarian was not yet, in spite of his temporary accession to power during the great revolutionary years. The events succeeding the collapse of the Bebeuf movement may be signalized in a few sentences. The populace of Paris and the other large cities gradually settled down into a private life of toil and hardship and indifference to public affairs. The wealthy classes plunged into every form of speculation and extravagance. The new middle-class republic became apparently every day more consolidated. It flourished at home under the director Barra and his colleagues, of whom Carnault was one, and abroad under its new general, Bonaparte. Conquest again followed conquest. New republics on the model of the French sprung up like mushrooms in Holland, Liguria, Lombardy, Sardinia, Switzerland, etc. The fresh elections in May 1797 nevertheless yielded a royalist majority in the councils, the upshot of which was that Barra and the majority of the directors by the following September, when things had come to a crisis, had to call in the aid of the army under general Augereau to overaw the legislature. This succeeded, and a large number of members including some arras of the old Antony's party were exiled on the ground of royalist intrigues to overthrow the republic. Carnault and Berthélemy were driven from the directory. The latter now became practically a dictatorship with Barra as head dictator. Most of the powers tired of prosecuting an adverse war were glad to make terms of peace. England was soon the only belligerent remaining. But the directory without money and having only the armies to fall back upon could not afford to bring about a complete cessation of hostilities. Bonaparte after having subdued the continent about this time returned to Paris, the most popular man in France. Barra, feeling his presence dangerous at home, invited him at once to undertake the task of subduing the British power. He readily exceeded and the brilliant Egyptian campaign entered upon with a view to India was the result. The elections of 1798 which were unlike those of the previous year too radical to please the directory were annulled but those of the following year 1799 yielded the same result. Meanwhile a new coalition had been formed one of the principal factors of which was Russia. The unpopular directory could no longer hold out against public opinion. Negotiations between the various parties were entered into without issue and the government at home was in great confusion when Bonaparte suddenly appeared on the scene having left his oriental army in the hands of General Clébert. A conspiracy was at once formed led by the old constitutionalist C.A.S. to place dictatorial authority in the hands of the successful general. The Senate, seduced by the report of a pretended Jacobey insurrection in the departments which was to shortly reach Paris, consented to decree the removal of both houses of legislature to the palace of Saint-Louis near Paris and to placing Bonaparte at the head of the military forces of the capital. This was on the 9th of November 1799, 18th Brumaire, 7th. The following day the legislature removed to Saint-Louis. The Council of Ancients met in the gallery of Mauss, one of the apartments of the palace, and the Council of Five Hundred in the Orangery. The Council of Five Hundred unanimously swore to the existing constitution, refusing to ratify the powers given by the other body. Bonaparte was driven away with cries of down with the tyrant, etc. His brother Lucien Bonaparte, who was president finding nothing was to be done, came out and harangued the troops stating that the assembly was being intimidated by a minority of the members withdrawn daggers. Bonaparte thus fortified then gave orders for the Orangery to be cleared by the military which was immediately affected. Thus was the consulate founded. From this to the consecration as emperor in 1804 was but a step. CHAPTER XXV THE NATIONAL PROPERTY The course of the revolution cannot be properly estimated without taking into consideration the results of the confiscation of the property of the nobility and clergy. In the directorial constitution of 1795, number 3, we read article 374. The French nation proclaims as guarantee of public faith that after an adjudication legally consummated of the national goods, whatever may be its origin, the legitimate acquirer thereof cannot be dispossessed. The same clause but slightly modified is introduced into the consular constitution of 1800, number 8, and the imperial constitution of 18004, number 12. There is more than meets the eye in these articles. They are the issue and sanction of a series of transactions which established a wealthy plutocracy on the ruins of the old feudal aristocracy of France. The first property to be sold was that of the church. This, which in a sense may be considered as having been held in trust for the poor, was primarily disposed of, not to benefit them but to reduce the public debt and preserve the state from financial ruin. The sales began in 1789 and the period of greatest activity was from August 1790 to January 1791. French companies, English companies, Dutch companies disputed for the spoil, only a comparatively few lots falling to the share of the peasantry since no restriction was laid on the amount sold to any one purchaser. The sales were the more easily affected in as much as only a small percentage of the purchase money had to be paid down. When the time came for the second installment, the money for payment was, naturally, considering the vast extent of the purchases in most cases not available. This led many of the speculators to favor the revolution and all of them to urge on the foreign war both of which would serve as an excuse for postponement. War was accordingly proclaimed in April 1792 and the following August the throne was overturned. After the latter event it was decided that the lands and property of the immigrant aristocrats which now came into the market should not be sold haphazard and en masse like the ecclesiastical property but should be duly apportioned into small lots which the small cultivator might hire a purchase on easy terms. This concession on the part of the middle classes was however simply the result of fear of imminent foreign invasion. No sooner had the armies of du Maurier driven the enemy back than the new assembly, the convention announced that the partition of the public lands must be indefinitely postponed on account of the difficulty of the operation. During the winter 92 to 93 the movable effects of the immigrants came into the possession of speculators and jobbers by means of sham sales. So flagrant was the abuse that the convention had to step in but without much effect. After the fall of the Girondistes the partition of the lands among the peasantry was again definitely ordered. The second grand campaign now intervened and France was for the moment converted into one vast camp. Exceptional measures were the order of things all around and comparatively few small transfers were affected. This did not prevent the confiscation both of the lands and movables of the nobles and suspects going on at a greater pace than ever but it was various agents of the government in the departments who made vast fortunes out of them by their clever maneuvering. Two-thirds of the houses in Paris were now national property. The convention decreed that goods to the value of one milliard should be reserved for the citizen soldiers returned from the wars. This milliard we need scarcely say remained a promise to the end of the chapter. The committee of public safety early in 94 ordered the sale of the confiscated lands to be proceeded with but while recommending that the principle of partition should be adopted did not insist upon it. The net result of the new sales being that large tracts of public land were sold in the lump as before but this time they went into the possession of a new class of thieves. To it the victuallers of the armies who had already made large fortunes out of their contracts. After Termidal this of course went forward on a larger scale than ever. Robespierre through his agent Saint-Just now got a decree passed that indigent patriots should be indemnified out of the goods of the enemies of the revolution but this decree was merely procured to maintain his popularity with the people as was proved by the fact that he never so much as attempted to put it into execution. The ninth of Termidal arrived without the working classes of the towns having touched any of the goods of the immigrants the clergy or the suspects while the peasantry had to be satisfied with here and there a few crumbs in the shape of the partition of communal lands. Barrere had said that they had coined money on the place de la Révolution but the working classes can certainly not be accused of having shared in this ill-gotten gain. Thus even while the masses were nominally in power the middle classes succeeded in nobling the revolution. After the insurrection of Termidal the traffic in the national property proceeded more unblushingly than ever. As soon as the maximum was abolished however the plutocracy founded even more to their interest for the moment to hocus the currency plan to purchase land at however reduced the money value. By procuring a practically unlimited issue of paper they succeeded in reducing the value of the Essignat to next to nothing. The forestalling of the necessaries of life especially grain which was the immediate cause of the various insurrections after Termidal up to that of Babuf was also a stupendous source of profit. The reopening of the bus, the repudiation of the apothec of the Essignat on the confiscated lands, the latter a piece of thieving of the most impudent character followed in the natural course of things. Lotteries were instituted, the prizes of its victory. It is well known how the Americans have tried for thirty years past to throw off this yoke which were the national property. One deputy even had the impudence to propose to take back the lands already distributed among the peasantry. But this was thought to be too risky. Meanwhile the victories of the armies under Bonaparte opened the fresh fields and pastures new for every form of swindling by means of provisioning contracts. A cessation of the war would indeed have been a grievous thing for the rising plutocracy of France. Under the directory the exploiters flung themselves anew upon the as yet undisturbed territories. Everything was now in their own hands. No stone was left unturned to diminish for the nonce the market value of this property. The price which was paid in depreciated paper taken at the nominal value was in most cases simply farcical. But all means of robbery were not yet exhausted. The army contractors refused to be paid any longer in Essignan, but insisted on large sums being placed to their credit in the books of the national debt, thus saddling themselves in perpetuity on the French people. Deputies, government agents, generals, contractors engaged in a mad scramble which could make the most out of the situation. The masses of France had but two purposes in their eyes. To labor at home at starvation wages insufficient to support life for any but the strongest and to serve as food for powder abroad. The vast territorial estates of the feudal aristocracy and the house property of the towns thus passed into the hands of another and a meaner set of lords. The new middle class of France was consolidated economically and politically. Verily the French Revolution was a success for them. And now, having reached the summit of their ambition, it only remained to kick over the latter which had helped them up. The hearth, the throne, and the altar must be re-established on a new basis. We must have done with Revolution and all its wicked ways, said they. Revolution must be henceforth a thing accursed. But a republic, no matter how safeguarded against intrusion of the common people, seemed to many an insufficient guarantee under the existing circumstances for the newly created order. A military dictator who knew how to smother insurrections in the birth, he was the man for the situation, and his name was Napoléon Bonaparte Chapter 26 Conclusion The French Revolution closes in a final and definite manner an epoch in the world's history. The Middle Ages proper it is true came to an end with the 16th century. But they left a kind of afterglow behind them in the shape of the centralized and quasi-absolute princetums and monarchies which prevailed during the 17th and 18th centuries, in the continuance in rural districts and the smaller towns of the old methods of industry but slightly if at all modified. In the perpetuation unabated for over a century at least of medieval and Renaissance superstitions and habits of thought. In short, in the survival of most of the external forms of the old world civilization, decayed like the foliage of a St. Martin's summer. The conversion of the feudal hierarchies into centralized monarchies but imperfectly freed the middle classes. The combined or workshop system of production had not in any marked or violent manner revolutionized industry. The learning of the Renaissance had to a large extent merely given a quasi-scientific and systematic shape to old habits of thought. The political, moral, and social changes leading up to modern times were of course going on all the while and were observable to the truly observant but were not at that time of a run-and-read character. The French revolution definitely closes this epoch. It does even more. It constitutes the dividing line between the world of today and all past ages whatever. The revolution was scarcely over when the electric telegraph appeared on the scene. At the same time, the idea of this steam engine was working in the heads of the ingenious and the closing years of the century saw the first of the new industrial machines established in the factories of the north of England. New stagecoach roads, canals, and other improvements sprang up in all directions. A couple of decades or so more and the great industry was to start the metamorphosis of human production and distribution. Yet another and the railway was to begin the transformation of the face of nature and the externals of human life in other directions. In short, from the French revolution we advance straight by leaps and bounds to the modern world. The city of Paris while typifies the progress. 100 years ago in 1789 it was, unlike London, which in its medieval form was destroyed by the fire of 1666, to all intents and purposes a medieval city substantially the Paris of Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame, a city of feudal fortresses, high walled enclosures, crooked, narrow unpaved streets. The Committee of Public Safety in 1793 began alterations partly with the view of giving employment to distressed workmen. The changes went on gradually till in 1859, housemen, under Napoleon the third, totally destroyed what remained of old Paris and laid out the city in the form we see it today, a city which would be as foreign to Danton, Robespierre or Marat, a San Francisco itself. The Paris of centuries perished in little more than 50 years. What is true of Paris is true of Europe, of the whole of existing civilization. The Europe of 1789 was in the main, the Europe of the later Middle Ages, of the Renaissance, but in the last stage of decay. It had been practically dead for over two centuries and, like Edgar Poe's hypnotized dead man, it fell to pieces with a sudden convulsive awakening after proclaiming itself dead. No restoration could really bring it together again. The new world of our time had meanwhile grown up with its science, its inventions, its intense self-consciousness, and placed insurmountable barriers between us and our naive and simple-minded ancestors. The old Mary England, for example, the England of the Fairy Ring and the Maple had passed away forever. In politics, the reign of the bourgeoisie with its oppression resting on cunning and hypocrisy had shut out the possibility of an enduring reaction to the coarser and more direct methods of feudal domination. There are several minor points worthy of notice afforded by the course of the French Revolution. One feature of the period already alluded to its perpetual reference to classical models and its somewhat mechanical attempt to make history repeat itself, to reproduce the republics of ancient Greece and Rome in 18th century France, can never be left out of sight. Every man's head was full of Plutarch's lives. All men, however little else they knew, seemed to have had at least a superficial schoolboy smattering of Roman history. Almost every speech and every newspaper article of the time bristles with references to Coriolanus, Cato, Cicero, Brutus, or Caesar. In fact, Roman history was to the French Revolution very much what the Jewish annals contained in the Bible were to the English rebellion under Charles I. We, or rather modern science and historical criticism, have changed all that. We no longer look to the past as a model for the society of the present or the future. The doctrine of evolution has taught us that human society, like everything else, is a growth, and that though corresponding and analogous phases certainly do recur in history, we can yet never argue back from one period to another, as though there had been no intervening development, or as though the economical, intellectual, and political conditions were substantially the same or might be made the same. Another point the revolution teaches us is the effective power of minorities. The terror itself, whatever view we may take as to its justifiability, it cannot be denied, was kept up for nearly two years by a comparatively small but energetic minority in all the towns of France. Outside this minority, the Jacobin, there was a floating mass of inert sympathy with the object of sanculatism and a belief in the necessity of drastic measures in view of this situation. Beyond this, again, was the vast mass of inert stupidity and indifference which was effectively cowed. The active enemies of the revolution were of course reduced to silence. It is significant again to notice that most of the great crises were connected with affairs on the frontiers. The 10th of August and the September massacres were the response to Brunswick's manifesto and the march of the enemy on the capital respectively. The 31st of May was directly brought about by the invasion of the new coalition and the disorganization of du Maurier's armies consequent on his defection. Finally, the 9th of Termidal and the abolition of the terror followed on the disappearance of the last trace of danger from the foreigner consequent on the battle of Florus. The extraordinary enthusiasm which we find, the reckless readiness of all alike to inflict and to suffer death, might lead us to suppose the men of the time to have been a race of born heroes or monsters, or both. The average of them were neither the one nor the other. They were the products of social forces beyond their control. The feeling of the all importance of the public interest carried all before it. Prior to the revolution, they were probably neither more courageous nor more truculent than ourselves. The same courage and the same truculancy might manifest itself in any man of character under like circumstances. Even Rebespierre was, as Carlisle suggests, probably neither better nor worse than other attorneys to start with. But in his case ambition ultimately assumed the mastery over his whole personality. This was partly owing to the fact that he was undeniably a man without a vice, in the ordinary sense of the word. Now only very exceptional men can afford to be without the ordinary vices of mankind, and Rebespierre was certainly not one of these men. With his ascetic Russoite notions of republican austerity, he had suppressed his natural appetites, the consequence being that all the morbid elements in his character, having no other outlet, ran into the channel of self-idolatory and morbid ambition. The first condition of a well-regulated man is to know how to properly distribute the quantum of vice with which a bountiful nature has endowed him. A false morality teaches him to suppress it. But this he can seldom do, and if he succeeds, it is at the expense of all or much that is distinctive in his character. In tearing off the coating of vice, he tears off his skin with it. The usual case, however, is that the vice has not got rid of at all, but only forced into some out-of-the-way channel. And whatever vice is concentrated, it is bad. When all the vice of a character is focused on any single one of the natural appetites, a man becomes a sot, a satyr, a glutton, a confirmed gambler, etc. Now Reves-Pierre sat upon all the usual valves. He and his ascetic band poured scorn on the Ibertsiste and the Dantonista-like for the looseness of their lives. But having closed up all the ordinary exits, his vice came out nonetheless, but concentrated in the form of a truculent remorseless ambition unparalleled in history. The rank and file of the actors in the Revolution it is difficult for the reasons before stated to characterize by any of the ordinary ethical standards. The best of them did things we cannot always approve while sitting comfortably in our chairs. The worst of them showed much genuine and disinterested devotion to the cause of the people. Where we called upon to name the five men whose aims were probably the purest, we would mention Marat, Chomet, Cloutts, Pache, and Bebe. Danton, apart from the disputed question of his bribery, was a mere politician who only interested himself in social questions when at all, insofar as they immediately affected the political situation. The issue of the French Revolution was, as we have seen, the modern world of great capital and free trade as opposed to the old world of land and privilege and all that that change implies. In the storm and stress of outward events, we are apt to forget the work done during the terror era by the committees of the convention. Administrative, educational, and illegal work which helped to build up the modern governmental system. The Code Napoléon itself was based on the labor of Merlinda Dway and his committee. In France, the political and juridical side of the great change was most prominent. In Germany, the philosophical and literary. In England, the industrial and commercial. While French politicians were engaged in establishing the Republic, German thinkers were engaged in founding 19th century thought and English inventors in establishing the new modes of production and locomotion. But while the medieval organization of society held together for centuries, the modern is already showing signs of approaching disintegration. Why is this? We answer because the latter contained from the first in its very nature the seeds of dissolution. The capitalistic system of necessity feeds upon itself. Competition, which is the breath of its life necessarily also destroys that life. It may be that the opening up of Africa and other as yet unexploited territories will give the system a further lease of existence lasting some decades, but the end cannot in any case be a long by and by. End of chapters 24 through 26. End of the story of the French Revolution by Ernest Belfort-Bachs. Recorded by Céline Meijor.