Chapter 11

I. Economical Complexity of Food Chain.

Complexity of the economical operation by which articles of prime necessity reach the consumer.--Conditions of the operation.--Available resources.--Cases in which these are not available.--Case of the holder of these being no longer disposed to make them.

Suppose a man forced to walk with his feet in the air and his head downward. By using extremely energetic measures he might, for a while, be made to maintain this unwholesome attitude, and certainly at the expense of a bruised or broken skull; it is very probable, moreover, that he would use his feet convulsively and kick terribly. But it is certain that if this course were persisted in, the man would experience intolerable pain and finally sink down; the blood would stop circulating and suffocation would ensue; the trunk and limbs would suffer as much as the head, and the feet would become numb and inert.--Such is more or less the history of France under its Jacobin pedagogues; their rigid theory and persistent brutality impose on the nation an attitude against nature; consequently she suffers, and each day suffers more and more; the paralysis increases; the functions get out of order and cease to act, while the last and principal one,[4201] the most urgent, namely, physical support and the daily nourishment of the living individual, is so badly accomplished, against so many obstacles, interruptions, uncertainties and deficiencies, that the patient, reduced to extreme want, asks if to-morrow will not be worse than to-day, and whether his semi-starvation will not end in complete starvation.

Nothing, apparently, is simpler, and yet really more complex, than the physiological process by which, in the organized body, the proper restorative food flows regularly to the spot where it is needed, among the innumerably diverse and distant cells. In like manner, nothing is simpler at the first glance, and yet more complex, than the economical process by which, in the social organism, provisions and other articles of prime necessity, flow of themselves to all points of the territory where they are needed and within reach of each consumer. It is owing to this that, in the social body as in the organized body, the terminal act presupposes many others anterior to and co-ordinate with it, a series of elaborations, a succession of metamorphoses, one elimination and transportation after another, mostly invisible and obscure, but all indispensable, and all of them carried out by infinitely delicate organs, so delicate that, under the slightest pressure, they get out of order, so dependent on each other that an injury to one affects the operations of the rest, and thus suppresses or perverts the final result to which, nearly or remotely, they all contribute.

Consider, for a moment, these precious economical organs and their mode of operation. In any tolerably civilized community that has lasted for any length of time, they consist, first in rank, of those who possess wealth arising from the accumulation of old and recent savings, that is to say, those who possess any sort of security, large or small, in money, in notes, or in kind, whatever its form, whether in lands, buildings or factories, in canals, shipping or machinery, in cattle or tools, as well as in every species of merchandise or produce.--And see what use they make of these: each person, reserving what he needs for daily consumption, devotes his available surplus to some enterprise, the capitalist his ready money, the real-estate owner his land and tenements, the farmer his cattle, seed and farming implements, the manufacturer his mills and raw material, the common-carrier his vessels, vehicles and horses, the trader his warehouses and stock of goods for the year, and the retailer his shop and supplies for a fortnight. To which everybody, the agriculturist, merchant and manufacturer, necessarily adds his cash on hand, the deposits in his bank for paying the monthly salaries of his clerks, and at the end of the week, the wages of his workmen.--Otherwise, it would be impossible to till the soil, to build, to fabricate, to transport, to sell; however useful the work might be, it could not be perfected, or even begun, without a preliminary outlay in money or in kind. In every enterprise, the crop presupposes labor and seed corn. If I want to dig a hole I am obliged to hire a pick and the arms to wield it, or, in other terms, to make certain advances. But these advances are made only on two conditions: first, that he who makes them is able to make them, that is to say, that he is the possessor of an available surplus; and next, being the owner of this surplus, that he desires to make them, with this proviso that he may gain instead of losing by the operation.--If I am wholly or partially ruined, if my tenants and farmers do not pay their rent,[4202] if my lands or goods do not bring half their value in the market, if the net proceeds of my possessions are threatened with confiscation or pillage, not only have I fewer securities to dispose of, but, again, I become more and more uneasy about the future; over and above my immediate consumption I have to provide for a prospective consumption; I add to my reserve stores especially of coin and provisions; I hold on to the remnant of my securities for myself and those who belong to me; they are no longer available and I can no longer make loans or enter upon my enterprise. And, on the other hand, if the loan or enterprise, instead of bringing me a profit, brings me loss; if the law is powerless or fails to do me justice and adds extra to ordinary risks; if my work once perfected is to become the prey of the government, of brigands or of whoever pleases to seize it; if I am compelled to surrender my wares and merchandise at one-half their cost; if I cannot produce, put in store, transport or sell except by renouncing all profit and with the certainty of not getting back my advances, I will no longer make loans or enter upon any under-taking whatever.

Such is the disposition and situation of people able to make advances in anarchical times, when the State falters and no longer performs its customary service, when property is no longer adequately protected by the public force, when jacqueries overspread the country and insurrections break out in the towns, when chateaux are sacked, archives burnt, shops broken into, provisions carried off and transportation is brought to a halt, when rents and leases are no longer paid, when the courts dare no longer convict, when the constable no longer dares serve a warrant, when the gendarmerie holds back, when the police fails to act, when repeated amnesties shield robbers and incendiaries, when a revolution brings into local and central power dishonest and impoverished adventurers hostile to every one that possesses property of any kind.--Such is the disposition and situation of all who are in possession of the means to initiate projects in socialistic times

* when the usurping State, instead of protecting private property, destroys or seizes it;

* when it takes for itself the property of many of the great corporations;

* when it suppresses legally established credits without indemnity;

* when, by dint of expenditure and the burdens this creates, it becomes insolvent;

* when, through its paper-money and forced circulation, it annuls indebtedness in the hands of the creditor, and allows the debtor to go scot-free;

* when it arbitrarily seizes current capital;

* when it makes forced loans and requisitions;

* when its tax on productions surpasses the cost of production and on merchandise the profit on its sale;

* when it constrains the manufacturer to manufacture at a loss and the merchant to sell at a loss;

* when its principles, judged by its acts, indicate a progression from partial to a universal confiscation.--

Ineluctably every phase of disease engenders the evil which follows: it is like a poison the effects of which spread or pass onwards. Each function, affected by the derangement of the adjacent one, becoming disturbed in its turn. The perils, mutilation and suppression of property diminish available securities as well as the courage that risks them, that is to say, the mode of, and disposition to, make advances. Through a lack of funds, useful enterprises languish, die out or are not undertaken. Consequently, the production, supply, and sale of indispensable articles slacken, become interrupted and cease altogether. There is less soap and sugar and fewer candles at the grocery, less wood and coal in the wood-yard, fewer oxen and sheep in the markets, less meat at the butcher's, less grain and flour at the corn-exchange, and less bread at the bakeries. As articles of prime necessity are scarce they become dear; as people contend for them their dearness increases; the rich man ruins himself in the struggle to get hold of them, while the poor man never gets any, and the bare necessities become unattainable.

II. Conditions in 1793. A Lesson in Market Economics.

Economical effect of the Jacobin policy from 1789 to 1793. --Attacks on property.--Direct attacks.--Jacqueries, effective confiscations and proclamation of the socialist creed. --Indirect attacks.--Bad administration of the public funds. --Transformation of taxation and insignificance of the returns.--Increased expenditures.--The War-budget and subsistence after 1793.--Paper money.--Enormous issues of it.--Credit of the Assignats run down.--Ruin of Public creditors and of all private credit.--Rate of interest during the Revolution.--Stoppage of trade and industry.--Bad management of new land-owners.--Decrease of productive labor.--Only the small rural land-owner works advantageously.--Why he refuses Assignats.--He is no longer obliged to sell his produce at once.--High cost of food.--It reaches a market with difficulty and in small quantities. --The towns buy at a high price and sell at a low one.--Food becomes dearer and famine begins.--Prices during the first six months of 1793.

Such is the hardship in France at the moment when the Jacobin conquest has been completed, a misery of which the Jacobins are the cause due to the systematic war they have waged against property during the preceding four years.

From below, they have provoked, excused, amnestied, or tolerated and authorized all the popular attacks on property,[4203] countless insurrections, seven successive jacqueries, some of them so extensive as to cover eight or ten departments at the same time. The last one let loose on all France a universal and lasting brigandage, the arbitrary rule of paupers, vagabonds and ruffians; every species of robbery, from a refusal to pay rents and leases to the sacking of chateaux and ordinary domiciles, even to the pillage of markets and granaries. Free scope was given to mobs which, under a political pretext, tax and ransom the "suspects" of all classes at pleasure, not alone the noble and the rich but the peaceable farmer and well-to-do artisan. In short, the country reverted back to a natural state, the sovereignty of appetites, greed and lust, to mankind's return to a savage, primitive life in the forests. Only a short time before, in the month of February, 1793, through Marat's recommendation, and with the connivance of the Jacobin municipality, the Paris riff-raff had broken into twelve hundred groceries and divided on the spot, either gratis or at the price it fixed, sugar, soap, brandy and coffee.

From above, they had undertaken, carried out and multiplied the worst assaults on property, vast spoliations of every sort; the suppression of hundreds of millions of incomes and the confiscation of billions of capital; the abolition without indemnity of tithes and quitrents; the expropriation of the property of the clergy, of emigrés, that of the order of Malta, that of the pious, charitable and educational associations and endowments, even laic; seizures of plate, of the sacred vessels and precious ornaments of the churches. And, because they have the power, others still more vast. After August 10, their newspapers in Paris and their commissioners in the departments,[4204] have preached

"the agrarian law, the holding of all property in common, the leveling of fortunes, the right of each fraction of the sovereign people" to help itself by force to all food and stores at the expense of the owner, to hunt down the rich, proscribe "land-owners, leading merchants, financiers and all men in possession of whatever is superfluous."

Rousseau's dogma that "the fruit belongs to everybody and the soil to no one" is established at an early date as a maxim of State in the Convention, while in the deliberations of the sovereign assembly socialism, openly avowed, becomes ascendant, and, afterwards, supreme. According to Robespierre,[4205]

"whatever is essential to preserve life is common property to society at large. It is only the excess which may be given up to individuals and surrendered to commercial enterprise."

With still greater solemnity, the pontiff of the sect, in the Declaration of Rights which, unanimously adopted by the all-powerful Jacobin club, is to serve as the corner-stone of the new institutions, pens the following formula heavy with their consequences:[4206]

"Society must provide for the support of all its members. The aid required by indigence is a debt of the rich to the poor. The right of property is limited, and applies only to that portion which the law guarantees. Every ownership, any trade, which bears prejudicially on the existence of our fellow-creatures is necessarily illicit and immoral."

The meaning of this is more than clear: the Jacobin populace, having decided that the possession of, and trade in, groceries was prejudicial to its existence, the grocers' monopoly is, therefore, immoral and illicit, and consequently, it pillages their shops. Under the rule of the populace and of the "Mountain," the Convention applies the theory, seizes capital wherever it can be found, and notifies the poor, in its name,

"that they will find in the pocket-books of the rich whatever they need to supply their wants."[4207]

Over and above these striking and direct attacks, an indirect and hidden attack, even more significant, which slowly undermines the basis of all present and future property. State affairs are everybody's affairs, and, when the State ruins itself, everybody is ruined along with it. For, it is the country's greatest debtor and its greatest creditor, while there is no debtor so free of seizure and no creditor so absorbing, since, making the laws and possessing the force, it can, firstly, repudiate indebtedness and send away the fund-holder with empty hands, and next, increase taxation and empty the taxpayer's pocket of his last penny. There is no greater menace to private fortunes than the bad administration of the public fortune. Now, under the pressure of Jacobin principles and of the Jacobin faction, the trustees of France have administered the country as if they purposely meant to ruin their ward; every known means for wasting a fortune have been brought into play by them.--In the first place, they have deprived him of three-fourths of his income. To please the people and enforce the theory, the taxes on articles consumed, on salt, with the excise subsidies and the octroi duties on liquors, meat, tobacco, leather and gunpowder, have been abolished, while the new imposts substituted for the old ones, slowly fixed, badly apportioned and raised with difficulty have brought in no returns. On the 1st of February, 1793,[4208] the Treasury had received on the real and personal taxation of 1791, but one hundred and fifty millions instead of three hundred millions. On the same taxes for 1792, instead of three hundred millions it had obtained nothing at all. At this date, and during the four years of the Revolution, the total arrears of taxation amounted to six hundred and thirty-two millions--a bad debt that can hardly be recovered, and, in fact, it is already reduced one-half, since, even if the debtor could and was disposed to pay, he would pay in assignats, which, at this time, were at a discount of fifty per cent.--In the second place, the new managers had quadrupled the public expenditure.[4209] What with the equipment and excursions of the National Guards federations, patriotic festivals and parades, the writing, printing and publication of innumerable documents, reimbursements for suppressed offices, the installation of new administrations, aid to the indigent and to its charity workshops, purchases of grain, indemnities to millers and bakers, it was under the necessity of providing for the cost of the universal demolition and reconstruction. Now, the State had, for the most part, defrayed all these expenses. At the end of April, 1793, it had already advanced to the city of Paris alone, one hundred and ten million francs, while the Commune, insolvent, kept constantly extorting fresh millions.[4210] By the side of this gulf, the Jacobins had dug another, larger still, that of the war. For the first half of the year 1793 they threw into this pit first, one hundred and forty millions, then one hundred and sixty millions, and then one hundred and ninety million francs; in the second six months of 1793 the war and provisions swallowed up three hundred million francs per month, and the more they threw into the two gulfs the deeper they became.[4211]

Naturally, when there is no collecting a revenue and expenses go on increasing, one is obliged to borrow on one's resources, and piecemeal, as long as these last. Naturally, when ready money is not to be had on the market, one draws notes and tries to put them in circulation; one pays tradesmen with written promises in the future, and thus exhausts one's credit. Such is paper money and the assignats, the third and most efficient way for wasting a fortune and which the Jacobins did not fail to make the most of.--Under the Constituent Assembly, through a remnant of good sense and good faith, efforts were at first made to guarantee the fulfillment of written promises the holders of assignats were almost secured by a first mortgage on the national possessions, which had been given to them coupled with an engagement not to raise more money on this guarantee, as well as not to issue any more assignats.[4212] But they did not keep faith. They rendered the security afforded by this mortgage inoperative and, as all chances of re-payment disappeared, its value declined. Then, on the 27th of April, 1792, according to the report of Cambon, there begins an unlimited issue; according to the Jacobin financiers, nothing more is necessary to provide for the war than to turn the wheel and grind out promises to pay: in June, 1793, assignats to the amount of four billion three hundred and twenty millions have already been manufactured, and everybody sees that the mill must grind faster. This is why the guarantee, vainly increased, no longer suffices for the monstrous, disproportionate mortgage; it exceeds all limits, covers nothing, and sinks through its own weight. At Paris, the assignat of one hundred francs is worth in specie, in the month of June, 1791, eighty-five francs, in January, 1792, only sixty-six francs, in March, 1792, only fifty. three francs; rising in value at the end of the Legislative Assembly, owing to fresh confiscations, it falls back to fifty-five francs in January, 1793, to forty-seven francs in April, to forty francs in June, to thirty-three francs in July.[4213]--Thus are the creditors of the State defrauded of a third, one-half, and two-thirds of their investment, and not alone the creditors of the State but every other creditor, since every debtor has the right to discharge his obligations by paying his debts in assignats. Enumerate, if possible, all who are defrauded of private claims, all money-lenders and stockholders who have invested in any private enterprise, either manufacturing or mercantile, those who have loaned money on Contracts of longer or shorter date, all sellers of real estate, with stipulations in their deeds for more or less remote payment, all landowners who have leased their grounds or buildings for a term of years, all holders of annuities on private bond or on an estate, all manufacturers, merchants and farmers who have sold their wares, goods and produce on time, all clerks on yearly salaries and even all other employees, underlings, servants and workmen receiving fixed salaries for a specified term. There is not one of these persons whose capital, or income payable in assignats, is not at once crippled in proportion to the decline in value of assignats, so that not only the State falls into bankruptcy but likewise every creditor in France, legally bankrupt along with it through its fault.

In such a situation how can any enterprise be commenced or maintained? Who dares take a risk, especially when disbursements are large and returns remote? Who dares lend on long credits--? If loans are still made they are not for a year but for a month, while the interest which, before the Revolution was six, five or even four per cent. per annum, is now two per cent. a month on securities." It soon runs up higher and, at Paris and Strasbourg we see it rising, as in India and the Barbary States, to four, five, six and even seven per cent. a month.[4214]

What holder of raw material, or of manufactured goods, would dare make entries on his books as usual and allow his customer the indispensable credit of three months? What large manufacturer would presume to make goods up, what wholesale merchant would care to make shipments, what man of wealth or with a competence would build, drain and construct dams and dykes, repair, or even maintain them with the positive certainty of delays in getting back only one-half his outlays and with the increasing certainty of getting nothing?

During a few years the large establishments collapsed in droves:

* After the ruin of the nobles and the departure of wealthy foreigners, every craft dependent on luxurious tastes, those of Paris and Lyons, which were the standard for Europe, all the manufactories of rich fabrics and furniture, and other artistic, elegant and fashionable articles.

* After the insurrection of the blacks in St. Domingo, and other troubles in the West Indies, the great colonial trade and remarkable prosperity of Nantes and Bordeaux, including all the industrial enterprises by which the production, transportation and circulation of cotton, sugar and coffee were affected;[4215]

* After the declaration of war with England, the shipping interest;

* After the declaration of war with all Europe, the commerce of the continent.[4216]

Failure after failure, an universal crash, utter cessation of extensively organized and productive labor: instead of productive industries, I see none now but destructive industries, those of the agricultural and commercial vermin, those of dealers in junk and speculators who dismantle mansions and abbeys, and who demolish chateaux and churches so as to sell the materials as cheap as dirt, who bargain away national possessions, so as to make a profit on the transaction. Imagine the mischief a temporary owner, steeped in debt, needy and urged on by the maturity of his engagements, can and must do to an estate held under a precarious title and of suspicious acquirement, which he has no idea of keeping, and from which, meanwhile, he derives every possible benefit:[4217] not only does he put no spokes in the mill-wheel, no stones in the dyke, no tiles on the roof, but he buys no manure, exhausts the soil, devastates the forest, alienates the fields, and dismembers the entire farm, damaging the ground and the stock of tools and injuring the dwelling by selling its mirrors, lead and iron, and oftentimes the window-shutters and doors. He turns all into cash, no matter how, at the expense of the domain, which he leaves in a run-down condition, unfurnished and for a long time unproductive. In like manner, the communal possessions, ravaged, pillaged and then pieced out and divided off, are so many organisms which are sacrificed for the immediate relief of the village poor, but of course to the detriment of their future productiveness and an abundant yield.[4218]

Alone, amongst these millions of men who have stopped working, or work the wrong way, the petty cultivator labors to advantage; free of taxes, of tithes and of feudal imposts, possessing a scrap of ground which he has obtained for almost nothing or without stretching his purse strings, he works in good spirits.[4219] He is sure that henceforth his crop will no longer be eaten up by the levies of the seignior, of the décimateur and of the King, that it will belong to him, that it will be wholly his, and that the worse the famine in the towns, the dearer he will sell his produce. Hence, he has ploughed more vigorously than ever; he has even cleared waste ground; getting the soil gratis, or nearly so, and having to make but few advances, having no other use for his advances, consisting of seed, manure, the work of his cattle and of his own hands, he has planted, reaped and raised grain with the greatest energy. Perhaps other articles of consumption will be scarce; it may be that, owing to the ruin of other branches of industry, it will be hard to get dry-goods, shoes, sugar, soap, oil, candles, wine and brandy; it may happen that, owing to the bungling way in which agricultural transformations have been effected, all produce of the secondary order, meat, vegetables, butter and eggs, may become scarce. In any event, French foodstuffs par excellence is on hand, standing in the field or stored in sheaves in the barns; in 1792 and 1793, and even in 1794, there is enough grain in France to provide every French inhabitant with his daily bread.[4220]

But that is not enough. In order that each Frenchman may obtain his bit of bread every day, it is still essential that grain should reach the markets in sufficient quantities, and that the bakers should every day have enough flour to make all the bread that is required; moreover, the bread offered for sale in the bakeries should not exceed the price which the majority of consumers can afford to pay. Now, in fact, through a forced result of the new system, neither of these conditions is fulfilled.--In the first place, wheat, and hence bread, is too dear. Even at the old rate, these would still be too dear for the innumerable empty or half-empty purses, after so many attacks on property, industry and trade, now that so many hundreds of workmen and employees are out of work, now that so many land-owners and bourgeois receive no rents, now that incomes, profits, wages and salaries have diminished by hundreds of thousands. But wheat, and, consequently, bread, has not remained at old rates. Formerly a sack of wheat in Paris was worth 50 francs. In February, 1793, it is worth sixty-five francs; in May, 1793, one hundred francs and then one hundred and fifty; and hence bread, in Paris, early in 1793, instead of being three sous the pound, costs six sous, in many of the southern departments seven and eight sous, and in other places ten and twelve sous.[4221] The reason is, that, since August 10, 1792, after the King's fall and the wrenching away of the ancient keystone of the arch which still kept the loosened stones of the social edifice in place, the frightened peasant would no longer part with his produce; he determined not to take assignats, not to let his grain go for anything but ringing coin. To exchange good wheat for bad, dirty paper rags seemed to him a trick, and justly so, for, on going to town every month he found that the dealers gave him less merchandise for these rags. Being distrustful and a hoarder, he must have good, old fashioned crowns, with the ancient effigy, so as to lay them away in a jar or old woollen stocking; give him specie or he will keep his grain. For he is not, as formerly, obliged to part with it as soon as it is cut, to pay taxes and rent; the bailiff and sheriff are no longer there to constrain him; in these times of disorder and demagoguism, under impotent or partial authorities, neither the public nor the private creditor has the power to compel payment, while the spurs which formerly impelled the farmer to seek the nearest market are blunted or broken. He therefore stays away, and he has excellent reasons for so doing. Vagabonds and the needy stand by the roadside and at the entrances of the towns to stop and pillage the loaded carts; in the markets and on the open square, women cut open bags of grain with their scissors and empty them, or the municipality, forced to do it by the crowd, fixes the price at a reduced rate.[4222]--The larger a town, the greater the difficulty in supplying its market; for its provisions are drawn from a distance; each department, each canton, each village keeps its own grain for itself by means of legal requisitions or by brutal force; it is impossible for wholesale dealers in grain to make bargains; they are styled monopolists, and the mob, breaking into their storehouses, hangs them out of preference.[4223] As the government, accordingly, has proclaimed their speculations "crimes," it is going to interdict their trade and substitute itself for them.[4224]--But this substitution only increases the penury still more; in vain do the towns force collections, tax their rich men, raise money on loan, and burden themselves beyond their resources;[4225] they only make the matter worse. When the municipality of Paris expends twelve thousand francs a day for the sale of flour at a low price in the markets, it keeps away the flour-dealers, who cannot deliver flour at such low figures; the result is that there is not flour enough in the market for the six hundred thousand mouths in Paris; when it expends seventy-five thousand francs daily to indemnify the bakers, it attracts the outside population, which rushes into Paris to get bread cheap, and for the seven hundred thousand mouths of Paris and the suburbs combined, the bakers have not an adequate supply. Whoever comes late finds the shop empty; consequently, everybody tries to get there earlier and earlier, at dawn, before daybreak, and then five or six hours before daybreak in February, 1793, long lines of people are already waiting at the bakers' door, these lines growing longer and longer in April, while in June they are enormously long.[4226] Naturally, for lack of bread, people fall back on other aliments, which also grow dearer; add to this the various contrivances and effects of Jacobin politics which still further increase the dearness of food of all sorts, and also of every other necessary article: for instance, the extremely bad condition of the roads, which renders transportation slower and more costly; the prohibition of the export of coin and hence the obtaining of food from abroad; the decree which obliges each industrial or commercial association, at present or to come, to "pay annually into the national treasury one-quarter of the amount of its dividends;" the revolt in Vendée, which deprives Paris of six hundred oxen a week; the feeding of the armies, which takes one-half of the cattle brought to the Poissy market; shutting off the sea and the continent, which ruins manufacturers and extensive commercial operations; the insurrections in Bordeaux, Marseilles and the South, which still further raise the price of groceries, sugar, soap, oil, candles, wine and brandy.[4227]--Early in 1793, a pound of beef in France is worth on the average, instead of six sous twenty sous; in May, at Paris, brandy which, six months before, cost thirty-five sous, costs ninety-four sous; in July, a pound of veal, instead of five sous, costs twenty-two sous. Sugar, from twenty sous, advances to four francs ten sous; a candle costs seven sous. France, pushed on by the Jacobins, approaches the depths of misery, entering the first circle of its Inferno; other circles follow down deeper and deeper, narrower still and yet more somber; under Jacobin impulsion is she to descend to the lowest?

III. Privation.

First and general cause of privations.--The socialist principle of the Revolutionary government.--Measures against large as well as small properties.--Expropriation of all remaining corporations, enormous issues of paper-money. forced rates of its circulation, forced loans, requisitions of coin and plate, revolutionary taxes, suppression of special organs of labor on a large scale.--New measures against small proprietorship.--The Maximum, requisitions for food and labor.--Situation of the shop-keeper, cultivator and laborer.--Effect of the measures on labor on a small scale. Stoppage of sales.

Obviously, if the people is not being fed properly and in places not at all, it is because one of the central and most important fibers of the economical machine has been incapacitated. It is evident that this fiber controls the sentiment by which man holds on to his property, fears to risk it, refuses to depreciate it, and tries to increase it.[4228] Obviously in the real human being, such as he actually is made up, this intense sentiment, tenacious, always stirring and active, is the magazine of inward energy which provides for three-fourths, almost the whole, of that unremitting effort, that calculating attention, that determined perseverance which leads the individual to undergo privation, to contrive and to exert himself, to turn to profitable account the labor of his hands, brain and capital, and to produce, save and create for himself and for others various resources and comforts.

(It is probable that disinterested motives, pure love for one's neighbor, for humanity, for country, do not form a hundredth part of the total energy that produces human activity. It must not be forgotten that the actions of men are alloyed with motives of a lower order, such as love of fame, the desire of self-admiration and of self-approval, fear of punishment and hope of reward beyond the grave, all of these being interested motives, and without which disinterested motives would be inoperative excepting in two or three souls among ten thousand.[4229])

Thus far, in society as a whole, this sentiment has been only partially touched, and the injury has mainly been to the well-to-do or rich classes. At first only one-half of its useful energy has been destroyed since only those services rendered by the rich and wealthy classes have been dispensed with. Little else than the labor of the capitalist, proprietor or contractor has been suppressed, whose far-reaching, combined, comprehensive labor, the rewards of which consist of objects of luxury and convenience, ensure for society that abundant supplies are always on hand, through ready and spontaneous distribution of indispensable commodities. There remains (for the Jacobins) to crush out what is left of this laborious and nutritive fiber; the remnant of useful energy has to be destroyed down to its extirpation among the people. Here there must be a suppression, as far as possible, of all manual, rude labor even on a small scale, and of its rudimentary fruits; the discouragement of the insignificant shopkeeper, mechanic and ploughman must be effected; the corner-grocer must be prevented from selling his sugar and candles, and the cobbler from mending shoes: the miller must think of giving up his mill and the wagoner of abandoning his cart; the farmer must be convinced that the best thing he can do is to get rid of his horses, eat his pork himself,[4230] let his oxen famish and leave his crops to rot on the ground.--The Jacobins are to do all this, for it is the inevitable result of the theory that they have proclaimed and which they apply. According to this theory the stern, strong, deep-seated instinct through which the individual stubbornly holds on to what he has, to what he makes for himself and for those that belong to him, is just the unwholesome fiber that must be rooted out or paralyzed at any cost; its true name is "egoism, incivism," and its operations consist of outrages on the community, which is the sole legitimate proprietor of property and products, and, yet more, of all persons and services. Body and soul, all belongs to the State, nothing to individuals, and, if need be, the State has the right to take not only lands and capital, but, again, to claim and tax at whatever rate it pleases all corn and cattle, all vehicles and the animals that draw them, all candles and sugar; it has the right to appropriate to itself and tax at whatever rate it pleases, the labor of shoemaker, tailor, miller, wagoner, ploughman, reaper and thrasher. The seizure of men and things is universal, and the new sovereigns do their best at it; for, in practice, necessity urges them on; insurrection thunders at their door; their supporters, all crackbrains with empty stomachs, the poor and the idle, and the Parisian populace, listen to no reason and blindly insist on things haphazard; they are bound to satisfy their patrons at once, to issue one on top of the other all the decrees they call for, even when impracticable and mischievous to starve the provinces so as to feed the city, to starve the former to-morrow so as to feed the latter to-day.--Subject to the clamors and menaces of the street they dispatch things rapidly; they cease to care for the future, the present being all that concerns them; they take and take forcibly; they uphold violence by brutality, they support robbery with murder; they expropriate persons by categories and appropriate objects by categories, and after the rich they despoil the poor.--During fourteen months the revolutionary government thus keeps both hands at work, one hand completing the confiscation of property, large and medium, and the other proceeding to the entire abolition of property even on a small scale.

Against large or medium properties it suffices to extend and aggravate the decrees already passed.--The spoliation of the last of existing corporations must be effected: the government, confiscates the property of hospitals, communes, and all scientific or literary associations.[4231]

To this we must add the spoliation of State credits and all other credits: it issues in fourteen months 5 100 millions of assignats, at one time and with one decree 1,400 million and another time 2,000 millions. It thus condemns itself to complete future bankruptcy. It also calls in the 1,500 million of assignats bearing the royal stamp (à face royale) and thus arbitrarily converts and reduces the public debt on the Grand Ledger, which is already, in fact, a partial and declared bankruptcy. Six months imprisonment for whoever refuses to accept assignats at par, twenty years in irons if the offence is repeated and the guillotine if there is an incivique intention or act, which suffices for all other creditors.[4232]

The spoliation of individuals, a forced loan of a billion on the rich, requisitions for coin against assignats at par, seizures of plate and jewels in private houses, revolutionary taxes so numerous as not only to exhaust the capital, but likewise the credit, of the person taxed,[4233] and the resumption by the State of the public domain pledged to private individuals for the past three centuries. How many years of labor are requisite to bring together again so much available capital, to reconstruct in France and to refill once again those private reservoirs which are to contain the accumulated savings essential for the out-flow required to drive the great wheel of each general enterprise? Take into account, moreover, the enterprises which are directly destroyed, root and branch, by revolutionary executions, enforced against the manufacturers and traders of Lyons, Marseilles and Bordeaux, proscribed in a mass,[4234] guillotined, imprisoned, or put to flight, their factories stopped, their storehouses put under sequestration, with their stocks of brandy, soap, silk, muslins, leather, paper, serges, cloth, canvas, cordage and the rest; the same at Nantes under Carrier, at Strasbourg under Saint-Just, and everywhere else.[4235]--"Commerce is annihilated," writes a Swiss merchant,[4236] from Paris, and the government, one would say, tries systematically to render it impossible. On the 27th of June, 1793, the Convention closes the Bourse; on the 15th of April, 1794, it suppresses "financial associations" and "prohibits all bankers, merchants and other persons from organizing any establishment of the said character under any pretext or title whatsoever." On the 8th of September, 1793, the Commune places seals "in all the counting-houses of bankers, stockbrokers, agents and silver-dealers,"[4237] and locks up their owners; as a favor, considering that they are obliged to pay the drafts drawn on them, they are let out, but provisionally, and on condition that they remain under arrest at home, "under the guard of two good citizens," at their own expense. Such is the case in Paris and in other cities, not alone with prominent merchants, but likewise with notaries and lawyers, with whom funds are on deposit and who manage estates; a sans-culotte with his pike stands in their cabinet whilst they write, and he accompanies them in the street when they call on their clients. Imagine the state of a notary's office or a counting-room under a system of this sort! The master of it winds up his business as soon as he can, no matter how, makes no new engagements and does as little as possible. Still more inactive than he, his colleagues, condemned to an indefinite listlessness, under lock and key in the common prison, no longer attend to their business.--There is a general, total paralysis of those natural organs which, in economic life, produce, elaborate, receive, store, preserve, exchange and transmit in large quantities; and as an after effect, embarrass, saturate, or weaken all the lesser subordinate organs to which the superior ones no longer provide outlets, intermediary agencies or aliment.

It is now the turn of the small enterprises. Whatever their sufferings may be they are ordered to carry their work out as in normal times, and they will be forced to do this. The Convention, pursuing its accustomed rigid logical course with its usual shortsightedness, lays on them its violent and inept hands; they are trodden down, trampled upon and mauled for the purpose of curing them. Farmers are forbidden to sell their produce except in the markets, and obliged to bring to these a quota of so many sacks per week, military raids compelling them to furnish their quotas.[4238] Shopkeepers are ordered "to expose for sale, daily and publicly, all goods and provisions of prime necessity" that they have on hand, while a maximum price is established, above which no one shall sell "bread, flour and grain, vegetables and fruits, wine, vinegar, cider, beer and brandy, fresh meat, salt meat, pork, cattle, dried, salted, smoked or pickled fish, butter, honey, sugar, sweet-oil, lamp-oil, candles, firewood, charcoal and other coal, salt, soap, soda, potash, leather, iron, steel, castings, lead, brass, hemp, linen, woolens, canvas and woven stuffs, sabots, shoes and tobacco." Whoever keeps on hand more than he consumes is a monopolist and commits a capital crime; the penalty, very severe, is imprisonment or the pillory, for whoever sells above the established price:[4239] such are the simple and direct expedients of the revolutionary government, and such is the character of its inventive faculty, like that of the savage who hews down a tree to get at its fruit.--Consequently, after the first application of the "maximum" the shopkeeper is no longer able to carry on business; his customers, attracted by the sudden depreciation in price of his wares, flock to his shop and empty it in a few days;[4240] having sold his goods for half what they cost him,[4241] he has got back only one-half of his advances; therefore, he can only one-half renew his assortment, less than a half, since he has not paid his bills, and his credit is declining, the (Jacobin) representatives on mission having taken all his coin, plate and assignats. Hence, during the following month, buyers find on his unfurnished counters nothing but rubbish and refuse.

In like manner, after the proclamation of the maximum,[4242] the peasant refuses to bring his produce to market, while the revolutionary army is not everywhere on hand to take it from him by force: he leaves his crop unthrashed as long as he can, and complains of not finding the men to thrash it. If necessary, he hides it or feeds it out to his animals. He often barters it away for wood, for a side of bacon or in payment for a day's work. At night, he carts it off six leagues to a neighboring district, where the local maximum is fixed at a higher rate. He knows who, in his own vicinity, still has specie in his pocket and he underhandedly supplies him with his stores. He especially conceals his superabundance and, as formerly, pretends to be poor and suffering. He is on good terms with the village authorities, with the mayor and national agent who are as interested as he is in evading the law, and, on a bribe being necessary, he gives it. At last, he allows himself to be sued, and his property attached; he goes to prison and tires the authorities out with his obstinacy. Hence, from week to week, less flour and grain and fewer cattle come to market, while meat becomes scarcer at the butcher's, and bread at the baker's.--Having thus paralyzed the lesser organs of supply and demand the Jacobins now have only to paralyze labor itself, the skilled hands, the active and vigorous arms. This is simply done by replacing the independent private workshop by the compulsory national workshop in this way replacing piece-work by work by the day, and the attentive, energetic workman who minds his business and expects to earn money in return by inattentive apathic workmen pressed into a poorly paid service but paid even when they botch the job or laze about.--This is what the Jacobins do by forcibly commanding the services of all sorts of laborers,[4243] "all who help handle, transport and retail produce and articles of prime necessity," "country people who usually get in the crops," and, more particularly, thrashers, reapers, carters, rafts men, and also shoemakers, tailors, blacksmiths and the rest.--At every point of the social organism, the same principle is applied with the same result. Substitute everywhere an external, artificial and mechanical constraint for the inward, natural and animating stimulant, and you get nothing but an universal atrophy. Deprive people of the fruits of their labor, and yet more, force them to produce by fear, confiscate their time, their painstaking efforts and their persons, reduce them to the condition of fellahs, create in them the sentiments of fellahs, and you will have nothing but the labor and productions of fellahs, that is to say, a minimum of labor and production, and hence, insufficient supplies for sustaining a very dense population, which, multiplied through a superior and more productive civilization, will not long subsist under a barbarous, inferior and unproductive régime. When this systematic and complete expropriation terminates we see the final result of the system, no longer a dearth, but famine, famine on a large scale, and the destruction of lives by millions.--Among the Jacobins,[4244] some of the maddest who are clear-sighted, on account of their fury, Guffroy, Antonelle, Jean Bon Saint-André, Collot d'Herbois, foresee the consequences and accept them along with the principle. Others, who avoid seeing it, are only the more determined in the application of it. However, they all work together with all their might to aggravate the misery of which the lamentable spectacle is so vainly exposed under their eyes.

IV. Hunger.

Famine.--In the provinces.--At Paris.--People standing in lines under the Revolutionary government to obtain food. --Its quality.--Distress and chagrin.

Collot d'Herbois wrote from Lyons on November 6, 1793: "There is not two days' supply of provisions here." On the following day: "The present population of Lyons is one hundred and thirty thousand souls at least, and there is not sufficient subsistence for three days." Again the day after: "Our situation in relation to food is deplorable." Then, the next day: "Famine is beginning."[4245]--Near by, in the Montbrison district, in February, 1794, "there is no food or provisions left for the people;" all has been taken by requisition and carried off, even seed for planting, so that the fields lie fallow.[4246]--At Marseilles, "since the maximum, everything is lacking; even the fishermen no longer go out (on the sea) so that there is no supply of fish to live on."[4247]--At Cahors, in spite of multiplied requisitions, the Directory of Lot and Representative Taillefer[4248] state that "the inhabitants, for more than eight days, are reduced wholly to maslin bread composed of one-fifth of wheat and the rest of barley, barley-malt and millet."--At Nîmes,[4249] to make the grain supply last, which is giving out, the bakers and all private persons are ordered not to sift the meal, but to leave the bran in it and knead and bake the "dough such as it is."--At Grenoble,[4250] "the bakers have stopped baking; the country people no longer bring wheat in; the dealers hide away their goods, or put them in the hands of neighborly officials, or send them off."--"It goes from bad to worse," write the agents of Huningue;[4251] one might say even, that they would give this or that article to their cattle rather than sell it in conformity with the tax."--The inhabitants of towns are everywhere put on rations, and so small a ration as to scarcely keep them from dying with hunger. "Since my arrival in Tarbes," writes another agent,[4252] "every person is limited to half a pound of bread a day, composed one-third of wheat and two-thirds of corn meal." The next day after the fête in honor of the tyrant's death there was absolutely none at all. "A half-pound of bread is also allowed at Evreux,[4253] "and even this is obtained with a good deal of trouble, many being obliged to go into the country and get it from the farmers with coin." And even "they have got very little bread, flour or wheat, for they have been obliged to bring what they had to Evreux for the armies and for Paris."

It is worse at Rouen and at Bordeaux: at Rouen, in Brumaire, the inhabitants have only one quarter of a pound per head per diem of bread; at Bordeaux, "for the past three months," says the agent,[4254] "the people sleep at the doors of the bakeries, to pay high for bread which they often do not get... There has been no baking done to-day, and to-morrow only half a loaf will be given to each person. This bread is made of oats and beans... On days that there is none, beans, chestnuts and rice are distributed in very small quantities," four ounces of bread, five of rice or chestnuts. "I, who tell you this, have already eaten eight or ten meals without bread; I would gladly do without it if I could get potatoes in place of it, but these, too, cannot be had." Five months later, fasting still continues, and it lasts until after the reign of Terror, not alone in the town, but throughout the department. "In the district of Cadillac, says Tallien,[4255] "absolute dearth prevails; the citizens of the rural districts contend with each other for the grass in the fields; I have eaten bread made of dog-grass." Haggard and worn out, the peasant, with his pallid wife and children, resorts to the marsh to dig roots, while there is scarcely enough strength in his arms to hold the plough.--The same spectacle is visible in places which produce but little grain, or where the granaries have been emptied by the revolutionary drafts. "In many of the Indre districts," writes the representative on missions,[4256] "food is wanting absolutely. Even in some of the communes, many of the inhabitants are reduced to a frightful state of want, feeding on acorns, bran and other unhealthy food.... The districts of Châtre and Argenton, especially, will be reduced to starvation unless they are promptly relieved.... The cultivation of the ground is abandoned; most of the persons in the jurisdiction wander about the neighboring departments in search of food."--And it is doubtful whether they find it. In the department of Cher, "the butchers can no longer slaughter; the dealers' stores are all empty." In Allier, "the slaughterhouses and markets are deserted, every species of vegetable and aliment having disappeared; the inns are closed." In one of the Lozère districts, composed of five cantons, of which one produces an extra quantity of rye, the people live on requisitions imposed on Gard and the Upper Loire; the extortions of the representatives in these two departments "were distributed among the municipalities, and by these to the most indigent: many entire families, many of the poor and even of the rich, suffered for want of bread during six or eight days, and this frequently."[4257] Nevertheless they do not riot; they merely supplicate and stretch forth their hands "with tears in their eyes. "--Such is the diet and submission of the stomach in the provinces. Paris is less patient. For this reason, all the rest is sacrificed to it,[4258] not merely the public funds, the Treasury from which it gets one or two millions per week,[4259] but whole districts are starved for its benefit, six departments providing grain, twenty six departments providing pork,[4260] at the rate of the maximum, through requisitions, through the prospect of imprisonment and of the scaffold in case of refusal or concealment, under the predatory bayonets of the revolutionary army. The capital, above all, has to be fed. Let us see, under this system of partiality, how people live in Paris and what they feed on.

"Frightful crowds" at the doors of the bakeries, then at the doors of the butchers and grocers, then at the markets for butter, eggs, fish and vegetables, and then on the quay for wine, firewood and charcoal--such is the steady refrain of the police reports.[4261]--And this lasts uninterruptedly during the fourteen months of revolutionary government: long lines of people waiting in turn for bread, meat, oil, soap and candles, "queues for milk, for butter, for wood, for charcoal, queues everywhere!"[4262] "There was one queue beginning at the door of a grocery in the Petit Carreau stretching half way up the rue Montorgueil."[4263] These queues form at three o'clock in the morning, one o'clock and at midnight, increasing from hour to hour. Picture to yourself, reader, the file of wretched men and women sleeping on the pavement when the weather is fine[4264] and when not fine, standing up on stiff tottering legs; above all in winter, "the rain pouring on their backs," and their feet in the snow, for so many weary hours in dark, foul, dimly lighted streets strewed with garbage; for, for want of oil, one half of the street lamps are extinguished, and for lack of money, there is no repaving, no more sweeping, the offal being piled up against the walls.[4265] The crowd draggles along through it, likewise, nasty, tattered and torn, people with shoes full of holes, because the shoemakers do no more work for their customers, and in dirty shirts, because no more soap can be had to wash with, while, morally as well as physically, all these forlorn beings elbowing each other render themselves still fouler.--Promiscuousness, contact, weariness, waiting and darkness afford free play to the grosser instincts; especially in summer, natural bestiality and Parisian mischievousness have full play. "Lewd women"[4266] pursue their calling standing in the row; it is an interlude for them; "their provoking expressions, their immoderate laughter," is heard some distance off and they find it a convenient place: two steps aside, on the flank of the row, are "half open doors and dark alleys" which invite tête-à-tête; many of these women who have brought their mattresses "sleep there and commit untold abominations." What an example for the wives and daughters of steady workmen, for honest servants who hear and see! Men stop at each row and choose their dulcinea, while others, less shameless, pounce on the women like bulls and kiss them one after the other." Are not these the fraternal kisses of patriotic Jacobins? Do not Mayor Pache's wife and daughter go to the clubs and kiss drunken sans-culottes? And what says the guard?--It has enough to do to restrain another blind and deaf animal instinct, aroused as it is by suffering, anticipation and deception.

On approaching each butcher's stall before it opens "the porters, bending under the weight of a side of beef, quicken their steps so as not to be assailed by the crowd which presses against them, seeming to devour the raw meat with their eyes." They force a passage, enter the shop in the rear, and it seems as if the time for distributing the meat had come; the gendarmes, spurring their horses to a gallop, scatter the groups that are too dense; "rascals, in pay of the Commune," range the women in files, two and two, "shivering" in the cold morning air of December and January, awaiting their turn. Beforehand, however, the butcher, according to law, sets aside the portion for the hospitals, for pregnant women and others who are confined, for nurses, and besides, notwithstanding the law, he sets aside another portion for the revolutionary committee of the section, for the assistant commissioner and superintendent, for the pashas and semi pashas of the quarter, and finally for his rich customers who pay him extra.[4267] To this end, "porters with broad shoulders form an impenetrable rampart in front of the shop and carry away whole oxen;" after this is over, the women find the shop stripped, while many, after wasting their time for four mortal hours," go away empty handed.--With this prospect before them the daily assemblages get to be uneasy and the waves rise; nobody, except those at the head of the row, is sure of his pittance those that are behind regard enviously and with suppressed anger the person ahead of them. First come outcries, then jeering and then scuffling; the women rival the men in struggling and in profanity,[4268] and they hustle each other. The line suddenly breaks; each rushes to get ahead of the other; the foremost place belongs to the most robust and the most brutal, and to secure it they have to trample down their neighbors.

There are fisticuffs every day. When an assemblage remains quiet the spectators take notice of it. In general "they fight,[4269] snatch bread out of each other's hands; those who cannot get any forcing whoever gets a loaf weighing four pounds to share it in small pieces. The women yell frightfully.... Children sent by their parents are beaten," while the weak are pitched into the gutter. "In distributing the meanest portions of food[4270] it is force which decides," the strength of loins and arms; "a number of women this morning came near losing their lives in trying to get four ounces of butter.--More sensitive and more violent than men, "they do not, or will not, listen to reason,[4271] they pounce down like harpies" on the market wagons; they thrash the drivers, strew the vegetables and butter on the ground, tumble over each other and are suffocated through the impetuosity of the assault; some, "trampled upon, almost crushed, are carried off half dead." Everybody for himself. Empty stomachs feel that, to get anything, it is important to get ahead, not to await for the distribution, the unloading or even the arrival of the supplies.--"A boat laden with wine having been signaled, the crowd rushed on board to pillage it and the boat sunk," probably along with a good many of its invaders.[4272] Other gatherings at the barriers stop the peasants' wagons and take their produce before they reach the markets. Outside the barriers, children and women throw stones at the milkmen, forcing them to get down from their carts and distribute milk on the spot. Still further out, one or two leagues off on the highways, gangs from Paris go at night to intercept and seize the supplies intended for Paris. "This morning," says a watchman, "all the Faubourg St. Antoine scattered itself along the Vincennes road and pillaged whatever was on the way to the city; some paid, while others carried off without paying.... The unfortunate peasants swore that they would not fetch anything more," the dearth thus increasing through the efforts to escape it.

In vain the government makes its requisitions for Paris as if in a state of siege, and fixes the quantity of grain on paper which each department, district, canton, and commune, must send to the capital.--Naturally, each department, district, canton and commune strives to retain its own supplies, for charity begins at home.[4273] Especially in a village, the mayor and members of a municipality, themselves cultivators, are lukewarm when the commune is to be starved for the benefit of the capital. They declare a less return of grain than there really is; they allege reasons and pretexts. They mystify or suborn the commissioner on provisions, who is a stranger, incompetent and needy; they make him drink and eat, and, now and then, fill his pocket book. He slips over the accounts, he gives the village receipts on furnishing three-quarters or a half of the demand, often in spoilt or mixed grain or poor flour, while those who have no rusty wheat get it of their neighbors. Instead of parting with a hundred quintals they part with fifty, while the quantity of grain in the Paris markets is not only insufficient, but the grain blackens or sprouts and the flour grows musty. In vain the government makes clerks and depositaries of butchers and grocers, allowing them five or ten per cent. profit on retail sales of the food it supplies them with at wholesale, and thus creates in Paris, at the expense of all France, an artificial drop in prices. Naturally, the bread[4274] which, thanks to the State, costs three sous in Paris, is furtively carried out of Paris into the suburbs, where six sous are obtained for it. There is the same furtive leakage for other food furnished by the State on the same conditions to other dealers; the tax is a burden which forces them to go outside their shops. Food finds its level like water, not alone outside of Paris, but in Paris itself.

* Naturally, "the grocers peddle their goods" secretly, "sugar, candles, soap, butter, dried vegetables, meat pies and the rest," amongst private houses, in which these articles are bought at any price.

* Naturally, the butcher keeps his large pieces of beef and choice morsels for the large eating houses, and for rich customers who pay him whatever profit he asks.

* Naturally, whoever is in authority, or has the power, uses it to supply himself first, largely, and in preference; we have seen the levies of the revolutionary committees, superintendents and agents; as soon as rations are allotted to all mouths, each potentate will have several rations delivered for his mouth alone; in the meantime[4275] the patriots who guard the barriers appropriate all provisions that arrive, and the next morning, should any scolding appear in the orders of the day, it is but slight.

Such are the two results of the system: not only is the food which is supplied to Paris scant and poor, but the regular consumers of it, those who take their turn to get it, obtain but a small portion, and that the worst.[4276] A certain inspector, on going to the corn market for a sample of flour, writes "that it cannot be called flour;[4277] it is ground bran," and not a nutritive substance; the bakers are forced to take it, the markets containing for the most part no other supply than this flour."--Again, three weeks later, "Food is still very scarce and poor in quality. The bread is disagreeable to the taste and produces maladies with which many citizens are suffering, like dysentery and other inflammatory ailments." The same report, three months later during the month of Nivôse: "Complaints are constantly made of the poor quality of flour, which, it is said, makes a good many people ill; it causes severe pain in the intestines, accompanied with a slow fever.--During Ventôse, "the scarcity of every article is extremely great,"[4278] especially of meat. Some women in the Place Maubert, pass six hours in a line waiting for it, and do not get the quarter of a pound; in many stalls there is none at all, not "an ounce" being obtainable to make broth for the sick. Workmen do not get it in their shops and do without their soup; they live on "bread and salted herrings." A great many people groan over "not having eaten bread for a fortnight;" women say that "they have not had a dish of meat and vegetables (pot au feu) for a month." Meanwhile "vegetables are astonishingly scarce and excessively dear.... two sous for a miserable carrot, and as much for two small leeks." Out of two thousand women who wait at the central market for a distribution of beans, only six hundred receive any. Potatoes increase in price in one week from two to three francs a bushel, and oatmeal and ground peas triple in price. "The grocers have no more brown sugar, even for the sick," and sell candles and soap only by the half pound.--A fortnight later candles are wholly wanting in certain quarters, except in the section storehouse, which is almost empty, each person being allowed only one. A good many households go to rest at sundown for lack of lights and do not cook any dinner for lack of coal. Eggs, especially, are "honored as invisible divinities," while the absent butter "is a god."[4279] "If this lasts," say the workmen, "we shall have to cut each other's throats, since there is nothing left to live on."[4280] "Sick women,[4281] children in their cradles, lie outstretched in the sun," in the very heart of Paris, in rue Vivienne, on the Pont-Royal, and remain there "late in the night, demanding alms of the passers-by." "One is constantly stopped by beggars of both sexes, most of them healthy and strong," begging, they say, for lack of work. Without counting the feeble and the infirm who are unable to stand in a line, whose sufferings are visible, who gradually waste away and die without a murmur at home, "one encounters in the streets and markets" only famished and eager visages, "an immense crowd of citizens running and dashing against each other," crying out and weeping, "everywhere presenting an image of despair."[4282]

V. Revolutionary Remedies.

Revolutionary remedies.--Rigor against the refractory. --Decrees and orders rendering the State the only depositary and distributor of food.--Efforts made to establish a conscription of labor.--Discouragement of the Peasant.--He refuses to cultivate.--Decrees and orders compelling him to harvest.--His stubbornness.--Cultivators imprisoned by thousands.--The Convention is obliged to set them at liberty.--Fortunate circumstances which save France from extreme famine.

This penury only exists, say the Jacobins, because the laws against monopoly, and sales above the "maximum" prices are not being obeyed to the letter of the law. The egoism of the cultivator and the cupidity of dealers are not restrained by fear and delinquents escape too frequently from the legal penalty. Let us enforce this penalty rigorously; let us increase the punishment against them and their instruments; let us screw up the machine and give them a new wrench. A new estimate and verification of the food supply takes place, domiciliary searches, seizures of special stores regarded as too ample,[4283] limited rations for each consumer, a common and obligatory mess table for all prisoners, brown, égalité bread, mostly of bran, for every mouth that can chew, prohibition of the making of any other kind, confiscation of boulters and sieves,[4284] the "individual," personal responsibility of every administrator who allows the people he directs to resist or escape providing the demanded supplies, the sequestration of his property, imprisonment, fines, the pillory and the guillotine to hurry up requisitions, or stop free trading,--every terrifying method is driven to the utmost against the farmers and cultivators of the soil.

After April, 1794,[4285] crowds of this class are found filling the prisons to overflowing; the Revolution has struck them also. They stroll about in the court yard, and wander through the corridors with a sad, stupefied expression, no longer comprehending the way things are going on in the world. In vain are efforts made to explain to them that "their crops are national property and that they are simply its depositaries;"[4286] never had this new principle entered into, nor will it enter, their rude brains; always, through habit and instinct, will they work against it.--Let them be spared the temptation. Let us (the Jacobins) relieve them from, and, in fact, take their crops; let the State in France become the sole depositary and distributor of grain; let it solely buy and sell grain at a fixed rate. Consequently, at Paris,[4287] the Committee of Public Safety first puts "in requisition all the oats that can be found in the Republic; every holder of oats is required to deposit his stock on hand within eight days, in the storehouse indicated by the district administration "at the maximum" price; otherwise he is "a 'suspect' and must be punished as such." In the meantime, through still more comprehensive orders issued in the provinces, Paganel in the department of Tarn, and Dartigoyte in those of Gers and the Upper-Garonne,[4288] enjoin each commune to establish public granaries. "All citizens are ordered to bring in whatever produce they possess in grain, flour, wheat, maslin, rye, barley, oats, millet, buckwheat" at the "maximum" rate. Nobody shall keep on hand more than one month's supply, fifty pounds of flour or wheat for each person; in this way, the State, which holds in its hands the keys of the storehouses, may "carry out the salutary equalization of provisions" between department and department, district and district, commune and commune, individual and individual. A storekeeper will look after each of these well filled granaries; the municipality will itself deliver rations and, moreover, "take suitable steps to see that beans and vegetables, as they mature, be economically distributed under its supervision," at so much per head, and always at the rate of the "maximum." Otherwise, dismissal, imprisonment and prosecution "in the extraordinary criminal tribunal. "-This being accomplished, and the fruits of labor duly allotted, there remains only the allotment of labor itself. To effect this, Maignet,[4289] in Vaucluse, and in the Bouches du Rhône, prescribes for each municipality the immediate formation of two lists, one of day laborers and the other of proprietors. "All proprietors in need of a cultivator by the day," are to appear and ask for one at the municipality, which will assign the applicant as many as he wants, "in order on the list," with a card for himself and numbers for the designated parties. The laborer who does not enter his name on the list, or who exacts more than the "maximum" wages, is to be sentenced to the pillory with two years in irons. The same sentence with the addition of a fine of three hundred livres, is for every proprietor who employs any laborer not on the list or who pays more than the "maximum rate of wages.

After this, nothing more is necessary, in practice, than to

* draw up and keep in sight the new registries of names and figures made by the members of thirty thousand municipal boards, who cannot keep accounts and who scarcely know how to read and write;

* build a vast public granary, or put in requisition three or four barns in each commune, in which half dried and mixed grain may rot;

* pay two hundred thousand incorruptible storekeepers and measurers who will not divert anything from the depots for their friends or themselves;

* add to the thirty five thousand employees of the Committee on Provisions,[4290] five hundred thousand municipal scribes disposed to quit their trades or ploughs for the purpose of making daily distributions gratuitously; but more precisely, to maintain four or five millions of perfect gendarmes, one in each family, living with it, to help along the purchases, sales and transactions of each day and to verify at night the contents of the locker.

In short, to set one half of the French people as spies on the other half.--These are the conditions which secure the production and distribution of food, and which suffice for the institution throughout France of a conscription of labor and the captivity of grain.

Unfortunately, the peasant does not understand this theory, but he understands business; he makes close calculations, and the positive, patent, vulgar facts on which he reasons lead to other conclusions:[4291]

"In Messidor last they took all my last years' oats, at fourteen francs in assignats, and, in Thermidor, they are going to take all this year's oats, at eleven francs in assignats. At this rate I shall not sow at all. Besides, I do not need any for myself, as they have taken my horses for the army wagons. To raise rye and wheat, as much of it as formerly, is also working at a loss; I will raise no more than the little I want for myself, and again, I suppose that this will be put in requisition, even my supplies for the year! I had rather let my fields lie fallow. Just see now, they are taking all the live three months' pigs! Luckily, I killed mine be forehand and it is now in the pork barrel. But they are going to claim all salt provisions like the rest. The new grabbers are worse than the old ones. Six months more, and we shall all die of hunger. It is better to cross one's arms at once and go to prison; there, at least, we shall be fed and not have to work."

In effect, they allow themselves to be imprisoned, the best of the small cultivators and proprietors by thousands, and Lindet,[4292] at the head of the Commission on Provisions, speaks with dismay of the ground being no longer tilled, of cattle in France being no more abundant than the year before, and of nothing to be had to cut this year.

For a strange thing has happened, unheard of in Europe, almost incredible to any one familiar with the French peasant and his love of work. This field which he has ploughed, manured, harrowed and reaped with his own hands, its precious crop, the crop that belongs to him and on which he has feasted his eyes for seven months, now that it is ripe, he will not take the trouble to gather it; it would be bothering himself for some one else. As the crop that he sees there is for the government, let the government defray the final cost of getting it in; let it do the harvesting, the reaping, the putting it in sheaves, the carting and the thrashing in the barn.--Thereupon, the representatives on mission exclaim, each shouting in a louder or lower key, according to his character.

"Many of the cultivators," writes Dartigoyte,[4293] "affect a supreme indifference for this splendid crop. One must have seen it, as I have, to believe how great the neglect of the wheat is in certain parts, how it is smothered by the grass.... Draft, if the case requires it, a certain number of inhabitants in this or that commune to work in another one.... Every man who refuses to work, except on the 'decade' day, must be punished as an ill-disposed citizen, as a royalist."--

"Generous friends of nature," writes Ferry,[4294] introduce amongst you, perpetuate around you, the habit of working in common and begin with the present crop. Do not spare either indolent women or indolent men, those social parasites, many of whom you doubtless have in your midst. What! allow lazy men and lazy women where we are! Where should we find a Republican police?... Immediately on the reception of this present order the municipal officers of each commune will convoke all citoyennes in the Temple of the Eternal and urge them, in the name of the law, to devote themselves to the labors of harvesting. Those women who fail in this patriotic duty, shall be excluded from the assemblies, from the national festivals, while all good citoyennes are requested to repel them from their homes. All good citizens are requested to give to this rural festivity that sentimental character which befits it."

--And the programme is carried out, here in idyllic shape and there under compulsion. Around Avignon,[4295] the commanding officer, the battalions of volunteers, and patriotic ladies, "the wives and daughters of patriots," inscribe themselves as harvesters. Around Arles, "the municipality drafts all the inhabitants; patrols are sent into the country to compel all who are engaged on other work to leave it and do the harvesting." The Convention, on its side, orders[4296] the release, "provisionally, of all ploughmen, day-laborers, reapers, and professional artisans and brewers, in the country and in the market towns and communes, the population of which is not over twelve hundred inhabitants, and who are confined as 'suspects.' "--In other terms, physical necessity has imposed silence on the inept theory; above all things, the crop must be harvested, and indispensable arms be restored to the field of labor. The governors of France are compelled to put on the brake, if only for an instant, at the last moment, at sight of the yawning abyss, of approaching and actual famine; France was then gliding into it, and, if not engulfed, it is simply a miracle.

Four fortunate circumstances, at the last hour, concur to keep her suspended on the hither brink of the precipice.--The winter chances to be exceptionally mild.[4297] The vegetables which make up for the absence of bread and meat provide food for April and May, while the remarkably fine harvest, almost spontaneous, is three weeks in advance.--Another, and the second piece of good fortune, consists in the great convoy from America, one hundred and sixteen vessels loaded with grain, which reached Brest on the 8th of June, 1794, in spite of English cruisers, thanks to the sacrifice of the fleet that protected it and which, eight days previously, had succumbed in its behalf. The third stroke of fortune is the entry of a victorious army into the enemies country and feeding itself through foreign requisitions, in Belgium, in the Palatinate and on the frontier provinces of Italy and Spain.--Finally, most fortunate of all, Robespierre, Saint Just and Couthon, the Paris commune and the theorist Jacobins, are guillotined on the 23rd of July, and with them falls despotic socialism. Henceforth, the Jacobin edifice crumbles, owing to great crevices in its walls. The "maximum," in fact, is no longer maintained, while the Convention, at the end of December, 1794, legally abolishes it. The farmers now sell as they please and at two prices, according as they are paid in assignats or coin; their hope, confidence and courage are restored; in October and November, 1794, they voluntarily do their own plowing and planting, and still more gladly will they gather in their own crops in July, 1795. Nevertheless, we can judge by the discouragement into which they had been plunged by four months of the system, the utter prostration into which they would have fallen had the system lasted an indefinite time. It is very probable that cultivation at the end of one or two years would have proved unproductive or have ceased altogether. Already, subject to every sort of exhortation and threat, the peasant had remained inert, apparently deaf and insensible, like an overloaded beast of burden which, so often struck, grows obstinate or sinks down and refuses to move. It is evident that he would have never stirred again could Saint-Just, holding him by the throat, have bound him hand and foot, as he had done at Strasbourg, in the multiplied knots of his Spartan Utopia. We should have seen what labor and the stagnation it produces comes to, when managed through State maneuvers by administrative manikins and humanitarian automatons. This experiment had been tried in China, in the eleventh century, and according to principles, long and regularly, by a well manipulated and omnipotent State, on the most industrious and soberest people in the world, and men died in myriads like flies. If the French, at the end of 1794 and during the following years did not die like flies, it was because the Jacobin system was relaxed too soon.[4298]

VI. Relaxation.

Relaxation of the Revolutionary system after Thermidor. --Repeal of the Maximum.--New situation of the peasant.--He begins to cultivation again.--Requisition of grain by the State.--The cultivator indemnifies himself at the expense of private persons.--Multiplication and increasing decline of Assignats. The classes who have to bear the burden.--Famine and misery during year III, and the first half of year IV. --In the country.--In the small towns.--In large towns and cities.

But, if the Jacobin system, in spite of its surviving founders, gradually relaxes after Thermidor; if the main ligature tied around the man's neck, broke just as the man was strangling, the others that still bind him hold him tight, except as they are loosened in places; and, as it is, some of the straps, terribly stiffened, sink deeper and deeper into his flesh.--In the first place, the requisitions continue there is no other way of provisioning the armies and the cities; the gendarme is always on the road, compelling each village to contribute its portion of grain, and at the legal rate. The refractory are subject to keepers, confiscations, fines and imprisonment; they are confined and kept in the district lock ups "at their own expense," men and women, twenty two on Pluviôse 17, year III., in the district of Bar-sur-Aube; forty five, Germinal 7, in the district of Troyes; forty-five, the same day, in the district of Nogent-sur-Seine, and twenty others, eight days later, in the same district, in the commune of Traine alone.[4299]--The condition of the cultivator is certainly not an easy one, while public authority, aided by the public force, extorts from him all it can at a rate of its own; moreover, it will soon exact from him one half of his contributions in kind, and, it must be noted, that at this time, the direct contributions alone absorb twelve and thirteen sous on the franc of the revenue. Nevertheless, under this condition, which is that of laborers in a Muslim country, the French peasant, like the Syrian or Tunisian peasant, can keep himself alive; for, through the abolition of the "maximum," private transactions are now free, and, to indemnify himself on this side, he sells to private individuals and even to towns,[42100] by agreement, on understood terms, and as dear as he pleases; all the dearer because through the legal requisitions the towns are half empty, and there are fewer sacks of grain for a larger number of purchasers; hence his losses by the government are more than made up by his gains on private parties; he gains in the end, and that is why he persists in farming.

The weight, however, of which he relieves himself falls upon the overburdened buyer, and this weight, already excessive, goes on increasing, through another effect of the revolutionary institution, until it becomes ten-fold and even a hundred-fold.--The only money, in fact, which private individuals possess melts away in their hands, and, so to say, destroys itself. When the guillotine stops working, the assignat, losing its official value, falls to its real value. In August, 1794, the loss on it is sixty six per cent., in October, seventy two per cent., in December, seventy eight per cent., in January, 1795, eighty one per cent., and after that date the constant issues of enormous amounts, five hundred millions, then a billion, a billion and a half, and, finally, two billions a month, hastens its depreciation.[42101] The greater the depreciation of the assignats the greater the amount the government is obliged to issue to provide for its expenses, and the more it issues the more it causes their depreciation, so that the decline which increases the issue increases the depreciation, until, finally, the assignat comes down to nothing. On March II, 1795, the louis d'or brings two hundred and five francs in assignats, May 11, four hundred francs, June 12, one thousand francs, in the month of October, one thousand seven hundred francs, November 13, two thousand eight hundred and fifty francs, November 21 three thousand francs, and six months later, nineteen thousand francs. Accordingly, an assignat of one hundred francs is worth in June, 1795, four francs, in August three francs, in November fifteen sous, in December ten sous, and then five sous. Naturally, all provisions rise proportionately in price. A pound of bread in Paris, January 2, 1796, costs fifty francs, a pound of meat sixty francs, a pound of candles one hundred and eighty francs, a bushel of potatoes two hundred francs, a bottle of wine one hundred francs. The reader may imagine, if he can, the distress of people with small incomes, pensioners and employees, mechanics and artisans in the towns out of work,[42102] in brief, all who have nothing but a small package of assignats to live on, and who have nothing to do, whose indispensable wants are not directly supplied by the labor of their own hands in producing wine, candles, meat, potatoes and bread.

Immediately after the abolition of the "maximum,"[42103] the cry of hunger increases. From month to month its accents become more painful and vehement in proportion to the increased dearness of provisions, especially in the summer of 1795, as the harvesting draws near, when the granaries, filled by the crop of 1794, are getting empty. And these hungering cries go up by millions: for a good many of the departments in France do not produce sufficient grain for home consumption, this being the case in fertile wheat departments, and likewise in certain districts; cries also go up from the large and small towns, while in each village numbers of peasants fast because they have no land to provide them with food, or because they lack strength, health, employment and wages. "For a fortnight past," writes a municipal body in Seine-et-Marne,[42104] "at least two hundred citizens in our commune are without bread, grain and flour; they have had no other food than bran and vegetables. We see with sorrow children deprived of nourishment, their nurses without milk, unable to suckle them; old men falling down through inanition, and young men in the fields too weak to stand up to their work." And other communes in the district "are about in the same condition." The same spectacle is visible throughout the Ile-de-France, Normandy, and in Picardy. Around Dieppe, in the country,[42105] entire communes support themselves on herbs and bran. "Citizen representatives," write the administrators, "we can no longer maintain ourselves. Our fellow citizens reproach us with having despoiled them of their grain in favor of the large communes."--"All means of subsistence are exhausted," writes the district of Louviers;[42106] "we are reduced here for a month past to eating bran bread and boiled herbs, and even this rude food is getting scarce. Bear in mind that we have seventy-one thousand people to govern, at this very time subject to all the horrors of famine, a large number of them having already perished, some with hunger and others with diseases engendered by the poor food they live on. "--In the Caen district,[42107] "the unripe peas, horse peas, beans, and green barley and rye are attacked;" mothers and children go after these in the fields in default of other food; "other vegetables in the gardens are already consumed; furniture, the comforts of the well to do class, have become the prey of the farming egoist; having nothing more to sell they consequently have nothing with which to obtain a morsel of bread."

"It is impossible," writes the representative on mission, "to wait for the crop without further aid. As long as bran lasted the people ate that; none can now be found and despair is at its height. I have not seen the sun since I came. The harvest will be a month behind. What shall we do? What will become of us?"--"In Picardy," writes the Beauvais district, "the great majority of people in the rural communes search the woods" to find mushrooms, berries and wild fruits.[42108] "They think themselves lucky," says the Bapaume district, "if they can get a share of the food of animals." "In many communes," the district of Vervier reports, "the inhabitants are reduced to living on herbage." "Many families, entire communes," reports the Laon commissary, "have been without bread two or three months and live on bran or herbs.... Mothers of families, children, old men, pregnant women, come to the (members of the) Directory for bread and often faint in their arms.

And yet, great as the famine is in the country it is worse in the towns; and the proof of it is that the starving people flock into the country to find whatever they can to live on, no matter how, and, generally speaking, in vain.--"Three quarters of our fellow citizens," writes the Rozoy municipality,[42109] "are forced to quit work and overrun the country here and there, among the farmers, to obtain bread for specie, and with more entreaty than the poorest wretches; for the most part, they return with tears in their eyes at not being able to find, not merely a bushel of wheat, but a pound of bread." "Yesterday," writes the Montreuil-sur-Mer municipality,[42110] "more than two hundred of our citizens set out to beg in the country," and, when they get nothing, they steal. "Bands of brigands[42111] spread through the country and pillage all dwellings anywise remote. ... Grain, flour, bread, cattle, poultry, stuffs, etc., all come in play. Our terrified shepherds are no longer willing to sleep in their sheep pens and are leaving us." The most timid dig Carrots at night or, during the day, gather dandelions; but their town stomachs cannot digest this food. "Lately," writes the procureur--syndic of Saint-Germain,[42112] "the corpse of a father of a family, found in the fields with his mouth still filled with the grass he had striven to chew, exasperates and arouses the spirit of the poor creatures awaiting a similar fate."

What then, do people in the towns do in order to survive?--In small towns or scattered villages, each municipality, using what gendarmes it has, makes legal requisitions in its vicinity, and sometimes the commune obtains from the government a charitable gift of wheat, oats, rice or assignats. But the quantity of grain it receives is so small, one asks how it is that, after two months, six months or a year of such a system, that half of the inhabitants are not in the grave yard. I suppose that many of them live on what they raise in their gardens, or on their small farms; others are helped by their relations, neighbors and companions; in any event, it is clear that the human body is very resistant, and a few mouthfuls suffice to keep it going a long time.--At Ervy,[42113] in Aube, "not a grain of wheat has been brought in the last two market days." "To morrow,[42114] Prairial 25, in Bapaume, the main town of the district, there will be only two bushels of flour left (for food of any sort)." "At Boulogne-sur-Mer, for the past ten days, there has been distributed to each person only three pounds of bad barley, or maslin, without knowing whether we can again distribute this miserable ration next decade." Out of sixteen hundred inhabitants in Brionne, "twelve hundred and sixty[42115] are reduced to the small portion of wheat they receive at the market, and which, unfortunately, for too long a time, has been reduced from eight to three ounces of wheat for each person, every eight days." For three months past, in Seine et Marne,[42116] in "the commune of Meaux, that of Laferté, Lagny, Daumartin, and other principal towns of the canton, they have had only half a pound per head, for each day, of bad bread." In Seine et Oise, "citizens of the neighborhood of Paris and even of Versailles[42117] state that they are reduced to four ounces of bread." At Saint-Denis,[42118] with a population of six thousand, "a large part of the inhabitants, worn out with suffering, betake themselves to the charity depots. Workmen, especially, cannot do their work for lack of food. A good many women, mothers and nurses, have been found in their houses unconscious, without any sign of life in them, and many have died with their infants at their breasts." Even in a larger and less forsaken town, Saint-Germain,[42119] the misery surpasses all that one can imagine. "Half-a-pound of flour for each inhabitant," not daily, but at long intervals; "bread at fifteen and sixteen francs the pound and all other provisions at the same rate; a people which is sinking, losing hope and perishing. Yesterday, for the fête of the 9th of Thermidor, not a sign of rejoicing; on the contrary, symptoms of general and profound depression, tottering specters in the streets, mournful shrieks of ravaging hunger or shouts of rage, almost every one, driven to the last extremity of misery, welcoming death as a boon."

Such is the aspect of these huge artificial agglomerations, where the soil, made sterile by habitation, bears only stones, and where twenty, thirty, fifty and a hundred thousand suffering stomachs have to obtain from ten, twenty and thirty leagues off their first and last mouthful of food. Within these close pens long lines of human sheep huddle together every day bleating and trembling around almost empty troughs, and only through extraordinary efforts do the shepherds daily succeed in providing them with a little nourishment. The central government, strenuously appealed to, enlarges or defines the circle of their requisitions; it authorizes them to borrow, to tax themselves; it lends or gives to them millions of assignats;[42120] frequently, in cases of extreme want, it allows them to take so much grain or rice from its storehouses, for a week's supply.--But, in truth, this sort of life is not living, it is only not dying. For one half, and more than one half of the inhabitants simply subsist on rations of bread obtained by long waiting for it at the end of a string of people and delivered at a reduced price. What rations and what bread!"It seems," says the municipality of Troyes, "that[42121] the country has anathematized the towns. Formerly, the finest grain was brought to market; the farmer kept the inferior quality and consumed it at home. Now it is the reverse, and this is carried still further, for, not only do we receive no wheat whatever, but the farmers give us sprouted barley and rye, which they reserve for our commune; the farmer who has none arranges with those who have, so as to buy it and deliver it in town, and sell his good wheat elsewhere. Half a pound per day and per head, in Pluviôse, to the thirteen thousand or fourteen thousand indigent in Troyes; then a quarter of a pound, and, finally, two ounces with a little rice and some dried vegetables, "which feeble resource is going to fail us."[42122] Half a pound in Pluviôse, to the twenty thousand needy in Amiens, which ration is only nominal, for "it often happens that each individual gets only four ounces, while the distribution has repeatedly failed three days in succession,'' and this continues. Six months later, Fructidor 7, Amiens has but sixty nine quintals of flour in its market storehouse, "an insufficient quantity for distribution this very day; to morrow, it will be impossible to make any distribution at all, and the day after to morrow the needy population of this commune will be brought down to absolute famine."--"Complete desperation! There are already "many suicides."[42123] At other times, rage predominates and there are riots. At Evreux,[42124] Germinal 21, a riot breaks out, owing to the delivery of only two pounds of flour per head and per week, and because three days before, only a pound and a half was delivered. There is a riot at Dieppe,[42125] Prairial 14 and 15, because "the people are reduced here to three or four ounces of bread." There is another at Vervins, Prairial 9, because the municipality which obtains bread at a cost of seven and eight francs a pound, raises the price from twenty-five to fifty sous. At Lille, an insurrection breaks out Messidor 4, because the municipality, paying nine francs for bread, can give it to the poor only for about twenty and thirty sous.--Lyons, during the month of Nivôse, remains without bread "for five full days."[42126] At Chartres, Thermidor 15,[42127] the distribution of bread for a month is only eight ounces a day, and there is not enough to keep this up until the 20th of Thermidor. On the fifteenth of Fructidor, La Rochelle writes that "its public distributions, reduced to seven or eight ounces of bread, are on the point of failing entirely." For four months, at Painboeuf, the ration is but the quarter of a pound of bread.[42128] And the same at Nantes, which has eighty-two thousand inhabitants and swarms with the wretched; "the distribution never exceeded four ounces a day," and that only for the past year. The same at Rouen, which contains sixty thousand inhabitants; and, in addition, within the past fortnight the distribution has failed three times. In other reports, those who are well-off suffer more than the indigent because they take no part in the communal distribution, "all resources for obtaining food being, so to say, interdicted to them."--Five ounces of bread per diem for four months is the allowance to the forty thousand inhabitants of Caen and its district.[42129] A great many in the town, as well as in the country, live on bran and wild herbs." At the end of Prairial, "there is not a bushel of grain in the town storehouses, while the requisitions, enforced in the most rigorous and imposing style, produce nothing or next to nothing." Misery augments from week to week: "it is impossible to form any idea of it; the people of Caen live on brown bread and the blood of cattle. ... Every countenance bears traces of the famine... Faces are of livid hue.... It is impossible to await the new crop, until the end of Fructidor."--Such are the exclamations everywhere. The object now, indeed, is to cross the narrowest and most terrible defile; a fortnight more of absolute fasting and hundreds of thousands of lives would be sacrificed.[42130] At this moment the government half opens the doors of its storehouses; it lends a few sacks of flour on condition of re-payment,--for example, at Cherbourg a few hundreds of quintals of oats; by means of oat bread, the poor can subsist until the coming harvest. But above all, it doubles its guard and shows its bayonets. At Nancy, a traveler sees[42131] "more than three thousand persons soliciting in vain for a few pounds of flour." They are dispersed with the butt-ends of muskets.--Thus are the peasantry taught patriotism and the townspeople patience. Physical constraint exercised on all in the name of all; this is the only procedure which an arbitrary socialism can resort to for the distribution of food and to discipline starvation.

VII. Misery at Paris.

Famine and misery at Paris.--Steps taken by the government to feed the capital.--Monthly cost to the Treasury.--Cold and hunger in the winter of 1794-1795.--Quality of the bread.--Daily rations diminished.--Suffering, especially of the populace.--Excessive physical suffering, despair, suicides, and deaths from exhaustion in 1795.--Government dinners and suppers.--Number of lives lost through want and war.--Socialism as applied, and its effects on comfort, well-being and mortality.

Anything that a totalitarian government may do to ensure that the capital is supplied with food is undertaken and carried out by this one, for here is its seat, and one more degree of dearth in Paris would overthrow it. Each week, on reading the daily reports of its agents,[42132] it finds itself on the verge of explosion; twice, in Germinal and Prairial, a popular outbreak does overthrow it for a few hours, and, if it maintains itself, it is on the condition of either giving the needy a piece of bread or the hope of getting it. Consequently, military posts are spaced out around Paris, up to eighteen leagues off, on all the highways; permanent patrols in correspondence with each other to urge on the wagoners and draft relays of horses on the spot. Escorts dispatched from Paris to meet convoys;[42133] requisition "all the carts and all the horses whatever to effect transportation in preference to any other work or service." All communes traversed by a highway are ordered to put rubble and manure on the bad spots and cover the whole way with a layer of soil, so that the horses may drag their loads in spite of the slippery road. The national agents are ordered to draft the necessary number of men to break the ice around the water-mills.[42134] A requisition is made for "all the barley throughout the length and breadth of the Republic, "this must be utilized to produce "the mixture for making bread," while the brewers are forbidden to use barley in the manufacture of beer; the starch makers are forbidden to convert potatoes into starch, with penalty of death against all offenders "as destroyers of alimentary produce;" the breweries and starch-factories[42135] are to be closed until further notice. Paris must have grain, no matter of what kind, no matter how, and at any cost, not merely in the following week, but to-morrow, this very day, because hunger chews and swallows everything, and it will not wait.--Once the grain is obtained, a price must be fixed which people can pay. Now, the difference between the selling and cost price is enormous; it keeps on increasing as the assignat declines and it is the government which pays this. "You furnish bread at three sous," said Dubois-Crancé, Floréal 16, year III,[42136] "and it costs you four francs. Paris consumes 8,000 quintals of meal daily, which expenditure alone amounts to 1,200 millions per annum." Seven months later, when a bag of flour brings 13,000 francs, the same expenditure reaches 546 millions per month.--Under the ancient régime, Paris, although overgrown, continued to be an useful organism; if it absorbed much, it elaborated more; its productiveness compensated for what it consumed, and, every year, instead of exhausting the public treasury it poured 77 millions into it. The new régime has converted it into a monstrous canker in the very heart of France, a devouring parasite which, through its six hundred thousand leeches, drains its surroundings for a distance of forty leagues, consumes one-half the annual revenue of the State, and yet still remains emaciated in spite of the sacrifices made by the treasury it depletes and the exhaustion of the provinces which supply it with food.

Always the same alimentary system, the same long lines of people waiting at, and before, dawn in every quarter of Paris, in the dark, for a long time, and often to no purpose, subject to the brutalities of the strong and the outrages of the licentious! On the 9th of Thermidor, the daily trot of the multitude in quest of food has lasted uninterruptedly for seventeen months, accompanied with outrages of the worst kind because there is less terror and less submissiveness, with more obstinacy because provisions at free sale are dearer, with greater privation because the ration distributed is smaller, and with more sombre despair because each household, having consumed its stores, has nothing of its own to make up for the insufficiencies of public charity.--And to cap it all, the winter of 1794-1795 is so cold[42137] that the Seine freezes and people cross the Loire on foot. Rafts no longer arrive and, to obtain fire-wood, it is necessary "to cut down trees at Boulogne, Vincennes, Verrières, St. Cloud, Meudon and two other forests in the vicinity." Fuel costs "four hundred francs per cord of wood, forty sous for a bushel of charcoal, twenty sous for a small basket. The needy are seen in the streets sawing the wood of their bedsteads to cook with and to keep from freezing." On the resumption of transportation by water amongst the cakes of ice "rafts are sold as fast as the raftsmen can haul the wood out of the water, the people being obliged to pass three nights at the landing to get it, each in turn according to his number." "On Pluviôse 3 at least two thousand persons are at the Louviers landing," each with his card allowing him four sticks at fifteen sous each. Naturally, there is pulling, hauling, tumult and a rush; "the dealers take to flight for fear, and the inspectors come near being murdered;" they get away along with the police commissioner and "the public helps itself." Likewise, the following day, there is "an abominable pillage;" the gendarmes and soldiers placed there to maintain order, "make a rush for the wood and carry it away together with the crowd." Bear in mind that on this day the thermometer is sixteen degrees below zero, that one hundred, two hundred other lines of people likewise stand waiting at the doors of bakers and butchers, enduring the same cold, and that they have already endured it and will yet endure it a month and more. Words are wanting to describe the sufferings of these long lines of motionless beings, during the night, at daybreak, standing there five or six hours, with the blast driving through their rags and their feet freezing.--Ventôse is beginning, and the ration of bread is reduced to a pound and a half;[42138] Ventôse ends, and the ration of bread, kept at a pound and a half for the three hundred and twenty-four laborers, falls to one pound; in fact, a great many get none at all, many only a half and a quarter of a pound. Germinal follows and the Committee of Public Safety, finding that its magazines are giving out, limits all rations to a quarter of a pound. Thereupon, on the 12th of Germinal, an insurrection of workmen and women breaks out; the Convention is invaded and liberated by military force. Paris is declared in a state of siege and the government, again in the saddle, tightens the reins. Thenceforth, the ration of meat served out every four or five days, is a quarter of a pound; bread averages every day, sometimes five, sometimes six and sometimes seven ounces, at long intervals eight ounces, often three, two and one ounce and a half, or even none at all; while this bread, black and "making mischief," becomes more and more worthless and detestable.[42139] People who are well off live on potatoes, but only for them, for, in the middle of Germinal, these cost fifteen francs the bushel and, towards the end, twenty francs; towards the end of Messidor, forty-five francs; in the first month of the Directory, one hundred and eighty francs, and then two hundred and eighty-four francs, whilst other produce goes up at the same rates.--After the abolition of the "maximum" the evil springs not from a lack of provisions, but from their dearness: the shops are well supplied. Whoever comes with a full purse gets what he wants[42140]: The former rich, the property owners and large capitalists, may eat on the condition that they hand their bundles of assignats over, that they withdrawing their last louis from its hiding-place, that they sell their jewelry, clocks, furniture and clothes. And the nouveaux rich, the speculators, the suppliers, the happy and extravagant robbers, spend four hundred, one thousand, three thousand, then five thousand francs for their dinner, and revel in the great eating establishments on fine wines and exquisite cheer: the burden of the scarcity is transferred to other shoulders.--At present, the class which suffers, and which suffers beyond all bounds of patience is, together with employees and people with small incomes,[42141] the crowd of workmen, the City plebeians, the low Parisian populace

* which lives from day to day,

* which is Jacobin at heart,

* which made the Revolution in order to better itself,

* which finds itself worse off,

* which gets up one insurrection more on the 1st of Prairial,

* which forcibly enters the Tuileries yelling "Bread and the Constitution of '93,"

* which installs itself as sovereign in the Convention,

* which murders the Representative Féraud,

* which decrees a return to Terror, but which, put down by the National Guard, disarmed and forced back into lasting obedience, has only to submit to the consequences of its own outrages, the socialism it has itself instituted and the economical system it itself has organized.

Because the workers of Paris have been usurpers and tyrants they are now beggars. Owing to the ruin brought on proprietors and capitalists by them, individuals can no longer employ them. Owing to the ruin they have brought on the Treasury, the State can provide them with only the semblance of charity, and hence, while all are compelled to go hungry, a great many die, and many commit suicide.

* On Germinal 6th, "Section of the Observatory,"[42142] at the distribution, "forty-one persons had been without bread; several pregnant women desired immediate confinement so as to destroy their infants; others asked for knives to stab themselves."

* On Germinal 8th," a large number of persons who had passed the night at the doors of the bakeries were obliged to leave without getting any bread."

* On Germinal 24th, "the police commissioner of the Arsenal section states that many become ill for lack of food, and that he buries quite a number.... The same day, he has heard of five or six citizens, who, finding themselves without bread, and unable to get other food, throw themselves into the Seine."

* Germinal 27, "the women say that they feel so furious and are in such despair on account of hunger and want that they must inevitably commit some act of violence.... In the section of 'Les Amis de la Patrie,' one half have no bread.... Three persons tumbled down through weakness on the Boulevard du Temple."

* Floréal 2, "most of the workmen in the 'République' section are leaving Paris on account of the scarcity of bread."

* Floréal 5, "eighteen out of twenty-four inspectors state that patience is exhausted and that things are coming to an end."

* Floréal 14, "the distribution is always unsatisfactory on account of the four-ounce ration; two thirds of the citizens do without it. One woman, on seeing the excitement of her husband and her four children who had been without bread for two days, trailed through the gutter tearing her hair and striking her head; she then got up in a state of fury and attempted to drown herself."

* Floréal 20, "all exclaim that they cannot live on three ounces of bread, and, again, of such bad quality. Mothers and pregnant women fall down with weakness."

* Floréal 21, "the inspectors state that they encounter many persons in the streets who have fallen through feebleness and inanition."

* Floréal 23, "a citoyenne who had no bread for her child tied it to her side and jumped into the river. Yesterday, an individual named Mottez, in despair through want, cut his throat."

* Floréal 25, "several persons, deprived of any means of existence, gave up in complete discouragement, and fell down with weakness and exhaustion.... In the 'Gravilliers' section, two men were found dead with inanition.... The peace officers report the decease of several citizens; one cut his throat, while another was found dead in his bed." Floréal 28, "numbers of people sink down for lack of something to eat; yesterday, a man was found dead and others exhausted through want."

* Prairial 24, "Inspector Laignier states that the indigent are compelled to seek nourishment in the piles of garbage on the corners."

* Messidor 1,[42143] "the said Picard fell through weakness at ten o'clock in the morning in the rue de la Loi, and was only brought to at seven o'clock in the evening; he was carried to the hospital on a hand-barrow."

* Messidor 11, "There is a report that the number of people trying to drown themselves is so great that the nets at St. Cloud scarcely suffice to drag them out of the water."

* Messidor 19, "A man was found on the corner of a street just dead with hunger."

* Messidor 27, "At four o'clock in the afternoon, Place Maubert, a man named Marcelin, employed in the Jardin des Plantes, fell down through starvation and died while assistance was being given to him." On the previous evening, the anniversary of the taking of the Bastille, a laborer on the Pont-au-Change, says "I have eaten nothing all day. ''Another replies: "I have not been home because I have nothing to give to my wife and children, dying with hunger." About the same date, a friend of Mallet-Dupan writes to him "that he is daily witness to people amongst the lower classes dying of inanition in the streets; others, and principally women, have nothing but garbage to live on, scraps of refuse vegetables and the blood running out of the slaughter houses. Laborers, generally, work on short time on account of their lack of strength and of their exhaustion for want of food."[42144]--

Thus ends the rule of the Convention. Well has it looked out for the interests of the poor! According to the reports of its own inspectors, "famished stomachs on all sides cry vengeance, beat to arms and sound the tocsin of alarm[42145].... Those who have to dwell daily on the sacrifices they make to keep themselves alive declare that there is no hope except in death." Are they going to be relieved by the new government which the Convention imposes on them with thunders of artillery and in which it perpetuates itself?[42146]--

* Brumaire 28, "Most of the workmen in the 'Temple' and 'Gravilliers' sections have done no work for want of bread."

* Brumaire 24, "Citizens of all classes refuse to mount guard because they have nothing to eat."

* Brumaire 25, "In the 'Gravilliers' section the women say that they have sold all that they possessed, while others, in the 'Faubourg-Antoine' section, declare that it would be better to be shot down."

* Brumaire 30, "A woman beside herself came and asked a baker to kill her children as she had nothing to give them to eat."

* Frimaire 1, 2, 3, and 4, "In many of the sections bread is given out only in the evening, in others at one o'clock in the morning, and of very poor quality.... Several sections yesterday had no bread."

* Frimaire 7, the inspectors declare that "the hospitals soon will not be vast enough to hold the sick and the wretched."

* Frimaire 14, At the central market a woman nursing her child sunk down with inanition." A few days before this, "a man fell down from weakness, on his way to Bourg l'Abbé."

"All our reports," say the district administrators, "resound with shrieks of despair." People are infatuated; "it seems to us that a crazy spirit prevails universally, we often encounter people in the street who, although alone, gesticulate and talk to themselves aloud." "How many times," writes a Swiss traveller,[42147] who lived in Paris during the latter half of 1795, "how often have I chanced to encounter men sinking through starvation, scarcely able to stand up against a post, or else down on the ground and unable to get up for want of strength!" A journalist states that he saw "within ten minutes, along the street, seven poor creatures fall on account of hunger, a child die on its mother's breast which was dry of milk, and a woman struggling with a dog near a sewer to get a bone away from him."[42148] Meissner never leaves his hotel without filling his pockets with pieces of the national bread. "This bread," he says, "which the poor would formerly have despised, I found accepted with the liveliest gratitude, and by well educated persons;" the lady who contended with the dog for the bone was a former nun, without either parents or friends and everywhere repulsed." "I still hear with a shudder," says Meissner, "the weak, melancholy voice of a well-dressed woman who stopped me in the rue du Bac, to tell me in accents indicative both of shame and despair: 'Ah, Sir, do help me! I am not an outcast. I have some talent--you may have seen some of my works in the salon. I have had nothing to eat for two days and I am crazy for want of food.'" Again, in June, 1796, the inspectors state that despair and despondency have reached the highest point, only one cry being heard-misery!.... Our reports all teem with groans and complaints.. .. Pallor and suffering are stamped on all faces.... Each day presents a sadder and more melancholy aspect." And repeatedly,[42149] they sum up their scattered observations in a general statement:

* "A mournful silence, the deepest distress on every countenance;

* the most intense hatred of the government in general developed in all conversations;

* contempt for all existing authority;

* an insolent luxuriousness, insulting to the wretchedness of the poor rentiers who expire with hunger in their garrets, no longer possessing the courage to crawl to the Treasury and get the wherewithal to prolong their misery for a few days;

* the worthy father of a family daily deciding what article of furniture he will sell to make up for what is lacking in his wages that he may buy a half-pound of bread;

* every sort of provision increasing in price sixty times an hour;

* the smallest business dependent on the fall of assignats;

* intriguers of all parties overthrowing each other only to get offices;

* the intoxicated soldier boasting of the services he has rendered and is to render, and abandoning himself shamelessly to every sort of debauchery;

* commercial houses transformed into dens of thieves;

* rascals become traders and traders become rascals; the most sordid cupidity and a mortal egoism--such is the picture presented by Paris."[42150]

One group is wanting in this picture, that of the governors who preside over this wretchedness, which group remains in the background; one might say that it was so designed and composed by some great artist, a lover of contrasts, an inexorable logician, whose invisible hand traces human character unvaryingly, and whose mournful irony unfailingly depicts side by side, in strong relief, the grotesqueness of folly and the seriousness of death. How many perished on account of this misery? Probably more than a million persons.[42151]--

Try to take in at a glance the extraordinary spectacle presented on twenty-six thousand square leagues of territory:

* The immense multitude of the starving in town and country,

* the long lines of women for three years waiting for bread in all the cities,

* this or that town of twenty-three thousand souls in which one-third of the population dies in the hospitals in three months,

* the crowds of paupers at the poor-houses,

* the file of poor wretches entering and the file of coffins going out,

* the asylums deprived of their property, overcrowded with the sick, unable to feed the multitude of foundlings pining away in their cradles the very first week, their little faces in wrinkles like those of old men,

* the malady of want aggravating all other maladies, the long suffering of a persistent vitality amidst pain and which refuses to succumb, the final death-rattle in a garret or in a ditch.

Contrast this with this the small, powerful, triumphant group of Jacobins which, having understood how to place themselves in the good places, is determined to stay there at any cost.--About ten o'clock in the morning,[42152] Cambacérès, president of the Committee of Public Safety, is seen entering its hall in the Pavillon de l'Egalité. He is a large, cautious and shrewd personage who will, later on, become arch-chancellor of the Empire and famous for his epicurean inventions and other peculiar tastes revived from antiquity. Scarcely seated, he orders an ample pat-au-feu to be placed on the chimney hearth and, on the table, "fine wine and fine white bread; three articles," says a guest, "not to be found elsewhere in all Paris." Between twelve and two o'clock, his colleagues enter the room in turn, take a plate of soup and a slice of meat, swallow some wine, and then proceed, each to his bureau, to receive his coterie, giving this one an office and compelling another to pay up, looking all the time after his own special interests. At this moment, especially, towards the close of the Convention, there are no public interests, all interests being private and personal.--In the mean time, the deputy in charge of provisions, Roux de la Haute Marne, an unfrocked Benedictine, formerly a terrorist in the provinces, subsequently the protégé and employee of Fouché, with whom he is to be associated in the police department, keeps the throng of women in check which daily resorts to the Tuileries to beg for bread. He is well adapted for this duty, being tall, chubby, ornamental, and with vigorous lungs. He has taken his office in the right place, in the attic of the palace, at the top of long, narrow and steep stairs, so that the line of women stretching up between the two walls, piled one above the other, necessarily becomes immovable. With the exception of the two or three at the front, no one has her hands free to grab the haranguer by the throat and close the oratorical stop-cock. He can spout his tirades accordingly with impunity, and for an indefinite time. On one occasion, his sonorous jabber rattles away uninterruptedly from the top to the bottom of the staircase, from nine o'clock in the morning to five o'clock in the afternoon. Under such a voluble shower, his hearers become weary and end by going home.--About nine or ten o'clock in the evening, the Committee of Public Safety reassembles, but not to discuss business. Danton and La Révellière preach in vain; each is too egoistic and too worn-out; they let the rein slacken on Cambacérès. As to him, he would rather keep quiet and drag the cart no longer; but there are two things necessary which he must provide for on pain of death.--"It will not do," says he in plaintive tones, "to keep on printing the assignats at night which we want for the next day. If that lasts, ma foi, we run the risk of being strung up at a lantern...Go and find Hourier-Eloi, as he has charge of the finances, and tell him that we entreat him to keep us a-going for a fortnight or eighteen days longer, when the executive Directory will come in and do what it pleases." "But food--shall we have enough for to-morrow?

"Aha, I don't know--I'll send for our colleague Roux, who will post us on that point." Roux enters, the official spokesman, the fat, jovial tamer of the popular dog. "Well, Roux, how do we stand about supplying Paris with food?" "The supply, citizen President, is just as abundant as ever, two ounces per head,--at least for most of the sections." "Go to the devil with your abundant supply! You'll have our heads off!" All remain silent, for this possible dénouement sets them to thinking. Then, one of them exclaims: "President, are there any refreshments provided for us? After working so hard for so many days we need something to strengthen us!" "Why, yes; there is a good calf's-tongue, a large turbot, a large piece of pie and some other things." They cheer up, begin to eat and drink champagne, and indulge in drolleries. About eleven or twelve o'clock the members of other Committees come in; signatures are affixed to their various decrees, on trust, without reading them over. They, in their turn, sit down at the table and the conclave of sovereign bellies digests without giving itself further trouble about the millions of stomachs that are empty.

*****

[Footnote 4201: On the other more complicated functions, such as the maintenance of roads, canals, harbors, public buildings, lighting, cleanliness, hygiene, superior secondary and primary education, hospitals, and other asylums, highway security, the suppression of robbery and kindred crimes, the destruction of wolves, etc., see Rocquam, "Etat de la France au 18 Brumaire," and the "Statistiques des Departements," published by the prefets, from years IX. to XIII.--These branches of the service were almost entirely overthrown; the reader will see the practical results of their suppression in the documents referred to.]

[Footnote 4202: "St. John de Crêvecoeur," by Robert de Crêvecoeur, p.216. (Letter of Mdlle. de Gouves, July, 1800.) "We are negotiating for the payment of, at least, the arrearages since 1789 on the Arras property." (M. de Gouves and his sisters had not emigrated, and yet they had had no income from their property for ten years.)]

[Footnote 4203: Cf. "The Revolution," vol. I., 254-261, 311-352; vol. II., 234-272.]

[Footnote 4204: Cf. "The Revolution," II., 273-276.]

[Footnote 4205: Buchez et Roux, XXII., 178. (Speech by Robespierre in the Convention, December 2, 1792.)--Mallet-Dupan, "Mémoires." I., 400. About the same date, "a deputation from the department of Gard expressly demands a sum of two hundred and fifty millions, as indemnity to the cultivator, for grain which it calls national property."--This fearful sum of two hundred and fifty millions, they add, is only a fictive advance, placing at its disposal real and purely national wealth, not belonging in full ownership to any distinct member of the social body any more than the pernicious metals minted as current coin."]

[Footnote 4206: Buchez et Roux, XXVI., 95. (Declaration of Rights presented in the Jacobin Club, April 21, 1793.)]

[Footnote 4207: Decrees in every commune establishing a tax on the rich in order to render the price of bread proportionate to wages, also in each large city to raise an army of paid sans-culottes, that will keep aristocrats under their pikes, April 5-7.--Decree ordering the forced loan of a billion on the rich, May 20-25--Buchez et Roux, XXV., 156. (Speech by Charles, March 27.--Gorsas, "Courrier des Départements," No. for May I5, 1793. (Speech by Simon in the club at Annecy.)--Speech by Guffroy at Chartres, and of Chalier and associates at Lyons, etc.]

[Footnote 4208: Report by Minister Claviéres, February 1, 1793, p. 27.--Cf. Report of M. de Montesquiou, September 9, 1791, p. 47. "During the first twenty-six months of the Revolution the taxes brought in three hundred and fifty-six millions less than they should naturally have done."--There is the same deficit in the receipts of the towns, especially on account of the abolition of the octroi. Paris, under this head, loses ten millions per annum.]

[Footnote 4209: Report by Cambon, Pluviôse 3, year III. "The Revolution and the war have cost in four years five thousand three hundred and fifty millions above the ordinary expenses." (Cambon, in his estimates, purposely exaggerates ordinary expenses of the monarchy. According to Necker's budget, the expenditure in 1759 was fixed at five hundred and thirty-one millions and not, as Cambon states, seven hundred millions. This raises the expenses of the Revolution and of the war to seven thousand one hundred and twenty-one millions for the four and a half years, and hence to one thousand five hundred and eighty-one millions per annum, that is to say, to triple the ordinary expenses.) The expenses of the cities are therefore exaggerated like those of the State and for the same reasons.]

[Footnote 4210: Schmidt, "Pariser Zustände," I. 93, 96. "During the first half of the year 1789 there were seventeen thousand men at twenty sous a day in the national workshops at Montmartre. In 1790, there were nineteen thousand. In 1791, thirty-one thousand costing sixty thousand francs a day. In 1790, the State expends seventy-five millions for maintaining the price of bread in Paris at eleven sous for four pounds.--Ibid., 113. During the first six months of 1793 the State pays the Paris bakers about seventy-five thousand francs a day to keep bread at three sous the pound.]

[Footnote 4211: Ibid. I., 139-144.]

[Footnote 4212: Decree of September 27, 1790. "The circulation of assignats shall not extend beyond one billion two hundred millions.... Those which are paid in shall be destroyed and there shall be no other creation or emission of them, without a decree of the Corps Legislatif, always subject to this condition that they shall not exceed the value of the national possessions nor obtain a circulation above one billion two hundred millions.]

[Footnote 4213: Schmidt, ibid., I., 104, 138, 144.]

[Footnote 4214: Felix Rocquam, "L'Etat de la France au 18 Brumaire," p.240. (Report by Lacuée, year IX.--Reports by préfets under the Consulate (Reports of Laumont, préfet of the Lower-Rhine, year X.; of Coichen, préfet of the Moselle, year XI., etc.)--Schmidt, Pariser Zustände," III., 205. ("The rate of interest during the Revolution was from four to five per cent. per month; in 1796 from six to eight per cent. per month, the lowest rate being two per cent. per month with security.")]

[Footnote 4215: Arthur Young, "Voyage en France," II., 360. (Fr. translation.) "I regard Bordeaux as richer and more commercial than any city in England except London."]

[Footnote 4216: Ibid., II., 357. The statistics of exports in France in 1787 give three hundred and forty-nine millions, and imports three hundred and forty millions (leaving out Lorraine. Alsace, the three Evéchés and the West Indies).-Ibid., 360. In 1786 the importations from the West Indies amounted to one hundred and seventy-four millions, of which St. Domingo furnished one hundred and thirty-one millions; the exports to the West Indies amounted to sixty-four millions, of which St. Domingo had forty-four millions. These exchanges were effected by five hundred and sixty-nine vessels carrying one hundred and sixty-two thousand tons, of which Bordeaux provided two hundred and forty-six vessels, carrying seventy-five thousand tons.--On the ruin of manufactures cf. the reports of préfets in the year X., with details from each department.--Arthur Young (II., 444) states that the Revolution affected manufactures more seriously than any other branch of industry.]

[Footnote 4217: Reports of préfets. (Orme, year IX.) "The purchasers have speculated on the profits for the time being, and have exhausted their resources. Many of them have destroyed all the plantations, all the enclosures and even the fruit trees."--Felix Rocquam, ibid., 116. (Report by Fourcroy on Brittany.) "The condition of rural structures everywhere demands considerable capital. But no advances, based on any lasting state of things, can be made."--Ibid., 236. (Report of Lacuée on the departments around Paris.) "The doubtful owners of national possessions cultivate badly and let things largely go to ruin."]

[Footnote 4218: Reports by préfets, years X. and XI. In general, the effect of the partition of communal possessions was disastrous, especially pasture and mountain grounds.--(Doubs.) "The partition of the communal property has contributed, in all the communes, rather to the complete ruin of the poor than to any amelioration of their fate."--(Lozére.) "The partition of the communal property by the law of June 10, 1792, has proved very injurious to cultivation." These partitions were numerous. (Moselle.) "Out of six hundred and eighty-six communes, one hundred and seven have divided per capitum, five hundred and seventy-nine by families, and one hundred and nineteen have remained intact."]

[Footnote 4219: Ibid. (Moselle.) Births largely increase in 1792. "But this is an exceptional year. All kinds of abuses, paper-money, the non-payment of taxes and claims, the partition in the communes, the sale for nothing of national possessions, has spread so much comfort among the people that the poorer classes, who are the most numerous, have had no dread of increasing their families, to which they hope some day to leave their fields and render them happy."]

[Footnote 4220: Mallet-Dupan, "Memoires," II., 29. (February 1, 1794.) "The late crop in France was generally good, and, in some provinces, it was above the average... I have seen the statements of two returns made from twenty-seven departments; they declare an excess of fifteen, twenty, thirty and thirty-five thousand bushels of grain. There is no real dearth."]

[Footnote 4221: Schmidt, ibid., I., 110, and following pages.--Buchez et Roux, XX., 416. (Speeches of Lequinio, November 27, 1792.)--Moniteur, XVII., 2. (Letter by Clement, Puy-de-Dome, June 15, 1793.) "For the past fifteen days bread has been worth sixteen and eighteen sous the pound. There is the most frightful distress in our mountains. The government distributes one-eighth of a bushel to each person, everybody being obliged to wait two days to take his turn. One woman was smothered and several were wounded."]

[Footnote 4222: Cf. "La Revolution," I., 208; II., 294, 205, 230.--Buchez et Roux, XX., 431. (Report of Lecointe-Puyraveau, Nov. 30, 1792.) (Mobs of four, five and six thousand men in the departments of Eure-et-Loire, Eure, Orme, Calvados, Indre-et-Loire, Loiret, and Sarthe cut down the prices of produce. The three delegates of the Convention disposed to interfere have their lives saved only on condition of announcing the rate dictated to them.--Ibid., 409. (Letter of Roland, Nov.27, 1792.)--XXI., 198. (Another letter by Roland, Dec. 6, 1792.) "All convoys are stopped at Lissy, la Ferté, Milan, la Ferté-sous-Jouarre... Carts loaded with wheat going to Paris have been forced to go back near Lonjumeau and near Meaux."]

[Footnote 4223: Archives Nationales, F. 7, 3265. (Letter of David, cultivator, and administrator of the department of Seine-Inférieure, Oct.11, 1792; letter of the special committee of Rouen, Oct.22; letter of the delegates of the executive power, Oct.20, etc.) "Reports from all quarters state that the farmers who drive to market are considered and treated in their parishes as aristocrats..... Each department keeps to itself: they mutually repel each other."]

[Footnote 4224: Buchez et Roux, XX., 409. (Letter of Roland, Nov. 271 1792.) "The circulation of grain has for a long time encountered the greatest obstacles; scarcely a citizen now dares to do that business."--Ibid., 417. (Speech by Lequinio.) "The monopoly of wheat by land-owners and farmers is almost universal. Fright is the cause of it.... And where does this fear come from? From the general agitation, and threats, with the bad treatment in many places of the farmers, land-owners and traffickers in wheat known as bladiers."--Decrees of Sep.16, 1792, and May 4, 1793.]

[Footnote 4225: Buchez et Roux, XIX. (Report by Cambon, Sep.22, 1792.) "The taxes no longer reach the public treasury, because they are used for purchasing grain in the departments." Ibid., XIX., 29. (Speech by Cambon, Oct.12, 1792.) "You can bear witness in your departments to the sacrifices which well-to-do people have been obliged to make in helping the poor class. In many of the towns extra taxes have been laid for the purchase of grain and for a thousand other helpful measures."]

[Footnote 4226: Buchez et Roux, XX., 409. (Letter of Roland, Nov.29, 1792)--XXI., 199. (Deliberations of the provisional executive council, Sep. 3, 1792.)--Dauban, "La Demagogie en 1793," p. 64. (Diary kept by Beaulieu.) Ibid., 152.)]

[Footnote 4227: Schmidt, I., 110-130.--Decrees against the export of coin or ingots, Sep. 5 and 15, 1792.-Decree on stocks or bonds payable to bearer, Aug.14, 1792.]

[Footnote 4228: We might today call this sentiment a desire to acquire and retain. (Sentiment of acquisiton). (SR.)]

[Footnote 4229: Taine's remark in a footnote. (SR.)]

[Footnote 4230: Archives Nationales, D., 55, I., file 2. (Letter by Joifroy, national agent in the district of Bar-sur-Aube, Germinal 5, year III.) "Most of the farmers, to escape the requisition, have sold their horses and replaced them with oxen."--Memoirs (in ms.) of M. Dufort de Cheverney (communicated by M. Robert de Crévecoeur). In June, 1793, "the requisitions fall like hail, every week, on wheat, hay, straw, oats, etc.," all at prices fixed by the contractors, who make deductions, postpone and pay with difficulty. Then come requisitions for hogs. "This was depriving all the country folks of what they lived on." As the requisitions called for live hogs, there was a hog St. Bartholomew. Everybody killed his pig and salted it down." (Environs of Blois.) In relation to refusing to gather in crops, see further on.--Dauban, "Paris in 1794, p.229. (Ventose 24, general orders by Henriot.) "Citizen Guillon being on duty outside the walls, saw with sorrow that citizens were cutting their wheat to feed rabbits with."]

[Footnote 4231: Decree of Messidor 23, year II., on the consolidation with the national domain of the assets and liabilities of hospitals and other charitable institutions. (See reports of prefets on the effect of this law, on the ruin of the hospitals, on the misery of the sick, of foundlings and the infirm, from years IX. to XIII.)--Decrees of August 8 and 12, 1793, and July 24, 1794, on academies and literary societies.--Decree of August 24, 1793, P 29, on the assets and liabilities of communes.]

[Footnote 4232: Schmidt, I., 144. (Two billions September 27, 1793; one billion four hundred millions June 19, 1794.)--Decree of August 24, September 13, 1793, on the conversion of title-deeds and the formation of the Grand Ledger.--Decrees of July 31, August 30 and September 5, on calling in the assignats à face royale.--Decrees of August 1 and September 5, 1793, on the refusal to accept assignats at par.]

[Footnote 4233: Archives Nationales, F.7, 4421. (Documents on the revolutionary taxes organized at Troyes, Brumaire 11, year II.) Three hundred and seventy-three persons are taxed, especially manufacturers, merchants and land-owners; the minimum of the tax is one hundred francs, the maximum fifty thousand francs, the total being one million seven hundred and sixty-two thousand seven hundred francs. Seventy-six petitions attached to the papers show exactly the situation of things in relation to trade, manufactures and property, the state of fortunes and credit of the upper and lower bourgeois class.]

[Footnote 4234: Mallet-Dupan, "Mémoires," II., 17. "I have seen the thirty-second list of émigrés at Marseilles, merely of those whose possessions have been confiscated and sold; there are twelve thousand of them, and the lists were not finished."--Reports of préfets. (Var by Fanchet, year IX.) "The emigration of 1793 throws upon Leghorn and the whole Italian coast a very large number of Marseilles and Toulon traders. These men, generally industrious, have established (there) more than one hundred and sixty soap factories and opened a market for the oil of this region. This event may be likened to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes."--Cf. the reports on the departments of the Rhône, Aude, Lot and Garonne, Lower Pyrenees, Orme, etc.]

[Footnote 4235: Archives des Affaires Étrangères, vol. 332. (Letter of Désgranges, Bordeaux, Brumaire 12, year II.) "Nobody here talks about trade any more than if it had never existed."]

[Footnote 4236: Dr. Jaïn, "Choix de documents et lettres privées trouvees dans des papiers de famille," p.144. (Letter of Gédëon Jaïn, banker at Paris, November 18, 1793.) "Business carried on with difficulty and at a great risk occasion frequent and serious losses, credit and resources being almost nothing."]

[Footnote 4237: Archives Nationales, F.7, 2475. (Letters of Thullier, procureur-syndic of the Paris department, September 7 and 10, 1793.--Report by a member of the Piques section, September 8 and 10, 1793.--Cf. the petitions of traders and lawyers imprisoned at Troyes, Strasbourg, Bordeaux, etc.--Archives Nationales, AF.,II., 271. Letter of Francastel: "At least three thousand monopolist aristocrats have been arrested at Nantes.... and this is not the last purification."]

[Footnote 4238: Decrees of May 4, 15, 19, 20 and 23, and of August 30, 1793.--Decrees of July 26, August 15, September II, 1793, and February 24, 1794.--Camille Boursier, "Essai sur la Terreur en Anjou," p. 254. (Letter of Buissart to his friend Maximilian Robespierre, Arras, Pluviose 14, year II.) "we are dying with starvation in the midst of abundance; I think that the mercantile aristocracy ought to be killed out like the nobles and priests. The communes, with the help of a storehouse of food and goods must alone be allowed to trade. This idea, well carried out, can be realized; then, the benefits of trade will turn to the advantage of the Republic, that is to say, to the advantage of buyer and seller."]

[Footnote 4239: Archives Nationales, AF., II., 49. (Documents on the levy of revolutionary taxes, Belfort, Brumaire 30, year II.) "Verneur, sr., taxed at ten thousand livres, for having withheld goods deposited with him by his sister, in order to save them from the coming taxation." Campardon I., 292. (Judgments of the revolutionary commission at Strasbourg.)--"The head-clerk in Hecht's apothecary shop is accused of selling two ounces of rhubarb and manna at fifty-four sous; Hecht, the proprietor, is condemned to a fine of fifteen thousand livres. Madeleine Meyer, at Rosheim, a retailer, is accused of selling a candle for ten sous and is condemned to a fine of one thousand livres, payable in three days. Braun, butcher and bar-keeper, accused of having sold a glass of wine for twenty sous, is condemned to a fine of forty thousand francs, to be imprisoned until this is paid, and to exposure in the pillory before his own house for four hours, with this inscription: debaser of the national currency."--"Recueil de Pieces, etc., at Strasbourg," (supplement, pp. 21, 30, 64). "Marie Ursule Schnellen and Marie Schultzmann, servant, accused of monopolising milk. The former is sentenced to the pillory for one day under a placard, monopoliser of milk, and to hold in one hand the money and, in the other, the milk-pot; the other, a servant with citizen Benner. ... he, the said Benner, is sentenced to a fine of three hundred livres, payable in three days."--"Dorothy Franz, convicted of having sold two heads of salad at twenty sous, and of thus having depreciated the value of assignats, is sentenced to a fine of three thousand livres, imprisonment for six weeks and exposure in the pillory for two hours."--Ibid., I., 18. "A grocer, accused of having sold sugar-candy at lower than the rate, although not comprised in the list, is sentenced to one hundred thousand livres fine and imprisonment until peace is declared."--Orders by Saint-Just and Lebas, Nivose 3, year II. "The criminal court of the department of the Lower-Rhine is ordered to destroy the house of any one convicted of having made sales below the rates fixed by the maximum," consequently, the house of one Schauer, a furrier, is torn down, Nivose 7.]

[Footnote 4240: Archives des Affaires Étrangères, vol. 322. (Letter by Haupt, Belfort, Brumaire 3, year II.) "On my arrival here, I found the law of the maximum promulgated and in operation... (but) the necessary steps have not been taken to prevent a new monopoly by the country people, who have flocked in to the shops of the dealers, carried off all their goods and created a factitious dearth."]

[Footnote 4241: Archives Nationales, F.7, 4421. (Petitions of merchants and shop-keepers at Troyes in relation to the revolutionary tax, especially of hatters, linen, cotton and woollen manufacturers, weavers and grocers. There is generally a loss of one-half, and sometimes of three-fourths of the purchase money.)]

[Footnote 4242: Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol.330. (Letter of Brutus, Marseilles, Nivose 6, year II.) "Since the maximum everything is wanting at Marseilles."--Ibid. (Letter by Soligny and Gosse, Thionville, Nivose 5, year II.) "No peasant is willing to bring anything to market... They go off six leagues to get a better price and thus the communes which they once supplied are famishing.. According as they are paid in specie or assignats the difference often amounts to two hundred per cent., and nearly always to one hundred per cent."--"Un Sejour en France," pp. 188-189.--Archives Nationales, D.. P I., file 2. (Letter of Representative Albert, Germinal 19, year II., and of Joffroy, national agent, district of Bar-sur-Aube, Germinal 5, year III. "The municipalities have always got themselves exempted from the requisitions, which all fall on the farmers and proprietors unable to satisfy them.... The allotment among the tax-payers is made with the most revolting inequality.... Partiality through connections of relatives and of friendship."]

[Footnote 4243: Decrees of September 29, 1793 (articles 8 and 9); of May 4 and 20, and June 26, 1794.--Archives Nationales, AF., II., 68-72. (Orders of the Committee of Public Safety, Prairial 26, year II.) "The horses and wagons of coal peddlers, the drivers accustomed to taking to Paris by law a portion of the supply of coal used in baking in the department of Seine-et-Marne, are drafted until the 1st of Brumaire next, for the transportation of coal to Paris. During this time they cannot be drafted for any other service." (A good many orders in relation to provisions and articles of prime necessity may be found in these files, mostly in the handwriting of Robert Lindet.)]

[Footnote 4244: Cf. "The Revolution," II., 69.--Dauban, "Paris en 1794." (Report by Pouvoyeur, March 15, 1794.) "A report has been long circulated that all the aged were to be slaughtered; there is not a place where this falsehood is not uttered."]

[Footnote 4245: Archives Nationales, F.7, 4435, file 10, letters of Collot d'Herbois, Brumaire 17 and 19, year II.--De Martel, "Fouché," 340, 341. Letters of Collot d'Herbois, November 7 and 9, 1793.]

[Footnote 4246: De Martel, ibid., 462. (Proclamation by Javogues, Pluviose 13, year II.)]

[Footnote 4247: Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol. 330. (Letter of Brutus, political agent, Nivôse 6.)]

[Footnote 4248: Archives Nationales, AF., II., 116. (Orders of Taillefer and Marat-Valette, and Deliberations of the Directory of Lot, Brumaire 20, year II.)]

[Footnote 4249: Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol. 331. (Letter of the agent Bertrand, Frimaire 3.)]

[Footnote 4250: Ibid., vol. 1332. (Letter of the agent Chépy, Brumaire 2.)]

[Footnote 4251: Ibid., vol.1411. (Letter of Blessmann and Hauser, Brumaire 30.)--Ibid. (Letter of Haupt, Belfort, Brumaire 29.) "I believe that Marat's advice should be followed here and a hundred scaffolds be erected; there are not guillotines enough to cut off the heads of the monopolists. I shall do what I can to have the pleasure of seeing one of these damned bastards play hot cockles."]

[Footnote 4252: Ibid., vol.333. (Letter of Garrigues, Pluviôse 16.)]

[Footnote 4253: "Souvenirs et Journal d'un Bourgeois d'Evreux," pp.83-85. (June and July, 1794.)--Ibid., at Nantes.--Dauban, "Paris en 1794," p.194, March 4.]

[Footnote 4254: Archives des Affaires étrangères, vols. 331 and 332. (Letters of Désgranges, Frimaire 3 and 8 and 10.) "Many of the peasants have eaten no bread for a fortnight. Most of them no longer work." Buchez et Roux, XVIII., 346. (Session of the convention, Brumaire 14, Speech by Legendre.)]

[Footnote 4255: Moniteur, xix., 671. (Speech by Tallien, March 12, 1794.) Buchez et Roux, XXXII., 423. (Letter of Jullien, June 15, 1794.)]

[Footnote 4256: Archives Nationales, AF., II., 111. (Letters of Michaud, Chateauroux, Pluviôse 18 and 19, year II.)]

[Footnote 4257: Dauban, "Paris en 1794," 410, 492, 498. (Letters frora the national agent of the district of Sancoins, Thermidor 9, year II.; from the Directory of Allier, Thermidor 9; from the national agent of the district of Villefort, Thermidor 9.)--Gouverneur Morris, April 10, 1794, says in a letter to Washington that the famine in many places is extremely severe. Men really die of starvation who have the means to buy bread if they could only get it.]

[Footnote 4258: Volney, "Voyage en Orient," II., 344. "When Constantinople lacks food twenty provinces are starved for its supply."]

[Footnote 4259: Archives Nationales, AF., II, 46, 68. (Decree of committee of Public Safety.) The Treasury pays over to the city of Paris for subsistence, on Aug. 2, 1793, two millions, August 14, three, and September 2nd, one million; September 8, 16, and 23, one million each, and so on.... Between August 7, 1793 and Germinal '9, year II., the Treasury paid over to Paris, thirty one millions.]

[Footnote 4260: Ibid, AF., II., 68. Decrees of Brumaire 14, Nivôse 7 and Germinal 22 on the departments assigned to the supply of Paris. Buchez et Roux, XXVIII., 489. (Speech by Danton in Jacobin club, Aug.28, '793.) "I constantly asserted that it was necessary to give all to the mayor of Paris if he exacted it to feed its inhabitants.. .. Let us sacrifice one hundred and ten millions and save Paris and through it, the Republic."]

[Footnote 4261: Archives des Affaires étrangères, vols. 1410 and 1411. Reports of June 20 and 21, 1793, July 21, 22, 28, 29 and 31, and every day of the months of August and September, 1793. Schmidt, "Tableaux de la Revolution Française," vol. II., passim--Dauban, "Paris in 1794," (especially throughout Ventôse, year II.).--Archives Nationales, F.7, 31167. (Reports for Nivôse, year II.)]

[Footnote 4262: Dauban, "Paris en 1794,". (Report of Ventôse 2.)]

[Footnote 4263: Mercier, "Paris Pendant la Revolution," I., 355.]

[Footnote 4264: Archives des Affaires étrangères, 141 I. (Reports of August 1 and 2, 1763.) "At one o'clock in the morning, we were surprised to find men and women lying along the sides of the houses patiently waiting for the shops to open."--Dauban, 231. (Report of Ventôse 24.) To obtain the lights of a hog, at the slaughter house near the Jardin des Plantes, at the rate of three francs ten sous, instead of thirty sous as formerly, women "were lying on the ground with little baskets by their side and waiting four and five hours."]

[Footnote 4265: Archives Nationales, F.7, 31167. (Reports of Nivôse 9 and 28.) "The streets of Paris are always abominable; they are certainly afraid to use those brooms." Dauban, 120. (Ventôse 9.) "The rue St. Anne is blocked up with manure. In that part of it near the Rue Louvois, heaps of this stretch along the walls for the past fortnight."]

[Footnote 4266: Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol.1411. (Reports of August 9, 1793.) Mercier, I., 353.--Dauban, 530. (Reports of Fructidor 27, year II. "There are always great gatherings at the coal depots. They begin at midnight. one, two o'clock in the morning. Many of the habitués take advantage of the obscurity and commit all sorts of indecencies."]

[Footnote 4267: Schmidt, "Tableaux de la Revolution Française," II., 155. (Reports of Ventôse 25.)--Dauban, 188. (Reports of Ventôse 19).--Ibid., (Reports of Ventôse 2.) Ibid., 126. (Reports of Ventôse 10.)--Archives Nationales, F. 7, 31167. (Reports of Nivôse 28, year II.) The women "denounce the butchers and pork sellers who pay no attention to the maximum law, giving only the poorest meat to the poor." Ibid., (Reports of Nivôse 6.) "It is frightful to see what the butchers give the people."]

[Footnote 4268: Mercier, 363. "The women struggled with all their might against the men and contracted the habit of swearing. The last on the row knew how to worm themselves up to the head of it." Buchez et Roux, XXVIII., 364. ("Journal de la Montague," July 28, 1793. "One citizen was killed on Sunday, July 21, one of the Gravilliers (club) in trying to hold on to a six pound loaf of bread which he had just secured for himself and family. Another had a cut on his arm the same day in the Rue Froid-Manteau. A pregnant woman was wounded and her child died in her womb."]

[Footnote 4269: Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol.1410. (Reports of August 6 and 7, 1793.)]

[Footnote 4270: Dauban, 144. (Reports of Ventôse 19.)]

[Footnote 4271: Dauban, 199. (Reports of Ventôse 19.)--Dauban, "La Demagogie en 1793," p. 470. "Scarcely had the peasants arrived when harpies in women's clothes attacked them and carried off their goods.... Yesterday, a peasant was beaten for wanting to sell his food at the 'maximum' rate." (October 19, 1793.)--Dauban, "Paris en 1794," 144, 173, 199. (Reports of Ventôse 13, 17 and 19.)--Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol. 1410. (Reports of June 26 and 27, 1793.) Wagons and boats are pillaged for candles and soap.]

[Footnote 4272: Dauban, 45. (Reports of Pluviôse 17.) 222. (Reports of Ventôse 23.)--160. (Reports of Ventôse 15.)--340. (Reports of Germinal 28.)--87. (Reports of Ventôse 5.)]

[Footnote 4273: Archives Nationales, AF., II., 116. (Order of Paganel, Castres, Pluviôse 6 and 7, year II. "The steps taken to obtain returns of food have not fulfilled the object.... The statements made are either false or inexact.") Cf., for details, the correspondence of the other representatives on mission.--Dauban," Paris en 1794." 190. (Speech by Fouquier-Tinville in the Convention, Ventôse 19.) "The mayor of Pont St. Maxence has dared to say that 'when Paris sends us sugar we will then see about letting her have our eggs and butter.'"]

[Footnote 4274: Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol. 1411. (Reports of August 7 and 8, 1793.) "Seven thousand five hundred pounds of bread, about to be taken out, have been stopped at the barriers."--Dauban, 45. (Orders of the day. Pluviôse 17.) Lamps are set up at all the posts, "especially at la Greve and Passy, so as to light up the river and see that no eatables pass outside."--Mercier, I., 355.--Dauban, 181. (Reports of Ventôse 18.)--210. (Reports of Ventôse 21.)--190. Speech by Fouquier, Ventôse 19.) "The butchers in Paris who cannot sell above the maximum carry the meat they buy to the Sèvres butchers and sell it at any price they please. "--257. (Reports of Ventôse 27.) "You see, about ten o'clock in the evening, aristocrats and other egoists coming to the dealers who supply Egalité's mansion (the Duke of Orleans) and buy chickens and turkeys which they carefully conceal under their overcoats."]

[Footnote 4275: Dauban, 255. (Orders of the day by Henriot, Ventôse 27.) "I have to request my brethren in arms not to take any rations whatever. This little deprivation will silence the malevolent who seek every opportunity to humble us."--Ibid.,359. "On Floreal 29, between five and six o'clock in the morning, a patrol of about fifteen men of the Bonnet Rouge section, commanded by a sort of commissary, stop subsistences on the Orleans road and take them to their section."]

[Footnote 4276: Dauban, 341. (Letter of the Commissioner on Subsistences, Germinal 23.) "The supplies are stolen under the people's eyes, or what they get is of inferior quality." The commissioner is surprised to find that, having provided so much, so little reaches the consumers.]

[Footnote 4277: Archives des Affaires étrangères, vol.1411. (Reports of August 11-12 and 31, and Sept. 1, 1793.)--Archives Nationales, F. 7, 31167.) (Reports of Nivôse 7 and 12, year II.)]

[Footnote 4278: Dauban, "Paris" en 1794, 60, 68, 69, 71, 82, 93, 216, 231.--Schmidt, "Tableaux de Paris," 187, 190.--Archives Nationales, F. 7, 31167. (Report of Leharivel, Nivôse 7.)--The gunsmiths employed by the government likewise state that they have for a long time had nothing to eat but bread and cheese.]

[Footnote 4279: Dauban, 231. (Report of Perriére, Ventôse 24.) "Butter of which they make a god."]

[Footnote 4280: Ibid., 68. (Report of Ventôse 2.)]

[Footnote 4281: Archives Nationales, F.7, 31167. (Report of Nivôse 28.)--Dauban, 144. (Report of Nivôse 14.)]

[Footnote 4282: Dauban, 81. (Report of Latour-Lamontagne, Ventôse 4.)]

[Footnote 4283: "Souvenirs et Journal d'un Bourgeois d'Evreux," 83. "Friday, June 15, 1794, a proclamation is made that all who have any provisions in their houses, wheat, barley, rye, flour and even bread, must declare them within twenty four hours under penalty of being regarded as an enemy of the country and declared 'suspect,' put under arrest and tried by the courts."--Schmidt, "Tableaux de la Revolution Française," II.. 214. A seizure is made at Passy of two pigs and forty pounds of butter, six bushels of beans, etc., in the domicile of citizen Lucet who had laid in supplies for sixteen persons of his own household.]

[Footnote 4284: Archives Nationales, AF., II., 68. Orders of the Committee of Public Safety, Pluviôse 23, referring to the law of Brumaire 25, forbidding the extraction of more than fifteen pounds of bran from a quintal of flour. Order directing the removal of bolters from bakeries and mills; he who keeps or conceals these on his property "shall be treated as 'suspect' and put under arrest until peace is declared."--Berryat Saint Prix, 357, 362. At Toulouse, three persons are condemned to death for monopoly. At Montpelier, a baker, two dealers and a merchant are guillotined for having invoiced, concealed and kept a certain quantity of gingerbread cakes intended solely for consumption by anti-revolutionaries.]

[Footnote 4285: "Un Séjour en France," (April 22, 1794).]

[Footnote 4286: Ludovic Sciout, IV., 236. (Proclamation of the representatives on mission in Finisterre.) "Magistrates of the people tell all farmers and owners of land that their crops belong to the nation and that they are simply its depositaries." Archives Nationales, AF., II., 92. (Orders by Bô, representative in Cautal, Pluviôse 8.) "Whereas, as all citizens in a Republic form one family.... all those who refuse to assist their brethren and neighbors under the specious pretext that they have not sufficient supplies must be regarded as 'suspect' citizens."]

[Footnote 4287: Archives Nationales, AF., II., 68. (Orders of the Committee of Public Safety, Prairial 28.) The maximum price is fourteen francs the quintal; after Messidor 30, it is not to be more than eleven francs.]

[Footnote 4288: Ibid., AF., II., 116 and 106, orders of Paganel, Castres, Pluviôse 6 and 7. Orders of Dartigoyte, Floréal 23, 25, and 29.]

[Footnote 4289: Ibid., AF., II., 147. (Orders of Maignet, Avignon, Prairial 2.)]

[Footnote 4290: Moniteur, XXIII., 397 (Speech by Dubois-Crancé, May 5, 1795.) "The Committee on Commerce (and Supplies) had thirty-five thousand employees in its service."]

[Footnote 4291: Archives Nationales, AF., II., 68. (Orders of the Committee of Public Safety, Prairial 28.) Decret of Messidor 8, year II. "All kinds of grain and the hay of the present crop are required by the government." A new estimate is made, each farmer being obliged to state the amount of his crop; verification, confiscation in case of inaccurate declarations, and orders to thrash out the sheaves.--Dauban, 490. (Letter of the national agent of Villefort, Thermidor 19.) Calculations and the reasoning of farmers with a view to avoid sowing and planting: "Not so much on account of the lack of hands as not to ruin oneself by sowing and raising an expensive crop which, they say, affords them small returns when they sell their grain at so low a price." Archives Nationales, AF., II. 106. (Letter of the national agent in Gers and Haute-Garonne, Floréal 25.) "They say here, that as soon as the crop is gathered, all the grain will be taken away, without leaving anything to live on. It is stated that all salt provisions are going to be taken and the agriculturists reduced to the horrors of a famine."]

[Footnote 4292: Moniteur, XXII., 21. (Speech by Lindet, September 7, 1794.) "We have long feared that the ground would not be tilled, that the meadows would be covered with cattle while the proprietors and farmers were kept in prison." Archives Nationales, D., P I, No. I. (Letter from the district of Bar-sur-Seine, Ventôse 14, year III.) "The 'maximum' causes the concealment of grain. The quit-claims ruined the consumers and rendered them desperate. How many wretches, indeed, have been arrested,--attacked, confiscated, fined and ruined for having gone off fifteen or twenty leagues to get grain with which to feed their wives and children?"]

[Footnote 4293: AF., II., 106. (Circular by Dartigoyte, Floréal 25.) "You must apply this rule, that is, make the municipal officers responsible for the non cultivation of the soil." "If any citizen allows himself a different kind of bread, other than that which all the cultivators and laborers in the commune use, I shall have him brought before the courts conjointly with the municipality as being the first culprit guilty of having tolerated it... Reduce, if necessary, three fourths of the bread allowed to non laboring citizens because muscadins and muscadines: have resources and, besides, lead an idle life."]

[Footnote 4294: AF., II., III. (Letters of Ferry, Bourges, Messidor 23, to his "brethren in the popular club," and "to the citoyennes (women) of Indre-et-Cher.")]

[Footnote 4295: Moniteur, XXI., 171. (Letter from Avignon, Messidor 9, and letter of the Jacobins of Arles.]

[Footnote 4296: Moniteur, XXI., 184. (Decree of Messidor 21.)]

[Footnote 4297: Gouverneur Morris. (correspondence with Washington. Letters of March 27 and April 10, 1794.) He says that there is no record of such an early spring. Rye has headed out and clover is in flower. It is astonishing to see apricots in April as large as pigeons' eggs. In the south, where the dearth is most severe, he has good reason to believe that the ground is supplying the inhabitants with food. A frost like that of the year before in the month of May (1793) would help the famine more than all the armies and fleets in Europe.]

[Footnote 4298: Stalin was to test the system and prove Taine right. (SR.)]

[Footnote 4299: Archives Nationales, AF., II., 73. (Letter by the Directory of Calvados, Prairial 26, year III.) "We have not a grain of wheat in store, and the prisons are full of cultivators." Archives Nationales, D., p 1, file No.3. (Warrants of arrest issued by Representative Albert, Pluviôse 19, year III., Germinal 7 and 16.) On the details of the difficulties and annoyances attending the requisitions, cf. this file and the five preceding or following files. (Letter of the National agent, district of Nogent-sur-Seine, Germinal 13.) "I have had summoned before the district court a great many cultivators and proprietors who are in arrears in furnishing the requisitions made on them by their respective municipalities.... A large majority declared that they were unable to furnish in full even if their seed were taken. The court ordered the confiscation of the said grain with a fine equal to the value of the quantity demanded of those called upon.. It is now my duty to execute the sentence. But, I must observe to you, that if you do not reduce the fine, many of them will be reduced to despair. Hence I await your answer so that I may act accordingly." (Another letter from the same agent, Germinal 9.) "It is impossible to supply the market of Villarceaux; seven communes under requisition prevented it through the district of Sozannes which constantly keeps an armed force there to carry grain away as soon as thrashed."--It is interesting to remark the inquisitorial sentimentality of the official agents and the low stage of culture. (Proces verbal of the Magincourt municipality, Ventôse 7.) Of course I am obliged to correct the spelling so as to render it intelligible. The said Croiset, gendarme, went with the national agent into the houses of citizens in arrears, of whom, amongst those in arrears, nobody refused but Jean Mauchin, whom we could not keep from talking against him, seeing that he is wholly egoist and only wants for himself. He declared to us that, if, the day before his harvesting he had any left, he would share it with the citizens that needed it.. .. Alas, yes, how could one refrain from shutting up such an egoist who wants only for himself to the detriment of his fellow citizens? A proof of the truth is that he feeds in his house three dogs, at least one hundred and fifty chickens and even pigeons, which uses up a lot of grain, enough to hinder the satisfaction of all the requisitions. He might do without dogs, as his court is enclosed he might likewise content himself with thirty chickens and then be able to satisfy the requisitions." This document is signed "Bertrand, Agen."--Mauchin, on the strength of it, is incarcerated at Troyes "at his own expense."]

[Footnote 42100: Ibid. Letter from the district of Bar sur Seine, Ventôse 14, year III. Since the abolition of the "maximum," "the inhabitants travel thirty and forty leagues to purchase wheat." (Letter from the municipality of Troyes, Ventôse 15.) "According to the price of grain, which we keep on buying, by agreement, bread will cost fifteen sous (the pound) next decade."]

[Footnote 42101: Schmidt, "Pariser Zustände," 145-220. The re-opening of the Bourse, April 25, 1795; ibid., 322, II., 105.--"Memoirs of Theobald Wolf," vol. I., p.200, (February 3, 1796). At Havre, the louis d'or is then worth five thousand francs, and the ecu of six francs in proportion. At Paris (February 12), the louis d'or is worth six thousand five hundred; a dinner for two persons at the Palais Royal costs one thousand five hundred francs.--Mayer, ("Frankreich in 1796.") He gives a dinner for ten persons which costs three hundred thousand francs in assignats. At this rate a cab ride costs one thousand francs, and by the hour six thousand francs.]

[Footnote 42102: "Correspondance de Mallet du Pan avec la cour de Vienne," I., 253 (July 18, 1795). "It is not the same now as in the early days of the Revolution, which then bore heavily only on certain classes of society; now, everybody feels the scourge, hourly, in every department of civil life. Goods and provisions advance daily (in price) in much greater proportion than the decline in assignats.... Paris is really a city of furnishing shops... The immense competition for these objects raises all goods twenty five per cent. a week.... It is the same with provisions. A sack of wheat weighing three quintals is now worth nine thousand francs, a pound of beef thirty six francs, a pair of shoes one hundred francs. It is impossible for artisans to raise their wages proportionately with such a large and rapid increase."--Cf. "Diary of Lord Malmesbury," III., 290 (October 27, 1796). After 1795, the gains of the peasants, land owners and producers are very large; from 1792 to 1796 they accumulate and hide away most of the current coin. They were courageous enough and smart enough to protect their hoard against the violence of the revolutionary government; "hence, at the time of the depreciation of assignats, they bought land extraordinarily cheap." In 1796 they cultivate and produce a great deal.]

[Footnote 42103: Archives Nationales, AF., II., 72. (Letter of the administrators of the district of Montpelier to the Convention, Messidor 26, year II.) "Your decree of Nivôse 4 last, suppressed the 'maximum,' which step, provoked by justice and the 'maximum,' did not have the effect you anticipated." The dearth ceases, but there is a prodigious increase in prices, the farmer selling his wheat at from four hundred and seventy to six hundred and seventy francs the quintal.]

[Footnote 42104: Archives Nationales, AF., II., 71. (Deliberations of the commune of Champs, canton of Lagny, Prairial 22, year III. Letter of the procureur-syndic of Meaux, Messidor 3. Letter of the municipality of Rozoy, Seine et Marne, Messidor 4.)--Ibid., AF., II., 74. (Letter of the municipality of Emérainville, endorsed by the Directory of Meaux, Messidor 14.) "The commune can procure only oat-bread for its inhabitants, and, again, they have to go a long way to get this. This food, of so poor a quality, far from strengthening the citizen accustomed to agricultural labor, disheartens him and makes him ill, the result being that the hay cannot be got in good time for lack of hands."--At Champs, "the crop of hay is ready for mowing, but, for want of food, the laborers cannot do the work."]

[Footnote 42105: Ibid., AF., II., 73. (Letter from the Directory of the district of Dieppe, Prairial 22.)]

[Footnote 42106: Ibid. (Letter of the administrators of the district of Louviers, Prairial 26.)]

[Footnote 42107: Ibid. (Letter of the procureur-syndic of the Caen district, Caen, Messidor 23.--Letter of Representative Porcher to the Committee of Public Safety, Messidor 26.--Letter of the same, Prairial 24. "The condition of this department seemed to me frightful.... The privations of the department with respect to subsistence cannot be over-stated to you; the evil is at its height."]

[Footnote 42108: Archives Nationales, AF. II., 74. (Letter of the Beauvais administrators, Prairial 15.--Letter of the Bapaume administrator, Prairial 24.--Letter of the Vervier administrator, Messidor 7.--Letter of the commissary sent by the district of Laon, Messidor.)--Cf., I6id., letter from the Abbeville district, Prairial 11. "The quintal of wheat is sold at one thousand assignats, or rather, the farmers will not take assignats any more, grain not to be had for anything but coin, and, as most people have none to give they are hard-hearted enough to demand of one his clothes, and of another his furniture, etc."]

[Footnote 42109: Ibid., AF., II., 71. (Letter of the Rozoy municipality. Seine-et-Marne, Messidor 4, year III.) A bushel of wheat in the vicinity of Rozoy brings three hundred francs.]

[Footnote 42110: Ibid., AF., II., 74. (Letter of the Montreuil-sur-Mer municipality, Prairial 29.)]

[Footnote 42111: Ibid. (Letter of the Vervins administrators, Prairial 11 Letter of the commune of La Chapelle-sur-Somme, Prairial 24.)]

[Footnote 42112: Ibid., AF., II., 70. (Letter of the procureur-syndic of the district of Saint-Germain, Thermidor 10.) This file, which depicts the situation of the communes around Paris, is specially heartrending and terrible. Among other instances of the misery of workmen the following petition of the men employed on the Marly water-works may be given, Messidor 28. "The workmen and employees on the machine at Marly beg leave to present to you the wretched state to which they are reduced by the dearness of provisions. Their moderate wages, which at the most have reached only five livres twelve sous, and again, for four months past, having received but two francs sixteen sous, no longer provide them with half a pound of bread, since it costs fifteen and sixteen francs per pound. We poor people have not been wanting in courage nor patience, hoping that times would mend. We have been reduced to selling most of our effects and to eating bread made of bran of which a sample is herewith sent, and which distresses us very much (nous incommode beaucoup); most of us are ill and those who are not so are in a very feeble state."--Schmidt, "Tableaux de Paris," Thermidor 9. "Peasants on the market square complain bitterly of being robbed in the fields and on the road, and even of having their sacks (of grain) plundered."]

[Footnote 42113: Archives Nationales, D., P I, file 2. (Letter of the Ervy municipality, Floréal 17, year III.) "The indifference of the egoist farmers in the country is at its height; they pay no respect whatever to the laws, killing the poor by refusing to sell, or unwilling to sell their grain at a price they can pay."--(It would be necessary to copy the whole of this file to show the alimentary state of the departments.)]

[Footnote 42114: Ibid., AF., II., 74. (Letter of the district administrators of Bapaume, Prairial 24.--Letter of the municipality of Boulogne-sur-Mer, Prairial 24.)]

[Footnote 42115: Ibid.,, AF., II., 73. (Letter of the municipality of Brionne, district of Bernay, Prairial 7.) The farmers do not bring in their wheat because they sell it elsewhere at the rate of fifteen hundred and two thousand francs the sack of three hundred and thirty pounds.]

[Footnote 42116: Ibid., AF., II., 71. (Letter of the procureur-syndic of the district of Meaux, Messidor 2.) "Their fate is shared by many of the rural communes" and the whole district has been reduced to this dearth "to increase the resources of Paris and the armies."]

[Footnote 42117: Schmidt, "Tableaux de Paris." (Reports of the Police, Pluviôse 6, year III.)--Ibid., Germinal 16. "A letter from the department of Drome states that they are dying of hunger there, bread selling at three francs the pound."]

[Footnote 42118: Archives Nationales, AF., II., 70. (Deliberations of the council-general of Franciade, Thermidor 9, year III.)]

[Footnote 42119: Ibid. (Letter of the procureur-syndic of the district of Saint-Germain, Thermidor 10.)--Delécluze, "Souvenirs de Soixante Années," p. 10. (The Delécluze family live in Mendon in 1794 and for most of 1795. M. Delécluze, senior, and his son go to Meaux and obtain of a farmer a bag of good flour weighing three hundred and twenty five pounds for about ten louis d'or and fetch it home, taking the greatest pains to keep it concealed. Both father and son "after having covered the precious sack with hay and straw in the bottom of the cart, follow it on foot at some distance as the peasant drives along." Madame Delécluze kneads the bread herself and bakes it.]

[Footnote 42120: Archives Nationales, AF., II., 74. The following shows some of the municipal expenditures. (Deliberations of the commune of Annecy, Thermidor 8, year II I.) "Amount received by the commune from the government, 1,200,000 francs. Fraternal subscriptions, 400,000 francs. Forced loan, 2,400,000 francs. Amount arising from grain granted by the government, but not paid for, 400,000 francs." (Letter from the municipality of Lille, Fructidor 7 ) "The deficit, at the time we took hold of the government, which, owing to the difference between the price of grain bought and the price obtained for bread distributed among the necessitous, had amounted to 2,270,023 francs, so increased in Thermidor as to amount to 8,312,956 francs." consequently, the towns ruin themselves with indebtedness to an incredible extent.--Archives Nationales, AF., II., 72. (Letter of the municipality of Tours, Vendémiaire 19, year IV.) Tours has not sufficient money with which to buy oil for its street lamps and which are no longer lit at night. A decree is passed to enable the agent for provisions at Paris to supply its commissaries with twenty quintals of oil which, for three hundred and forty lamps, keeps one hundred agoing up to Germinal 1. The same at Toulouse. (Report of Destrene, Moniteur, June 24, 1798.) On November 26, 1794, Bordeaux is unable to pay seventy two francs for thirty barrels of water to wash the guillotine. (Granier de Cassagnac, I., 13. Extract from the archives of Bordeaux.) Bordeaux is authorized to sell one thousand casks of wine which had formerly been taken on requisition by the government, the town to pay for them at the rate at which the Republic bought them and to sell them as dear as possible in the way of regular trade. The proceeds are to be employed in providing subsistence for its inhabitants. (Archives Nationales, AF., II., 72, orders of Vendémiaire 4, year IV.) As to aid furnished by the assignats granted to towns and departments cf. the same files; 400,000 francs to Poitiers, Pluviôse 18, four millions to Lyons, Pluviôse 17, three millions a month to Nantes, after Thermidor 14, ten millions to the department of Herault in Frimaire and Pluviôse, etc.]

[Footnote 42121: Archives Nationales, II., P 1, file 2. (Deliberations of the commune of Troyes, Ventôse 15, year III.)--"Un Sejour en France." (Amiens, May 9, 1795.) "As we had obtained a few six franc crowns and were able to get a small supply of wheat.... Mr. D and the servants eat bread made of three fourths bran and one fourth flour. When we bake it we carefully close the doors, paying no attention to the door bell, and allow no visitor to come in until every trace of the operation is gone... The distribution now consists of a mixture of sprouted wheat, peas, rye, etc., which scarcely resembles bread." (April 12.) "The distribution of bread (then) was a quarter of a pound a day. Many of those who in other respects were well off, got nothing at all."]

[Footnote 42122: Ibid. (Letters of the municipality of Troyes, Ventôse 15, year III., and Germinal 6.) Letter of the three deputies, sent by the municipality to Paris, Pluviôse, year III. (no date.)]

[Footnote 42123: "Un Sejour en France." (Amiens, Jan. 30, 1795.) Archives Nationales. AF.,II., 74. (Deliberation of the commune of Amiens, Thermidor 8, and Fructidor 7, year III.)]

[Footnote 42124: "Souvenirs et Journal d'un Bourgeois d'Evreux," p. 97. (The women stop carts loaded with wheat, keep them all night, stone and wound Representative Bernier, and succeed in getting, each, eight pounds of wheat.)]

[Footnote 42125: Archives Nationales, AF.,II., 73. (Letter of the municipality of Dieppe, Prairial 22.)--AF.,II., 74. (Letter of the municipality of Vervins, Messidor 7. Letter of the municipality of Lille, Fructidor 7.)]

[Footnote 42126: "Correspondance de Mallet du Pan avec la Cour de Vienne," I., 90. Ibid., 131. One month later a quintal of flour at Lyons is worth two hundred francs and a pound of bread forty-five sous.]

[Footnote 42127: Archives Nationales, AF., II., 13. (Letter of the deputies extraordinary of the three administrative bodies of Chartres, Thermidor 15: "In the name of this commune dying of hunger ")--"The inhabitants of Chartres have not even been allowed to receive their rents in grain; all has been poured into the government storehouses."]

[Footnote 42128: Ibid. (Petition of the commune of La Rochelle, Fructidor 25, that of Painboeuf, Fructidor 9, that of the municipality of Nantes, Thermidor 14, that of Rouen, Fructidor 1.)--Ibid., AF.,II, 72. (Letter of the commune of Bayonne, Fructidor 1.) "Penury of provisions for more than two years.... The municipality, the past six months, is under the cruel necessity of reducing its subjects to half-a-pound of corn-bread per day.... at the rate of twenty-five sous the pound, although the pound costs over five francs." After the suppression of the "maximum" it loses about twenty-five thousand francs per day.]

[Footnote 42129: Ibid. (Letter of Representative Porcher, Caen, Prairial 24, Messidor 3 and 26. Letter of the municipality of Caen, Messidor 3.)]

[Footnote 42130: Ibid. AF.,II., 71. (Letter of the municipality of Auxerre, Messidor 19.) "We have kept alive thus far through all sorts of expedients as if by miracle. It has required incalculable efforts, great expenditure, and really supernatural means to accomplish it. But there is still one month between this and the end of Thermidor. How are we going to live! Our people, the majority of whom are farmers and artisans, are rationed at half-a-pound a day for each person and this will last but ten or twelve days at most."]

[Footnote 42131: Meissner, "Voyage à Paris," 339. "There was not a morsel of bread in our inn. I went myself to five or six bakeries and pastry shops and found them all stripped." He finds in the last one about a dozen of small Savoy biscuits for which he pays fifteen francs.--See, for the military proceedings of the government in relation to bread, the orders of the Committee of Public Safety, most of them by the hand of Lindet, AF., II., 68-74.]

[Footnote 42132: Schmidt, "Tableaux de Paris," vols. II. and III.,passim.]

[Footnote 42133: Archives Nationales, AF.,II., 68. (Orders of Ventôse 20, year III.; Germinal 19 and 20; Messidor 8, etc.)]

[Footnote 42134: ibid. Orders of Nivôse 5 and 22.]

[Footnote 42135: Ibid. Orders of Pluviôse 19, Ventôse 5, Floréal 4 and 24. (The fourteen brewers which the Republic keeps agoing for itself at Dunkirk are excepted.)--The proceedings are the same in relation to other necessary articles,--returns demanded of nuts, rape-seed, and other seeds or fruits producing oil, also the hoofs of cattle and sheep, with requisitions for every other article entering into the manufacture of oil, and orders to keep oil-mills agoing. "All administrative bodies will see that the butchers remove the fat from their meat before offering it for sale, that they do not themselves make candles out of it, and that they do not sell it to soap-factories, etc. "--(Orders of Veridémiaire 28, year III.) The executive committee will collect eight hundred yoke of oxen and distribute them among the dealers in hay in order to transport wood and coal from the woods and collieries to the yards. They will distribute proportionately eight hundred sets of wheels and harness. The wagoners will be paid and guarded the same as military convoys, and drafted as required. To feed the oxen, the district administrators will take by pre-emption the necessary fields and pasturages, etc." (Orders of Pluviôse 10, year III.)]

[Footnote 42136: Moniteur, XXIV., 397.--Schmidt, "Tableaux de Paris." (Reports of Frimaire 16, year IV.) "Citizens in the departments wonder how it is that Paris costs them five hundred and forty six millions per month merely for bread when they are starving. This isolation of Paris, for which all the benefits of the Revolution are exclusively reserved. has the worst effect on the public mind."--Meissner, 345.]

[Footnote 42137: Mercier, "Paris Pendant la Révolution," I., 355-357.--Schmidt, "Pariser Zustande," I., 224. (The Seine is frozen over on November 23 and January 23, the thermometer standing at sixteen degrees (Centigrade) below zero.)--Schmidt, "Tableaux de Paris." (Reports of the Police, Pluviôse 2, 3 and 4.)]

[Footnote 42138: Schmidt, "Pariser Zustande," I., 228, and following pages. (February 25, the distribution of bread is reduced to one and one-half pounds per person; March 17, to one and onehalf pounds for workmen and one pound for others. Final reduction to one-quarter of a pound, March 31.)--Ibid., 251, for ulterior rates.--Dufort de Cheverney, (MS. Mémoires, August, 1795.) M. de Cheverney takes up his quarters at the old Louvre with his friend Sedaine. "I had assisted them with food all I could: they owned to me that, without this, they would have died of starvation notwithstanding their means."]

[Footnote 42139: Schmidt, "Tableaux de Paris." (Reports of Germinal 15 and 27, and Messidor 28, year III., Brumaire 14 and Frimaire 23, year IV.)--Ibid. (Germinal 15, year III.) Butter is at eight francs the pound, eggs seven francs for four ounces.--Ibid., (Messidor 19) bread is at sixteen francs the pound, (Messidor 28) butter at fourteen francs the pound, (Brumaire 29) flour at 14,000 francs the bag of 325 pounds.]

[Footnote 42140: Ibid. (Report of Germinal 12, year III.) "The eating houses and pastry-cooks are better supplied than ever."?"Memoires (manuscript) of M. de Cheverney." "My sister-in-law, with more than forty thousand livres income, registered in the 'Grand Ledger,' was reduced to cultivating her garden, assisted by her two chambermaids. M. de Richebourg, formerly intendant-general of the Post-Office, had to sell at one time a clock and at another time a wardrobe to live on. 'My friends,' he said to us one day, 'I have been obliged to put my clock in the pot.' "--Schmidt. (Report of Frimaire 17, year IV.) "A frequenter of the Stock-Exchange sells a louis at five thousand francs. He dines for one thousand francs and loudly exclaims: 'I have dined at four francs ten sous. They are really superb, these assignats! I couldn't have dined so well formerly at twelve francs.'"]

[Footnote 42141: Schmidt. (Reports of Frimaire 9, year IV.) "The reports describe the sad condition of those who, with small incomes and having sold their clothes, are selling their furniture, being, so to say, at their last piece; and, soon without anything, are reduced to the last extremity by committing suicide."--Ibid., Frimaire 2, "The rentier is ruined, not being able to buy food. Employees are all in the same situation."--Naturally, the condition of employees and rentiters grows worse with the depreciation of assignats. Here are house-keeping accounts at the end of 1795. (Letter of Beaumarchais' sister Julie to his wife, December, 1794. "Beaumarchais et son temps," by De Lomenie, p.486.) "When you gave me those four thousand francs (assignats), my dear friend, my heart went pit-a-pat. I thought that I should go crazy with such a fortune. I put them in my pocket at once and talked about other things so as to get the idea out of my mind. On returning to the house, get some wood and provisions as quick as possible before prices go higher! Dupont (the old domestic) started off and did his best. But the scales fell from my eyes on seeing, not counting food for a month, the result of those 4,275 francs:

1 load of wood 1460 francs 9 pounds of candles, from 8 to 100 francs per pound 900 4 pounds of sugar, at 100 francs per pound 400 3 measures of grain, at 40 francs 120 7 pounds oil, at 100 francs 700 12 wicks, at 5 francs 60 1 1/2 bushels potatoes, at 200 francs per bushel 300 1 month's washing 215 1 pound ground powder 70 2 ounces pomatum (formerly 3 sous, now 25 francs) 50 Sub-total 4,275 francs

There remains the month's supply of butter and eggs, as you know, 200 francs, meat 25 or 30 francs, and other articles in proportion 507

There was no bread for two days... I have bought only four pounds the last two days, at 45 francs 180

Total 5,022 francs.

"When I think of this royal outlay, as you call it, which makes me spend from18,000 to 20,000 francs for nothing, I wish the devil had the system.... 10,000 francs which I have scattered about the past fortnight, alarm and trouble me so much that I do not know how to calculate my income in this way. In three days the difference (in the value of assignats) has sent wood up from 4,200 to 6,500 francs, and extras in proportion so that, as I wrote you, a load piled up and put away costs me 7,100 francs. Every week now, the pot-au-feu and other meats for ragouts, without any butter, eggs and other details, cost from seven to eight hundred francs. Washing also goes up so fast that eight thousand francs do not suffice. All this puts me out of humor, while in all this expenditure I declare on my honor (je jure par la saine vérité de mon coeur) that for two years I have indulged no fancy of my own or spent anything except on household expenses. Nevertheless, I have urgent need of some things for which I should require piles of assignats."--We see by Beaumarchais' correspondence that one of his friends travels around in the environs of Paris to find bread. "It is said here (he writes from Soizy, June 5, 1795) that flour may be had at Briare. If this were so I would bargain with a reliable man there to carry it to you by water-carriage between Briare and Paris... In the mean time I do not despair of finding a loaf."--Letter of a friend of Beaumarchais: "This letter costs you at least one hundred francs, including paper, pen, ink, and lamp-oil. For economy's sake I write it in your house."]

[Footnote 42142: Cf. Schmidt, "Tableaux de Paris," vols. II. and III. (Reports of the Police, at the dates designated.)]

[Footnote 42143: Dauban, "Paris en 1794," pp.562, 568, 572.]

[Footnote 42144: Mallet-Dupan, "Correspondance avec la cour de Vienne," I., 254. (July 18, 1795.)]

[Footnote 42145: Schmidt, ibid. (Report of Fructidor 3, year III.)]

[Footnote 42146: Schmidt, ibid., vols. II. and III. (Reports of the police at the dates designated.)]

[Footnote 42147: Meissner, "Voyage à Paris," 132. Ibid., 104. "Bread is made with coarse, sticky black flour, because they put in potatoes, beans, Indian corn and millet, and moreover it is badly baked."--Granier de Cassagnac, "Histoire du Directoire," I., 51. (Letter of M. Andot to the author.) "There were three-quarter pound days, one-half pound and one-quarter pound days and many at two ounces. I was a child of twelve and used to go and wait four hours in the morning in a line, rue de l'Ancienne Comédie. There was a fourth part of bran in the bread, which was very tender and very soft.... and it contained one-fourth excess of water. I brought back eight ounces of bread a day for the four persons in our household."]

[Footnote 42148: Dauban, 586.]

[Footnote 42149: Schmidt, ibid. (Reports of Brumaire 24, and Frimaire 13, year IV.)]

[Footnote 42150: This state of misery is prolonged far beyond this epoch in Paris and the provinces. ~f. Schmidt, "Tableaux de Paris," vol. III.-Felix Rocquam, "L'Etat de la France au 18e Brumaire," p.156. (Report by Fourcroy, Nivôse 5, year IX.) Convoys of grain fail to reach Brest because the English are masters at sea, while the roads on land are impassable. "we are assured that the people of Brest have long been on half-rations and perhaps on quarter-rations."]

[Footnote 42151: 1st It is difficult to arrive at even approximate figures, but the following statements will render the idea clear. I. Wherever I have compared the mortality of the Revolution with that of the ancient regime I have found the former greater than the latter, even in those parts of France not devastated by the civil war; and the increase of this mortality is enormous, especially in years II. and III.--At Troyes, with 25,282 inhabitants (in 1790), during the five years of 1786, 1787, 1788, 1789 and 1792 (1790 and 1791 are missing), the average annual mortality is 991 deaths, or 39 per thousand inhabitants; during the years II, III, IV, this average is 1,166 or 47 per thousand inhabitants; the increase is then 7 deaths per year, nearly one fifth. (Documents provided by M. Albert Babeau.)--At Rheims, the average mortality from 1780 to 1789 is 1,350, which, for a population of 35,597, (1790), gives 41 deaths per annum to every thousand inhabitants. In the year II., there are 1,836 deaths which gives for each of the two years 64 deaths to every thousand persons; the increase is 23 deaths a year, that is to say more than one-half above the ordinary rate. (Statistics communicated by M. Jadart, archiviste at Rheims.)--At Limoges, the yearly average of mortality previous to 1789 was 825 to 20,000 inhabitants, or at the rate of 41 to a thousand. From January 1, 1792, to September 22, 1794, there are 3,449 deaths, that is to say, a yearly average of 63 deaths to one thousand inhabitants, that is to say, 22 extra per annum, while the mortality bears mostly on the poor, for out of 2,073 persons who die between January 17, 1793, and September 22, 1794, over one-half, 1,100, die in the hospital.--(Louis Guibert, "Ancien registre des paroisses de Limoges," pp. 40, 45, 47.)--At Poitiers, in year IX., the population is 18,223, and the average mortality of the past ten years was 724 per annum. But in year II., there are 2,094 deaths, and in year III. 2,032, largely in the hospitals. Thus, even on comparing the average mortality of the ten years of the Revolution with the mortality of years II. and III., the average rate has almost trebled.--The same applies to Loudens, where the average death-rate being 151, in year II., it rises to 425. Instead of the triple for Chatellerault, it is double, where, the average rate being 262, the death-rate rises to 482, principally in the military hospitals. ("Statistique de la Vienne," by Cochon, préfet, year IX.)--At Niort, population 11,000, the annual mortality of the ten years preceding 1793 averaged 423, or 38 per thousand. In year II., there are 1,872, or 170 per thousand inhabitants, the number being more than quadrupled. In year III., there are 1,122 deaths, or 122, which is almost the triple. ("Statistique des Deux-Sèvres," by Dupin, prefet, 2nd memorial, year IX.)--At Strasbourg, ("Recueil des Pièces Authentiques," etc., vol. I., p.32, declaration of the Municipality,) "twice as many died last year (year II.) as during any of the preceding years."--According to these figures and the details we have read, the annual mortality during years II. and III. and most of year IV., may be estimated as having increased one-half extra. Now, previous to 1789, according to Moheau and Necker, (Peuchet, "Statistique elementaire de la France," 1805, p.239,) the yearly mortality in France was one person to every thirty, that is to say, 866,666 deaths to a population of 26 millions. One-half in addition to this for two and a half years gives, consequently, one million and eighty thousand deaths.]

2nd. During the whole of the Directory episode, privation lasted and the rate of mortality rose very high, especially for sick children, the infirm and the aged, because the convention had confiscated the possessions of the hospitals and public charity was almost null. For example, at Lyons, "The Asylums having been deprived of sisters of charity during years II., III. and IV., and most of year V., the children gathered into them could neither be fed nor suckled and the number that perished was frightful." ("Statistique du Rhone," by Vernier, prefet, year X.)--In Necker's time, there were about eight hundred asylums, hospitals and charitable institutions, with one hundred thousand or one hundred and ten thousand inmates. (Peuchet, ibid., 256.) For lack of care and food they die in myriads, especially foundlings, the number of which increases enormously: in 1790, the figures do not exceed 23,000; in year IX., the number surpasses 62,000, (Peuchet, 260): "It is a 'perfect deluge,'" say the reports; in the department of Aisne, there are 1,097 instead of 400; in that of Lot-et-Garonne, fifteen hundred, (Statistiques des préfets de l'Aisne, Gers, Lot-et-Garonne), and they are born only to die. In that of Eure, after a few months, it is six out of seven; at Lyons, 792 out of 820; (Statistique des Prefets du Rhone et de l'Eure). At Marseilles, it is ´600 out of 618; at Toulon, 101 out of 104; in the average, 19 out of 20. (Rocquam, "Etat de France au 18e Brumaire," p.33. Report of François de Nantes.) At Troyes, out of 164 brought in in year IV., 134 die; out of 147 received in year VII., 136 die. (Albert Babeau, II., 452.) At Paris, in year IV., out of 3,122 infants received 2,907 perish. (Moniteur, year V., No. 231.)--The sick perish the same. "At Toulon, only seven pounds of meat are given each day to eighty patients; I saw in the civil Asylum," says François de Nantes, "a woman who had just undergone a surgical operation to whom they gave for a restorative a dozen beans on a wooden platter." (Ibid., 16, 31, and passim, especially for Bordeaux, Caen, Alençon, St. Lô, etc.)--As to beggars, these are innumerable: in year IX., it is estimated that there are 3 or 4,000 by department, at least 300,000 in France. "In the four Brittany departments one can truly say that a third of the population live at the expense of the other two-thirds, either by stealing from them or through compelling assistance." (Rocquain, "Report by Barbé-Marbois," p.93.)]

3rd. In year IX., the Consells-generaux are called upon to ascertain whether the departments have increased or diminished in population since 1789. ("Analyse des procés-verbaux des Conseils-Generaux de l'an XI." In four volumes.) Out of 58 which reply, 37 state that the population with them has diminished; 12, that it has increased; 9, that it remains stationary. Of the 22 others, 13 attribute the maintenance or increase of population, at least for the most part, to the multiplication of early marriages in order to avoid conscription and to the large number of natural children.--Consequently, the average rate of population is kept up not through preserving life, but through the substitution of new lives for the old ones that are sacrificed. Bordeaux, nevertheless, lost one-tenth of its population, Angers one-eighth, Pau one-seventh, Chambery one-fourth, Rennes one-third. In the departments where the civil-war was carried on, Argenton-Château lost two-thirds of its population, Bressuire fell from 3,000 to 630 inhabitants; Lyons, after the siege, fell from a population of 140,000 thousand to 80,000. ("Analyse des procés-verbaux des Conseils-Generaux" and Statistiques des Prefets.")]

[Footnote 42152: Lareveillère-Lepeaux, "Mémoires." I, 248. (He belongs to the Committee and is an eye-witness.)]

BOOK FIFTH. THE END OF THE REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENT.