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TITLE: The French Revolution, Volume 3 
AUTHOR: Hippolyte A. Taine 
EBOOK: E00014 (O'Briens Book Cellar)
 
The French Revolution, Volume 1. 
^M                                            
The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2^M
^M                                            
by Hippolyte A. Taine^M 
 
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION VOLUME III. 
PREFACE. 
BOOK FIRST. The Establishment of the Revolutionary Government. 
CHAPTER I. 
BOOK SECOND. The Jacobin Program. 
CHAPTER I. 
CHAPTER II. 
BOOK THIRD. The Governors. 
CHAPTER I. Psychology of the Jacobin Leaders. 
CHAPTER II. The Rulers of the Country. 
CHAPTER III. The Rulers. (continued). 
BOOK FOURTH.  The Governed. 
CHAPTER I. The Oppressed. 
CHAPTER II. Food and Provisions. 
BOOK FIFTH.   The End of the Revolutionary Government. 
CHAPTER I. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
"In Egypt," says Clement of Alexandria,[1] "the sanctuaries of the 
temples are shaded by curtains of golden tissue.   But on going 
further into the interior in quest of the statue, a priest of grave 
aspect, advancing to meet you and chanting a hymn in the Egyptian 
tongue, slightly raises a veil to show you the god.   And what do you 
behold? A crocodile, or some indigenous serpent, or other dangerous 
animal, the Egyptian god being a beast sprawling on a purple carpet." 
 
We need not visit Egypt or go so far back in history to encounter 
crocodile worship, as this can be readily found in France at the end 
of the last century.   -- Unfortunately, a hundred years is too long 
an interval, too far away, for an imaginative retrospect of the past. 
At the present time, standing where we do and regarding the horizon 
behind us, we see only forms which the intervening atmosphere 
embellishes, shimmering contours which each spectator may interpret in 
his own fashion; no distinct, animated figure, but merely a mass of 
moving points, forming and dissolving in the midst of picturesque 
architecture.   I was anxious to take a closer view of these vague 
points, and, accordingly, deported myself back to the last half of the 
eighteenth century.   I have now been living with them for twelve 
years, and, like Clement of Alexandria, examined, first, the temple, 
and next the god.   A passing glance at these is not sufficient; it 
was also necessary to understand the theology on which this cult is 
founded.   This one, explained by a very specious theology, like most 
others, is composed of dogmas called the principles of 1789; they were 
proclaimed, indeed, at that date, having been previously formulated by 
Jean-Jacques Rousseau: 
 
* The well known sovereignty of the people. 
 
* The rights of Man. 
 
* The social contract. 
 
Once adopted, their practical results unfolded themselves naturally. 
In three years these dogmas installed the crocodile on the purple 
carpet insides the sanctuary behind the golden veil.  He was selected 
for the place on account of the energy of his jaws and the capacity of 
his stomach; he became a god through his qualities as a destructive 
brute and man-eater.  -- Comprehending this, the rites which 
consecrate him and the pomp which surrounds him need not give us any 
further concern. -- We can observe him, like any ordinary animal, and 
study his various attitudes, as he lies in wait for his prey, springs 
upon it, tears it to pieces, swallows it, and digests it.  I have 
studied the details of his structure, the play of his organs, his 
habits, his mode of living, his instincts, his faculties, and his 
appetites.  -- Specimens abounded.  I have handled thousands of them, 
and have dissected hundreds of every species and variety, always 
preserving the most valuable and characteristic examples, but for lack 
of room I have been compelled to let many of them go because my 
collections was too large.  Those that I was able to bring back with 
me will be found here, and, among others, about twenty individuals of 
different dimensions, which -- a difficult undertaking -- I have kept 
alive with great pains.  At all events, they are intact and perfect, 
and particularly the three largest.  These seem to me, of their kind, 
truly remarkable, and those in which the divinity of the day might 
well incarnate himself.  - Authentic and rather well kept cookbooks 
inform us about the cost of the cult: We can more or less estimate how 
much the sacred crocodiles consumed in ten years; we know their bills 
of daily fare, their favorite morsels.  Naturally, the god selected 
the fattest victims, but his voracity was so great that he likewise 
bolted down, and blindly, the lean ones, and in much greater number 
than the fattest.  Moreover, by virtue of his instincts, and an 
unfailing effect of the situation, he ate his equals once or twice a 
year, except when they succeeded in eating him.  -- This cult 
certainly is instructive, at least to historians and men of pure 
science.  If any believers in it still remain I do not aim to convert 
them; one cannot argue with a devotee on matters of faith.  This 
volume, accordingly, like the others that have gone before it, is 
written solely for amateurs of moral zoology, for naturalists of the 
understanding, for seekers of truth, of texts, and of proofs -- for 
these alone and not for the public, whose mind is made up and which 
has its own opinion on the Revolution.  This opinion began to be 
formed between 1825 and 1830, after the retirement or withdrawal of 
eye witnesses.  When they disappeared it was easy to convince a 
credulous public that crocodiles were philanthropists; that many 
possessed genius; that they scarcely ate others than the guilty, and 
that if they sometimes ate too many it was unconsciously and in spite 
of themselves, or through devotion and self-sacrifice for the common 
good. 
 
H. A. Taine,   Menthon Saint Bernard, July 1884. 
 
___________________________________________________________________ 
 
BOOK FIRST.  THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENT. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
I. 
 
Weakness of former governments.  - Energy of the new government.  - 
The despotic creed and instincts of the Jacobin. 
 
So far, the weakness of the legal government is extreme.  During four 
years, whatever its kind, it has constantly and everywhere been 
disobeyed.  For four years it never dared enforce obedience. 
Recruited among the cultivated and refined class, the rulers of the 
country have brought with them into power the prejudices and 
sensibilities of the epoch.  Under the influence of the prevailing 
dogma they have submitted to the will of the multitude and, with too 
much faith in the rights of Man, they have had too little in the 
authority of the magistrate.  Moreover, through humanity, they have 
abhorred bloodshed and, unwilling to repress, they have allowed 
themselves to be repressed.  Thus from the 1st of May, 1789, to June 
2, 1793, they have administrated or legislated, escaping countless 
insurrections, almost all of them going unpunished ; while their 
constitution, an unhealthy product of theory and fear, have done no 
more than transform spontaneous anarchy into legal anarchy. 
Deliberately and through distrust of authority they have undermined 
the principle of command, reduced the King to the post of a decorative 
puppet, and almost annihilated the central power: from the top to the 
bottom of the hierarchy the superior has lost his hold on the 
inferior, the minister on the departments, the departments on the 
districts, and the districts on the communes.  Throughout all branches 
of the service, the chief, elected on the spot and by his 
subordinates, has come to depend on them.  Thenceforth, each post in 
which authority is vested is found isolated, dismantled and preyed 
upon, while, to crown all, the Declaration of Rights, proclaiming "the 
jurisdiction of constituents over their clerks,"[2] has invited the 
assailants to make the assault.  On the strength of this a faction 
arises which ends in becoming an organized band ; under its clamor, 
its menaces and its pikes, at Paris and in the provinces, at the polls 
and in the parliament, the majorities are all silenced, while the 
minorities vote, decree and govern; the Legislative Assembly is 
purged, the King is dethroned, and the Convention is mutilated.  Of 
all the garrisons of the central citadel, whether royalists, 
Constitutionalists, or Girondins, not one has been able to defend 
itself, to re-fashion the executive instrument, to draw the sword and 
use it in the streets: on the first attack, often at the first 
summons, all have surrendered, and now the citadel, with every other 
public fortress, is in the hands of the Jacobins. 
 
This time, its occupants are of a different stamp.  Aside from the 
great mass of well-disposed people fond of a quiet life, the 
Revolution has sifted out and separated from the rest all who are 
fanatical, brutal or perverse enough to have lost respect for others; 
these form the new garrison -- sectarians blinded by their creed, the 
roughs (assommeurs) who are hardened by their calling, and those who 
make all they can out of their offices.  None of this class are 
scrupulous concerning human life or property ; for, as we have seen, 
they have shaped the theory to suit themselves, and reduced popular 
sovereignty to their sovereignty.  The commonwealth, according to the 
Jacobin, is his; with him, the commonwealth comprises all private 
possessions, bodies, estates, souls and consciences; everything 
belongs to him; the fact of being a Jacobin makes him legitimately 
czar and pope.  Little does he care about the wills of actually living 
Frenchmen; his mandate does not emanate from a vote ; it descends to 
him from aloft, conferred on him by Truth, by Reason, by Virtue.  As 
he alone is enlightened, and the only patriot, he alone is worthy to 
take command, while resistance, according to his imperious pride, is 
criminal.  If the majority protests it is because the majority is 
imbecile or corrupt; in either case, it deserves to be brought to 
heel.  And, in fact, the Jacobin only does that and right away too; 
insurrections, usurpations, pillaging, murders, assaults on 
individuals, on judges and public attorneys, on assemblies, violations 
of law, attacks on the State, on communities -- there is no outrage 
not committed by him.  He has always acted as sovereign instinctively 
; he was so as a private individual and clubbist; he is not to cease 
being so, now that he possesses legal authority, and all the more 
because if he hesitates he knows he is lost; to save himself from the 
scaffold he has no refuge but in a dictatorship.  Such a man, unlike 
his predecessors, will not allow himself to be turned out; on the 
contrary, he will exact obedience at any cost.  He will not hesitate 
to restore the central power; he will put back the local wheels that 
have been detached; he will repair the old forcing gear; he will set 
it agoing so as to work more rudely and arbitrarily than ever, with 
greater contempt for private rights and public liberties than either a 
Louis XIV.  or a Napoleon. 
 
II.    Jacobin Dissimulation. 
 

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