第16章

And in a recent work M.A.Cochin insists on this conception of popular action.

``And here is the wonder: Michelet is right.In proportion as we know them better the facts seem to consecrate the fiction:

this crowd, without chiefs and without laws, the very image of chaos, did for five years govern and command, speak and act, with a precision, a consistency, and an entirety that were marvellous.Anarchy gave lessons in order and discipline to the defeated party of order...twenty-five millions of men, spread over an area of 30,000 square leagues, acted as one.''

Certainly if this simultaneous conduct of the people had been spontaneous, as the author supposes, it would have been marvellous.M.Aulard himself understands very well the impossibilities of such a phenomenon, for he is careful, in speaking of the people, to say that he is speaking of groups, and that these groups may have been guided by leaders:--``And what, then, cemented the national unity? Who saved this nation, attacked by the king and rent by civil war? Was it Danton? Was it Robespierre? Was it Carnot? Certainly these individual men were of service: but unity was in fact maintained and independence assured by the grouping of the French into communes and popular societies--people's clubs.It was the municipal and Jacobin organisation of France that forced the coalition of Europe to retreat.But in each group, if we look more closely, there were two or three individuals more capable than the rest, who, whether leaders or led, executed decisions and had the appearance of leaders, but who (if, for instance, we read the proceedings of the people's clubs) seem to us to have drawn their strength far more from their group than from themselves.

M.Aulard's mistake consists in supposing that all these groups were derived ``from a spontaneous movement of fraternity and reason.'' France at that time was covered with thousands of little clubs, receiving a single impulsion from the great Jacobin Club of Paris, and obeying it with perfect docility.

This is what reality teaches us, though the illusions of the Jacobins do not permit them to accept the fact.[3]

[3] In the historical manuals which M.Aulard has prepared for the use of classes in collaboration with M.Debidour the role attributed to the people as an entity is even more marked.We see it intervening continually and spontaneously;here are a few examples:--

The ``Day'' of June the 20th: ``The king dismissed the Girondist members.The people of Paris, indignant, rose spontaneously and invaded the Tuileries.''

The ``Day'' of August 10th: ``The Legislative Assembly dared not overthrow it; it was the people of Paris, aided by the Federals of the Departments, who effected this revolution at the price of its blood.''

The conflict of the Girondists and the Mountain: ``This discord in the face of the enemy was dangerous.The people put an end to it on the days of the 31st of May and the 2nd of June, 1793, when it forced the Convention to expel the leaders of the Gironde from its midst and to decree their arrest.''

4.The Popular Entity and its Constituent Elements.

In order to answer to certain theoretical conceptions the people was erected into a mystic entity, endowed with all the powers and all the virtues, incessantly praised by the politicians, and overwhelmed with flattery.We shall see what we are to make of this conception of the part played by the people in the French Revolution.

To the Jacobins of this epoch, as to those of our own days, this popular entity constitutes a superior personality possessing the attributes, peculiar to divinities, of never having to answer for its actions and never making a mistake.Its wishes must be humbly acceded.The people may kill, burn, ravage, commit the most frightful cruelties, glorify its hero to-day and throw him into the gutter to-morrow; it is all one; the politicians will not cease to vaunt its virtues, its high wisdom, and to bow to its every decision.[4]

[4] These pretensions do at least seem to be growing untenable to the more advanced republicans.

``The rage with the socialists'' writes M.Clemenceau, ``is to endow with all the virtues, as though by a superhuman reason, the crowd whose reason cannot be much to boast of.'' The famous statesman might say more correctly that reason not only cannot be prominent in the crowd but is practically nonexistent.

Now in what does this entity really consist, this mysterious fetich which revolutionists have revered for more than a century?

It may be decomposed into two distinct categories.The first includes the peasants, traders, and workers of all sorts who need tranquillity and order that they may exercise their calling.

This people forms the majority, but a majority which never caused a revolution.Living in laborious silence, it is ignored by the historians.

The second category, which plays a capital part in all national disturbances, consists of a subversive social residue dominated by a criminal mentality.Degenerates of alcoholism and poverty, thieves, beggars, destitute ``casuals,'' indifferent workers without employment--these constitute the dangerous bulk of the armies of insurrection.