The Psychology of Revolution, Gustave le Bon [top 100 books of all time checklist txt] 📗

that the people took the Bastille, attacked the Tuileries, invaded the Convention, &c., but that certain leaders—generally by means of the clubs—united armed bands of the populace, which they led against the Bastille, the Tuileries, &c. During the Revolution the same crowds attacked or defended the most contrary parties, according to the leaders who happened to be at their heads. A crowd never has any opinion but that of its leaders.

Example constituting one of the most potent forms of suggestion, the taking of the Bastille was inevitably followed by the destruction of other fortresses. Many chateaux were regarded as so many little Bastilles, and in order to imitate the Parisians who had destroyed theirs the peasants began to burn them. They did so with the greater fury because the seigneurial homes contained the titles of feudal dues. It was a species of Jacquerie.

The Constituent Assembly, so proud and haughty towards the king, was, like all the revolutionary assemblies which followed it, extremely pusillanimous before the people.

Hoping to put an end to the disorders of the night of August 4th, it voted, on the proposition of a member of the nobility, the Comte de Noailles, the abolition of seigneurial rights. Although this measure suppressed at one stroke the privileges of the nobles, it was voted with tears and embracings. Such accesses of sentimental enthusiasm are readily explained when we recall how contagious emotion is in a crowd, above all in an assembly oppressed by fear.

If the renunciation of their rights had been effected by the nobility a few years earlier, the Revolution would doubtless have been avoided, but it was now too late. To give way only when one is forced to do so merely increases the demands of those to whom one yields. In politics one should always look ahead and give way long before one is forced to do so.

Louis XVI. hesitated for two months to ratify the decisions voted by the Assembly on the night of the 4th of August. He had retired to Versailles. The leaders sent thither a band of 7,000 or 8,000 men and women of the people, assuring them that the royal residence contained great stores of bread. The railings of the palace were forced, some of the bodyguard were killed, and the king and all his family were led back to Paris in the midst of a shrieking crowd, many of whom bore on the ends of their pikes the heads of the soldiers massacred. The dreadful journey lasted six hours. These events constituted what are known as the “days” of October.

The popular power increased, and in reality the king, like the whole assembly, was henceforth in the hands of the people—that is, at the mercy of the clubs and their leaders. This popular power was to prevail for nearly ten years, and the Revolution was to be almost entirely its work.

While proclaiming that the people constituted the only sovereign, the Assembly was greatly embarrassed by riots which went far beyond its theoretical expectations. It had supposed that order would be restored while it fabricated a Constitution destined to assure the eternal happiness of mankind.

We know that during the whole duration of the Revolution one of the chief occupations of the assemblies was to make, unmake, and remake Constitutions. The theorists attributed to them then, as they do to-day, the power of transforming society; the Assembly, therefore, could not neglect its task. In the meantime it published a solemn Declaration of the Rights of Man which summarised its principles.

The Constitution, proclamations, declarations, and speeches had not the slightest effect on the popular movements, nor on the dissentients who daily increased in number in the heart of the Assembly. The latter became more and more subjected to the ascendancy of the advanced party, which was supported by the clubs. Danton, Camille Desmoulins, and later Marat and Hebert, violently excited the populace by their harangues and their journals. The Assembly was rapidly going down the slope that leads to extremes.

During all these disorders the finances of the country were not improving. Finally convinced that philanthropic speeches would not alter their lamentable condition, and seeing that bankruptcy threatened, the Assembly decreed, on the 2nd of November, 1789, the confiscation of the goods of the Church. Their revenues, consisting of the tithes collected from the faithful, amounted to some L8,000,000, and their value was estimated at about L120,000,000. They were divided among some hundreds of prelates, Court abbes, &c., who owned a quarter of all France. These goods, henceforth entitled is “national domains,” formed the guarantee of the assignats, the first issue of which was for 400,000,000 francs (L16,000,000 sterling). The public accepted them at the outset, but they multiplied so under the Directory and the Convention, which issued 45,000,000,000 francs in this form (L1,800,000,000 sterling), that an assignat of 100 livres was finally worth only a few halfpence.

Stimulated by his advisers, the feeble Louis attempted in vain to struggle against the decrees of the Assembly by refusing to sanction them.

Under the influence of the daily suggestions of the leaders and the power of mental contagion the revolutionary movement was spreading everywhere independently of the Assembly and often even against it.

In the towns and villages revolutionary municipalities were instituted, protected by the local National Guards. Those of neighbouring towns commenced to make mutual arrangements to defend themselves should need arise. Thus federations were formed, which were soon rolled into one; this sent 14,000 National Guards to Paris, who assembled on the Champ-de-Mars on the 14th of July, 1790. There the king swore to maintain the Constitution decreed by the National Assembly.

Despite this vain oath it became more evident every day that no agreement was possible between the hereditary principles of the monarchy and those proclaimed by the Assembly.

Feeling himself completely powerless, the king thought only of flight. Arrested at Varennes and brought back a prisoner to Paris, he was shut up in the Tuileries. The Assembly, although still extremely royalist, suspended him from power, and decided to assume the sole charge of the government.

Never did sovereign find himself in a position so difficult as that of Louis at the time of his flight. The genius of a Richelieu would hardly have extricated him. The only element of defence on which he could have relied had from the beginning absolutely failed him.

During the whole duration of the Constituent Assembly the immense majority of Frenchmen and of the Assembly remained royalist, so that had the sovereign accepted a liberal monarchy he could perhaps have remained in power. It would seem that Louis had little to promise in order to come to an agreement with the Assembly.

Little, perhaps, but with his structure of mind that little was strictly impossible. All the shades of his forbears would have risen up in front of him had he consented to modify the mechanism of the monarchy inherited from so many ancestors. And even had he attempted to do so, the opposition of his family, the clergy, the nobles, and the Court could never have been surmounted. The ancient castes on which the monarchy rested, the nobility and the clergy, were then almost as powerful as the monarch himself. Every time it seemed as though he might yield to the injunctions of the Assembly it was because he was constrained to do so by force, and to attempt to gain time. His appeals to alien Powers represented the resolution of a desperate man who had seen all his natural defences fail him.

He, and especially the queen, entertained the strangest illusions as to the possible assistance of Austria, for centuries the rival of France. If Austria indolently consented to come to his aid, it was only in the hope of receiving a great reward. Mercy gave him to understand that the payment expected consisted of Alsace, the Alps, and Navarre.

The leaders of the clubs, finding the Assembly too royalist, sent the people against it. A petition was signed, inviting the Assembly to convoke a new constituent power to proceed to the trial of Louis XVI.

Monarchical in spite of all, and finding that the Revolution was assuming a character far too demagogic, the Assembly resolved to defend itself against the actions of the people. A battalion of the National Guard, commanded by La Fayette, was sent to the Champ-de-Mars, where the crowd was assembled, to disperse it. Fifty of those present were killed.

The Assembly did not long persist in its feeble resistance. Extremely fearful of the people, it increased its arrogance towards the king, depriving him every day of some part of his prerogatives and authority. He was now scarcely more than a mere official obliged to execute the wishes of others.

The Assembly had imagined that it would be able to exercise the authority of which it had deprived the king, but such a task was infinitely above its resources. A power so divided is always weak. “I know nothing more terrible,” said Mirabeau, “than the sovereign authority of six hundred persons.”

Having flattered itself that it could combine in itself all the powers of the State, and exercise them as Louis XVI. had done, the Assembly very soon exercised none whatever.

As its authority failed anarchy increased. The popular leaders continually stirred up the people. Riot and insurrection became the sole power. Every day the Assembly was invaded by rowdy and imperious delegations which operated by means of threats and demands.

All these popular movements, which the Assembly, under the stress of fear, invariably obeyed, had nothing spontaneous about them. They simply represented the manifestations of new powers—the clubs and the Commune—which had been set up beside the Assembly.

The most powerful of these clubs was the Jacobin, which had quickly created more than five hundred branches in the country, all of which were under the orders of the central body. Its influence remained preponderant during the whole duration of the Revolution. It was the master of the Assembly, and then of France, its only rival the insurrectionary Commune, whose power was exercised only in Paris.

The weakness of the national Assembly and all its failures had made it extremely unpopular. It became conscious of this, and, feeling that it was every day more powerless, decided to hasten the creation of the new Constitution in order that it might dissolve. Its last action, which was tactless enough, was to decree that no member of the Constituent Assembly should be elected to the Legislative Assembly. The members of the latter were thus deprived of the experience acquired by their predecessors.

The Constitution was completed on the 3rd of September, 1791, and accepted on the 13th by the king, to whom the Assembly had restored his powers.

This Constitution organised a representative Government, delegating the legislative power to deputies elected by the people, and the executive power to the king, whose right of veto over the decrees of the Assembly was recognised. New departmental divisions were substituted for the old provinces. The imposts were abolished, and replaced by direct and indirect taxes, which are still in force.

The Assembly, which had just altered the territorial divisions and overthrown all the old social organisation, thought itself powerful enough to transform the religious organisation of the country also. It claimed notably that the members of the clergy should be elected by the people, and should be thus withdrawn from the influence of their supreme head, the Pope.

This civil constitution of the clergy was the origin of religious struggles and persecutions which lasted until the days of the Consulate. Two-thirds of the priests refused the oath demanded of them.

During the three years which represented the life of the Constituent Assembly the Revolution had produced considerable results. The principal result was perhaps the beginning of the transference to the Third Estate of the riches of the privileged classes. In this way while interests were created to