书城公版The Origins of Contemporary France
35302100000489

第489章

[7] Moniteur, XI. 603. (Session of March 10. Speech by Brissot, to secure a decree of accusation against M. Delessart, Minister of Foreign Affairs.) M. Delessart is a "perfidious man," for having stated in a dispatch that "the Constitution, with the great majority of the nation, has become a sort of religion which is embraced with the greatest enthusiasm." Brissot denounces these two expressions as inadequate and anti-patriotic.-Ibid., XII. 438 (session of May 20).

Speech by Guadet: "Larivière, the juge-de-paix, has convicted himself of the basest and most atrocious of passions, in having desired to usurp the power which the Constitution has placed in the hands of the National Assembly." -- I do not believe that Laubardemont himself could have composed anything equal to these two speeches. -- Cf. XII.

462 (session of May 23). Speech by Brissot and one by Gonsonné on the Austrian committee. The feebleness and absurdity of their argument is incredible.

[8] Affairs of the Minister Duport-Dutertre and of the Ambassador to Vienna, M. de Noailles.

[9] Mercure de France, March 10, 1792.

[10] Moniteur, XI. 607 (session of March 10).

[11] Moniteur, XII .396 (session of May 15). Isnard's address is the ground-plan of Roland's famous letter. -- Cf. passim, the sessions of the Assembly during the Girondist ministry, especially those of May 19and 20, June 5, etc.

[12] Dumouriez, "Mémoires," book III. ch. VI.

[13] "Letter of a young mechanician," proposing to make a constitutional king, which, "by means of a spring, would receive from the hands of the president of the Assembly a list of ministers designated by the majority" (1791).

[14] Servan, who was Girondist minister of war, proposed to let 20 000fédérés or provincial National guards establish themselves outside Paris. (SR).

[15] You will meet this sinister expression later on when the Government ceased killing in France but simply sent undesirables and imaginary or real opponents overseas to death-camps. Transportation was used by Stalin and Hitler only their extermination took place in their own countries not overseas. (SR).

[16] Moniteur, XI. 426 (session of May 19). Speech by Lasource: "Could not things be so arranged as to have a considerable force near enough to the capital to terrify and keep inactive the factions, the intriguers, the traitors who are plotting perfidious plans in its bosom, simultaneously with the maneuvers of outside enemies?"[17] 'Mallet du Pan, "Mémoires." I. 303. Letter of Malouet, June 29:

"The king is calm and perfectly resigned. On the 19th he wrote to his confessor: "Come, sir; never have I had so much need of your consolations. I am done with men; I must now turn my eyes to heaven.

Sad events are announced for to-morrow. I shall have courage.' " --"Lettres de Coray au Protopsalte de Smyrne" (translated by M. de Queux de Saint-Hilaire,) 145, May 1st: "The court is in peril every moment.

Do not be surprised if I write you some day that his unhappy king and his wife are assassinated."."[18] Rétif de la Bretonne, "Nuits de Paris," VoL XVI. (analyzed by Lacroix in "Bibliothèque de Rétif de la Bretonne" ). --Rétif is the man in Paris who lived the most in the streets and had the most intercourse with the low class.

[19] "Archives Nationales," F7, 3276. Letter from the Directory of Clamecy, March 27, and official report of the civil commissioners, March 31, 1792, on the riot of the raftsmen. Tracu, their captain, armed with a cudgel ten feet long, compelled peaceful people to march along with him, threatening to knock them down; he tried to get the head of Peynier, the clerk of the Paris dealers in wood. "I shall have a good supper to-night," he exclaimed "(or the head of that bastard Peynier is a fat one, and I'll stick it in my Pot!"[20] Letters of Coray, 126. "This pillaging has lasted three days, Jan. 22, 23 and 24, and we expect from hour to hour similar riots still more terrible."[21] Mercier (" Tableau de Paris") had already noticed before the Revolution this habit of the Parisian workman, especially among the lowest class of workmen.

[22] Mortimer-Ternaux, 1.346 (letter of June 21, 1792).

[23] Buchez et Roux, VIII. 25 (session of the National Assembly, Nov.10, 1790). Petition presented by Danton in the name of the forty-eight sections of Paris.

[24] Buchez et Roux, XIV. 268 (May. 1792). Article by Robespierre against the fête decreed in honor of Simonneau, Mayor of Etampes, assassinated in a riot: "Simonneau was guilty before he became a victim."[25] How can one forget that great seducer of the masses Hitler? In his book "Hitler Speaks" page 208 Rauschning reports Hitler as saying:

"It is true that the masses are uncritical, but not in the way these idiots of Marxists and reactionaries imagine. The masses have their critical faculties, too, but they function differently from those of the private individual. The masses are like an animal they obeys instincts. They do not reach conclusions by reasoning. My success in initiating the greatest people's movement of all time is due to my never having done anything in violation of the vital laws and feelings of the mass. These feelings may be primitive, but they have the resistance and indestructibility of natural qualities. A once intensely felt experience in the life of the masses, like ration cards and inflation, will never again be driven out of their blood. The masses have a ****** system of thinking and feeling, and anything that cannot be fitted into it disturbs them. It is only because I take their vital laws into consideration that I can rule them."[26] Moniteur, XII. 254. - According to the royal almanac of 1792the Paris national guard comprises 32,000 men, divided into sixty battalions, to which must be added the battalions of pikemen, spontaneously organized and composed, especially of the non-active citizens. - Cf. in "Les Révolutions de Paris," Prudhomme's Journal, the engravings which represent this sort of procession.