INSTANCES OF REVOLUTIONARY VIOLENCE
1.Psychological Causes of Revolutionary Violence.
We have shown in the course of the preceding chapters that the revolutionary theories constituted a new faith.
Humanitarian and sentimental, they exalted liberty and fraternity.But, as in many religions, we can observe a complete contradiction between doctrine and action.In practice no liberty was tolerated, and fraternity was quickly replaced by frenzied massacres.
This opposition between principles and conduct results from the intolerance which accompanies all beliefs.A religion may be steeped in humanitarianism and forbearance, but its sectaries will always want to impose it on others by force, so that violence is the inevitable result.
The cruelties of the Revolution were thus the inherent results of the propagation of the new dogmas.The Inquisition, the religious wars of France, St.Bartholomew's Day, the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the ``Dragonnades,'' the persecution of the Jansenists, &c., belonged to the same family as the Terror and derived from the same psychological sources.
Louis XIV.was not a cruel king, yet under the impulse of his faith he drove hundreds of thousands of Protestants out of France, after first shooting down a considerable number and sending others to the galleys.
The methods of persuasion adopted by all believers are by no means a consequence of their fear of the dissentient opposition.
Protestants and Jansenists were anything but dangerous under Louis XIV.Intolerance arises above all from the indignation experienced by a mind which is convinced that it possesses the most dazzling verities against the men who deny those truths, and who are surely not acting in good faith.How can one support error when one has the necessary strength to wipe it out?
Thus have reasoned the believers of all ages.Thus reasoned Louis XIV.and the men of the Terror.These latter also were convinced that they were in possession of absolute truths, which they believed to be obvious, and whose triumph was certain to regenerate humanity.Could they be more tolerant toward their adversaries than the Church and the kings of France had been toward heretics?
We are forced to believe that terror is a method which all believers regard as a necessity, since from the beginning of the ages religious codes have always been based upon terror.To force men to observe their prescriptions, believers have sought to terrify them with threats of an eternal hell of torments.
The apostles of the Jacobin belief behaved as their fathers had done, and employed the same methods.If similar events occurred again we should see identical actions repeated.If a new belief--Socialism, for example--were to triumph to-morrow, it would be led to employ methods of propaganda like those of the Inquisition and the Terror.
But were we to regard the Jacobin Terror solely as the result of a religious movement, we should not completely apprehend it.
Around a triumphant religious belief, as we saw in the case of the Reformation, gather a host of individual interests which are dependent on that belief.The Terror was directed by a few fanatical apostles, but beside this small number of ardent proselytes, whose narrow minds dreamed of regenerating the world, were great numbers of men who lived only to enrich themselves.
They rallied readily around the first victorious leader who promised to enable them to enjoy the results of their pillage.
``The Terrorists of the Revolution,'' writes Albert Sorel, ``resorted to the Terror because they wished to remain in power, and were incapable of doing so by other means.They employed it for their own salvation, and after the event they stated that their motive was the salvation of the State.Before it became a system it was a means of government, and the system was only invented to justify the means.''
We may thus fully agree with the following verdict on the Terror, written by Emile Ollivier in his work on the Revolution: ``The Terror was above all a Jacquerie, a regularised pillage, the vastest enterprise of theft that any association of criminals has ever organised.''
2.The Revolutionary Tribunals.
The Revolutionary Tribunals constituted the principal means of action of the Terror.Besides that of Paris, created at the instigation of Danton, and which a year afterwards sent its founder to the guillotine, France was covered with such tribunals.
``One hundred and seventy-eight tribunals,'' says Taine, ``of which 40 were perambulant, pronounced death sentences in all parts of the country, which were carried out instantly on the spot.Between the 16th of April, 1793, and the 9th of Thermidor in the year II.that of Paris guillotined 2,625 persons, and the provincial judges worked as hard as those of Paris.In the little town of Orange alone 331 persons were guillotined.In the city of Arras 299 men and 93 women were guillotined....In the city of Lyons alone the revolutionary commissioner admitted to 1,684 executions....The total number of these murders has been put at 17,000, among whom were 1,200 women, of whom a number were octogenarians.''
Although the Revolutionary Tribunal of Paris claimed only 2,625victims, it must not be forgotten that all the suspects had already been summarily massacred during the ``days'' of September.
