Part 3

Mirabeau had said that men's first aim must be "to decatholicise" France. To all appearance this was being done. One Commune after another petitioned to be allowed to change its name, which was almost always that of some saint. Saint-Denis, for instance (whose headless patron never existed), was renamed Franciade. Most of the provinces followed the example of Paris. Nothing that could remind men of the "kingdom by the grace of God" was spared. In 1793 a venerable, white-bearded Alsatian, a member of the Committee of Public Safety, Ruhl by name, managed to get possession of the sacred, miracle-working ampulla containing the anointing oil which a dove had brought down from heaven on the occasion of the coronation of Clovis. Followed by a vast crowd, he bore it in triumph to the great square of Reims, where the magistrates and other public officials had already assembled round the statue of Louis XV. Here he delivered an oration against tyranny and tyrants, and wound up by throwing the sacred vessel at the head of Louis le Bien-aimé with such violence that it broke into a hundred pieces, and the sacred oil trickled once again down the cheeks of the Lord's Anointed.

Events such as these, and language such as the above quoted, show plainly enough how determinedly the Revolution was attacking the principle of authority. It was highly significant that patents of nobility were burned in the same bonfire with the images of the saints, and that disbelief in the sacred ampulla led to the flouting of royalty. From the moment when the authority of religion was overthrown, the magic power of authority in every domain was gone.

It was supplanted by the watchword: Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. But this watchword contained at least two fundamental principles instead of one. Liberty as a fundamental principle may be regarded as emanating from Voltaire, fraternity from Rousseau. And equality and liberty did not combine well. When, not long before the Revolution, Saint-Martin, the mystic, proclaimed his mysterious doctrine of the Holy Trinity (Ternaire)--liberty, equality, and fraternity, which always had been, and always should be--he did not foresee the possibility of disunion, of conflict, between these principles. Voltaire says somewhere: "It was a wise provision that made of the Trinity one God; if there had been three they would have come to blows." In 1793 Saint-Martin's trinity revealed the contradictions which lay latent in it.

In the month of April the new Declaration of the Rights of Man which Robespierre had drawn up and persuaded the Jacobins to accept as their programme was published, and in the same month, whilst the violent dispute between Robespierre and Vergniaud was going on, there emanated from the opposite camp the plan of a constitution, evolved by Condorcet, Barrère, Thomas Paine, Pétion, Barbaroux, Sièyes, and others, and drawn up by Condorcet.

If we place these two documents side by side, we have before us in embryo the two ideas which in the future were to struggle for the mastery, namely, the idea of liberalism and the idea of socialism, the former derived from Voltaire, the latter from Rousseau. As the two programmes deal point by point with the same subjects, the difference strikes us here as it does nowhere else.

In the first years of the Revolution there had been no mention of socialism. Men aimed at freeing capital from unjust burdens, not at limiting its power. This is clearly shown by the fact that the first proof which the victorious bourgeoisie gave of their authority after the storming of the Bastille was the publication of a decree that the printers were to be held responsible for every book or pamphlet published by writers without known means of subsistence (_sans existence connue_). This regulation was published on the 24th of July 1789, exactly ten days after the capture of the Bastille. The bourgeoisie took care, as soon as they had mounted themselves, to draw the ladder up after them. Their first act, when they had won their own place by the aid of the pen, was to take the pen out of the hand of the classes below them.

The Convention, nourished on the ideas of Rousseau and Mably, comprehended that inequality within the citizen society was the worst enemy of political equality, and dreamed of producing equality by giving property to all. Condorcet wished to devote the funds at the disposal of the state, not to the abolishment of private property, but to the equalisation of any excessive disproportion in the distribution of worldly possessions. Right of succession was to be abolished, the means of education were to be made accessible to all, &c, &c. It was not till the owners of property began, after the fall of Robespierre, to resist the claims of those who owned nothing, that the attack on property as such was made. Babeuf's communistic conspiracy followed. The conspiracy was betrayed and defeated, drowned in the blood of the conspirators without a voice being raised in defence of the ideas which had inspired it. Socialism did no more than put out feelers at the time of the Revolution.

Whilst the Girondists' Declaration of the Rights of Man ensures first and foremost the rights of the individual--freedom of conscience and of thought (_les franchises de la pensée_ was the expression in those days), the inviolability of the home, equality in sight of the law, the proportioning of punishment to crime--the Jacobins in every matter insist upon the responsibility of human beings for each other and the duty entailed by brotherhood.

The Girondists laid down the principle of non-interference. The Jacobins taught: The men of all countries are brothers, and the different nations ought to help each other to the best of their ability, like citizens of the same state. The nation which oppresses another nation declares itself the enemy of all. Those who make war upon any one nation in order to arrest the progress of liberty and abolish the rights of humanity ought to be assailed by all the others, not as ordinary enemies, but as insurrectionary murderers and robbers.

The Girondists opposed every tyranny in human shape, but they seldom tried to protect from the tyranny of circumstances. Their work was for the most part of a negative nature. The Jacobins perceived more clearly the uselessness of bestowing on the sick the right to be cured without curing them, the mockery in solemnly conferring on the lame the right to walk. Yet there was no essential difference between them. Condorcet the Girondist felt as strongly as any Jacobin that free competition was a lie when in the race one man was mounted on an excellent horse while the other had to run barefoot.

It was the feeling of duty to society (as defined by Rousseau) which led to Robespierre's significant intervention in the war between the Revolution and positive religion. Once the Revolution had broken into the churches axe in hand, it seemed as if the movement were irresistible. Men mounted on the frailest of scaffolding to scrape from the ceilings of churches portraits of popes concealed by century-old spiders' webs. Images of saints were torn from their niches, and fanaticism destroyed some of the finest works of Gothic art; the emissaries of the Revolution descended even into the vaults, and flashed their lanterns in the pale faces of the dead; fragments of broken-up altars were piled together "like shapeless stones in a quarry." The chairmen of the revolutionary committees wore velvet breeches made out of episcopal robes, and shirts cut out of choristers' surplices. In the end a few atheistic enthusiasts (Anacharsis Clootz, a man of German extraction, Chaumette, and Hébert) made their voices heard, and carried the mob with them in their iconoclastic fury.

Except on this occasion we hear as little of atheism during the Revolution as of socialism. Belief in God and immortality, the common creed of Voltaire and Rousseau, is the creed held unchanged by almost all the chosen leaders of the people. And this same belief pervades all the writings of the period. Thomas Paine's _Age of Reason_ is a good example. Even such a recklessly disreputable poem as Parny's _Guerre des Dieux_ inculcates the same doctrine, Camille Desmoulins writes in a letter: "Mon cher Manuel! Les rois sont mûrs, mais le bon Dieu ne l'est pas encore (notez que je dis _le bon Dieu_ et non pas _Dieu_, ce qui est fort différent)." This is the standpoint of the age; its task was not to subject the conception of God to criticism, but to free it from the legendary encumbrances of the positive religions. The atheists in the National Assembly led the Revolution beyond its proper goal and instigated excesses which degraded it in the eyes of the contemporary generation.

Clootz succeeded in persuading a bishop, Gobel by name, to write a letter to the Convention, which began: "Citizens, representatives! I am a priest, that is to say, a quack. Hitherto I have been an honest quack; I have only deceived because I myself was deceived." It ended, of course, with the information that he had become converted to philosophy.

Chaumette, an enthusiast, who had procured the abolition of corporal punishment in educational institutions and of legally regulated prostitution, persuaded the Commune to consecrate the cathedral of Notre Dame to "the worship of Reason." Within the church was erected a temple with the inscription _À la Philosophie_, the porch of which was decorated with busts of the great philosophers. On the dedication day, when the door was thrown open, a young actress, Mademoiselle Candeille, representing Liberty, issued forth, and a hymn to Liberty, written by Marie-Joseph Chénier and set to music by Gossec, composer to the Republic, was sung in her honour. On another occasion Mademoiselle Maillard of the Opera, a stately and beautiful woman, chosen to represent the goddess of Reason, was carried shoulder-high out of the old cathedral in a chair decked with garlands of oak leaves and was escorted by trumpeters, a crowd of red-capped citizens, and a number of members of the Convention, to the assembly hall of that body, whose president solemnly impressed a kiss on her brow. But these ceremonies, innocent in themselves, were degraded by the ribald manner in which they were imitated by the mob. Women of bad character had themselves carried in triumphal processions as goddesses of Reason. Wild revels were held in churches; the church of Saint-Eustache was actually turned into a tavern. The relics of Saint Geneviève were burned, and such a bonfire of wooden images of saints, prayer-books, and Old and New Testaments was lit on the Place de la Grève that the flames rose to the second stories of the houses.

Clootz was elected president of the Jacobin Club. Hereupon Robespierre, as a good disciple of Rousseau, and with his eye on Europe, prevailed on the Convention to issue a public declaration that the French people acknowledged the existence of the Supreme Being; and he moreover persuaded the Jacobins to present a petition to the Convention, praying that assembly to do all that was in its power to restore belief in God and in the immortality of the soul. He denounced the iconoclasts as fanatics of the Catholic type, and atheism as aristocratic. When, in May 1794, he mounted the tribune to urge the Convention to celebrate a festival in honour of the Supreme Being, he proceeded, after saying a few enthusiastic words in praise of Rousseau, to make a deliberate attack on Christianity. "All men's imaginings disappear in presence of the truth, and all follies succumb to reason.... What have the priests to do with God? The position of priests to morality is the same as that of quacks to the science of medicine." Assuming, in the manner of his century, that religions are the inventions of their priests, he says: "The priests have made of God a fire-ball, a bull, a tree, a man, a king. The Supreme Being's true priest is nature, his temple the universe, his worship virtue." He goes on to show that priests have everywhere supported tyranny: "It is you who have said to kings: Ye are the representatives of God on earth; it is from Him ye hold your authority! And the kings in their turn have said to you: In very truth ye are God's messengers; let us divide the incense and the spoils!"

The result of these endeavours was the Convention's proclamation to all the nations of the earth that it countenanced free worship of God, and that it censured "the excesses of philosophy as strongly as the crimes of fanaticism." One paragraph of this proclamation runs: "Your rulers will tell you that the French nation has banished all religions and has ordained the worship of certain men instead of the worship of the Deity; they represent us to you as an idolatrous and insane people. They lie. The French people and its representatives favour liberty of worship of every kind." It was decided to celebrate a certain number of religious festivals--the festivals of liberty, of equality, of humanity, one in honour of the great men who in their day had been liberators, &c.,&c.

The first outcome of this decision was the famous festival in honour of the Supreme Being. There is something touchingly comic in the childishness of the whole proceeding. With a bouquet of flowers and ears of wheat in his hand, Robespierre, elected president for the day, led the assembled Convention through Paris to the Champ de Mars. On its march it was encircled by a tricoloured ribbon carried by children, youths, middle-aged and old men, decked according to their age with violets, myrtle, oak, or vine leaves. Every member of the Convention wore a tricoloured scarf and carried a bouquet of flowers, fruits, and ears of corn. When they had taken their places in the space reserved for them on the highest part of the plain, a ceremony was proceeded with, which, according to the testimony of eye-witnesses, was impressive, though somewhat theatrical. An invocation of the Most High was sung by thousands of voices. The young girls strewed flowers, the young men brandished their weapons and swore that they would save France and liberty. The rites concluded with a performance in the taste of the day. In a conspicuous position stood a group of monsters specially designed by the famous painter, David--impiety, selfishness, disunion, and ambition, evil things which were to be exterminated from the earth henceforth and for ever. Robespierre seized a torch and flung it at the monsters. As they had been drenched with turpentine they burned up at once, and in their place there appeared an incombustible statue of Wisdom. A curious irony of fate willed it that this statue should be completely blackened by the flames and smoke.

The festival in honour of the Supreme Being was an ingenuous expression of the piety of the eighteenth century. Robespierre was perfectly right in lamenting that Rousseau had not lived to see that day; it would have been a festival after his own heart. And so firmly were these religious ideas rooted in the minds of the legislators that they stood when Robespierre fell. The "citizen" religion instituted by the Convention was not of his evolving. Far from turning back after his death, men pressed eagerly onwards. The Republican calendar was introduced. As "the Christian era had been the era of lies, deception, and charlatanism." the Christian reckoning was abolished; time was reckoned from 1792, the week was superseded by the decade, and it was proposed to give to the various saints' days the names of agricultural implements and useful domestic animals.

Ere long regular liturgies and catechisms of the new religion were published. In one such book (_Office des décadis en discours, hymnes et prières en usage dans les temples de la Raison_) we read:--

"Liberty, thou supreme happiness of man upon earth, hallowed be thy name by all nations throughout the world! May thy joy-bringing kingdom come and put an end to the reign of tyrants! May thy holy worship take the place of the worship of those miserable idols whose altars thou hast overthrown!... I believe in a Supreme Being who has created men free and equal, who has formed them to love one another and not to hate one another, who desires to be honoured by the exhibition of virtue, not of fanaticism, and in whose eyes the noblest of worships is the worship of truth and reason. I believe in the approaching fall of all tyrants, in the regeneration of morality, the ever-increasing spread of all the virtues, and the eternal triumph of liberty."

Simultaneously, however, men confessed their faith in other and less innocent ways. The churches were dismantled to serve the purposes of the new religion. Practical reasons made the abolition of Sunday a vital question; ere long suspicion attached to every one who observed it--and in those days it was dangerous to be suspected. The violent attempts made during the rule of the Convention to prevent the observance of Sunday constituted a new species of tyranny, which, although more excusable than the tyranny it superseded, was no less barbarous and unreasonable.

Even under the Directory, when the first symptoms of a reactionary movement in the lower ranks of society were already perceptible, there were, as we are told by a writer of the day, members of Assembly who had nervous attacks if they as much as heard the word "priest"; and the work of destruction was carried on with avidity. "Every man," says Laurent, "who had a drop of revolutionary blood in his veins laboured with feverish enthusiasm at the destruction of Christianity." In official reports the faithful Catholics are described as "weak-minded." A proclamation of the Directory relating to the elections of the year VI. declares that it is necessary to erase from the lists "the unhappy fanatics, who are blinded by credulity, and who might take it into their heads to throw themselves once more at the feet of the priests."

The priests had continued to be the most terrible enemies of the Revolution. The bloody war in La Vendée was to a great extent their work. The horrors perpetrated during this struggle recall those of the Middle Ages. One priest who had sworn allegiance to the constitution was stoned to death by yelling women, and another was torn to pieces, also by women. Before the Republican President, Joubert, was killed, his hands were sawn off. In one town the Royalists buried their revolutionary enemies alive; when the Republican troops arrived they saw arms sticking up out of the ground, the hands clenching the turf.

The revolutionists were soon compelled to acknowledge that their proceedings had had the opposite effect to what they had wished and expected. Significantly enough, the envoys sent to La Vendée were the first to advise complete separation of church from state. In their opinion this was the only means of tranquillising men's minds and restoring the country to peace. As far back as the days of the Legislative Assembly it had been proposed by a priest that the state should cease to subsidise any religion. But men were too excited then to refrain from violent espousal of one side or the other. The revolutionists hoped, as they often said, "to put an end to all sectarianism" by the aid of universal education. They fondly imagined that the era of dogmas was past, that the time had come when, in the words of Jefferson, the American, the miraculous conception of Christ in the womb of a virgin was to be classed along with the miraculous conception of Minerva in the head of Jupiter. In a report drawn up under the Convention we read: "Soon men will only make acquaintance with these foolish dogmas, the offspring of fear and delusion, to despise them. Soon the religion of Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, and Cicero will be the religion of the world." And when, in her Memoirs, Madame Roland has occasion to use the word "catechism," she considers it necessary to explain it for the benefit of posterity. She writes: "So rapidly are things moving now that the readers of this passage will perhaps ask: What was that? I will tell them."

The men of the Revolution had failed to comprehend that the great body of the people, profoundly ignorant, and imbued with ideas and feelings which had been transmitted from generation to generation for centuries, were irresponsive to their appeals, terrified by their acts of violence, and prepared, from old habit, to give themselves over into the hands of the priests again, as soon as opportunity offered. In 1800, in a letter to Bonaparte, General Clarke writes: "Our religious revolution has been a failure. France has become Roman Catholic again. It would take thirty years' liberty of the press to destroy the spiritual power of the Bishop of Rome." He is mistaken only in his computation of thirty years. Three hundred would be more nearly the number required, and even this would only suffice if to liberty of the press were added good, free, and entirely secular education.

It was not the common people alone who had quietly remained faithful to the church. In the upper-class families in the provinces the mother, with her daughters, had generally remained Catholic, since the father, with the Frenchman's natural caution and distrust of free thought, almost invariably, whatever his private opinions might be, regarded religion as a beneficial restraint upon women. The ladies had always embroidered altar-cloths, patronised the priest, given him money for his poor parishioners, attended mass most regularly. Now the celebration of mass was forbidden. The industrious and phlegmatic French peasant, his wife, and his whole household had, until the Revolution came, been accustomed to look up to _Monsieur le curé_ as a species of earthly providence, been accustomed to salute him reverently when he passed, and to ask his advice; he had baptized the children, and from his hands they had received their first sacrament; he had united Jacques to Fanchette in holy matrimony; he had administered the last sacraments to the old mother. No one read in the peasant's house; no one cultivated literature, or philosophy, or music. Every impulse of the soul that rose above the plough-share and the clods which it flung up took the direction of the church. Poor as it might be, it was a festal hall in comparison with the cottar's hovel--and it was a holy place; they knelt in it. Now the church was closed. Any one who has seen the peasants of France or Italy pray, seen the touching devotion which shines from eyes as earnest and as clear as a dog's, can understand what it meant to such people that there was no longer to be mass or priest. And Sunday too! The peasant is opposed to every change the utility of which is not at once apparent to him. Sunday to be done away with! Had any one ever heard the like? Could such an idea have occurred to any one except these gentlemen in Paris? Sunday, which had been kept holy for more than a thousand years--possibly since the creation of the world! God Himself had rested on the seventh day; but now the week was to have ten days, and to be called _Décade_, a word which conveyed no meaning. Was God, too, to be done away with?

Add to all this the effect upon the younger and as yet undepraved priests. Frayssinous, who, after the Restoration, became so famous as a Catholic vindicator of Christianity, tells how he himself and a friend, also a priest, continued to perform their sacred avocations during the Reign of Terror in spite of all the threats of banishment, and how, in order to prove and strengthen themselves, and familiarise themselves with the death which awaited them if they were discovered, they went in turn to watch the executions on the permanent scaffold of Rodez.