"Look at the part which money played in our first unhappy revolution!
"It is the most instructive part of that whole sad history, and yet, for a hundred different reasons, it is the part which from the beginning has been most obscured by a miscellaneous conspiracy of silence. Some day perhaps it will be possible to get a true life written of Le Pelletier de Saint-Fargeau, the millionaire Mephistopheles of Philippe egalite.
The hand that struck him to death in the very centre of the scene of his long machinations, there in the Palais Royal, with his vote, dooming the king to death, still as it were on his lips, did not strike at random.
There was no such bit of dramatic justice done in those dark days as the killing of that man in that place between the giving of that vote and the murder of the king that followed it next day!
"But the story cannot be written yet. They were much more concerned about the death of Le Pelletier next day in the Convention, you will see if you look into the true records of the session, than they were about the murder of the king, which was then going on in the Place de la Revolution. They gave him--why not?--(the most active of them and the deepest in the plot were his property, bought and paid for)--they gave him a national funeral, and made his heiress--the greatest heiress she was in France--the ward of the nation.
"It was quite another vision he had in his mind for her! I will show you some day a curious letter of hers written after she became a d.u.c.h.ess, about the Empress Josephine. It is very instructive. She grew up a lovely, untameable, unmanageable young person, made a love-match, as you know, and with whom you know, broke her husband"s heart, got a divorce and married again. To go into all this now would disturb the peace of families in no way responsible for her career or for the plots and schemes of her father. It would be like "flushing" the ghost of that monster Carrier who drowned the poor and the priests at Nantes, only to plague his descendants. His son was an excellent person who very properly changed his name. The most malicious thing I ever knew one woman say of another, was said of one of his grand-daughters at a foreign court by another Frenchwoman, jealous of her social success.
"She is very charming, no doubt; but look at her mouth, and you will see she has carious teeth--_des dents Carrier_!" But when, if ever, the truth about that dark episode of Le Pelletier and his schemes is told, it will be seen how much more gold and private ambitions had to do with the final fatal drift of things after the destiny of France fell into the swirl of Paris, than all the howlings and ravings of the philosophers and the patriots. What happened in the last century will happen again whenever and wherever human society ceases to be held together by the idea of Duty. It is not the discontent of Labour which makes me most anxious as to the future. It is the egotism of Capital, educated and encouraged into egotism by the false doctrines of what is called Liberalism in this country, and provoked into egotism by the equally egotistic discontent of Labour. What I most value in the work of M. Harmel is the courage and precision with which he has from the first insisted upon the Duty of the employer to the employed. You have seen, of course, his _Catechisme du Patron_?"
The Cardinal Archbishop had given me a copy of this book, which is really one of the most remarkable contributions ever made to the practical study of the relations between Capital and Labour. In it M.
Harmel has condensed, in the catechetical form of questions and answers, his lifelong experience in the work of ascertaining and fulfilling all the duties inc.u.mbent, from the point of view of Christian duty, upon the capitalist who employs the labour of his fellow-men in putting his capital into use and making it profitable. It would be very interesting merely as a theory of the true relations between Labour and Capital. It is more than interesting as the ripe expression of an experiment faithfully and successfully carried out by a man of resolute will and great practical ability for more than a quarter of a century in a field which, when he entered upon it, was certainly one of the most unpromising in the world.
The "Christian Corporation" was an established inst.i.tution, as I have said, at Val-des-Bois, in 1870, when the war with Germany broke out. In 1871, after the storm of the invasion had been followed by the horrors of the Commune of Paris, the principles on which the industrial family at Val-des-Bois had been organised began to attract attention all over France. A club of Catholic working-men was opened at Paris in 1871, and a movement began in earnest for extending these inst.i.tutions throughout France. It made rapid progress. In September 1874 a great disaster occurred at Val-des-Bois. The factory buildings took fire during the night of the 12th of that month, and despite the efforts of the whole population they were all in ashes when the morning broke. Before noon of the next day M. Harmel announced to his workmen that he had leased, at no small sacrifice of his immediate pecuniary interests, another factory at some distance from the Val-des-Bois, called La Neuville, and that the "Christian Corporation" of Val-des-Bois might at once be transferred thither, and carried on as before until the reconstruction of its original site. The tidings of this calamity brought substantial succour from Catholic clubs all over France, from Ma.r.s.eilles to Nantes, and from Bordeaux to Lille. More than a hundred clubs were represented in this outburst of sympathy, and the disaster led, not indirectly, to a formal approval of the work in a brief issued by His Holiness Pius IX. on October 2, 1874.
In 1878 there were more than four hundred clubs in France, with a membership of nearly a hundred thousand persons. Concurrently with the development of these clubs a movement went on for establishing an organisation of honorary members, not belonging to the working cla.s.ses, who should co-operate with the clubs in promoting the principles represented by the "Christian Corporations." In 1875 a parliamentary inquiry was made into the condition of Labour in France; and on behalf of the committee which conducted this inquiry, the deputy, M. Ducarre, who drew up the report, declared it to be the opinion of the committee that all the syndicating movements of modern times point to the necessity of re-establishing the corporate system of labour which was destroyed by the First Republic in 1791. The language used in this Report is worth citing.
"All the remedies suggested for the existing state of things," said M.
Ducarre, "may be summed up in this conclusion; there must be an end of the isolation of the individual labourer. This must be replaced by the action of collectivities, a.s.sociations, or syndicates, whose duty it shall be to watch over the interests of every calling. In a word we must go back to the system of corporations of the trades, _maitrises_, and _jurandes_, under which labour was so long carried on in France." This Report found no favour in the eyes of the Radicals because it aimed at a good understanding and practical co-operation between Labour and Capital. Nine years afterwards, on March 21, 1884, a law was carried through the French Parliament authorising the establishment of "professional syndicates." The object of the Republicans, then as now controlling a majority of the Chamber, in pa.s.sing this law, was to strengthen the trades unions as against the employers of France. The law, it will be observed, was pa.s.sed at the time when a syndicate of miners in the North, which had no legal right to exist before the pa.s.sage of the law, was actively promoting, under its leader, M. Basly, the great strike at Anzin of which I have spoken in a preceding chapter.
But while the law of March 1884 legalised "syndicates" of this aggressive, and in the nature of things tyrannical, type, it also necessarily legalised precisely such Christian corporations as those contemplated in the Report of 1875, and long before organised on the lines laid down by M. Harmel. A great and visible responsibility was thus thrown upon the employers of France and upon what are called the upper cla.s.ses generally in that country. It was clear that, if they would energetically and systematically throw themselves into the work of bringing about a reconstruction of social order on the principles of co-operation and sympathy as opposed to the principle of antagonism between Capital and Labour, the law of 1884, intended to widen, might be effectually used to close the threatening breach between the employers and the employed. There seems to be little doubt that down to that time the promoters of the Christian Corporation movement in France had made greater headway with the working cla.s.ses than with the employers. A Report presented in 1885 by the general committee of the Catholic clubs of France to the French bishops states this very plainly. This report was signed by the Marquis De La-Tour-du-Pin-Chambly, who from the beginning of M. Harmel"s experiment at Val-des-Bois had been one of his most earnest and active coadjutors, by the Comte de la Bouillerie, Treasurer of the General Society, by the Comte de Mun, and by the Comte Albert de Mun, the moving spirit now of the whole work, who resigned his commission in the army to devote himself to it, and who went up from the Morbihan to Paris as a deputy in 1885, elected by 60,341 votes, to demand not only the restoration of the monarchy but a property restriction upon the suffrage. In 1889, under the _scrutin d"arrondiss.e.m.e.nt_ readopted by the terrified Republicans to defeat "Boulangism," Count Albert de Mun was re-elected without opposition for the 2nd division of Pontivy. In no part of France is the pa.s.sion of equality stronger than in the Morbihan; and the contempt of the people there for "universal suffrage" is extremely instructive.
"Of the Christian Corporations," says this Report of 1885, "as of the working-men"s clubs, it is proper to say that never in any place or at any time has any obstacle been offered to them by the working cla.s.ses.
On the contrary, there is plainly going on among the working cla.s.ses, under the influence of the deplorable crises which affect the industrial world, an instinctive and ever-increasing movement towards this a.s.sociation of common and professional interests, the notion of which is suggested by the natural sentiment of right and wrong, as well as by some confused memory, obscured by revolutionary doctrines, of the traditions of Labour in France, which predisposes the working-man to seek safety in a return to the old system of the Corporations. A similar feeling exists among the employers, who desire, though they too often despair of seeing, a closer union of interests between themselves and their working-men. Wherever the movement languishes, one of the chief causes will be found to be the apathy, the discouragement, and the frivolity of the upper cla.s.ses."
In the case of great factories like that of the Val-des-Bois, the Christian Corporations naturally are sufficient unto themselves. There the employer and the employed between them const.i.tute a small world, which can take care of itself and carry out the numerous subsidiary features of the system, such as the promotion of domestic economy, the establishment of savings-funds, the organisation of festivals and of courses of instruction, without relying much, or at all, upon any co-operation from without. It is in the development of the system for the benefit of working-men who are isolated in their work, or employed in small establishments, that the co-operation of the upper cla.s.ses is needed; and while I incline to think that there is still much ground for the strong language on this point employed in the Report of 1885, there appears to be no doubt that a great improvement has taken place during the last three or four years. In 1884 the efforts of the Cardinal Archbishop of Reims, the Bishop of Angers, and of other energetic prelates, secured the active partic.i.p.ation of the Holy See in the promotion of this work. In February of that year a pilgrimage to Rome of members of the Catholic Clubs of France was organised. The pilgrims were received in special audience by Leo XIII., and he gave his Papal approbation and benediction to the work in a very remarkable address which produced a deep and widespread impression throughout Catholic France. Similar pilgrimages were made in 1887 and in 1889.
One very important effect of this has been to bring about a better understanding between the parochial clergy of France in general and these steadily increasing lay organisations. It is in the nature of things that the clergy should be slow in giving their unreserved aid to any movement, no matter how admirable in itself, which involves a good deal of extra-clerical activity in matters religious. This was ill.u.s.trated in the att.i.tude of the English Protestant clergy towards Wesley and Whitfield, and there are some curious coincidences--of course absolutely undesigned--between some of the methods of the great and powerful Protestant sect of the Wesleyans and those of M. Harmel"s Catholic Clubs.
The Methodist "cla.s.s-leader," for example, reappears in a modified form in the _zelateurs_ and _zelatrices_ of the Harmel Clubs and fraternities. These are members, working-men and working-women, who are willing to devote themselves to promoting religious sentiments and practices among their comrades, and who hold regular meetings to consider and work out the best and most practical way of doing this.
It is not surprising that in many cases the cures should have looked with a little uneasiness upon the development of such a system until it had been fully considered and formally approved by the highest authority in the Church. Of its efficacy from the point of view of M. Harmel there can be no doubt.
Something not wholly unlike the "exclusive dealing" which contributes so much to the strength of Methodism in America has also been established for the benefit of the members of M. Harmel"s Christian Corporation.
This is "exclusive dealing "of an honest and honourable sort, and must not be confounded with the rascally "exclusive dealing" known in Ireland as "boycotting." It combines a system of "privileged purveyors" with an acc.u.mulative savings fund.
The firm of Harmel Brothers, acting for the Corporation, makes contracts with tradesmen at Val-des-Bois--grocers, butchers, bakers, and the like--by which the tradesmen bind themselves to sell certain wares to members of the Christian Corporations, and to them only, at a fixed discount below the lowest current rate of prices--the wares to be of the best quality, under a penalty--and the lowest current rate to be fixed by an average taken from the current rates as given to Harmel Brothers by four dealers in such wares in the city of Reims, of whom two are to be named by them and two by the "privileged purveyor." Each member of the Corporation receives certificates, of one franc, ten sous, or ten centimes in value, from the office of Harmel Brothers, and these are taken by the "privileged purveyor" in payment at their face value.
For him they are each week cashed in money at the office of Harmel Brothers. If the members prefer to pay the "privileged purveyor" in cash, or in orders upon their wages, the sums so paid are inscribed on the account of the Corporation. When the weekly or fortnightly accounts are made up, a certain percentage of the differences between the current market-price of the purchases made and the actual price so paid by the purchasers goes to what is called the "Corporation profit," the residue of the difference being paid over to the member with his or her wages.
The "Corporation profit" is a savings fund. Each member has a book showing--with his or her number, and with the full name of the head of the family to which he or she may belong--the amount of this fund standing each quarter to his or her credit, with interest at 5 per cent.
This can only be drawn out by the member, on leaving the employment of the firm, in case of illness or incapacity, or at the age of fifty years.
An actuary"s estimate shows that the share of the Corporation profit accruing to each member in twenty-five years on an annual estimated average Corporation profit of 70 francs a member, with five per cent.
interest, would be 3,300 francs. And this, be it observed, will have cost the member nothing, being simply a result of the union of employer and employed in a corporate dealing with the purveyors. In 1879 the annual budget of a hundred families at Val-des-Bois, earning among them 249,242 francs, showed an actual "Corporation profit" of 91,319.05 francs, which ought to have been much larger had Val-des-Bois then possessed more than one butcher, baker, grocer, and tailor. These hundred families comprised 496 members, 279 of them employed in the factory and 217 occupied at home.
During the last ten years, and especially since the pa.s.sage of the law of March 1884, the scope of these Christian Corporations, not only at Val-des-Bois and at Reims, but all over France, has been considerably extended. Many of them have now the character of true guilds, as at Poitiers, for example, where there is a Corporation of the Builders under the invocation of St-Radegonda, another--Our Lady of the Keys--founded upon a syndicate of clothiers, and a third, of St.-Honore, founded upon a syndicate of provision-dealers. At Lille I found a typical Corporation, that of the spinners and weavers, known as the Christian Corporation of St.-Nicholas. This was founded in May 1885.
This Corporation admits workmen and workwomen, employees and manufacturers, belonging, either by residence or by connexion with the industry named, to the commune of Lille or to one of the adjoining communes. It had last year a membership of 887 persons, of whom 26 were master manufacturers and 37 employees, the rest being workmen and workwomen. Five large firms were represented in it. The Syndical Council was made up of a syndic employer, a syndic employee, and a syndic workman from each of these firms, and of a syndic workman, M.
Courtecuisse, representing the members who were employed in other establishments. The directing bureau consisted of seven members, including the chaplain. It was presided over by one of the great manufacturers of Lille, M. Feron-Vrau, and the two vice-presidents were M. Edouard Bontry, of the house of Bontry-Droullers, and M. Courtecuisse already named.
This Corporation, under the law of 1884, can own the buildings necessary for its meetings, its libraries, and its lecture-courses; it can establish among its members special savings funds, mutual a.s.sistance and pension funds; found and conduct offices for information bearing on the business of its members, and it may be consulted, under Article 6 of the Law of 1884, on "all difficulties and misunderstandings and questions arising out of its specialty." This provision--specially intended by the authors of the law to arm the "strikers" of France against French employers--may thus, it will be seen, be turned quite as effectually to purposes of concord and harmony as to purposes of discontent and strife.
The Corporation of St.-Nicholas may receive gifts and legacies in aid of its Corporation funds and purposes, and generally take an active part, like all these Corporations, as was pointed out by Leo XIII. in his "Encyclical of April 20, 1884," in protecting, under the "guidance of the Faith, both the interests and the morals of the people."
It already has within its sphere of action a Confraternity of Our Lady of the Factory, comprising 548 members, a Mutual Aid Society with 218 members, an a.s.sistance Fund with 409 members; and a Domestic Economy Fund, the principle of which is that certain dealers make a discount on their wares to members of the Corporation which is certified to by them in counters of different values. These counters are receivable by the Corporation in payment of the a.s.sessments and subscriptions of the members.
The steady development of these inst.i.tutions during the last four or five years has led to the organisation by them of a complete general system of administration, provincial and national. The Corporations are grouped not by departments but by provinces.
Provincial a.s.semblies are held, by which delegates are named to attend an annual general a.s.sembly at Paris. At the general a.s.sembly of 1889, held on June 24, 350 delegates were present, and the session of the a.s.sembly was opened by the delegation from Dauphiny, the chair being taken by one of its members, M. Roche, in virtue, as he explained to the crowded audience in the large hall of the Horticultural Society in the Rue de Grenelle, of his descent "from a representative of the Estates of Dauphiny in 1789." The work of the a.s.sembly was divided between four committees, one on moral and religious interests, one on public interests, one on commercial and industrial interests, and one on agricultural and rural interests.
From this it will be seen that the principles of the movement are being systematically applied to the whole field of active life in France. The general maxim of the organisation is the sound, sensible, and military maxim, of St.-Vincent de Paul, "let us keep our rules, and our rules will keep us," and I think there can be no doubt that the French freemasons, and the fanatics of unbelief generally who have launched the government of the Third Republic upon its present course, will find this new Christian organisation of Capital and Labour a troublesome factor in the political field.
We have seen what came in Germany of the _Cultur-Kampf_, and there are curious a.n.a.logies between the work and the spirit of the Catholic Clubs in France to-day, and the ideas of Monseigneur von Ketteler, which gave vigour and vitality to the great "party of the Centre," in the contest with the Chancellor. Where the giant of Berlin had the wisdom to give way, the pigmies of Paris are likely to persist until they are crushed.
For they have burned their ships, as the Chancellor never burned his, and they are dogmatists, while he is a statesman. He sought to control and use the Catholic Church in Germany. Their object is, as one of the ablest Republicans in France, Jules Simon, long ago told them, to supplant a State Church of belief by a State church of unbelief. In America and in England when men talk of "religious freedom," they mean the freedom of a man to profess and practise his own religion. What the Third French Republic means by "religious freedom" is freedom from religion. Their legislation has tended, ever since 1877, not indirectly nor by implication, but directly and avowedly, to establish in France a state of things in which, not Catholics only, but all men who profess any form of religion, shall be treated as Protestants were in France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, or as Catholics were in Ireland under William III. This is the meaning of M. Gambetta"s war-cry "Clericalism is the enemy." The phrase was his, but the policy was announced by his party long before he invented the phrase in 1877. It was distinctly formulated in 1874 by a Republican leader much better equipped for dealing with such questions than M. Gambetta, who was the Boanerges not the Paul of the French gospel of unbelief.
On September 4, 1874, M. Challemel-Lacour, in a remarkable speech, laid it down as a fundamental principle of the Republican policy that the State should so control all the higher branches of education as to secure what he called "the moral unity of France." It was on this principle that Napoleon in 1808 had re-organised the University of France. M. Challemel-Lacour unhesitatingly called upon the Republicans to adopt it. If Catholics or Protestants or Israelites were allowed to found universities of their own and confer degrees and diplomas, what would become of the "moral unity of France"? The duty of the Republicans was to protect and develop this "moral unity." So long as one Frenchman could be found in France who believed anything not believed by every other Frenchman, so long this "moral unity" would be imperfect. The French Liberals of 1830 obviously made a great mistake when they put "freedom of education" as a right of Frenchmen in the charter. M.
Guizot, the great Protestant Minister of Louis Philippe, obviously made a great mistake when he established the principles of free primary education in 1833. The Republicans of 1848 obviously made a great mistake when they proclaimed "freedom of education" as a Republican principle. The Jacobins of 1792 were the true "children of light," and they alone understood how really to achieve the "moral unity of France,"
M. Challemel-Lacour did not say this in so many words; but he did say in so many words that he objected to see any bill pa.s.sed which should establish "freedom of education," and permit clerical persons to found universities, because, "instead of establishing the moral unity of France, this newfangled liberty would only aggravate the division of Frenchmen into two sets of minds moving upon different lines to different conclusions. The young men educated in these universities," he said, "will become zealous apostles of Catholicism. The more ardour they put into their proselytism the more antagonism they will excite!" At this pa.s.sage in M. Challemel-Lacour"s extraordinary speech, according to the official report, a member of the Right broke in with the very natural exclamation, "And why not? Is not that liberty? liberty for all?" To which M. Challemel-Lacour discreetly made no reply, but went on to say, "Instead of establishing our moral unity, you will heap up combustibles in the country until shocks are produced and perhaps cataclysms!"
This is the doctrine of the worthy Lord Mayor in "Barnaby Rudge" who querulously exclaims to Mr. Harwood when that gentleman came to him asking for protection against the Gordon rioters, "What are you a Catholic for? If you were not a Catholic the rioters would let you alone. I do believe people turn Catholics a-purpose to vex and worrit me!" "Moral unity" would have saved the good Lord Mayor a great deal of trouble. "Moral unity" would have kept things quiet and comfortable throughout the Roman Empire under Diocletian, and throughout the Low Countries under Phillip II. and Alva, and throughout England under Henry VIII. The Jacobins of 1792 did their best to organise "moral unity" in France with the help of the guillotine, and of the Committee of Public Safety and of the hired a.s.sa.s.sins who butchered prisoners in cold blood.
Here, at Reims, in September 1792, while Marat "the Friend of the People" and Danton the "Minister of Justice" were employing Maillard the "hero of the Bastile" and his salaried cut-throats to promote public economy and private liberty by emptying the prisons of Paris, certain agents of Marat made a notable effort in behalf of the "moral unity of France." To this effort the melodramatic historians of the French Revolution have done scant justice. Mr. Carlyle, for example, alludes to it only in a casual half-disdainful way, which would be almost comical were the theme less ghastly. "At Reims," he observes, "about eight persons were killed--and two were afterwards hanged for doing it."
The contest of this curious pa.s.sage plainly shows that he imagined these "eight persons" (more or less) to have been "killed" by the people of Reims, roused into a patriotic frenzy by the circular which Marat, Panis and Sergent sent out to the provinces calling upon all Frenchmen to imitate the "people of Paris," and ma.s.sacre all the enemies of the Revolution at home before marching against the foreign invaders. That the "people" of Reims thus aroused should only have killed "about eight persons" really seemed to him, one would say, hardly worthy of a truly "t.i.tanic" and "transcendental" epoch. There is something essentially bucolic in the impression which mobs and mult.i.tudes always seem to make upon Mr. Carlyle"s imagination. Of what really happened at Reims in September 1792 he plainly had no accurate notion. He obviously cites from some second-hand contemporary accounts of the transactions there this statement, that "about eight persons were killed," because, as it happens, we have a full precise and official Report of the killing of all these persons, with their names and details of the ma.s.sacre, drawn up on September 8, 1792, by the munic.i.p.al authorities of Reims and signed by all the members of the Council General. Had Mr. Carlyle seen this Report, it would have shown him that Marat, Panis and Sergent knew what they were about when they sent out their famous or infamous circular, just as Marat and Danton knew what they were about when they organised the ma.s.sacres of September in the prisons of Paris. The "people" of Reims had no more to do with the killing of "about eight persons" in the streets and squares of this historic city in September 1792 than the "people" of Paris had to do with the atrocious butcheries at the Abbeys and Bicetre and La Force and the Conciergerie. Mr. Carlyle ought to have learned even from the "Histoire Parlementaire" of Buchez and Roux, which he seems to have freely consulted, that "the days of September were an administrative business."
What actually happened at Reims in September 1792 is worth telling. It does not prove, as Mr. Carlyle almost dolefully takes it to prove, that in the provinces the "Sansculottes only bellowed and howled but did not bite." It does prove that when they bit, they bit to order, and under impulses no more "t.i.tanic" or "transcendental" than those which in our own time lead active politicians to invent lies about the character of their opponents, and to manufacture emotional issues on the eve of a sharp political contest.
The subsidised Parisian insurrection of August 10, 1792, prostrated the monarchy, but it did not found the Republic. It was the death knell both of Petion and of the Girondists, who had been most active in secretly or openly promoting it. The Const.i.tution having been torn into shreds, power became a prize to be fought for by all the demagogues and all the factions in Paris. The Legislative a.s.sembly fell into the trough of the sea. The sections of Paris supported Marat in calmly laying hands on the printing-presses and material of the royal printing-office, and converting his abominable newspaper into a "Journal of the Republic." He was voted a special "tribune of honour" in the hall of the Council. On August 19 he openly called upon the "people" to "march in arms to the prison of the Abbaye, take out the prisoners there, especially the officers of the Swiss Guard and their accomplices, and put them to the sword." This was an electoral proceeding. The members of the National Convention were then about to be chosen. Under a law pa.s.sed by the expiring legislature, electors of the members were first to be chosen by the voters on August 26, and the electors thus chosen were to meet on September 2, and choose the members of the Convention. It was in view of this second and decisive election day that Marat and Danton settled the date at which the great patriotic work of "emptying the prisons" should begin, and it was in view of this day also that the circular already mentioned of Marat, Panis and Sergent was sent forth to all places at which a lively administration of murder and pillage would be most likely to conduce to the choice by the electors of deputies agreeable to the authors of the circular.
The electors for the Department of the Marne chosen on August 26 were to meet in Reims on September 2, and choose the Deputies for that department to sit in the Convention.
In Reims Marat had a faithful personal ally in the person of the Procureur-Syndic, the most important national functionary in the city.
This man, Couplet, called Beaucourt, was a disreputable and apostate ex-monk who had married an ex-nun. His position, of course, gave him a great influence over the least respectable part of the population, and with Marat and Danton at his back in Paris he cared nothing for the mayor and the munic.i.p.al authorities. From August 19 to August 31 he kept issuing incendiary placards and making inflammatory speeches in Reims.
On August 31 he received an intimation from Paris that a column of so-called "Volunteers" was in motion for Reims, and that he must have things ready for them. To this end he caused the arrest of the postmaster, M. Guerin, and of a poor young letter-carrier named Carton, on a charge of sequestrating and burning "compromising letters" which ought to have been turned over to him and the "justice of the Republic."
On the morning of the election day there marched into Reims the expected "Volunteers," who carried banners proclaiming them to be "Men of the 10th of August." Couplet received them and feasted them. They broke up into squads and went roaring about Reims denouncing "the aristocrats"
and demanding "justice upon all public enemies." They finally broke open the prison, and dragging out the unfortunate postmaster, cut him to pieces in front of the Hotel de Ville. Some courageous citizens contrived to smuggle out of their reach the young letter-carrier, and took him for safety into the hall of the Munic.i.p.al Council.
There the murderers followed him, excited by a speech from the Procureur-Syndic, who knowing that no trial had been had, did not scruple to say that "nothing could excuse the unfaithful letter-carrier."
The town officers tried to get Carton out by a back door, but Marat"s murderers were too quick for them, and the poor youth was torn to pieces. While this was doing the Procureur-Syndic provided another victim. He arrested on some pretext a retired officer of the army, M. de Montrosier, ex-commandant of Lille, then in the house of his father-in-law, M. Andrieux, one of the first magistrates of Reims. M. de Montrosier being taken to prison, the Maratist mob broke again into the prison, dragged him out, killed him, and carried his head all over Reims on a pike. Meanwhile a detachment went out to a neighbouring village in quest of two of the canons of Reims, who had taken refuge there, brought them back to the city, and shot them dead in the street. Night now coming on, the apostles of the "moral unity of France," many of them by this time being exceedingly drunk, kindled a huge bonfire in front of the Hotel de Ville, flung into it the mutilated corpses of their victims, and towards midnight laying hands upon two priests, MM. Romain and Alexandre, threw them into the flames! Another band during the evening broke into the venerable church of St.-Remi, and tearing down the shields and banners which for fourteen centuries had hung above the tomb of the great Archbishop who made France a Christian kingdom, brought these to the bonfire and consumed them.
During this day of horrors, the electors of the department had been in session. As the news reached them of what was going on in the streets, one thought came into the minds of all the decent men among them, to get through as fast as possible and quit the city. At the first ballot 442 electors were present. At the seventh only 203 remained. Of these 135, being the compact "Republican" minority, gave their votes on that ballot to Drouet, the postmaster"s son of Ste-Menehould, Mr. Carlyle"s "bold old dragoon," who stopped the carriage of Louis XVI. at Varennes. He was one of the special adherents of Marat, and a most vicious and venal creature, as his own memoirs, giving among other matters an account of his grotesque attempt to fly down out of his Austrian prison with a pair of paper wings, abundantly attest. He escaped the guillotine, and naturally enough turned up under the empire as an obsequious sub-prefect at Ste-Menehould. The whole of the elections, which in normal circ.u.mstances would have occupied at least three days, were hurried through before midnight of the first day.
Couplet, called Beaucourt, was satisfied. But so were not the "men of the 10th of August," They got their pay of course, but they wanted more blood. At 9 A.M. the next morning they seized the venerable cure of St.-Jean, the Abbe Paquot, and dragged him before Couplet, insisting that he should take the const.i.tutional oath. Couplet tried to explain that the time for taking it had expired on August 26. But the courageous Abbe, looking his a.s.sa.s.sins in the face, said to them: "I will not take it, it is against my conscience. If I had two souls I would gladly give one of them for you. I have but one, and it belongs to my G.o.d." He had hardly uttered the words when he was struck down and cut to pieces.
Almost at the same moment another priest more than eighty years of age, the curate of Rilly, refusing to take the oath, was hanged upon the bar of a street lantern before the eyes of the Mayor of Reims, who tried in vain to disperse or control these _sans-culottes_, who, according to Mr.
Carlyle, "howled and bellowed, but did not bite."
By this time the news came of the surrender of Verdun to the Prussians, and the tocsin began to sound from the great bells of the cathedral. The citizens of Reims suddenly took courage from the sense of the national peril, not to fall upon and slay helpless and unarmed prisoners, but to make head against the murderers and scoundrels who were domineering over their city. The local National Guards began to appear, and were shortly reinforced by a column of Volunteers from the country armed to meet the invaders. The Mayor took command of them and marched to the Hotel de Ville. There they found that one Chateau, an agent of Couplet, had been secretly denounced by his employer as a spy and promptly hanged by the Parisians on the same lantern-bar from which the night before they had hanged the aged cure of Rilly. His dead body had been flung into the still blazing bonfire kept up all night with woodwork from the pillaged churches of Reims. The champions of "moral unity" had also laid hands on the wife of this wretched man, and were on the point of throwing her alive into the flames when the Mayor and the troops appeared. The order to "charge bayonets" was given and the whole brood of scoundrels thereupon broke and fled in all directions.
All these details, with others too loathsome to be here reproduced, are, as I have said, taken from an official _proces verbal_ drawn up at Reims on September 8, 1792, and signed by every member of the Council-General.
This record was produced when in 1795, after the fall of Robespierre had opened the way for the great reaction which finally made Napoleon master of France, the tribunals of the Department of the Marne took steps to bring to justice such of the a.s.sa.s.sins of 1792 as they could lay hands upon. On the 26 Thermidor, An III., two wretches, one a newspaper-vendor and the other a slopshop-keeper, were condemned to death and executed for the murder of the Abbe Paquot and of the cure of Rilly. Two others, a glazier and a shoemaker, were condemned to six years in the chain-gang.