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

by their intestine conflicts, had very little to do with their victories. At the most two or three members of the committees of the Assembly were concerned with the armies, and the fact that they were victorious was due, apart from their numbers and the talents of their young generals, to the enthusiasm with which a new faith had inspired them.

In a later chapter, devoted to the revolutionary armies, we shall see how they conquered Europe in arms. They set out inspired by the ideas of liberty and equality which constituted the new gospel, and once on the frontiers, which were to keep them so long, they retained a special mentality, very different from that of the Government, which they first knew nothing of and afterwards despised.

Having no part whatever in their victories, the men of the Convention contented themselves with legislating at hazard according to the injunctions of the leaders who directed them, and who claimed to be regenerating France by means of the guillotine.

But it was thanks to these valiant armies that the history of the Convention was transformed into an apotheosis which affected several generations with a religious respect which even to-day is hardly extinct.

Studying in detail the psychology of the “Giants” of the Convention, we find their magnitude shrink very rapidly. They were in general extremely mediocre. Their most fervent defenders, such as M. Aulard, are obliged to admit as much.

This is how M. Aulard puts it in his History of the French Revolution:—

“It has been said that the generation which from 1789 to 1799 did such great and terrible things was a generation of giants, or, to put it more plainly, that it was a generation more distinguished than that which preceded it or that which followed.

This is a retrospective illusion. The citizens who formed the municipal and Jacobin or nationalist groups by which the Revolution was effected do not seem to have been superior, either in enlightenment or in talents, to the Frenchmen of the time of Louis XV. or of Louis Philippe. Were those exceptionally gifted whose names history has retained because they appeared on the stage of Paris, or because they were the most brilliant orators of the various revolutionary Assemblies? Mirabeau, up to a certain point, deserved the title of genius; but as to the rest— Robespierre, Danton, Vergniaud—had they truly more talent, for example, than our modern orators? In 1793, in the time of the supposed `giants,’ Mme. Roland wrote in her memoirs: `France was as though drained of men; their dearth during this revolution is truly surprising; there have scarcely been any but pigmies.’ ”

If after considering the men of the Convention individually we consider them in a body, we may say that they did not shine either by intelligence or by virtue or by courage. Never did a body of men manifest such pusillanimity. They had no courage save in their speeches or in respect of remote dangers. This Assembly, so proud and threatening in its speech when addressing royalty, was perhaps the most timid and docile political collectivity that the world has ever known. We see it slavishly obedient to the orders of the clubs and the Commune, trembling before the popular delegations which invaded it daily, and obeying the injunctions of the rioters to the point of handing over to them its most brilliant members. The Convention affords the world a melancholy spectacle, voting, at the popular behest, laws so absurd that it is obliged to annul them as soon as the rioters have quitted the hall.

Few Assemblies have given proof of such weakness. When we wish to show how low a popular Government can fall we have only to point to the Convention.

 

2. Results of the Triumph of the Jacobin Religion

 

Among the causes that gave the Convention its special physiognomy, one of the most important was the definite establishment of a revolutionary religion. A dogma which was at first in process of formation was at last finally erected.

This dogma was composed of an aggregate of somewhat inconsistent elements. Nature, the rights of man, liberty, equality, the social contract, hatred of tyrants, and popular sovereignty formed the articles of a gospel which, to its disciples, was above discussion. The new truths had found apostles who were certain of their power, and who finally, like believers all the world over, sought to impose them by force. No heed should be taken of the opinion of unbelievers; they all deserved to be exterminated.

The hatred of heretics having been always, as we have seen, in respect of the Reformation, an irreducible characteristic of great beliefs, we can readily comprehend the intolerance of the Jacobin religion.

The history of the Reformation proves also that the conflict between two allied beliefs is very bitter. We must not, therefore, be astonished that in the Convention the Jacobins fought furiously against the other republicans, whose faith hardly differed from their own.

The propaganda of the new apostles was very energetic. To convert the provinces they sent thither zealous disciples escorted by guillotines. The inquisitors of the new faith would have no paltering with error. As Robespierre said, “The republic is the destruction of everything that is opposed to it.” What matter that the country refused to be regenerated? It should be regenerated despite itself. “We will make a cemetery of France,” said Carrier, “rather than fail to regenerate it in our own way.”

The Jacobin policy derived from the new faith was very simple. It consisted in a sort of equalitarian Socialism, directed by a dictatorship which would brook no opposition.

Of practical ideas consistent with the economic necessities and the true nature of man, the theorists who ruled France would have nothing to say. Speech and the guillotine sufficed them. Their speeches were childish. “Never a fact,” says Taine, “nothing but abstractions, strings of sentences about Nature, reason, the people, tyrants, liberty: like so many puffed-out balloons uselessly jostling in space. If we did not know that it all ended in practical and dreadful results, we should think they were games of logic, school exercises, academical demonstrations, ideological combinations.”

The theories of the Jacobins amounted practically to an absolute tyranny. To them it seemed evident that a sovereign State must be obeyed without discussion by citizens rendered equal as to conditions and fortune.

The power with which they invested themselves was far greater than that of the monarchs who had preceded them. They fixed the prices of merchandise and arrogated the right to dispose of the life and property of citizens.

Their confidence in the regenerative virtues of the revolutionary faith was such that after having declared war upon kings they declared war upon the gods. A calendar was established from which the saints were banished. They created a new divinity, Reason, whose worship was celebrated in Notre-Dame, with ceremonies which were in many ways identical with those of the Catholic faith, upon the altar of the “late Holy Virgin.” This cult lasted until Robespierre substituted a personal religion of which he constituted himself the high priest.

The sole masters of France, the Jacobins and their disciples were able to plunder the country with impunity, although they were never in the majority anywhere.

Their numbers are not easy to determine exactly. We know only that they were very small. Taine valued them at 5,000 in Paris, among 700,000 inhabitants; in Besancon 300 among 300,000; and in all France about 300,000.

“A small feudality of brigands, set over a conquered France,” according to the words of the same author, they were able, in spite of their small numbers, to dominate the country, and this for several reasons. In the first place, their faith gave them a considerable strength. Then, because they represented the Government, and for centuries the French had obeyed those who were in command. Finally, because it was believed that to overthrow them would be to bring back the ancien regime, which was greatly dreaded by the numerous purchasers of the national domains. Their tyranny must have grown frightful indeed to force so many departments to rise against them.

The first factor of their power was very important. In the conflict between powerful faiths and weak faiths victory never falls to the latter. A powerful faith creates strong wills, which will always overpower weak wills. That the Jacobins themselves did finally perish was because their accumulated violence had bound together thousands of weak wills whose united weight overbalanced their own strong wills.

It is true that the Girondists, whom the Jacobins persecuted with so much hatred, had also well-established beliefs, but in the struggle which ensued their education told against them, together with their respect for certain traditions and the rights of others, scruples which did not in the least trouble their adversaries.

“The majority of the sentiments of the Girondists,” writes Emile Ollivier, “were delicate and generous; those of the Jacobin mob were low, gross, and brutal. The name of Vergniaud, compared with that of the `divine’ Marat, measures a gulf which nothing could span.”

Dominating the Convention at the outset by the superiority of their talents and their eloquence, the Girondists soon fell under the domination of the Montagnards—worthless energumens, who carried little weight, but were always active, and who knew how to excite the passions of the populace. It was violence and not talent that impressed the Assemblies.

 

3. Mental Characteristics of the Convention.

 

Beside the characteristics common to all assemblies there are some created by influences of environment and circumstances, which give any particular assembly of men a special physiognomy. Most of the characteristics observable in the Constituent and Legislative Assemblies reappeared, in an exaggerated form, in the Convention.

This Assembly comprised about seven hundred and fifty deputies, of whom rather more than a third had sat in the Constituent or the Legislative Assembly. By terrorising the population the Jacobins contrived to triumph at the elections. The majority of the electors, six millions out of seven, preferred to abstain from voting.

As to the professions, the Assembly contained a large number of lawyers, advocates, notaries, bailiffs, ex-magistrates, and a few literary men.

The mentality of the Convention was not homogeneous. Now, an assembly composed of individuals of widely different characters soon splits up into a number of groups. The Convention very early contained three—the Gironde, the Mountain, and the Plain. The constitutional monarchists had almost disappeared.

The Gironde and the Mountain, extreme parties, consisted of about a hundred members apiece, who successively became leaders. In the Mountain were the most advanced members: Couthon, Herault de Sechelles, Danton, Camille Desmoulins, Marat, Collot d’Herbois, Billaud-Varennes, Barras, Saint-Just, Fouche, Tallien, Carrier, Robespierre, &c. In the Gironde were Brissot, Petion, Condorcet, Vergniaud, &c.

The five hundred other members of the Assembly—that is, the great majority—constituted what was known as the Plain.

This latter formed a floating mass, silent, undecided, and timid; ready to follow every impulse and to be carried away by the excitement of the moment. It gave ear indifferently to the stronger of the two preceding groups. After obeying the Gironde for some time it allowed itself to be led away by the Mountain, when the latter triumphed over its enemy. This was a natural consequence of the law already stated, by which the weak invariably fall under the dominion of the stronger wills.

The influence of great manipulators of men was displayed in a high degree during the Convention. It was constantly led by a violent minority of narrow minds, whose intense convictions lent them great strength.

A brutal and audacious minority will always lead a fearful and irresolute majority. This explains the constant tendency toward extremes to be observed in all revolutionary assemblies. The history of the Convention verifies once more the law of acceleration studied in another chapter.

The men of the Convention were thus bound to pass from moderation to greater and greater violence. Finally they decimated