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    1156 THE. LEADER. [No. 297, Saturday,

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    Among The Minor Dialogues Of Pi-Ato None...

    The History of the French Revolution ( Histoire , $ c . ) By Louis Blanc Vol . VII . ;* . Jrans : . Langiois and Co . M . Lours Blanc ' s impartiality is almost austere . In this volume he touches the most difficult parts of bis great subject , the revolutionary schism , the programme of the coalesced kings—the events of August and September , the defence of France by its improvised army , and the trial of the Kin ? . No passages of history have been more frequently treated , or from more opposite points of view . Partisans have done their best , and compilers their worst , to darken and confuse them . Nothing was more natural . There were great interests , ideas , passions , to inflame the partisan ; astonishing incidents to tempt the compiler . There were materials for all classes of -writers—for the speculatist and the epigrammatist—for the dramatist and ihe dissertator—for narratives that glitter as they flow , like those of M . de Lainartine , and for the picturesque paradoxes of M . Michelet . M . Louis

    Blanc brings a new method , and some new matter to the task . His plan _ is to narrate < upon a basis of criticism , —to construct , as it were , a channel , with solid banks of authority and reference , of comparison and proof , and to pour through this a coloured and scenic relation , bright with the dramatic phenomena of the revolution , alive with its spirit , warm with its tumultuous emotions . M . Louis Blanc ' s pen and his spirit have been tempered by exile . He is less passionate , he uses fewer apostrophes , he displays his individuality more seldom than formerly . If he has still some sins of manner , they consist in the occurrence of abrupt interjectional phrases and tragic attitudes of style . It was not easy , however , to compose a vivid narrative , and to observe the severity of justice—least of all was it easy to an historian who is at the same time a politician . No French politician can be personally indifferent

    to the decisions of his contemporaries , on the questions here investigated . As the events and characters of the great revolution are appreciated in our own times , so do opinions vary on the policy then initiated in France , but which it is left to the second half of the nineteenth century to develope . It is , therefore , M . Louis Blanc ' s highest claim to praise that he separates himself from the revolution , and judges it without considering the interests on either side . Had he written of Greece he could not have written more freely . He treats Robespierre as justly as he could have treated Cleon , and is no more exasperated against Peltier than the mildest Classic might be against Aristophanes . The Mountain and the Gironde , the Terrorists , and they who provoked the terror—the Party of the Monarchy , and of the Revolution , are considered from an independent point of view .

    This being an historian's rarest quality , deserves to be praised with particular emphasis . M . Louis Blanc ' s work has , however , other characteristics almost equally remarkable . It is based , to a considerable extent , upon new materials , and corrects , in very essential points , M . Lamartine's generalisations and M . Michelet's paradoxical summaries . A large presentation and lucid analysis of documentary evidence , an exact quotation of authorities , a judicial comparison of testimony , and an inquiry into the character of the witnesses cited , give to the book a completeness as well as an authenticity possessed by no previous history of the French Revolution . M . Louis Blanc is indebted to his exile for the discovery , in the British Museum , of two valuable collections , with a classified catalogue of

    publications and manuscripts relating to the French Revolution . The materials exist in the most varied forms—pamphlets , orations , reports of trials , satires , songs , statistics , proclamations , and placards . These refer to every conceivable topic—to the Parliaments , to the States-general , to public works , to education , to the clubs , to the civic festivals , to the prisons , and to the different personages of the political drama . Sixty-four volumes of " Facetiae " remain as memorials of that convulsive vivacity which , during the deepest agony of the crisis , lit up , with lurid rays , the society of Paris . Even more curious is the collection of journals , under all possible appellations—Friends , Defenders , Scourges , Voices , Trumpets , exhibiting the fierceness , the ambition , the eccentricity of the Revolution .

    The events of the tenth of August , which resulted in the suspension of the King's authority , and the installation of Danton , as minister , have been characterised by successive and conflicting writers . Into the popular versions of the story innumerable errors have crept , and these , for the most part , are traceable to Peltier's pamphlet issued in London in 1792 , as " The late Preture of Paris ; or , a Faithful Narrative of the Revolution of the Tenth of August . " M . Louis Blanc says : " To refute Pether—whose recital was the moat ; complete that appeared—ia to refute those who , coming : after him , have been little more than his copyists . " From this he proceeds to dispose of Peltier ' s servile statements , proving that the Swiss guard was ordered by the King ' s officers to attack the people in the rear , and to strike terror hy slaughter , and that the policy of the Court was to hold out against the nation , at all hazards , until ts foreign friends arrived and presented to Paris the alternative of submission or destruction . The programme of the Coalition , announced in the manifesto of Coblentz , is epitomised by M . Louis Blanc . It stated :

    "That the Allies would morob , to put an end to anarchy in Franoe , to save tho throne , to defend tho altar , and to restore to the King his liberty and power . 1 ' Th ** un * U th j > ar « val of the combined armies , the national guard and tho authorities should be held responsible for all disorders . " That they should be invited to return to their ancient fidelity . " That those oitizens who dared to defend themselves should bo punished on the spot , as rebels , and then- houses demolished or burned " That If the city of Paris did not set the King completely at liberty and yield him the reBpeot which was hia due , the coalesced princes would hold responsible , personally , and at the peril of their Hvea—to be judged by martial law , without , hope of pardon—all the members of the National Assembly , of tho Department , of the District , of the Municipality , of the National Guard . « ' That if the palace wore broken into or outraged , tho coalesced princes would enforce a signal revenge , by giving up Paris to a military massacre , and to total subversion . "

    It was thw , the most nefarious project ever conceived , that was the proximate cause of the Reign of Terror . Nothing could exceed the horror and astonishment of the people of Paris , when they learned that the King and Queen trusted for deliverance to the consummation of this anti-national plot . No man knew at what hour St . Bartholomew roialit be re-enacted . Then

    the revolutionists committed their folly and their crime , and anticipated the Royalist Terror by the Republican . M . Louis Blanc deals judicially—even harshly—with the Terrorists of September . But he does not forget that the system of massacre began under the Court—that with the Court it was an initiation of ferocity , with the people a policy of revenge : . " On the 27 th of August Paris was in mourning . That day was tlie festival of the dead . Sargent -was its orator , Chenier its poet , and Gonfrec once more its musician . Nothing more sombre or more terrible was ever behelc 1 . The sarcophagus of the victims of the tenth of August drawn through the streets by a train of oxen , in the ancient style—the long procession of orpliaus and widows

    in white robes with black girdles—the horseman who waved solemnly to and fro upon a flag , a legend of massacres , the names of citizens immolated at Nancy , at Nismes , afc Montauban , at Avignon , at Chapelle , and on the Champs de Mars simultaneously invoked and incited to this funeral of martyrs , —the sword borne by the image of the law—the perfumes that rose about the biers—the threatening snouts of the workmen , and the lamentations of the women ; all this excited the populace to frenzy . Eren the place chosen for this manifestation contributed to its terrors . Here , in the garden of the Tuileries , the branches had been broken by bullets , the flower beds Lad been obliterated by trampling feet , tha flowers had been swept from their stems . "

    The combined armies advanced . Treason cleared their path . Longwy surrendered , and every leader of the Coalition—the Duke of Brunswick excepted—relied upon a victorious march to Paris . Paris knew what to expect from those champions of society . " Already , compass in hand , the Royalists measured the distance from "Verdun to the capital ; already- their wives prepared white handkerchiefs—( how they remind us of 1815 !)—to welcome the profanation of Paris . That the conspirators of the Throne and the altar were registered , organised , divided into sections , there could be no doubt ; for the trial of Collor d'Angremont liad thrown a sinister light upon these machinations . And against suspected perfidy , how shall I describe it ?—demonstrated perfidy—what protection was there ? The public tribunate connived with the accused ; the High . Court would not condemn . "

    M .-Louis Blanc cites examples of tergiversation on the part of the Royalist courts of justice . He then depicts the state of the capital , with a vast army hourly expected to pour into its streets , and to fill them , with ravage and slaughter . The enemy they a-waited , however , was not one that came , attacking the nation , the government , the monarchy , and all Frenchmen . His forces had been invited by the King ; and the Parisians saw , within their own city , a class of men exulting over the prospect of the slaughter . If this does not justify , does it not explain , the madness of the ensuing days ? The gates were closed , the citizens were under arms , the patriots were marching to the frontier :

    " An immense black flag was displayed above the Hotel de "Ville ; the echoes of the btlla , the roll of drums , the qiiickening succession of artillery reports , the clamours of the women , the volunteers departing to die , plunged Paris into a melancholy delirium . " Well " they cried , as they went , trembling with fury , " Since we must perish , since liberty has no mercy to expect , since power overwhelms justice , since the end of the world is come , let not one enemy remain behind us to trample on our families , and to triumph in this dread disaster !" Keeping close to his authorities , M . Louis Blanc now enters on the details of the September massacres . His critics have already said that he humanises the narration . Boyalist writers had long rendered their versions incredible by describing impossible acts ; but the vulgar editions of the history have run a lengthened course , and much criticism is yet needed to efface them .

    " Such , an agitation could not prevail in Paris without reaching the prisons . Early in the morning the jailer of the Abbaye had removed his wife and children , —a fact which proves that he participated in the general alarm , . which was perfectly natural—but by no means , as the Royalist historians pretend , that the massacre had its accredited director and its concerted plan . In the same fact consist the explanations of another mis-represented circumstance . It is affirmed , on one side , that the prisoner's dinner-hour bad been delayed ; and , on the other , that their knives were taken from them . But to prove , from this circumstance , the systematic barbarity with which , so many writers have completed the hideous romance , it must be shown that the same thing happened in the other prisons . Now , nothing of tho kind took place . But that which demonstrates most

    emphatically that the turnkeys only learned what was passing , at intervals , as fragments of public rumour reached them , ia the fact that at La Force , tho juiler , Join ville , did not know until two o ' clock of the great dangers in which the city was enveloped , while at tho Chfttelet ( and this is more remarkable still ) , the jailer was only informed of the massacres at four o ' clock , —that is to say , when they had commenced . No , it did not exist—that cold , systematic , in feriml premeditation , which would multiply a hundred-fold tho horrors of events too horrible already ! N " o , the positive absence of all deliberation , tho svidrlonuess and fury of tho common impulse , the alternations of rage and pity , the chaos of contradictory passions—all this excludes the idea of a guiding Bchomo ; all ia suggestive of the work of chance and frenzy . "

    But M . Louis Blanc , though he extenuates , does not defend the September executions . He knows that it has been the misfortune of liberty to be allied , sometimes , with the memory of violent crimes . Since , in the history of the world , despotisms have been general , and free states exceptional , the majority of fashionable writers , in all ages , have dwelt with exaggerating rhetoric on * such events as the French Revolution . Contrasted with the massacres and proscriptions which have emanated from military governments , they become , of course , significant ; but M . Louis Blanc does not attempt to conceal that the Parisians became maniacs , and avenged a plan of wholesale assassination , which the royalist warty had not yet

    committed , though it avowed the design . He relieves the narrative of the prison executions of that melodramatic atrocity , which forms the subject of so many little books , and ao many large pictures . Thus , even the aspects of the courts of justice have been grossly caricatured . The president is represented sitting , in a grey coat , before a desk covered with papers , pipes , and bottles ; around him stand ten men , some in aprons , with bare arms , others lolling drowsily on benches . At the door are two republicans , in blood-coloured shirts—near them a hoary jailer with his hand upon the bolt . Such is the royalist—anonymous—picture . M . Louis Blanc , upon authenticated evidence affirms a totally different statement , and shews that the trials were conducted soberly , and that numbers of the accused were acquitted amid acclamations

    1156 The. Leader. [No. 297, Saturday,

    1156 THE . LEADER . [ No . 297 , Saturday ,

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Dec. 1, 1855, page 16, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_01121855/page/16/