A people differs from a crowd also in that it is composed of a collection of groups, each having different interests and passions.In a crowd properly so-called--a popular assembly, for example--there are unities which may belong to very different social categories.
A people sometimes seems as mobile as a crowd, but we must not forget that behind its mobility, its enthusiasms, its violence and destructiveness, the extremely tenacious and conservative instincts of the racial mind persist.The history of the Revolution and the century which has followed shows how the conservative spirit finally overcomes the spirit of destruction.
More than one system of government which the people has shattered has been restored by the people.
It is not as easy to work upon the mind of the people--that is, the mind of the race--as on the mind of a crowd.The means of action are indirect and slower (journals, conferences, speeches, books, &c.).The elements of persuasion always come under the headings already given: affirmation, repetition, prestige, and contagion.
Mental contagion may affect a whole people instantaneously, but more often it operates slowly, creeping from group to group.
Thus was the Reformation propagated in France.
A people is far less excitable than a crowd; but certain events--national insults, threats of invasion, &c.--may arouse it instantly.Such a phenomenon was observed on several occasions during the Revolution, notably at the time of the insolent manifesto issued by the Duke of Brunswick.The Duke knew little indeed of the psychology of the French race when he proffered his threats.Not only did he considerably prejudice the cause of Louis XVI.; but he also damaged his own, since his intervention raised from the soil an army eager to fight him.
This sudden explosion of feeling throughout a whole race has been observed in all nations.Napoleon did not understand the power of such explosions when he invaded Spain and Russia.One may easily disaggregate the facile mind of a crowd, but one can do nothing before the permanent soul of a race.Certainly the Russian peasant is a very indifferent being, gross and narrow by nature, yet at the first news of invasion he was transformed.
One may judge of this fact on reading a letter written by Elizabeth, wife of the Emperor Alexander I.
``From the moment when Napoleon had crossed our frontiers it was as though an electric spark had spread through all Russia; and if the immensity of its area had made it possible for the news to penetrate simultaneously to every corner of the Empire a cry of indignation would have arisen so terrible that I believe it would have resounded to the ends of the earth.As Napoleon advances this feeling is growing yet stronger.Old men who have lost all or nearly all their goods are saying: `We shall find a way of living.Anything is preferable to a shameful peace.' Women all of whose kin are in the army regard the dangers they are running as secondary, and fear nothing but peace.Happily this peace, which would be the death-warrant of Russia, will not be negotiated; the Emperor does not conceive of such an idea, and even if he would he could not.This is the heroic side of our position.''
The Empress describes to her mother the two following traits, which give some idea of the degree of resistance of which the soul of the Russian is capable:--``The Frenchmen had caught some unhappy peasants in Moscow, whom they thought to force to serve in their ranks, and in order that they should not be able to escape they branded their hands as one brands horses in the stud.One of them asked what this mark meant; he was told it signified that he was a French soldier.
`What! I am a soldier of the Emperor of the French!' he said.
And immediately he took his hatchet, cut off his hand, and threw it at the feet of those present, saying, `Take it--there's your mark!'
``At Moscow, too, the French had taken a score of peasants of whom they wished to make an example in order to frighten the villagers, who were picking off the French foraging parties and were making war as well as the detachments of regular troops.
They ranged them against a wall and read their sentence in Russian.They waited for them to beg for mercy: instead of that they took farewell of one another and made their sign of the cross.The French fired on the first of them; they waited for the rest to beg for pardon in their terror, and to promise to change their conduct.They fired on the second, and on the third, and so on all the twenty, without a single one having attempted to implore the clemency of the enemy.Napoleon has not once had the pleasure of profaning this word in Russia.''
