BOOKS.
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.*
PEOPLE with a taste for history may find consolation in the thought that the difficult times through which we are passing help us to understand the great events of the past. Every one, for example, can now appreciate the immense services rendered to their country by Pitt the Younger and by Castlereagh in carrying on war against a seemingly unconquerable enemy, in maintaining order at home in the face of a factious Opposition and of reckless agitators with dubious foreign connexions, and in securing a just and honourable peace. It -is becomilg possible, too, for sober people to take a dispassionate view of the French Revolution, now that revolutions are fashionable in Central and Eastern Europe and can be studied in some detail in the daily newspapers. After all that we have heard about Russia in particular, the old-fashioned theory that the French Revolution was a natural phenomenon, an " act of God," as the lawyers say, like an earthquake or a thunderstorm, is no longer convincing. We have seen that the Russian Revolution was to a very large extent the work of men—some of them honest, some of them faols or knaves—and it is reasonable to infer that the French Revolution was in some measure due to human contrivance. As Lord Acton put it, " the appalling thing in the French Revolution is not the tumult but the design. Through all the fire and smoke we perceive the evidence of calculating organization." Lord Acton did not attempt to work out this hypothesis, doubtless for lack of really satisfactory evidence. Mrs. Webster, greatly daring, has tried to do what Lord Acton refrained from doing for six famous episodes of the Revolution—namely, the fall of the Bastille, the march on Versailles, the invasion of the Tuileries (June 20th, 1792) and- the sack of the Tuileries (August 10th, 1792), the September massacres, and the Terror. We may say at once that Mrs. Webster's book will be a veritable revelation to those who only know of the Revolution from Carlyle's brilliant but profoundly misleading pages, but that it will not astonish those who have read the late Professor Morse Stephens's unfinished history— most unfairly bracketed by the author with Alison's as "old," since it embodies the results of much painstaking modern research—and, further, that it will seem rather uncritical to those who know M. Louis Aladdin's recent book—by far the best short history of the Revolution that has ever been written. Mrs. Webster, by drawing largely on Royalist and Moderate sources, supplies a much-needed corrective to the many books • The French Rerebdies: a Study in Democracy. By Ziesta U. Webster. London : Constable. - ins. net-1 • which glorify even the wild and wicked excesses of the Revolu- tion. Yet she goes too far in suggesting that the Revolution was unnecessary and disastrous, just as Roman Catholics lament the Reformation. The "Ancien Regime," like the Tsardom, may not have been so black as it was painted, but it was unques- tionably bankrupt and obsolete. The misfortune of France, as of Russia in 1917, was to lack able and moderate men who could introduce gradual reforms and at the same time keep the dill- orderly elements in check. She wanted a Pym and a Cromwell; an Adams and a Washington, but when the moment came the men were not to, be found. Mirabeau failed, because he was known to be dishonest. His career is a terrible warning to all politicians who may think that character is unimportant in. public life.
Mrs. Webster is inclined to make the Duke of Orleans the villain of the piece. Philippe "Egalite" had no merits and many vices; he hated Marie Antoinette and despised Louis XVI., and was reputed to desire the throne. It is possible, even probable, that Laclos, the chief Orleanist agent, had something to do with the mutinies in. the Army that preceded the fall of the Bastille, and that really accounted for the success of the Revolution. Then we have plausible answers to a series of questions. Was the scarcity of grain in the markets, if not in the country, really due to the machinations of the °demists ? Were the " brigands " who appeared in the streets of Paris in July, 1789, collected and paid by Laclos to create disorder ? Who instigated the " siege " of the Bastille, whose foolish old Governor offered no resistance ? Was the march of the women. on Versailles organized by the Orleans faction ? Some of the " women " were unquestionably men in disguise ; the respectable working women held aloof from the demonstration, not caring to mix with the very questionable persons who were led by Theroigne de Mericouit, dressed in the Duke's racing colours of scarlet and black. Did Orleans intend the murder of the Queen, if not of the King, by this disgusting mob? Mrs. Webster thinks the worst of Orleans, but we agree with Mr. Wickham Legg that, though the case against the Duke is strong, it is not proved, and that " the authors [of the demonstration] are as much concealed from us to-day as they were from the judges of the Chatelet who inquired into the affair in 1790." The author assigns a great part in the mobbing of the Tuileries to Prussian intrigue. It is generally agreed that the Girondins inspired the first attack on June 20th, 1792, out of revenge for the dismissal of Roland and other Girondin Ministers a few days before. Marat had a good deal to do with the planning of the attack of August 10th, when the unhappy Swiss, forbidden to resist as they might have done, were slaughtered like sheep. Mrs. Webster attaches serious importance to Girondin schemes for offering the throne to the Duke of Brunswick, whose army was then across the frontier. Possibly Orleans still hoped that the crown might be offered to him. On these matters it is safer to preserve an atti- tude of philosophic doubt. But when Mrs. Webster suggests that Valmy was, in the vulgar phrase, a "put-up job," she goes too far. The cannonade of Valmy was doubtless not in itself enough to explain the Prussian retreat. It is unnecessary, however, to suppose that Denton bribed the Prussians with the proceeds of a sale of the Crown jewels. The truth was that Brunswick's army was wasted by sickness and short of supplies, and that it occupied an untenable position with its line of communications open to attack by Dumouriez. The King of Prussia did not want to invade France ; he was eager to betake himself to Poland, where the Second Partition was beginning. The Prussians therefore were as anxious to retire as the French were to see them go. Valmy offered a sufficient excuse.
Mrs. Webster's chapters on the September massacres and on the Terror are terrible reading. It is true that the slaughter was not to be compared with that perpetrated in the last two years by Lenin and Trotsky, yet it was just as immoral and just as inexcusable. The old theory that the aristocrats were killed in the prisons owing to a panic at the approach of the Prussian invaders has long been abandoned. The massacres were delibe_ rately planned, with Danton's connivance if not with his active approval and were carried out by a very small body of hired assassins. The populace took no part in them, but had to be prevented by force from 1: nching the murderers. It was bad enough that the imprisoned Royalists and clergy should be killed by their political opponents. But there was no possible excuse for the ruffians who killed hundreds of the ordinary criminals, of both sexes—including 300 at the Conciergerie, over 200 thieves at the Chatelet, 35 women at the Salpetalere, and, among others, 33 little boys: who were detained at Bicetre for childish offences.. Few readers, perhaps, know that of the • 1,368 victims, all but 43 aristocrats and 245 priests were poor people who had nothing to do with' politics.. The Princesse de Lamballe was the victim of highest rank. Mrs. Webster details the evidence put forward by the enemies of the Duke of Orleans to. show that he procured her murder. The mildest-mannered reader must feel a certain satisfaction in remembering that the Duke had- in his turn to put his head through " the little window," as the guillotine was familiarly termed. When the Terror began, the Orleanist faction became as helpless as the others. A sort of madness, born of fear, came over the Terrorists. It is idle to seek for any deeper explanation. The leading spirits sent men and women, mostly of the working class, to the guillotine, because they were afraid of the public, afraid of the Assembly, afraid at last of each. other. If they had felt conscious of popular support, they would have ceased from the slaughter. The same phenomenon in. Russia to-day urises from the. same -met- cause. Lenin. and Trotsky know that they do not represent the Russian people, and therefore have to rule by terror. Mrs. Webster tells us not to blame the French people for the horrors of the Revolution. But though the people were not directly responsible, they are hardly to be exonerated. The respectable classes, the hard-working men and women, were guilty of apathy and indifference in that they allowed a very small minority of scoundrels to do what they pleased. Political apathy is perhaps a graver danger than bad leadership to a democratic State.
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