the large library of the Jacobin monastery in the little
rue Saint-Hyacinthe, that the leaders of the Eevolution
developed the daring and force which changed them
from social reformers to busy politicians. From this
gray store-room of the recorded thought of men, now
changed to an auditorium, daily growing more and
more tumultuous, a new thought-life was sent vibrating
through France.
When it is question of the clubs as to the means to
get the ear of the masses, the Jacobins shares the hon-
ors with the Cordeliers and the Cercle Social. At the
Jacobins, Mirabeau, Barnave, Yergniaud, Kobespierre,
came one after the other " to lead men by the ears,"
but all the clubs did a conspicuous work of propaganda.
Nightly, at the Cordelier, Danton's voice rang out, driv-
ing home a new patriotism and a new courage to the
heart and brain of every small workman and fiery stu-
dent who heard him. Nightly, Claude Fauchet preached
Rousseau or communism to hysterical men and women
at the Cercle Social, and fostered that extreme wing of
revolution which culminated in Babouvism. Besides
100
OF FRENCH REVOLUTION.
serving as a means to define the politician's point of
view, the clubs were then so many means to spread dis-
content and a new creed among the already alienated
lower classes. At the clubs, the Paris masses added
the will to do, to their recently acquired will to think
for themselves.
Perhaps no one of these clubs made for revolution as
directly as did the " Club des Enrages," the name
often given to the gatherings at the Palais Eoyal. If
the more organized societies fed the will to do, the hand
to strike for the new principles was found at the Club
des Enrages. Here Camille Desmoulins and his friends
won the cooperation of all that was disaffected in Paris ;
here, when revolt began, those whom famine had nearly
maddened or the weak municipality had stupidly in-
censed, the hungry, the vicious, the resentful, all empty-
pocketed and burning with mere physical smart, heard
a story to their liking. No fee or form of enrolment
kept this most factious part of the city population from
loitering in and listening with uproarious approval as
men, mounted on chairs, criticised the acts of the king
and the Assembly, laughed at the new mayor or decried
Lafayette. Most unclub-like of clubs, this was the
strongest agent for inoculating the masses with ideas of
democracy or ochlocracy; and it was here that a
power was roused which presently became a driving-
force for the leaders themselves.
The Club des Enrages is a composite which, when
analyzed, resolves into a number of cafes fronting on
a large and beautiful court. Each of these cafes by
itself, along with many others scattered about the big
CAFfiS OF THE REVOLUTION. 1Q1
city, came conspicuously into the foreground as a debat-
ing place, where revolutionary principles were knocked
about in a tempest of opinion.
The cafes were an influence more directly emotional
than either salon or club proper, yet emphatically an
influence aiding the selection and organization of the
new theories. At all times during the past two hun-
dred years or more, the cafe has been the chief loitering-
place in France. Here, in ordinary times, as they sip
their coffee or stronger drink, chat with an acquaint-
ance or watch the street life drifting past them,
Frenchmen catch the current social idea, and thus
modify and make socially effective their individual
opinions. In 1789, the social idea was everywhere ask-
ing for a hearing with an insistence which gave it a
marked determinative force. In face of the swelling
revolt, the cafe of 1789 changed its whole character in
a brief period.
The swift transformation of the cafe from a peace-
able loitering-place to a more or less strongly organized
party stronghold is one of the entertaining stories of
the Eevolution. How the cafes had been severely super-
vised up to 1789, so that no political discussions were
permitted in them, is as well known as the way in
which, when that surveillance ceased during Keeker's
administration, these same cafes became "public
schools of democracy and insurrection/' 48 The non-
partisan cafe was not even tolerated, as the few learned
who, in these troublous times, sought, at the Cafe Flore,
a place where they might peaceably have no opinions;
48 Sallier. Annales frangaises, p. 241. Quoted in Cherest,
op. cit., Vpl, II, p. 219,
102 PRINCIPLES OF FRENCH REVOLUTION.
they soon found themselves forced to take a share in
public affairs or to disband. 49 The cafe, as an element
of social life, made way for the cafe become the most
lively exponent of the political situation.
In the clubs, the debate centered about principles of
ethics and government; in the cafes, the fight had
rather to do with small differences of opinion and
the relative merit of party leaders. One pictures
the applause as the habitues of these cafes heard their
own sentiments voiced by the orators who were regularly
established at most of them. It is easy to guess how
the audience got new courage for their convictions, as
they listened to the stimulating speakers mounted on
table-tops; how their opinions strengthened as they
aided to draw up hastily improvised resolutions, and
how some must have learned what they were fighting
for, as they danced about the nightly bonfires which
kept their enthusiasm at gala-day pitch. The daily
challenges which the five o'clock " deliberative clubs "
sent from Zoppi's or the Cafe des Arts, the Cafe du
Bourbon or the Cafe de Mirabeau (Tonneau), the money
summarily collected from the frequenters of these places
and sent to the militia for arms, were each in a way so
many indications of a newly-born idea of concerted
action in order to the political end. The hot debates,
the bluster and stir which made the Cafe de Foi, 50 the
portico of the Revolution, the very center of sedition
and uproar, where old institutions were satirized and
reforms tumultuously advocated, are for the present
49 De Goncourt, op. cit., pp. 207-209.
50 Ibid, p. 202.
THEATERS OF THE REVOLUTION. 1Q3
study less a picture of daily collision between royalist
and republican than a scene which evidences the growth
of strong political feeling and a final boiling-over of
discontent. It seems impossible to overestimate the
part of the cafe in the work of disseminating the new
opinion by way of shouting it, while at the same time
ridiculing the old.
A word here with regard to the theaters, whose in-
fluence was of a kind similar to that of the cafes. It
is a fact old in the history of changes in national
thought, that the play's the thing by which to spread
the contagion of a new idea and nurse a young en-
thusinsm to the point of action. In 1789, as at any
time in French history, the Paris playhouse did its full
share in voicing public opinion and playing upon the
emotions of the masses. From the time that " Figaro," 51
after four years of struggle with censorship, set Paris
covertly mocking at the old regime and the inconsis-
tencies it presented between men's thoughts and acts,
the stage was used more and more boldly to scout the
tottering system. When it is recalled that, of the
thirty-five theaters which nightly during the Revolution
opened their doors to Parisians of all classes, only four
were royalists, it is not hard to guess the direction
which the opinions of the theater-goers were likely to
take. How " Charles IX " 52 set the example for count-
less " pieces de circonstances " of less literary value,
but perhaps as much immediate influence, is a bit
51 First produced in 1784.
52 M. J. Chenier; produced first on November 4, 1789. The
De Goncourts call it " le drapeau de la Revolution." Cf ., op.
cit., pp. 48-53.
IQ4: PRINCIPLES OF FRENCH REVOLUTION.
of history which always goes along with the descrip-
tion of how these plays taught lessons of patriotism
and hatred of tyranny and roused or gratified the pas-
sions of the day. As the clubs and political bodies came
to a clearer understanding of what they were working
for, the stage took up their opinions, and by means of
the brilliant costumes and stirring events of a past or
present time, put club harangues into a poetic form
which sent the ideas these advocated, no longer to the
intellects of the hearers, but directly to their hearts.
The drama's share in giving form to the revolutionary
principles is then by no means to be forgotten.
The newspapers of the time took a conspicuous
part in the work of propaganda. The average man
reads for one or both of two reasons; he either seeks
to find his opinions, put definitely and in a way he
himself is incapable of putting them, or he wants to
feel a sense of comradeship in his ideas. If, then, in a
time of revolt, there is a greedy grasping for daily lit-
erature of a radical kind, it is because men are become
eager to see their own longings for change worded by
those who are less voiceless than they, or because they
are keen to know how much and how widely their half-
confessed iconoclastic ideas are the general opinion.
Similarly, when certain temperaments are possessed by
a new ideal which they desire to make current, they
find putting it into a brief and popular form the easiest
and most suggestive means for spreading such an ideal.
The newspaper and pamphlet are then likely to be most
prolific and the best indication ,of public feeling in
times .of social storm and stress; the remarkable popur
NEWSPAPERS OF THE REVOLUTION. 1Q5
larity of the newspaper as well as the countless num-
ber published during the revolutionary period seems
thus to be accounted for.
As facts of practical life, the French newspaper and
the notion of democracy came to France at about the
same time. 53 The French journal came full grown to an
eager public. By this novel means, clever men, most
of whom posited democracy as the prerequisite to any
successful social life, ably joined, in the preaching and
teaching of the new theories. At any period of its his-
tory, nothing more partisan than the French newspaper
can be conceived of, and the pioneers of '89 were the
hardiest partisans of their race. It is easy to imagine
how flagging sympathies must have been stirred to en-
ergetic alliance by the feverish calls to liberty and
equality which the " Revolutions de France et de Bra-
bant," the " Revolutions de Paris/' " L'Ami de Peuple,"
" Pere Duchesne," and the dozen similar publications
sent out daily to a listening Paris. The small circula-
tion and uncertain existence of the court papers, such
as the "Actes des Apotres " or the "Apocalypse " leave
little doubt that early in the struggle, majority opinion
in Paris had gone over to the notion of revolt. His-
tory, telling of the eagerness with which these daily
publications were bought and read, and of the sacri-
fices which men and women made in order to buy them,
proves the increasing popularity of the democracy they
preached and the extending reach of their influence.
It is clear enough that the journals swiftly became " the
53 De Goncourt, op. cit., p. 252. " Fils de '89, le journal
n'a pas d'enfance." Comp. also, Blanc. La Revolution Fran-
Caise, III, p. 115.
106 PRINCIPLES OF FRENCH REVOLUTION.
cry of war, the provocation, the attack, the defense; the
national assembly where everyone speaks and replies,
and which furnishes the theme of the other national as-
sembly; * * * tribune of paper, more listened to,
more ringing, more reigning, than the tribune where
Mirabeau apostrophized or Maury replied. 7 ' 54
The influence of the pamphlet fell short of that
of the newspaper in so far as the public who reads long
articles is made up of fewer persons than that which
reads publications more brief and abstract in tenor.
The sudden appearance of the astonishing number of
pamphlets has been called " a particular crisis in the
midst of a general crisis." 55 Men still marvel at the
enormous output of pamphletary literature, 56 and, turn-
ing over the five thousand and more specimens of them,
which remain to represent this type of revolutionary
writings, they marvel also at the unanimity of opinion,
the boldness and simplicity of idea which characterizes
most of them. Usually the pamphlet was the voice of
the noblemen or clergymen, who represented the revo-
lutionary minority in the upper classes. The most
moderate asked for immediate and complete abolition
of many social abuses; the radical sort asked for an
entire alteration in social organization.
The brochures most frequently read were popular
expositions of the ideas of the eighteenth century phil-
54 De Goncourt, op. cit., chap, x, p. 252.
55Cherest, op. cit., II, p. 248.
56 The publication of the pamphlets began with the call for
the Assembly of the Notables; in the last month of 1788 there
were 2,500 collected. For a good study of pamphlets, with re-
gard to the theory they contain, see Lichtenberger, Le Social-
isme et La Revolution Franchise, pp. 31-54.
PAMPHLETS OF THE REVOLUTION.
osophers, with additional suggestions, as how to apply
those ideas directly to existing conditions. In a
word, the pamphlets were the final literary presenta-
tion of those principles which the thought of the cen-
tury had developed.
Some of these pamphlets taught to the masses what
the " Contrat Social " had taught their leaders. Who-
soever reads the bold demand for the rights of the
Third Estate framed in the pamphlet, whose very title
" What is the Third Estate? " (" Qu'est ce que le Tiers-
Etat?") stirred a long-forgotten question, reads Rous-
seau, as well as Sieyes. The cool assertion of the
rights of the Third Estate, the daring elevation of the
caste to the first place in the realm, the positive proofs
which its history is said to furnish that it is right and
necessary for the Third Estate to hold first place in the
legislation, these are the important facts which the
pamphlet carries for our purpose. And when others 57
go to greater lengths, one picturing France strong and
grand before the world, though deprived by fortuitous
circumstances of her clergy and nobles, 58 another even
openly discussing a French republic, 59 it is evident that
the pamphlet was not far behind the journal in express-
ing a claim for new theories, all tending in one direc-
tion.
The " almanachs " of this time are so numerous and
so characteristic that they merit a word in passing.
57 Condorcet, Volney, Target, Bergasse, Mounier, Servan,
Rabaud de St. Etienne, are the most important writers of
pamphlets.
58 Rabaud de St. Etienne; note the resemblance of this
idea to that of St. Simon in his " Parabola."
59 Camille Desmoulins, in his " France Libre."
108 PRINCIPLES OF FRENCH REVOLUTION.
These curious and distinctively French publications
played the not altogether admirable part of the low
comedian, whose jokes reach the gallery where the in-
tellectual didactics of the leading personages fail of ef-
fect. Their share in the work must not be neglected.
Particularly in France, where to ridicule is to kill
socially, the low comedian has no despicable role, and
it is probable that the almanac played a significant
part in the work of reshaping public opinion. The
cheap prose and cheaper poetry of the " Almanach
des Kepublicains," of the " Calendrier des Bons Citoy-
ens" of Collot d'Herbois; the popular "Almanach du
Pere Gerard," or the other more royalist publications
of a similar nature, 60 are dull enough reading now;
but their absurd, even offensive commonplace had much
vogue at the time it was edited. The whole tenor
of these publications was to belittle the past, to cry
aloud the gifts which the present had ready for the fu-
ture above all to exalt a future that was to be shaped
by the inspired theories with which the Revolution was
blessing men. Though empty of meaning, unless read
in the light of the events which produced them, the
almanacs take their place along with newspaper and
pamphlet as a medium to catch and hold the possibly
unsettled mind of the reading public. 61
To these more institutional phases of Paris life add
60 L* Almanach de 1'AbbS Maury, Les Almanachs des Emigres,
L' Almanach historique et critique des deputes," are especially
noteworthy. Comp. Welschinger, Les Almanachs de la Re"vo-
lution. Paris, 1884.
61 For a good study of the content and influence of the al-
manac, the reader is referred to Welschinger's readable little,
book.
FINAL FOCUSING. 109
now the gradual changes which the Kevolution slowly
brought about. When the new ideas of equality and
liberty strive to become applied doctrine, Paris still
leads in stimulating to active discontent or in making
for solidarity of opinion. When the militia organized
and all classes thus came shoulder to shoulder in an
entirely new service of citizenship; when titles were
banished, and armorial bearings were removed from
houses where they had been for centuries; when simple
and similar dress went along with newly- awakened sen-
sibilities concerning a neighbor's rights, each change
came to act as another plea for a widespread and en-
tire acceptance of principles completely revolutionary.
When, on the other hand, Paris streets surged daily
with thousands of beggars and unemployed, 62 come foot-
sore and in haste to the fount of freedom in order to
get a share in the new liberty, that element of blind
force arrived which-completed the probability of swift
and entire alteration in the social institutions. By
1793, Paris inclosed within her walls all that was nec-
essary to give power to the radical reformer.
We have almost reached the period in French his-
tory when the radical rationalism which is the sub-
ject of this study took precedence, if only for a brief
time, of all other theory, both in the mouths of men and
in social institutions. One more group of social facts
needs to be noted as a determining influence, not so
much now, an influence for the expression of revolu-
62 There were 119,000 in 1791. Von Hoist, op. cit., 1, p. 47.
PRINCIPLES OF FRENCH REVOLUTION.
tionary principles as one which decided the final color
to be given those principles. In addition to the new
culture, the national disintegration and the class awak-
ening which were essential preliminaries of a time when
new doctrines actually displaced the old; in addition to
the elements of Paris life, which aided to concentrate
and strengthen the doctrine, the events which decided
their entirely radical character need to be noted. The
dramatic period which includes the meeting of the first
two legislative bodies of France and a small part of
the history of the third, also includes the final change,
which for a short, yet notable period, made the demo-
cratic sentiments of a few doctrinaires and their allies
the announced principles of the French nation. During
this period passionate debates finally wrought a change
in the whole political system of the nation. At the
end of the period, uncompromising advocates of a log-
ical and complete alteration in the social theory of the
time had, with the aid of the Paris mob, won their
fight, and for a short while the Principles of Bevolu-
tion were promulgated as the law of France.
This closing period may be divided into three stages.
The first is that during which the Constituent Assem-
bly begins a definite statement of the principles of revo-
lution, and then, with a lingering respect for the old
doctrine, compromises on the reforms expressed in the
Constitution of '91. The next is that period when
revolutionary principles were vigorously demanded, but
social anarchy and a struggle of factions chilled those
who held political control so that they hesitated to
further the final enumeration of these principles.
CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY.
Finally there came the time when a group of opportun-
ists got control, and, promulgating the Constitution
of '93, completed the record of the immediate causes
of the revolutionary principles.
The Constituent Assembly represents a struggle be-
tween abstract philosophy and the doctrines of ap-
plied politics; it is the place where the practical men
make their last effective protest against the despotism
of logic. But the rationalistic type of mind had first
place even in this earliest legislative body. For the
most part, the Constituent Assembly was made up of
young, convent-bred men, who had little or no knowl-
edge of practical politics 03 men who, under Paris in-
fluences, were daily growing more liberty-mad. Re-
calling this fact, it is not surprising that the deputies of
'89 forgot the many important administrative duties
which they had come to perform, and spent months in
a wrangle over logical principles which, in the eyes of
these enthusiasts, seemed the right and necessary basis
of the new government they were to inaugurate.
Called to make constitutional and administrative law,
to alter and codify civil law, to devise means of sup-
port for a bankrupt government and eventually to plan
for an ecclesiastic and educational system in a word,
to serve at once as legislators and legislature, to make
law and to administer the law, they did neither until
they had first drawn up the Rights of Man! A spirit
of reform rather than of revolution may have later
63 For one of the best resumes of the character of the As-
sembly, see Taine, op. cit., Vol. 11, chap. 1, pp. 154-178. Ar-
thur Young and Dumont (MSmoires de Mirabeau) also bear
the same testimony on this point.
PRINCIPLES OF FRENCH REVOLUTION.
regained control of the Assembly, 64 because Mirabeau's
strong statesmanship fairly dominated that body even
against its will ; none the less this same Assembly
sent forth the Eights of Man to France and these
Eights of Man were the fundamental doctrine in the
revolutionary principles. The stress which the As-
sembly laid upon this series of abstractions spread and
deepened the revolution in men's minds.
The remaining work of the Assembly was the Con-
stitution of '91. This body of rules for the govern-
ment of France is a futile effort to reconcile the prin-
ciples of monarchy and democracy. It created as ex-
ecutive, a king, whose legislative power consisted in a
suspensive veto which gave the monarch a very con-
siderable power to block legislation, and so seemed to
make constant friction with the legislative almost cer-
tain. As to the legislative, its democratic and radical
character seemed assured. It is true that its members
were required to have somewhat high property quali-
fications and were chosen by indirect election, but the
legislative body was to be unicameral, and was to change
every two years. In consideration of the average of
human nature, a plan for a legislature of one cham-
ber, which changed its personnel so often, was one
which seemed to make factional and ineffective govern-
ment inevitable. Most important of all, this instru-
ment of government disputed the very terms of the
Declaration of Eights which had proudly been placed
at its head ; for, on a basis of money distinctions, it sepa-
rated the nation into active and passive citizens. The
Constitution of '91 is, then, the recorded evidence of the
w See e. g.. art. 16, where the principle of the separation
of powers is laid down.
MINORITIES CONTROL.
momentary compromise between the incompatible ele-
ments contending in the Assembly. It is the close of
the reform movement as against the revolutionary move-
ment ; or, to look at it from another point of view,
it is the last dyke which the less radical element of
the nation managed to erect for a brief time in face
of the rising flood of revolutionary opinion.
It is a Curious fact in the political affairs of human-
ity a fact that of course holds good for other than
French history that it is an energetic minority which
usually holds and carries with it the more or less unwill-
ing majority. Nowhere in history is this better evi-
denced than in the successive assemblies of the French
Kevolution. If conservatism partly controlled the con-
stituent, it was because Mirabeau's voice, raised in
warning against the despotism of mobs, checked the
majority in their growing passion of eagerness to realize
political equality at once. If the Legislative Assembly
moved steadily to the extreme democracy which the
Convention ultimately sanctioned, it was because within
these legislative bodies a small group of energetic Par-
isians drove opinion in that direction. True, outside
the halls of state, this minority itself was driven; but
so far as the legislative assemblies are in question, it