书城公版The Origins of Contemporary France
19097600000577

第577章

Baboeuf estimates his adherents in Paris as "4,000 revolutionaries, 1,500 members of the former authorities, and 1,000 bourgeois gunners,"besides soldiers, prisoners, and a police force. He also recruited a good many prostitutes. The men who come to him are workmen who pretend to have arsouillé109 in the Revolution and who are ready to repeat the job, provided it is for the purpose of killing those rich rascals, the monopolizers, merchants, informers, and panachés at the Luxembourg." (Letter of the agent of the Bonne-Nouvelle section, April 13, 1796.)[110] The proportion, composition and spirit of the party are everywhere the same, especially at Lyons (Guillon de Montléon, "Mémoires," and Balleydier, "Histoire du peuple de Lyon,". passim); at Toulon (Lauvergne, "Histoire du department du Var"); at Marseilles, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Strasbourg, Besan?on, etc. -- At Bordeaux (Riouffe, "Mémoires," 23) "it consisted wholly of vagabonds, Savoyards, Biscayans, even Germans, . .brokers, and water-carriers, who had become so powerful that they arrested the rich, and so well-off that they traveled by post" Riouffe adds: "When I read this passage in the Conciergerie men from every corner of the republic exclaimed in one voice: 'It is the same in all the communes!'" -- Cf.

Durand-Maillane, "Mémoires," 67: "This people, thus qualified, since the suppression of the silver marc has been the most vicious and most depraved in the community." - Dumouriez, II. 51. "The Jacobins, taken for the most part, from the most abject and most brutal of the nation, unable to furnish men of sufficient dignity for offices, have degraded offices to their own level. . . They are drunken, barbarous Helots that have taken the places of the Spartans." -- The sign of their advent is the expulsion of the liberals and of the refined of 1789.

("Archives Nationales," F7, 4434, No.6. Letter of Richard to the committee on Public Safety, Vent?se 3, year II.). During the proconsulate of Baudot at Toulouse "almost all the patriots of 1789were excluded from the popular club they had founded; an immense number were admitted whose patriotism reached only as far back as the 10th of August 1792, if it even went so far as the 31st of last May.

It is an established fact that out of more than 1,000 persons who now compose the club there are not fifty whose patriotism as far back as the beginning of the Revolution."[111] Any tribune taking command of a mob of brutes is well advised to understand Taine's analysis. One might think Hitler had read Taine pr somebody who had learned from his wisdom, somewhat like the Devil who had read the Bible. See page 208, The Secret of Ruling the Masses, in Rauschning's book, "Hitler Speaks". (SR).

[112] R?derer, "Chronique des cinquante jours."[113] Schmidt, I. 246 (Dutard, May 18).

[114] Schmidt, I. 215 (Dutard, May 25).

[115] Buchez et Roux, XXV. 156 (extract from the Patriote Fran?ais, March 30, 1793).Speech by Chasles at the Jacobin Club, March 27: "We have announced to our fellow-citizens in the country that by means of the war-tax the poor could be fed by the rich, and that they would find in the purses of those egoists the wherewithal to live on."Ibid., 269. Speech by Rose Lacombe: "Let us make sure of the aristocrats; let us force them to meet the enemies which Dumouriez is bringing against Paris. Let us give them to understand that if they prove treacherous their wives and children shall have their throats cut, and that we will burn their houses. . I do not want patriots to leave the city; I want them to guard Paris. And if we are beaten, the first man who hesitates to apply the torch, let him be stabbed at once. I want all the owners of property who have grabbed everything and excited the people's anger, to kill the tyrants themselves or else be killed." [Applause -- April 3.] - Ibid., 302 (in the Convention, April 8): "Marat demands that 100,000 relatives and friends of the émigrés be seized as hostages for the safety of the commissioners in the hands of the enemy." -- Cf. Balleydier, 117, 122. At Lyons, Jan.

26, 1793, Challier addresses the central club: "Sans-culottes, rejoice! the blood of the royal tiger has flowed in sight of his den!

But full justice is not yet done to the people There are still 500among you deserving of the tyrant's fate! " -- He proposes on the 5th of February a revolutionary tribunal for trying arrested persons in a revolutionary manner. "It is the only way to force it (the Revolution)on royal and aristocratic factionists, the only rational way to avenge the sovereignty of the brave sans-culottes, who belong only to us." -- Hydens, a national commissioner adds: "Let 25,000,000 of Frenchmen perish a hundred times over rather than one single indivisible Republic!"[116] Mallet du Pan, the last expression.

[117] Buzot, 64.

[118] Michelet, IV. 6 (according to an oral statement by Daunou). --Buchez et Roux, 101 (Letter of Louvet to Roland): "At the moment of the presentation of their petition against armed force (departmental)by the so-called commissioners of the 48 sections of Paris, I heard Santerre say in a loud tone to those around him, somewhat in these words: 'You see, now, these deputies are not up to the Revolution. . .

That all comes from fifty, a hundred two hundred leagues off; they don't understand one word you say!'"