The French Revolution, vol 1 | Page 4

by hundreds and thousands over the
whole surface of the territory. They write apart, without being able to
consult each other, and without even knowing each other. No one is so
well placed for collecting and transmitting accurate information. None
of them seek literary effect, or even imagine that what they write will
ever be published. They draw up their statements at once, under the
direct impression of local events. Testimony of this character, of the
highest order, and at first hand, provides the means by which all other
testimony ought to be verified. - The footnotes at the bottom of the
pages indicate the condition, office, name, and address of those
decisive witnesses. For greater certainty I have transcribed as often as
possible their own words. In this way the reader, confronting the texts,
can interpret them for himself, and form his own opinions; he will have
the same documents as myself for arriving at his conclusions, and, if he
is pleased to do so, he may conclude otherwise. As for allusions, if he
finds any, he himself will have introduced them, and if he applies them
he is alone responsible for them. To my mind, the past has features of
its own, and the portrait here presented resembles only the France of
the past. I have drawn it without concerning myself with the
discussions of the day; I have written as if my subject were the
revolutions of Florence or Athens. This is history, and nothing more,
and, if I may fully express myself, I esteem my vocation of historian
too highly to make a cloak of it for the concealment of another.
(December 1877).
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BOOK FIRST. SPONTANEOUS ANARCHY.
CHAPTER I
. THE BEGINNINGS OF ANARCHY.
I.
Dearth the first cause. - Bad crops. The winter of 1788 and 1789. -
High price and poor quality of bread. - In the provinces. - At Paris.
During the night of July 14-15, 1789, the Duc de la Rochefoucauld-
Liancourt caused Louis XVI to be aroused to inform him of the taking

of the Bastille. "It is a revolt, then?" exclaimed the King. "Sire!" replied
the Duke; "it is a revolution!" The event was even more serious. Not
only had power slipped from the hands of the King, but also it had not
fallen into those of the Assembly. It now lay on the ground, ready to
the hands of the unchained populace, the violent and over-excited
crowd, the mobs, which picked it up like some weapon that had been
thrown away in the street. In fact, there was no longer any government;
the artificial structure of human society was giving way entirely; things
were returning to a state of nature. This was not a revolution, but a
dissolution.
Two causes excite and maintain the universal upheaval. The first one is
food shortages and dearth, which being constant, lasting for ten years,
and aggravated by the very disturbances which it excites, bids fair to
inflame the popular passions to madness, and change the whole course
of the Revolution into a series of spasmodic stumbles.
When a stream is brimful, a slight rise suffices to cause an overflow. So
was it with the extreme distress of the eighteenth century. A poor man,
who finds it difficult to live when bread is cheap, sees death staring him
in the face when it is dear. In this state of suffering the animal instinct
revolts, and the universal obedience which constitutes public peace
depends on a degree more or less of dryness or damp, heat or cold. In
1788, a year of severe drought, the crops had been poor. In addition to
this, on the eve of the harvest,[1] a terrible hail-storm burst over the
region around Paris, from Normandy to Champagne, devastating sixty
leagues of the most fertile territory, and causing damage to the amount
of one hundred millions of francs. Winter came on, the severest that
had been seen since 1709. At the close of December the Seine was
frozen over from Paris to Havre, while the thermometer stood at 180
below zero. A third of the olive-trees died in Provence, and the rest
suffered to such an extent that they were considered incapable of
bearing fruit for two years to come. The same disaster befell
Languedoc. In Vivarais, and in the Cevennes, whole forests of
chestnuts had perished, along with all the grain and grass crops on the
uplands. On the plain the Rhone remained in a state of overflow for two
months. After the spring of 1789 the famine spread everywhere, and it
increased from month to month like a rising flood. In vain did the
Government order the farmers, proprietors, and corn-dealers to keep the

markets supplied. In vain did it double the bounty on imports, resort to
all sorts