书城公版The Origins of Contemporary France
19097600000504

第504章

Equally captive, and nearly as prostrate as the King himself; the Assembly merely serves as a recording office for the popular will, that very morning furnishing evidence of the value which the armed commonalty attaches to its decrees. That morning murders were committed at its door, in contempt of its safe conduct; at eight o'clock Suleau and three others, wrested from their guards, are cut down under its windows. In the afternoon, from sixty to eighty of the unarmed Swiss still remaining in the church of the Feuillants are taken out to be sent to the H?tel-de-ville, and massacred on the way at the Place de Grève. Another detachment, conducted to the section of the Roule, is likewise disposed of in the same way.[103] Carle, at the head of the gendarmerie, is called out of the Assembly and assassinated on the Place Vend?me, and his head is carried about on a pike. The founder of the old monarchical club, M. de Clermont-Tonnerre, withdrawn from public life for two years past, and quietly passing along the streets, is recognized, dragged through the gutter and cut to pieces. -- After such warnings (murder and pillage) the Assembly can only obey, and, as usual, conceal its submission beneath sonorous words. If the dictatorial committee, self-imposed at the H?tel-de-ville, still condescends to keep it alive, it is owing to a new investiture,[104] and by declaring to it that it must not meddle with its doings now or in the future. Let it confine itself to its function, that of rendering decrees made by the faction. Accordingly, like fruit falling from a tree vigorously shaken, these decrees rattle down, one after another, into the hands that await them,[105]

1. the suspension of the King,2. the convoking of a national convention,3. electors and the eligible exempted from all property qualifications,4. an indemnity for displaced electors,5. the term of Assemblies left to the decision of the electors,[106]

6. the removal and arrest of the late ministers,7. the re-appointment of Servan, Clavières and Roland,8. Danton as Minister of Justice,9. the recognition of the usurping Commune,10. Santerre confirmed in his new rank,11. the municipalities empowered to look after general safety,12. the arrest of suspicious persons confided to all well-disposed citizens,[107]

13. domiciliary visits prescribed for the discovery of arms and ammunition,[108]

14. all the justices of Paris to be re-elected by those within their jurisdiction,15. all officers of the gendarmerie subject to re-election by their soldiers,[109]

16. thirty sous per diem for the Marseilles troops from the day of their arrival,17. a court-martial against the Swiss,18. a tribunal for the dispatch of justice against the vanquished of August 10, and a quantity of other decrees of a still more important bearing:

19. the suspension of the commissioners appointed to enforce the execution of the law in civil and criminal courts,[110]

20. the release of all persons accused or condemned for military insubordination, for press offenses and pillaging of grain,[111]

21. the partition of communal possessions,[112]

22. the confiscation and sale of property belonging to émigrés,[113]

23. the relegation of their fathers, mothers, wives and children into the interior,24. the banishment or transportation of unsworn ecclesiastics,[114]

25. the establishment of easy divorce at two months' notice and on demand of one of the parties,[115]

in short, every measure is taken which tend to disturb property, break up the family, persecute conscience, suspend the law, pervert justice, and rehabilitate crime. laws are promulgated to deliver:

* the judicial system,* the full control of the nation,* the selection of the members of the future omnipotent Assembly,* in short, the entire government,to an autocratic, violent minority, which, having risked all to grab the dictatorship, dares all to keep it.[116]

VIII.

State of Paris in the Interregnum. -- The mass of the population. --Subaltern Jacobins. -- The Jacobin leaders.

Let us stop a moment to contemplate this great city and its new rulers. -- From afar, Paris seems a club of 700,000 fanatics, vociferating and deliberating on the public squares; near by, it is nothing of the sort. The slime, on rising from the bottom, has become the surface, and given its color to the stream; but the human stream flows in its ordinary channel, and, under this turbid exterior, remains about the same as it was before. It is a city of people like ourselves, governed, busy, and fond of amusement. To the great majority, even in revolutionary times, private life, too complex and absorbing, leaves but an insignificant corner for public affairs.