It is certain that modern progress would successively have established all that the Revolution effected--the equality of citizens before the law, the suppression of the privileges of birth, &c.Despite the conservative spirit of the Latins, these things would have been won, as they were by the majority of the peoples.We might in this manner have been saved twenty years of warfare and devastation; but we must have had a different mental constitution, and, above all, different statesmen.
The profound hostility of the bourgeoisie against the classes maintained above it by tradition was one of the great factors of the Revolution, and perfectly explains why, after its triumph, the first class despoiled the vanquished of their wealth.They behaved as conquerors--like William the Conqueror, who, after the conquest of England, distributed the soil among his soldiers.
But although the bourgeoisie detested the nobility they had no hatred for royalty, and did not regard it as revocable.The maladdress of the king and his appeals to foreign powers only very gradually made him unpopular.
The first Assembly never dreamed of founding a republic.
Extremely royalist, in fact, it thought simply to substitute a constitutional for an absolute monarchy.Only the consciousness of its increasing power exasperated it against the resistance of the king; but it dared not overthrow him.
3.Life under the Ancien Regime.
It is difficult to form a very clear idea of life under the ancien regime, and, above all, of the real situation of the peasants.
The writers who defend the Revolution as theologians defend religious dogmas draw such gloomy pictures of the existence of the peasants under the ancien regime that we ask ourselves how it was that all these unhappy creatures had not died of hunger long before.A good example of this style of writing may be found in a book by M.A.Rambaud, formerly professor at the Sorbonne, published under the title History of the French Revolution.One notices especially an engraving bearing the legend, Poverty of Peasants under Louis XIV.In the foreground a man is fighting some dogs for some bones, which for that matter are already quite fleshless.Beside him a wretched fellow is twisting himself and compressing his stomach.Farther back a woman lying on the ground is eating grass.At the back of the landscape figures of which one cannot say whether they are corpses or persons starving are also stretched on the soil.As an example of the administration of the ancien regime the same author assures us that ``a place in the police cost 300livres and brought in 400,000.'' Such figures surely indicate a great disinterestedness on the part of those who sold such productive employment! He also informs us ``that it cost only 120 livres to get people arrested,'' and that ``under Louis XV.
more than 150,000 lettres de cachet were distributed.''
The majority of books dealing with the Revolution are conceived with as little impartiality and critical spirit, which is one reason why this period is really so little known to us.
Certainly there is no lack of documents, but they are absolutely contradictory.To the celebrated description of La Bruyere we may oppose the enthusiastic picture drawn by the English traveller Young of the prosperous condition of the peasants of some of the French provinces.
Were they really crushed by taxation, and did they, as has been stated, pay four-fifths of their revenue instead of a fifth as to-day? Impossible to say with certainty.One capital fact, however, seems to prove that under the ancien regime the situation of the inhabitants of the rural districts could not have been so very wretched, since it seems established that more than a third of the soil had been bought by peasants.
We are better informed as to the financial system.It was very oppressive and extremely complicated.The budgets usually showed deficits, and the imposts of all kinds were raised by tyrannical farmers-general.At the very moment of the Revolution this condition of the finances became the cause of universal discontent, which is expressed in the cahiers of the States General.Let us remark that these cahiers did not represent a previous state of affairs, but an actual condition due to a crisis of poverty produced by the bad harvest of 1788 and the hard winter of 1789.What would these cahiers have told us had they been written ten years earlier?
