No More Learning

A proposal that came from a sort of literary hack, Félix Bodin,
made him determine to write a history of the French Revolution;
ADOLPHE THIERS
—



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14822
ADOLPHE THIERS
the first two volumes of which, bearing Bodin's name by the side
of Thiers's, appeared in 1823. This was the beginning of the first
exhaustive history of the French Revolution written by one who had
not been an eye-witness of the event; and it presented therefore
greater guarantees of impartiality than anything before published on
the same subject. The young writer moreover possessed to a very
high degree the gift of telling an interesting story, and of presenting
in a clear and simple way that which seemed at first obscure and
complicated. He could also work fast, so as not to allow the reader
to lose his interest in the narrative. The last of the ten volumes of
Thiers's History of the French Revolution' appeared in 1827, hardly
four years after the first volumes had been issued.
The success of the work at once placed its author in the front
rank of historical writers, at a time when France was extraordinarily
rich in literary talent, and when the desire to know as accurately as
possible the events of the revolutionary period was general in Europe.
Thiers, who was destined to be a great parliamentarian, had also a
special gift for financial explanation and military narrative; so that
he possessed almost every one of the requisites for composing the
history of a crisis which was financial in its causes and military in
its development, no less than social and political in its nature.
It is to be noted as a curious coincidence that while Thiers was
publishing this exhaustive work on the Revolution, his friend Mignet
was writing another and shorter narrative of the same period. These
two works were the first that manifested a reaction against the
anti-revolutionary sentiments which had been dominant in France, at
least in appearance, since the restoration of the Bourbons. Liberal
opinion was gathering strength and boldness. The accession to the
throne of Charles X. , the last of the surviving brothers of Louis XVI. ,
made every one feel that a great effort would be made by the court
to place the ultra-royalist and Catholic party in full control of affairs.
Thiers's History of the French Revolution' called attention to the
means by which in the past the people had triumphed over an anti-
patriotic cabal, and powerfully served the Liberal party in its prepa-
rations for what may be termed aggressive resistance.
On January 1st, 1830, when the fight was at its hottest, Thiers
for the first time assumed a prominent rank among the combatants.
In connection with his friends François Mignet and Armand Car-
rel he established a daily political paper, Le National, which was at
once recognized as the boldest of the opposition newspapers. The
leader in which the policy of the paper was explained stated that,
determined to possess political liberty, France was willing to find a
model for her institutions across the Channel; but that should she
fail in the attempt, she would not hesitate to look for another model
across the Atlantic. The article had been written by Adolphe Thiers,


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ADOLPHE THIERS
14823
who was destined to be before long a minister of a constitutional
sovereign, and more than forty years later the President of a demo-
cratic republic.
In the months that followed, many of the most striking political
articles of the National were printed over the initials A. T. ; and when
on July 25th, 1830, Charles X. determined, by his famous Ordonnances,
to challenge the Chamber of Deputies and the Liberal press to a
mortal combat, it was Adolphe Thiers that wrote the strong-worded
protest by which the Parisian journalists proclaimed their refusal to
obey the illegal dictates of the infatuated monarch.
The success of the revolution of 1830 made Thiers one of the
most influential men in the kingdom. His literary productions at that
time comprised, in addition to his 'History of the French Revolution'
and to his articles in the Constitutionnel and in the National, a volume
on Law and his System of Finance' (1826), reprinted in 1858 under
a new title, 'History of Law'; and an 'Essay on Vauvenargues,' quite
an early production, written by him while still in Aix, and rewarded
by a prize of the Aix Academy of Letters and Sciences under rather
curious circumstances. That Academy had offered a Eulogy of Vauve-
nargues as a subject for a competitive essay. Young Thiers, in his
eagerness to secure the prize, sent in two essays composed on two
different plans,- so that the judges could not, until the name of the
author was disclosed, imagine that they came from only one source;
and he secured both first and second prize, over all his competitors.
For nearly fifteen years after the accession of Louis Philippe
there was an interruption in his labors as a man of letters. He
then played an important political part, being several times a cabi-
net minister and twice prime minister; the last time from March to
November 1840, when he strongly supported against all Europe the
celebrated ruler of Egypt, Mehemet-Ali. His rival at that time was
another celebrated man of letters,- the historian Guizot, who suc-
ceeded him as prime minister. Both were considered the most bril-
liant political orators France possessed at that time, with Berryer and
Lamartine. In 1834 Thiers was elected a member of the French
Academy. His speech on being received in that illustrious body is
one of his most successful efforts.
The opinions he represented in Parliament during the reign of
Louis Philippe were those of a moderate Liberal, and especially of one
who placed the authority of Parliament far above the King. That
much he set forth in the famous formula: "The King reigns and
does not govern. " Soon after his retirement from power, in 1840,
he realized that both King and Parliament were, and were likely to
remain for a long time, hostile to his ideas, and that his chances of
regaining power were very slight indeed. He therefore again turned


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14824
ADOLPHE THIERS
to literature, to historical writing. In his History of the French
Revolution he had conducted his narrative to the Eighteenth Bru-
maire of the eighth year of the French Republic (November 9th, 1799),
-the date of the military revolution by which General Napoleon Bona-
parte was made supreme in the State. He determined now to write
the history of Napoleon himself from his accession to power to his
death.
The times were ripe for such an undertaking: the admiration
for Napoleon was one of the strongest feelings of the generation to
which Thiers belonged. When last prime minister, he had prevailed
upon England to give up the remains of the great captain, and to
allow them to be transported to France. Paris had known in the suc-
ceeding quarter of a century no such enthusiasm as was manifested
on December 15th, 1840; when, in the midst of the most impressive
military pomp, Napoleon's coffin was laid at rest in the crypt of the
Hôtel des Invalides. Thiers devoted no less than twenty years of
his life to the composition of his History of the Consulate and the
Empire'; the first five volumes of which were published in 1845, and
the twentieth and last in 1862.
During that period France passed through strange vicissitudes.
The throne of Louis Philippe was in February 1848 swept away by
a revolution, which the King at the last moment vainly tried to stave
off by calling Thiers to power. A republic was established, which
soon intrusted its destiny to a nephew of Napoleon. Thiers, after
supporting the candidacy of Louis Napoleon to the presidency of
the republic, soon discovered his mistake, and became a determined
opponent of the "Prince-President"; and so, when Louis Napoleon
broke his oath of office and destroyed the republic, Thiers was not
surprised at being informed that he was banished from France. He
was, however, soon allowed to return and to peacefully complete his
great historical undertaking. In the mean time he had written a short
but important work on 'Property,' destined to check the growth of
socialistic feeling.
ness
The 'History of Napoleon' is Thiers's greatest claim to distinction
as a literary man. It possesses in a high degree the merits of clear-
ss and order; it never fails to be interesting. It may be lacking
in moral power: Napoleon is too uniformly praised and admired, his
opponents are too uniformly found fault with. But the author's
enthusiasm for his hero is felt to be genuine; and Thiers, moreover,
does not seem to speak simply in his own name, but in the name of
the millions for whom Napoleon was the image of everything that
was great and striking. Whether this fulsome approval of Napoleon's
doings very well agreed with the liberal doctrines he defended in
the political arena, does not seem to have troubled Thiers very much;
and as soon as he had completed his history he re-entered public


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ADOLPHE THIERS
14825
life, and almost suddenly passed from praising the uncle to bitterly
assailing the nephew.
In 1863 Thiers offered himself as an opposition candidate to the
voters of one of the Paris constituencies; and after being elected a
member of the Chamber of Deputies, opened against the imperial
government a campaign of opposition, which became every day more
intense until his predictions were verified, and the imperial throne
lay shattered on the battle-field.
Thiers's political speeches between 1863 and 1870 developed with
a marvelous variety of arguments the theme that the government
of Napoleon III. betrayed the French people, both in denying them
political liberty and in allowing French influence to become every
day smaller in foreign affairs. Especially did he criticize the expedi-
tion by which the French government tried to establish an empire in
Mexico, and the policy of Napoleon III. in allowing Prussia to grow
at the expense of Austria. His denunciation of that policy in 1866
was nothing short of prophetic.
He was of course re-elected to the Chamber in 1869; and a year
later, the policy which he opposed culminated in the foolhardy decla-
ration of war against Prussia and the disasters that followed. This
declaration of war Thiers did his utmost to prevent; he addressed
the house in an impassioned speech, which the supporters of the
government constantly cut with insulting interruptions, without how-
ever succeeding in stifling his voice.
Thiers was now seventy-three years old, and new paths of use-
fulness opened before him in which he was to win more renown
than he had in all his past career. On September 4th, 1870, after
the reception of the news of the surrender of the imperial army at
Sedan, the imperial government collapsed at Paris; a republic was
proclaimed; and a new government was formed, consisting of the
representatives of the various Parisian constituencies in the Cham-
ber of Deputies. Thiers however declined to be a member of that
government; but at its request undertook to visit all the capitals of
Europe, and try to get some help for invaded France.
He failed in his mission,-in which, indeed, failure was simply
unavoidable; and when a few months later France had to sue for
peace, and to elect a National Assembly which alone had the power
of accepting or rejecting the terms of the victorious Germans, the
country only remembered Thiers's heroic opposition to the declara-
tion of the war, and manifested its confidence in him by an election
to the Assembly from no less than twenty-six constituencies.
It was
a foregone conclusion that he would be called upon by
the Assembly to form a new government. On February 17th, at
Bordeaux, where the Assembly met because it was one of the spots.


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ADOLPHE THIERS
still unoccupied by the German armies,—he was elected chief of the
executive power of the French Republic, and President of the Coun-
cil of Ministers; a title which was a few months later changed to Pres-
ident of the French Republic. His first duty was the saddest that
could befall such a patriotic Frenchman as he was: he had to meet
Prince Bismarck, and hear from him the terms upon which Germany
was willing to grant peace to France. This duty he fulfilled with
dignity, courage, and skill; and he was fortunate enough to save
for France the Alsatian fortress of Belfort, without the possession of
which the French frontier would have remained entirely open to any
later German invasion.
None the less hard was it for him to convince the Assembly
that, hard as they were, the terms imposed by Germany had to be
accepted, so that patriotic citizens might afterwards address them-
selves to the task of reorganizing the impoverished country.
The task he then had to face was nothing short of appalling.
Administration, army, finances - everything was in a state of complete
collapse; and yet the country had to pay to Germany the unheard-of
war indemnity of one thousand million dollars, before the territory
of France was to be free from the presence of German armies! In
addition to that, political passions were at fever heat. A majority of
the members elected to the National Assembly were men of royalist
proclivities, who wished to have the republic abolished, and either
the Bourbon or the Orleans pretender called to the throne. On the
other hand, Paris and all the large cities were enthusiastically republi-
can, and made no secret of their determination to resist by force any
attempt to re-establish a monarch in France.
To reconcile these conflicting claims, to the extent of having the
settlement of purely political questions postponed to a time when
the country had been enabled to resume the normal tenor of its life,
was the task to which Thiers then devoted himself, and in the per-
formance of which he could make use of hardly any weapon save his
oratorical power. Being a member of the Assembly, he was allowed
to address it; and those of his speeches which belong to that period
of his life are among the most remarkable that have been delivered
before any parliament.
His success was not always complete. For instance, he wished the
Assembly to leave Bordeaux and come to Paris, as soon as the Ger-
man forces had left the Paris forts. All he could achieve was to
determine the Assembly, which disliked the intense republicanism of
the capital, to move to Versailles. This slight, which the Parisians
felt to be undeserved after the heroic resistance they had opposed to
the Germans in a five-months' siege, was one of the causes of the
terrible insurrection which broke out on March 18th, 1871.


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ADOLPHE THIERS
14827
It was while engaged in the sad task of repressing that insurrec-
tion that President Thiers, for the first time, openly stated his deter-
mination to keep away from any plans having for their object the
destruction of the republic. Almost up to that time he had been
known to be an advocate of constitutional monarchy. But the
strength of republican sentiment in France, and the hopeless divis-
ions of the royalists and imperialists, now convinced him that a restor-
ation of monarchy in France would be, as he soon after stated, "the
worst of revolutions. "
No wonder that the friends of the pretenders, who controlled a
majority of the Assembly, at once determined to treat him as an
enemy, and that therefore the career of his government was not an
easy one. Every day assailed by his critics, M. Theirs was constantly
compelled to take part himself in the debates of the Assembly, where
his personal ascendency often enabled him to secure a majority
against all apparent odds. The task, moreover, that had to be per-
formed by the government, was one which hardly made it possible to
M. Thiers's opponents to dispense with his services, even after the
defeat of the Paris insurrection had re-established everywhere the
sovereignty of the National Government. The German troops still
occupied a considerable part of the French territory; the enormous
war indemnity due to Germany had not been paid; the army had not
been organized; and finally, France needed to be trusted by the other
nations, and possessed then no other statesman who commanded
the respect of all the European governments in anything like the
same degree as M. Thiers. In addition thereto the country, which had
elected a good many royalists in February 1871 simply because they
more energetically than others pronounced in favor of a cessation of
the war, now every day showed by its votes in by-elections, which
were numerous, its growing affection for republican institutions, and
made the anti-republican members of the Assembly somewhat timid
in furthering plans clearly condemned by a majority of the electo-
They therefore directed their efforts to a somewhat different
object. M. Thiers's main weapon was his persuasive oratory; and the
speeches that he delivered during that period of his political life are
among his most interesting productions, even from a purely literary
standpoint. They are wonders of simplicity, of clearness, at times of
good-naturedness; but also, when needed, of dogged tenacity. If the
deliberations of the Assembly could be so conducted that M. Thiers
should be kept out of them, his opponents would have gained a great
point. And this they achieved in a great measure. They managed
to have a law framed which decided that, as M. Thiers was not sim-
ply a member of the Assembly but also President of the Republic, he
would be allowed to address the Assembly only in special sessions,
held solely for that purpose, at his own request.
rate.


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14828
ADOLPHE THIERS
Finally the work which M. Thiers had assigned to himself was
done. The enormous war indemnity was paid, thanks to the wonder-
ful success of two five per cent. loans issued by the government. A
convention was signed with Germany by virtue of which the French
territory was to be freed of German troops some time in 1873, con-
siderably before the moment at which this consummation had origi-
nally been expected. The law reorganizing the army was passed in
1872. What remained to be done now was to give France a con-
stitution; and President Thiers, in a special message, boldly asked
that that constitution should be republican.
This was too much for the anti-republicans of the Assembly. They
determined that M. Thiers must be compelled to resign his office.
On May 24th, 1873, a memorable session took place, in which the
President most impressively explained the reasons that had led him
to consider it impossible and undesirable to re-establish a monarchy
in France. He had never been so eloquent, so persuasive, so ener-
getic. All was of no avail. Everything had been settled in advance.
An adverse vote was carried by a majority of fourteen in a house of
more than seven hundred; and in the evening he resigned his office,
and Marshal MacMahon was elected by his opponents as his successor.
The last four years of his life Thiers spent in comparative retire-
ment. He remained in public life in so far as he was all the time
a member of the representative assemblies; but he very seldom took
part in discussions. His advice, however, was constantly sought by
the leaders of the republican party, with whom he came to be al-
most exclusively surrounded. Once he seemed almost on the eve of
returning to power. On May 16th, 1877, President MacMahon had, by
means that were constitutionally questionable, got rid of a republican
cabinet which possessed an undoubted majority in Parliament. The
royalists were still smarting under the bitterness of their disappoint-
ment in being unable to destroy the republic, even after the resig-
nation of President Thiers; and they were determined to give another
and desperate battle to their opponents.
A monarchical ministry
was formed; office-holders of monarchical tendencies were everywhere
substituted for the republican incumbents; and a general election was
called, in which it was hoped by the royalists that an unscrupulous
use of the governmental machinery might compel the country to
return to the house an anti-republican majority. The republicans
were led in the fight by Thiers, Gambetta, and Grévy; and their
plan was, after winning at the polls a victory which seemed to them
absolutely certain to come, to compel Marshal MacMahon to resign
the Presidency, and to reinstate M. Thiers in that office. The success
of the plan was prevented by the death of Thiers himself, who was
then in his eighty-first year. It occurred in Saint-Germain, near Paris,
on September 3d, 1877.


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ADOLPHE THIERS
14829
The great statesman's funeral was an imposing popular and re-
publican demonstration. He helped the cause he had come to love
so much, in death as he had done in life. Among his papers was
found an important document, the last thing of any public interest
that was written by him. It was a kind of political testament,
the publication of which was intrusted to three of his best and
oldest friends: Mignet, who although slightly his senior survived him
a few years, Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, and Jules Simon. In it the
illustrious ex-President gave to the French people the advice which
seemed to him most timely in the crisis through which the country
was then passing; and he thus very substantially contributed to the
final victory of the republic in France.
All the political life here sketched is reflected in the remarkable
collection of his speeches which has been published since his death,
and the editor of which was one of his stanchest political and pri-
vate friends, M. Calmon.
The type of men to whom Thiers belonged seems to be passing
away. Literature and politics seem to get more widely apart from
each other than before. No more Guizots and Thierses in France, no
more Broughams and Macaulays in England, no more Daniel Web-
sters in the United States: the more reason for paying close attention
to the best specimens of a class of public men who thought that he
understood his country best who understood its language best.
Adolphe Whe
WHY THE REVOLUTION CAME
From the History of the French Revolution'
E
VERYBODY is acquainted with the revolutions of the French
monarchy. It is well known that the Greeks, and afterwards
the Romans, introduced their arms and their civilization
among the half-savage Gauls; that subsequently the barbarians
established their military hierarchy among them; that this hier-
archy, transferred from persons to lands, struck root, as it were,
and grew up into the feudal system. Authority was divided
between the feudal chief called king and the secondary chiefs.
called vassals, who in their turn were kings over their own
dependents. In our times, when the necessity for preferring
mutual accusations has caused search to be made for recipro-
cal faults, abundant pains have been taken to teach us that the
supreme authority was first disputed by the vassals, which is


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14830
ADOLPHE THIERS
always done by those who are nearest to it; that this authority
was afterwards divided among them, which constituted feudal
anarchy; and that at length it reverted to the throne, where it
concentrated itself into despotism, under Louis XI. , Richelieu,
and Louis XIV.
The French population had progressively enfranchised itself
by industry, the primary source of wealth and liberty. Though
originally agricultural, it soon devoted its attention to commerce
and manufactures, and acquired an importance that affected the
entire nation. Introduced
Introduced as a supplicant to the States-General,
it appeared there in no other posture than on its knees, in order
to be grievously abused. In process of time even Louis XIV.
declared that he would have no more of these cringing assemblies;
and this he declared, booted and whip in hand, to the parlia
ment. Thenceforth were seen at the head of the State a king
clothed with a power ill defined in theory, but absolute in prac-
tice; grandees who had relinquished their feudal dignity for the
favor of the monarch, and who disputed by intrigue what was
granted to them out of the substance of the people; beneath
them an immense population, having no other relation to the
court and the aristocracy than habitual submission and the pay-
ment of taxes. Between the court and the people were parlia-
ments invested with the power of administering justice and
registering the royal decrees. Authority is always disputed. If
not in the legitimate assemblies of the nation, it is contested
in the very palace of the prince. It is well known that the par-
liaments, by refusing to register the royal edicts, rendered them
ineffective; this terminated in "a bed of justice" and a conces-
sion when the king was weak, but in entire submission when the
king was powerful. Louis XIV. had no need to make conces-
sions, for in his reign no parliament durst remonstrate; he drew
the nation along in his train, and it glorified him with the prodi-
gies which itself achieved in war and in the arts and sciences.
The subjects and the monarch were unanimous, and their actions
tended towards one and the same point. But no sooner had
Louis XIV. expired than the Regent afforded the parliaments
occasion to revenge themselves for their long nullity. The will
of the monarch, so profoundly respected in his lifetime, was
violated after his death, and his last testament was canceled.
Authority was then thrown into litigation, and a long struggle
commenced between the parliaments, the clergy, and the court,


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ADOLPHE THIERS
14831
in sight of a nation worn out with long wars, and exhausted by
supplying the extravagance of its rulers, who gave themselves up
alternately to a fondness for pleasure and for arms. Till then it
had displayed no skill but for the service and the gratification of
the monarch: it now began to apply its intelligence to its own
benefit and the examination of its interests.
The human mind is incessantly passing from one object to
another. From the theatre and the pulpit, French genius turned
to the moral and political sciences: all then became changed.
Figure to yourself, during a whole century, the usurpers of all
the national rights quarreling about a worn-out authority; the
parliaments persecuting the clergy, the clergy persecuting the
parliaments; the latter disputing the authority of the court;
the court, careless and calm amid this struggle, squandering the
substance of the people in the most profligate debauchery: the
nation, enriched and roused, watching these disputes, arming itself
with the allegations of one party against the other, deprived of
all political action, dogmatizing boldly and ignorantly because
it was confined to theories; aspiring above all to recover its.
rank in Europe, and offering in vain its treasure and its blood
to regain a place which it had lost through the weakness of its
rulers. Such was the eighteenth century.
The scandal had been carried to its height when Louis XVI.
- an equitable prince, moderate in his propensities, carelessly
educated, but naturally of a good disposition - ascended the
throne at a very early age. He called to his side an old courtier,
and consigned to him the care of his kingdom; and divided his
confidence between Maurepas and the Queen,- an Austrian prin-
cess, young, lively, and amiable, who possessed a complete ascend-
ency over him. Maurepas and the Queen were not good friends.
The King, sometimes giving way to his minister, at others to his
consort, began at an early period his long career of vacillations.
Aware of the state of his kingdom, he believed the reports of
the philosophers on that subject; but brought up in the most
Christian sentiments, he felt the utmost aversion for them. The
public voice, which was loudly expressed, called for Turgot, one
of the class of economists: an honest, virtuous man, endowed with
firmness of character; a slow genius, but obstinate and profound.
Convinced of his probity, delighted with his plans of reform,
Louis XVI. frequently repeated, "There are none besides myself
and Turgot who are friends of the people. " Turgot's reforms were


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14832
ADOLPHE THIERS
thwarted by the opposition of the highest orders in the State,
who were interested in maintaining all kinds of abuses, which
the austere minister proposed to suppress. Louis XVI. dismissed
him with regret. During his whole life, which was only a long
martyrdom, he had the mortification to discern what was right,
to wish it sincerely, but to lack the energy requisite for carrying
it into execution.
The King, placed between the court, the parliaments, and
the people, exposed to intrigues and to suggestions of all sorts,
repeatedly changed his ministers. Yielding once more to the
public voice, and to the necessity for reform, he summoned to the
finance department Necker, a native of Geneva, who had amassed
wealth as a banker: a partisan and disciple of Colbert, as Turgot
was of Sully; an economical and upright financier, but a vain
man, fond of setting himself up for arbitrator in everything,—
philosophy, religion, liberty; and, misled by the praises of his
friends and the public, flattering himself that he could guide and
fix the minds of others at that point at which his own had
stopped.
Necker re-established order in the finances, and found means
to defray the heavy expenses of the American war.
With a
mind more comprehensive but less flexible than that of Tur-
got, possessing more particularly the confidence of capitalists, he
found for the moment unexpected resources, and revived public
credit. But it required something more than financial artifices to
put an end to the embarrassments of the exchequer, and he had
recourse to reform. He found the higher orders not less adverse
to him than they had been to Turgot; the parliaments, apprised
of his plans, combined against him, and obliged him to retire.
The conviction of the xistence of abuses was universal;
everybody admitted it; the King knew and deeply grieved at
it. The courtiers, who derived advantage from these abuses,
would have been glad to see an end put to the embarrassments
of the exchequer, provided it did not cost them a single sacrifice.
They descanted at court on the state of affairs, and there retailed
philosophical maxims; they deplored, whilst hunting, the oppres-
sions inflicted upon the farmer; nay, they were even seen to
applaud the enfranchisement of the Americans, and to receive
with honor the young Frenchmen who returned from the New
World.
The parliaments also talked of the interests of the peo-
ple, loudly insisted on the sufferings of the poor, and yet opposed


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ADOLPHE THIERS
14833
the equalization of the taxes, as well as the abolition of the
remains of feudal barbarism. All talked of the public weal, few
desired it; and the people, not yet knowing who were its true
friends, applauded all those who resisted power, its most obvious
enemy.
By the removal of Turgot and Necker, the state of affairs
was not changed; the distress of the treasury still remained the
same. Those in power would have been willing to dispense, for a
long time to come, with the intervention of the nation; but it
was absolutely necessary to subsist—it was absolutely necessary to
supply the profusion of the court. The difficulty, removed for a
moment by the dismissal of a minister, by a loan, by the forced
imposition of a tax, appeared again in an aggravated form, like
every evil injudiciously neglected. The court hesitated, just as a
man does who is compelled to take a dreaded but an indispensa-
ble step. An intrigue brought forward M. de Calonne, who was
not in good odor with the public, because he had contributed to
the persecution of La Chalotais. Calonne, clever, brilliant, fertile
in resources, relied upon his genius, upon fortune, and upon men,
and awaited the future with the most extraordinary apathy. It
was his opinion that one ought not to be alarmed beforehand, or
to discover an evil till the day before that on which one intends
to set about repairing it. He seduced the court by his manners,
touched it by his eagerness to grant all that it required, afforded
the King and everybody else some happier moments, and dis-
pelled the most gloomy presages by a gleam of prosperity and
blind confidence.
That future which had been counted upon now approached: it
became necessary at length to adopt decisive measures.
It was
impossible to burden the people with fresh imposts, and yet the
coffers were empty. There was but one remedy which could be
applied, that was to reduce the expenses by the suppression
of grants; and if this expedient should not suffice, to extend the
taxes to a greater number of contributors,- that is, to the nobil-
ity and clergy. These plans, attempted successively by Turgot
and Necker and resumed by Calonne, appeared to the latter not at
all likely to succeed, unless the consent of the privileged classes
themselves could be obtained. Calonne, therefore, proposed to
collect them together in an assembly, to be called the Assembly
of the Notables, in order to lay his plans before them, and to
gain their consent either by address or by conviction.
Translation of Frederic Shoberl.
-
XXV-928


## p. 14834 (#408) ##########################################

14834
ADOLPHE THIERS
THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR IN WESTERN FRANCE
From the History of the French Revolution'
AN
NOTHER much more general revolt had broken out in the
Marais and the department of La Vendée. At Machecoul
and Challans, the recruiting was the occasion of a universal
insurrection. A hair-dresser named Gaston killed an officer, took
his uniform, put himself at the head of the troop, took Challans,
and then Machecoul,- where his men burned all the papers of
the administrations, and committed murders of which Bocage had
furnished no example. Three hundred republicans were shot
by parties of twenty or thirty. The insurgents first made them
confess, and then took them to the edge of a ditch, beside which
they shot them, to spare themselves the trouble of burying the
bodies. Nantes instantly sent several hundred men to St. Phili-
bert; but learning that there was a disturbance at Savenay, it
recalled those troops, and the insurgents of Machecoul remained
masters of the conquered country.
In the department of La Vendée,- that is, to the south of
the theatre of this war,-the insurrection assumed still more con-
sistence.
The national guards of Fontenay, having set out on their
march for Chantonnay, were repulsed and beaten. Chantonnay
was plundered. General Verteuil, who commanded the eleventh
military division, on receiving intelligence of this defeat dis-
patched General Marcé with twelve hundred men, partly troops
of the line and partly national guards. The rebels, who were
met at St. Vincent, were repulsed. General Marcé had time to
add twelve hundred more men and nine pieces of cannon to
his little army. In marching upon St. Fulgent he again fell in
with the Vendeans in a valley, and stopped to restore a bridge
which they had destroyed. About four in the afternoon of the
18th of March, the Vendeans, taking the initiative, advanced and
attacked him. Availing themselves as usual of the advantages of
the ground, they began to fire with their wonted superiority; and
by degrees surrounded the republican army, astonished at this de-
structive fire, and utterly unable to reach an enemy concealed
and dispersed in all the hollows of the ground. At length they
rushed on to the assault, threw their adversaries into disorder,
and made themselves masters of the artillery, the ammunition,
and the arms, which the soldiers threw away that they might be
the lighter in their flight.


## p. 14835 (#409) ##########################################

ADOLPHE THIERS
14835
These more important successes in the department of La
Vendée, properly so called, procured for the insurgents the name
of Vendeans; which they afterwards retained, though the war
was far more active out of La Vendée. The pillage committed by
them in the Marais caused them to be called brigands, though
the greater number did not deserve that appellation. The insur-
rection extended into the Marais, from the environs of Nantes
to Les Sables; and into Anjou and Poitou, as far as the environs
of Vihiers and Parthenay. The cause of the success of the Ven-
deans was in the configuration of the country; in their skill and
courage to profit by it; and finally in the inexperience and im-
prudent ardor of the republican troops, which, levied in haste,
were in too great a hurry to attack them, and thus gave them
victories and all their results,-military stores, confidence, and
courage.
Easter recalled all the insurgents to their homes, from which
they never would stay away long. To them a war was a sort
of sporting excursion of several days; they carried with them
a sufficient quantity of bread for the time, and then returned to
inflame their neighbors by the accounts which they gave. Places
of meeting were appointed for the month of April. The insur-
rection was then general, and extended over the whole surface of
the country.
THE HEIGHT OF THE "TERROR»
From the "History of the French Revolution'
NⓇ
EVER had the terror been greater, not only in the Convention,
but in the prisons and throughout France.
The cruel agents of Robespierre, Fouquier-Tinville the
accuser and Dumas the president, had taken up the law of the
22d of Prairial, and were preparing to avail themselves of it for
the purpose of committing fresh atrocities in the prisons. "Very
soon," said Fouquier, "there shall be put up on their doors bills
of This house to let. "" The plan was to get rid of the greater
part of the suspected persons. People had accustomed themselves
to consider these latter as irreconcilable enemies, whom it was
necessary to destroy for the welfare of the republic. To sacri-
fice thousands of individuals, whose only fault was to think in a
certain manner,- nay, whose opinions were often precisely the


## p. 14836 (#410) ##########################################

14836
ADOLPHE THIERS
same as those of their persecutors,- to sacrifice them seemed a
perfectly natural thing, from the habit which people had acquired
of destroying one another. The facility with which they put
others to death, or encountered death themselves, had become
extraordinary. In the field of battle, on the scaffold, thousands
perished daily, and nobody was any longer shocked at it. The
first murders committed in 1793 proceeded from a real irritation
caused by danger. Such perils had now ceased; the republic
was victorious: people now slaughtered not from indignation, but
from the atrocious habit which they had contracted. That for-
midable machine which they had been obliged to construct in
order to withstand enemies of all kinds, began to be no longer
necessary; but once set going, they knew not how to stop it.
Every government must have its climax, and does not perish till
it has attained that climax. The Revolutionary government was
not destined to end on the same day that all the enemies of
the republic should be sufficiently terrified: it was destined to
go beyond that point, and to exercise itself till it had become
generally disgusting by its very atrocity. Such is the invariable
course of human affairs. Why had atrocious circumstances com-
pelled the creation of a government of blood, which was to reign
and vanquish solely by inflicting death?
nance.
A still more frightful circumstance is, that when the signal is
given, when the idea is established that lives must be sacrificed,
all dispose themselves for this horrid purpose with an extraordi-
nary facility. Every one acts without remorse, without repug-
People accustom themselves to this, like the judge who
condemns criminals to death, like the surgeon who sees beings
writhing under his instrument, like the general who orders the
sacrifice of twenty thousand soldiers. They frame a horrid lan-
guage according to their new operations; they contrive even to
render it gay; they invent striking words to express sanguinary
ideas. Every one, stunned and hurried along, keeps pace with
the mass; and men who were yesterday engaged in the peaceful
occupations of the arts and commerce, are to-day seen applying
themselves with the same facility to the work of death and de-
struction.
-
The Committee had given the signal by the law of the 22d.
Dumas and Fouquier had but too well understood it.
necessary, however, to find pretexts for immolating so many vic-
tims. What crime could be imputed to them, when most of them


## p. 14837 (#411) ##########################################

ADOLPHE THIERS
14837
were peaceful, unknown citizens, who had never given any sign
of life to the State? It was conceived that being confined in
the prisons, they would think how to get out of them; that their
number was likely to inspire them with a feeling of their strength,
and to suggest to them the idea of exerting it for their escape.
The pretended conspiracy of Dillon was the germ of this idea,
which was developed in an atrocious manner. Some wretches
among the prisoners consented to act the infamous part of in-
formers. They pointed out in the Luxembourg one hundred and
sixty prisoners who, they said, had been concerned in Dillon's
plot. Some of these list-makers were procured in all the other
places of confinement; and they denounced in each, one or two
hundred persons as accomplices in the "conspiracy of the prisons. "
An attempt at escape made at La Force served but to authorize
this unworthy fable; and hundreds of unfortunate creatures be-
gan immediately to be sent to the Revolutionary tribunal. They
were transferred from the various prisons to the Conciergerie,
to be thence taken to the tribunal and to the scaffold. In the
night between the 18th and 19th of Messidor (June 6th), the one
hundred and sixty persons denounced at the Luxembourg were
transferred. They trembled on hearing themselves called: they
knew not what was laid to their charge, but they regarded it as
most probable that death was reserved for them. The odious Fou-
quier, since he had been furnished with the law of the 22d, had
made great changes in the hall of the tribunal. Instead of the
seats for the advocates and the bench, which would hold eighteen
or twenty persons and had been appropriated to the accused, an
amphitheatre for the accused was constructed by his order, with
a capacity of one hundred or one hundred and fifty at a time.
This he called his "little seats. " Carrying his atrocious activ-
ity still further, he had even caused a scaffold to be erected in
the very hall of the tribunal; and he proposed to have the one
hundred and sixty accused in the Luxembourg, tried at one and
the same sitting.
The Committee of Public Welfare, when informed of the kind.
of mania which had seized its public accuser, sent for him, ordered
him to remove the scaffold from the hall in which it was set up,
and forbade him to bring sixty persons to trial at once. "What! "
said Collot-d'Herbois in a transport of indignation: "wouldst thou
then demoralize death itself? " It should however be remarked
that Fouquier asserted the contrary, and maintained that it was


## p. 14838 (#412) ##########################################

14838
ADOLPHE THIERS
he who demanded the trial of the one hundred and sixty in
three divisions. Everything proves, on the contrary, that it was
the Committee which was less extravagant than their minister,
and checked his mad proceedings. They were obliged to repeat
the order to Fouquier-Tinville to remove the guillotine from the
hall of the tribunal.
The one hundred and sixty were divided into three companies,
tried and executed in three days. The proceedings were as expe-
ditious and as frightful as those adopted in the Abbaye on the
nights of the 2d and 3d of September. Carts ordered for every
day were waiting from the morning in the court of the Palace of
Justice, and the accused could see them as they went up-stairs to
the tribunal. Dumas the president, holding sessions like a maniac,
had a pair of pistols on the table before him. He merely asked
the accused their names, and added some very general question.
In the examination of the one hundred and sixty, the president
said to one of them, Dorival, "Do you know anything of the
conspiracy? " "No. "—"I expected that you would give that
answer; but it shall not avail you. Another. " He addressed a
person named Champigny, "Are you not an ex-noble? " "Yes. "
"Another. " To Gudreville, "Are you a priest? " "Yes —
but I have taken the oath. "-"You have no right to speak.
Another. " To a man named Menil, "Were you not servant to
the ex-constituent Menou ? » "Yes. "—"Another. " To Vely,
"Were you not architect to Madame? -"Yes; but I was dis-
missed in 1788. " — "Another. " To Gondrecourt, "Had you not
your father-in-law at the Luxembourg? " "Yes. " — "Another. "
To Durfort, "Were you not in the life-guard? " — "Yes; but I
was disbanded in 1789. "-
» — "Another. "
-
-
Such was the summary mode of proceeding with these unfor-
tunate persons. According to the law, the testimony of witnesses
was to be dispensed with only when there existed material or
moral proofs; nevertheless no witnesses were called, as it was
alleged that proofs of this kind existed in every case. The
jurors did not take the trouble to retire to the consultation room.
They gave their opinions before the audience, and sentence was
immediately pronounced. The accused had scarcely time to rise
and to mention their names. One day there was a prisoner whose
name was not upon the list of the accused, and who said to the
Court, "I am not accused; my name in not on your list. " "What
signifies that? " said Fouquier, "give it quick! " He gave it, and
-
-
>>
-
―
-
.


## p. 14839 (#413) ##########################################

ADOLPHE THIERS
14839
was sent to the scaffold like the others. The utmost negligence
prevailed in this kind of barbarous administration. Sometimes,
owing to the extreme precipitation, the acts of accusation were
not delivered to the accused till they were before the tribunal.
The most extraordinary blunders were committed. A worthy old
man, Loizerolles, heard along with his own surname the Christ-
ian names of his son called over: he forebore to remonstrate,
and was sent to the scaffold. Some time afterward the son was
brought to trial; it was found that he ought not to be alive,
since a person answering to all his names had been executed:
it was his father. He was nevertheless put to death. More than
once victims were called long after they had perished. There
were hundreds of acts of accusation quite ready, to which there
was nothing to add but the designation of the individuals.
The trials were conducted in like manner. The printing-office
was contiguous to the hall of the tribunal: the forms were kept
standing, the title, the motives, were ready composed; there was
nothing but the names to be added. These were handed through
a small loophole to the overseer. Thousands of copies were im-
mediately printed, and plunged families into mourning and struck
terror into the prisons. The hawkers came to sell the bulletin
of the tribunal under the prisoners' windows, crying, "Here are
the names of those who have gained prizes in the lottery of
St. Guillotine. " The accused were executed on the breaking-up
of the court; or at latest on the morrow, if the day was too far
advanced.
Ever since the passing of the law of the 22d of Prairial, vic-
tims perished at the rate of fifty or sixty a day. "That goes
well," said Fouquier-Tinville: "heads fall like tiles. " And he
added, "It must go better still next decade: I must have four
hundred and fifty at least. " For this purpose there were given.
what were called orders to the wretches who undertook the office
of spies upon the suspected. These wretches had become the
terror of the prisons. Confined as suspected persons, it was not
exactly known which of them it was who undertook to mark
out victims; but it was inferred from their insolence, from the
preference shown them by the jailers, from the orgies which
they held in the lodges with the agents of the police. They fre-
quently gave intimation of their importance, in order to traffic
with it. They were caressed, implored, by the trembling prison-
ers; they even received sums of money not to put their names


## p. 14840 (#414) ##########################################

14840
ADOLPHE THIERS
upon their lists. These they made up at random: they said of
one, that he had used aristocratic language; of another, that he
had drunk on a certain day when a defeat of the armies was
announced: and their mere designation was equivalent to a
death-warrant. The names which they had furnished were in-
serted in so many acts of accusation; these acts were notified in
the evening to the prisoners, and the latter were removed to the
Conciergerie. This was called in the language of the jailers
"the evening journal. " When those unfortunate creatures heard
the rolling of the tumbrils which came to fetch them, they were
in an agony as cruel as that of death. They ran to the gates,
clung to the bars to listen to the list, and trembled lest their
name should be pronounced by the messenger. When they were
named, they embraced their companions in misfortune, and took
a last leave of them. Most painful separations were frequently
witnessed, a father parting from his children, a husband from
his wife. Those who survived were as wretched as those who
were conducted to the den of Fouquier-Tinville. They went back
expecting soon to rejoin their relatives. When the fatal list was
finished, the prisoners breathed more freely, but only till the fol-
lowing day. Their anguish was then renewed, and the rolling of
the carts brought fresh terror along with it.
The public pity began to be expressed in a way that gave
some uneasiness to the exterminators. The shopkeepers in the
Rue St. Honoré, through which the carts passed every day, shut
up their shops. To deprive the victims of these signs of mourn-
ing, the scaffold was removed to the Barrière du Trone; but not
less pity was shown by the laboring people in this quarter than
by the inhabitants of the best streets in Paris. The populace, in
a moment of intoxication, may have no feeling for the victims
whom it slaughters itself; but when it daily witnesses the death
of fifty or sixty unfortunate persons against whom it is not ex-
cited by rage, it soon begins to be softened. This pity, however,
was still silent and timid. All the distinguished persons confined
in the prisons had fallen,- the unfortunate sister of Louis XVI.
had been immolated in her turn; and Death was already descend-
ing from the upper to the lower classes of society. We find at
this period on the list of the Revolutionary tribunal, tailors,
shoemakers, hair-dressers, butchers, farmers, publicans, nay, even
laboring men, condemned for sentiments and language held to be
counter-revolutionary. To convey in brief an idea of the num-
―


## p. 14841 (#415) ##########################################

ADOLPHE THIERS
14841
ber of executions of this period, it will be sufficient to state that
between the month of March 1793, when the tribunal commenced
its operations, and June 1794 (22d Prairial, year II), 577 persons
had been condemned; and that from the 10th of June (22d Prai-
rial) to the 17th of July (9th Thermidor) it condemned 1,285: so
that the total number of victims up to the 9th of Thermidor
amounts to 1,862.
Translation of Frederic Shoberl.
THE POLICY OF NAPOLEON IN EGYPT
From the History of the French Revolution'
THE
HE Arabs were struck by the character of the young con-
queror. They could not comprehend how it was that a
mortal who wielded the thunderbolt should be so merciful.
They called him the worthy son of the Prophet, the Favorite of
the great Allah. They sang in the great mosque the following
litany:
:-
"The great Allah is no longer wroth with us. He hath forgotten
our faults: they have been sufficiently punished by the long oppres-
sion of the Mamelukes. Let us sing the mercies of the great Allah!
"Who is he that hath saved the Favorite of Victory from the
dangers of the sea and the rage of his enemies? Who is he that
hath led the brave men of the West safe and unharmed to the banks
of the Nile?
"It is the great Allah, the great Allah, who hath ceased to be
wroth with us. Let us sing the mercies of the great Allah!
"The Mameluke beys had put their trust in their horses; the
Mameluke beys had drawn forth their infantry in battle array.
"But the Favorite of Victory, at the head of the brave men of the
West, hath destroyed the footmen and the horsemen of the Mam-
elukes.
"As th vapors which rise in the morning from he Nile are scat-
tered by the rays of the sun, so hath the army of the Mamelukes
been scattered by the brave men of the West; because the great
Allah is now wroth with the Mamelukes, because the brave men of
the West are as the apple of the right eye of the great Allah. "
Bonaparte, in order to make himself better acquainted with
the manners of the Arabs, resolved to attend all their festivals.
He was present at that of the Nile. which is one of the greatest


## p. 14842 (#416) ##########################################

14842
ADOLPHE THIERS
in Egypt. The river is the benefactor of the country. It is, in
consequence, held in great veneration by the inhabitants, and is
the object of a sort of worship. During the inundation, its water
is introduced into Cairo by a great canal: a dike prevents it from
entering the canal until it has attained a certain height; the dike
is then cut, and the day fixed for this operation is a day of
rejoicing.