VII. 1791. 46. and misery Meanwhile, the King's ministers were daily becoming CHAP. more unpopular, from the decided resistance he had at length made to the iniquitous measures sought to be forced on him by the Assembly. The Jacobin and Cordelier Distraction clubs thundered against them, night after night, in the of France. most violent and indignant strains; and the general misery of the country, which in reality was owing to the Revolution, was universally ascribed to their factious resistance to it. The emigration of the nobles, and general distrust or actual bankruptcy of the capitalists, had destroyed almost entirely the home trade of France. Manufactures of every sort were at a stand, and the workmen employed in them, destitute of bread, added everywhere to the formidable and seditious groups which menaced the public tranquillity. This distress, which was universal, was fearfully aggravated by its immediately succeeding the unbounded hopes of general felicity which had been formed at the commencement of the Revolution.† A contemporary writer, of the republican party, has left the following picture of the state of France at this period: "In truth, the real evils of France at this period were such that they could hardly be exaggerated, even by the most malignant ambition. Two parties, equally inveterate in their animosities, equally rancorous in their hatred, divided the country from one end to the other. The Jacobins reproached the Feuillants with labouring in secret for the restoration of the old régime; the Feuillants retorted on the Jacobins that they had organised, by means of their affiliated clubs, the most infernal despotism that had ever * "Celsus et Paulinus, cum prudentiâ eorum nemo uteretur, inani nomine ducum, alienæ culpæ prætendebantur-Tribuni, centurionesque ambigui, quod spretis melioribus deterrimi valebant: miles alacer, qui tamen jussa ducum interpretari quam exsequi mallet."-TACITUS, Hist. ii. 39. "Nous avons noté le dehors, les journaux, les clubs. Mais sous cette surface sonore, est le dessous, insondable, muet, l'infini de la souffrance. Souffrance croissante, aggravée moralement par l'amertume d'un si grand espoir trompé, aggravée matériellement par la disparition subite de toute ressource. Le premier résultat des violences fut de faire partir, outre les nobles, beaucoup de gens riches ou aisés, nullement ennemis de la Révolution, mais qui avaient 1791. CHAP. oppressed mankind. The constitution for which the nation VII. had so ardently panted, and which it was fondly hoped would prove a remedy for every evil, was finished, and yet the public miseries were augmented. Every day saw fresh crimes against persons and property committed, and all with impunity. The public peace was in no degree reestablished the laws were powerless, the magistrates impotent. It had been expected that the public tranquillity would be effectually restored by the Juges de Paix, elected by the people, and therefore possessing their confidence; but they had proved totally powerless. Public and private credit had alike perished amidst the general convulsions. Specie had disappeared from the circulation. The assignat had fallen to a third of its value, and occasioned such an amount of ruin to private fortunes that numbers already wished for a return to the ancient régime, and were doing their utmost to promote it. Famine, the usual attendant on public calamities, had appeared, and its pangs were aggravated by their being felt in the midst of abundance. The peasants, tenacious of their property, everywhere refused the assignats, to the fall of which no limit could be assigned, and the purchasers in towns had nothing else to offer. Thus sales could not be effected: both parties were in despair, and poverty was universal, though there was plenty in the land. In this extremity, crowds of famishing citizens threw themselves on the barnyards of the farmers, and took grain by force: while the rural population sounded the tocsin in their villages, and forced the municipal officers to put themselves at their head to resist this violence, or retaliated by pillaging the peur. Ce qui restait, n'osait ni bouger, ni entreprendre, ni vendre, ni acheter, ni fabriquer, ni dépenser. L'argent effrayé se tenait au fond des bourses; toute spéculation, tout travail était arrêté.—L'ouvrier muet et sombre, renvoyé des ateliers, se promenait les bras croisés, errait tout le jour, écoutait les conversations des groups animés, remplissait les clubs, les tribunes, les abords de l'Assemblée. Toute émeute, payée ou non payée, trouvait dans la rue une armée d'ouvriers aigris de misère, de travailleurs excédés d'ennui et d'inaction, trop heureux, de manière ou d'autre, de travailler au moins un jour.”—MICHELET, Histoire de la Révolution, ii. 410. VII. burghs; and the law, equally trampled under foot by both CHAP. parties, was alike impotent to repress or punish the violence of either. This was the state of France during the 1791. whole winter." Such is the picture of France at this Amis, vi. period, drawn by two ardent supporters of the Revolution. 345, 350. 1 Deux One branch of the public service had in an especial 47. ruin of the manner fallen into disorder, from the confusion conse- Decay and quent on the Revolution—and this, from its subsequent navy. importance during the war, deserves particular notice. The NAVY had in a few years become so disorganised, that hardly a vestige of the noble fleet which Louis XVI. had nursed up with so much care, to counterbalance that of England, could be said to remain. The ships indeed were there, the arsenals were full, but discipline and subordination were at an end. The national riches were dried up in their sources by the destruction of credit and capital during the Revolution: St Domingo, the most important colony of France, was in a state of insurrection or discord; the marine was discontented; the dockyards, the vessels, the arsenals, presented a frightful picture of insubordination, license, and neglect. "The cause of these evils," says Bertrand de Molleville, the minister of marine, "was evident. Those who should obey had everywhere assumed the direction; those who should direct, being deprived of all authority, were overwhelmed with impunity by outrages and abuse. In truth, there was not a single instance of a mutiny in the ports, or on board the royal vessels, in which the mutineers had been punished. The most legitimate and necessary acts of authority were deemed insults, by men who had suddenly passed from a state of necessary subjection to one of absolute independence. Clubs of all sorts, incorporations a thousand times more dangerous and de Mol. powerful than those which the constitution had destroyed, Compte and which set every species of authority at defiance, were l'Assemblée established in every port, and proscribed, outraged, or put 28th March, to flight their superiors. These facts are notorious—no i. 299, 302. words can exaggerate them." 2 Bert. rendu a Nationale, 1792. Mém. CHAP. VII. 48. While the royal navy was in this deplorable state of disorganisation and mutiny, the noblest colony of France, 1791. which singly sustained the colossus of its maritime power, Commence- had fallen, from the effects of the Revolution, into a series tation in St of disasters the most dreadful recorded in history. The Domingo. slaves in that flourishing colony, agitated by the intelli ment of agi gence which they received of the levelling principles of the Constituent Assembly, had early manifested symptoms of insubordination. The Assembly, divided between the desire of enfranchising so large a body of men, and the evident dangers of such a step, had long hesitated as to the course they should adopt, and were inclined to support the rights of the planters. In the debate which ensued, decisive evidence was afforded of the length to which the Jacobins were inclined to push their principles, and the total disregard of human suffering in carrying them into practice by which they were distinguished. "Perish the colonies," said Moreau de St Méry, " rather than that one principle be sacrificed!" "Perish the colonies," added Robespierre, "rather than affix a stain to your happiness, your glory, your liberty! Yes, I repeat it. Perish the colonies, rather than let them, by their menaces, compel us to do what is most loudly called for by their interests!" Pressed by the dangers clearly depicted on one side, and the clamour as loudly expressed on the other, the Assembly steered a middle course, by xii. 96, 97. decreeing that all persons of colour, born of free parents, Lac. i. 214. should have the right of entering the colonial Assemblies; vi. 402, 403. but declaring that beyond that they would not go, unless the colony itself took the initiative.1 May 15. 1 Hist. Parl. Deux Amis, 49. Dreadful insurrection there. But these steps were too slow for the revolutionists. The passions of the negroes were excited by the efforts of a society, styled "The Society of Friends of the Blacks," of which Brissot was the leading member; and the mulattoes were induced, by their injudicious advice, to organise a rebellion. They trusted that they would be able to control the ferocity of the slaves even during the heat of VII. 1791. a revolt; they little knew the dissimulation and cruelty CHAP. of the negro character. A universal insurrection was planned and organised, without the slightest suspicion on the part of the planters, and the same night fixed on for its breaking out over the whole island. Accordingly, at midnight on the 30th of September the insurrection began. In an instant, twelve hundred coffee and two Sept. 30. hundred sugar plantations were in flames; the buildings, the machinery, the farm-offices, were reduced to ashes; the unfortunate proprietors hunted down, murdered, or thrown into the flames by the infuriated slaves. Ere Oct. 30. long a hundred thousand rebels were in arms, who committed everywhere the most frightful atrocities. The horrors of a servile war universally appeared. The unchained African signalised his ingenuity by the discovery of new and unheard-of modes of torture. An unhappy planter was sawed asunder between two boards; the horrors inflicted on the women exceeded anything known even in the annals of Christian ferocity. The indulgent master was sacrificed equally with the inhuman; on all alike, young and old, rich and poor, the wrongs of an oppressed race were indiscriminately wreaked. Crowds of slaves traversed the country with the heads of white children affixed on their pikes; they served as the standards of these furious assemblages. In a few instances only, the humanity of the negro character resisted the contagion of the time; and some faithful slaves, at the xii. 295,305. hazard of their own lives, fed in caves their masters, or vi. 403, 404. the children of these, whom they had rescued from de- Toul. ii. 98. struction.1 1 Hist. Parl. Deux Amis, Lac. i. 214. 50. universal The intelligence of these disasters excited an angry discussion in the Assembly. Brissot, the most vehement The Assemopponent of slavery, ascribed them all to the refusal of bly concedes the blessings of freedom to the negroes; the moderate emancipamembers, to the inflammatory addresses circulated among them by the Anti-Slavery Society of Paris. At length it was agreed to concede to the men of colour the political VOL. II. L tion. Nov. 7. |