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

This case is one of the most instructive that could be cited, and is worthy of a moment’s consideration. It has been perfectly investigated by General Bonnal, in the light of the notes of an eye-witness, General Elchingen. Thirty-six thousand troops were then in Paris, but the weakness and incapacity of their officers made it impossible to use them. Contradictory orders were given, and finally the troops were forbidden to fire on the people, who, moreover—and nothing could have been more dangerous—were permitted to mingle with the troops. The riot succeeded without fighting and forced the king to abdicate.

Applying to the preceding case our knowledge of the psychology of crowds, General Bonnal shows how easily the riot which overthrew Louis-Philippe could have been controlled. He proves, notably, that if the commanding officers had not completely lost their heads quite a small body of troops could have prevented the insurgents from invading the Chamber of Deputies. This last, composed of monarchists, would certainly have proclaimed the Count of Paris under the regency of his mother.

Similar phenomena were observable in the revolutions of Spain and Portugal.

These facts show the role of petty accessory circumstances in great events, and prove that one must not speak too readily of the general laws of history. Without the riot which overthrew Louis-Philippe, we should probably have seen neither the Republic of 1848, nor the Second Empire, nor Sedan, nor the invasion, nor the loss of Alsace.

In the revolutions of which I have just been speaking the army was of no assistance to the government, but did not turn against it. It sometimes happens otherwise. It is often the army which effects the revolution, as in Turkey and Portugal. The innumerable revolutions of the Latin republics of America are effected by the army.

When a revolution is effected by an army the new rulers naturally fall under its domination. I have already recalled the fact that this was the case at the end of the Roman Empire, when the emperors were made and unmade by the soldiery.

The same thing has sometimes been witnessed in modern times. The following extract from a newspaper, with reference to the Greek revolution, shows what becomes of a government dominated by its army:—

“One day it was announced that eighty officers of the navy would send in their resignations if the government did not dismiss the leaders of whom they complained. Another time it was the agricultural labourers on a farm (metairie) belonging to the Crown Prince who demanded the partition of the soil among them. The navy protested against the promotion promised to Colonel Zorbas. Colonel Zorbas, after a week of discussion with Lieutenant Typaldos, treated with the President of the Council as one power with another. During this time the Federation of the corporations abused the officers of the navy. A deputy demanded that these officers and their families should be treated as brigands. When Commander Miaoulis fired on the rebels, the sailors, who first of all had obeyed Typaldos, returned to duty. This is no longer the harmonious Greece of Pericles and Themistocles. It is a hideous camp of Agramant.”

A revolution cannot be effected without the assistance or at least the neutrality of the army, but it often happens that the movement commences without it. This was the case with the revolutions of 1830 and 1848, and that of 1870, which overthrew the Empire after the humiliation of France by the surrender of Sedan.

The majority of revolutions take place in the capitals, and by means of contagion spread through the country; but this is not a constant rule. We know that during the French Revolution La Vendee, Brittany, and the Midi revolted spontaneously against Paris.

2. How the resistance of Governments may overcome Revolution.

In the greater number of the revolutions enumerated above, we have seen governments perish by their weakness. As soon as they were touched they fell.

The Russian Revolution proved that a government which defends itself energetically may finally triumph.

Never was revolution more menacing to the government. After the disasters suffered in the Orient, and the severities of a too oppressive autocratic regime, all classes of society, including a portion of the army and the fleet, had revolted. The railways, posts, and telegraph services had struck, so that communications between the various portions of the vast empire were interrupted.

The rural class itself, forming the majority of the nation, began to feel the influence of the revolutionary propaganda. The lot of the peasants was wretched. They were obliged, by the system of the mir, to cultivate soil which they could not acquire. The government resolved immediately to conciliate this large class of peasants by turning them into proprietors. Special laws forced the landlords to sell the peasants a portion of their lands, and banks intended to lend the buyers the necessary purchase-money were created. The sums lent were to be repaid by small annuities deducted from the product of the sale of the crops.

Assured of the neutrality of the peasants, the government could contend with the fanatics who were burning the towns, throwing bombs among the crowds, and waging a merciless warfare. All those who could be taken were killed. Such extermination is the only method discovered since the beginning of the world by which a society can be protected against the rebels who wish to destroy it.

The victorious government understood moreover the necessity of satisfying the legitimate claims of the enlightened portion of the nation. It created a parliament instructed to prepare laws and control expenditure.

The history of the Russian Revolution shows us how a government, all of whose natural supports have crumbled in succession, can, with wisdom and firmness, triumph over the most formidable obstacles. It has been very justly said that governments are not overthrown, but that they commit suicide.

3. Revolutions effected by Governments.—Examples: China, Turkey, &c.

Governments almost invariably fight revolutions; they hardly ever create them. Representing the needs of the moment and general opinion, they follow the reformers timidly; they do not precede them. Sometimes, however, certain governments have attempted those sudden reforms which we know as revolutions. The stability or instability of the national mind decrees the success or failure of such attempts.

They succeed when the people on whom the government seeks to impose new institutions is composed of semi-barbarous tribes, without fixed laws, without solid traditions; that is to say, without a settled national mind. Such was the condition of Russia in the days of Peter the Great. We know how he sought to Europeanise the semi-Asiatic populations by means of force.

Japan is another example of a revolution effected by a government, but it was her machinery, not her mind that was reformed.

It needs a very powerful autocrat, seconded by a man of genius, to succeed, even partially, in such a task. More often than not the reformer finds that the whole people rises up against him. Then, to the contrary of what befalls in an ordinary revolution, the autocrat is revolutionary and the people is conservative. But an attentive study will soon show you that the peoples are always extremely conservative.

Failure is the rule with these attempts. Whether effected by the upper classes or the lower, revolutions do not change the souls of peoples that have been a long time established. They only change those things that are worn by time and ready to fall.

China is at the present time making a very interesting but impossible experiment, in seeking, by means of the government, suddenly to renew the institutions of the country. The revolution which overturned the dynasty of her ancient sovereigns was the indirect consequence of the discontent provoked by reforms which the government had sought to impose with a view to ameliorating the condition of China. The suppression of opium and gaming, the reform of the army, and the creation of schools, involved an increase of taxation which, as well as the reforms themselves, greatly indisposed the general opinion.

A few cultured Chinese educated in the schools of Europe profited by this discontent to raise the people and proclaim a republic, an institution of which the Chinese could have had no conception.

It surely cannot long survive, for the impulse which has given birth to it is not a movement of progress, but of reaction. The word republic, to the Chinaman intellectualised by his European education, is simply synonymous with the rejection of the yoke of laws, rules, and long-established restraints. Cutting off his pigtail, covering his head with a cap, and calling himself a Republican, the young Chinaman thinks to give the rein to all his instincts. This is more or less the idea of a republic that a large part of the French people entertained at the time of the great Revolution.

China will soon discover the fate that awaits a society deprived of the armour slowly wrought by the past. After a few years of bloody anarchy it will be necessary to establish a power whose tyranny will inevitably be far severer than that which was overthrown. Science has not yet discovered the magic ring capable of saving a society without discipline. There is no need to impose discipline when it has become hereditary, but when the primitive instincts have been allowed to destroy the barriers painfully erected by slow ancestral labours, they cannot be reconstituted save by an energetic tyranny.

As a proof of these assertions we may instance an experiment analogous to that undertaken by China; that recently attempted by Turkey. A few years ago young men instructed in European schools and full of good intentions succeeded, with the aid of a number of officers, in overthrowing a Sultan whose tyranny seemed insupportable. Having acquired our robust Latin faith in the magic power of formulae, they thought they could establish the representative system in a country half-civilised, profoundly divided by religious hatred, and peopled by divers races.

The attempt has not prospered hitherto. The authors of the reformation had to learn that despite their liberalism they were forced to govern by methods very like those employed by the government overthrown. They could neither prevent summary executions nor wholesale massacres of Christians, nor could they remedy a single abuse.

It would be unjust to reproach them. What in truth could they have done to change a people whose traditions have been fixed so long, whose religious passions are so intense, and whose Mohammedans, although in the minority, legitimately claim to govern the sacred city of their faith according to their code? How prevent Islam from remaining the State religion in a country where civil law and religious law are not yet plainly separated, and where faith in the Koran is the only tie by which the idea of nationality can be maintained?

It was difficult to destroy such a state of affairs, so that we were bound to see the re-establishment of an autocratic organisation with an appearance of constitutionalism—that is to say, practically the old system once again. Such attempts afford a good example of the fact that a people cannot choose its institutions until it has transformed its mind.

4. Social elements which survive the changes of Government after Revolution.

What we shall say later on as to the stable foundation of the national soul will enable us to appreciate the force of systems of government that have been long established, such as ancient monarchies. A monarch may easily be overthrown by conspirators, but these latter are powerless against the principles which the monarch represents. Napoleon at his fall was replaced not by his natural heir, but by the heir of kings. The latter incarnated an ancient principle, while the son of the Emperor personified ideas that were as yet imperfectly established in men’s minds.

For the same reason a minister, however able, however great the services he has rendered to his country,