182 LA GRÈVE AND FAMINE. cries of frenzy, and made the men ashamed of their tardiness; the summary judgments of La Grève were ever too long for them. They hung at once.* England has had in this century her poetry of hunger.† Who will give its history to France? A terrible history in the last century, neglected by the historians, who have reserved their pity for the artisans of famine. I have attempted to descend into the regions of that hell, guided nearer and nearer by deep groans of agony. I have shown the land more and more sterile in proportion as the exchequer seized and destroyed the cattle, and that the earth devoid of manure is condemned to a perpetual fast. I have shown how, as the nobles, the exempt from taxes, multiplied, the impost weighed ever more heavily on an ever declining land. I have not sufficiently shown how food became, from its very scarcity, the object of an eminently productive traffic. The profits were so • obvious, that the king wished also to take a part. The world saw with astonishment a king trafficking with the lives of his subjects, a king speculating on scarcity and death,-a king the assassin of his people. Famine is no longer only the result of the seasons,- -a natural phenomenon; it is neither rain nor hail. It is a deed of the civil order: people starve by order of the king. The king here is the system. The people were starving under Louis XV., and they starve under Louis XVI. Famine was then a science, a complicated art of administration and commerce. Its parents are the exchequer and monopoly. It engenders a race apart, a bastard breed of contractors, bankers, financiers, revenue-farmers, intendants, counsellors, and ministers. A profound expression on the alliance between the speculators and politicians was uttered from the bowels of the people: compact of famine. Among those men was one who had long been famous. His name Foulon (very expressive, ‡ and which he strove to justify) was in the mouth of the people as early as 1756. He had begun his career as an intendant of the army, and in the *They hung thus on the 5th of October the honest abbé Lefebvre, one of the heroes of the 14th of July; luckily the rope was cut. + Ebenezer Elliott, Corn-law Rhymes (Manchester, 1834), &c., &c. As if foulons: let us trample (on the people).-C. C. FOULON AND BERTHIER. 183 enemy's country. Truly terrible to Germany, he was even more so to our soldiers. His manner of victualling was Foulon was a speculator, financier, and contractor on one hand, and on the other a member of the Council who alone judge the contractors. He expected certainly to become minister. He would have died of grief, if bankruptcy had been effected by any other than he. The laurels of the abbé Terray did not allow him to sleep. He had the fault of preaching his system too loudly; his tongue counteracted his doings and rendered it impossible. The Court relished very much the idea of not paying, but it wanted to borrow, and the calling the apostle of bankruptcy to the ministry was not the way to entice lenders. Foulon was already an old man, one of the good old days of Louis XV., one of that insolent school that gloried in its rapine, boldly showing it, and which, for a trophy of depredation, built on the boulevard the Pavillon of Hanover. For his part, he had erected for himself, in the most frequented thoroughfare, at the corner of the Rue du Temple, a delightful mansion, which was still admired in 1845. He was convinced that in France, as Figaro Beaumarchais says, "Everything ends in a song;" therefore he must assume a bold face, brave and laugh at public opinion. Hence those words which were re-echoed everywhere: "If they are hungry, let them browse grass. Wait till I am minister, I will make them eat hay; my horses eat it." He is also stated to have uttered this terrible threat: "France must be mowed." faut faucher la France. The old man believed, by such bravado, to please the young military party, and recommend himself for the day he saw approaching, when the Court, wanting to strike some desperate blow, would look out for a hardened villain. Foulon had a son-in law after his own heart, Berthier, the intendant of Paris, a clever, but hard-hearted man, as confessed by the royalists, and unscrupulous, since he had espoused a fortune acquired in such a manner. * According to Beaulieu's confession, Mémoires, ii., p. 10. 184 FOULON AND BERTHIER. Of humble extraction, being descended from a race of provincial attorneys or petty magistrates, he was hard-working, active, and energetic. A libertine at the age of fifty, in spite of his numerous family, he purchased, on all sides, so it was said, little girls twelve years of age. He knew well that he was detested by the Parisians, and was but too happy to find an opportunity of making war upon them. With old Foulon, he was the soul of the three days' ministry. Marshal de Broglie augured no good of it: he obeyed. But Foulon and Berthier were very ardent. The latter showed a diabolical activity in collecting arms, troops, everything together, and in manufacturing cartridges. If Paris was not laid waste with fire and sword, it was not his fault. * People feel astonished that persons so wealthy, so well-informed, of mature age and experience, should have cast themselves into such mad proceedings. The reason is, that all great financial speculators partake of the manner of gamblers; they have their temptations. Now, the most lucrative affair they could ever find, was thus to undertake to effect bankruptcy by military execution. That was hazardous. But what great affair is without risk? A profit is made on storm and fire; why not then on war and famine? Nothing risk, nothing gain. Famine and war, I mean Foulon and Berthier, who thought they held Paris fast, were disconcerted by the taking of the Bastille. On the evening of the 14th, Berthier attempted to reassure Louis XVI.; if he could but get from him the slightest order, he could even then pour down his Germans upon Paris. Louis XVI. neither said nor did anything. From that moment, those two ministers felt they were dead men. Berthier fled towards the north, escaping by night from place to place; he passed four nights without sleeping, or even stopping, and yet had reached only Soissons. Foulon did not attempt to fly first of all, he spread the report everywhere that he had not wished to be minister; next, that he was struck with apoplexy, and lastly pretended he was dead. He had himself buried with great pomp (one of his servants having died at the * Alex. de Lameth, Hist. de l'Assemblée constituante, i., p. 67. right moment.) This being done, he repaired very quietly to the house of his worthy friend Sartine, the former lieutenant of police. He had good reason to be afraid: the movement was terrible. Let us go back a little. As early as the month of May, famine had exiled whole populations, driving them one upon the other. Caen and Rouen, Orleans, Lyons, and Nancy, had witnessed struggles for corn. Marseilles had seen at her gates a band of eight thousand famished people who must pillage or die; the whole town, in spite of the Government, in spite of the Parliament of Aix, had taken up arms, and remained armed. The movement slackened a moment in June. All France, with eyes fixed on the Assembly, was waiting for it to conquer: no other hope of salvation. The most extreme sufferings were for a moment silent; one thought was predominant over all others. * Who can describe the rage, the horror of hope deceived, on the news of Necker's dismissal. Necker was not a politician; he was, as we have seen, timid, vain-glorious, and ridiculous. But in what concerned subsistence, it is but justice to say, that he was an indefatigable, ingenious administrator, full of industry and resources. What is far better, he showed himself to be an honest, good, kind-hearted man; when nobody would lend to the state, he borrowed in his own name, and engaged his own credit as far as two millions of francs, the half of his fortune. When dismissed, he did not withdraw his security; but wrote to the lenders that he maintained it. In a word, if he knew not how to govern, he nourished the people, and fed them with his own money. Necker and subsistence were words that had the same sound in the ears of the people. Necker's dismissal and famine, hopeless, irremediable famine, was what France felt on the 12th of July. The provincial Bastilles, that of Caen and that of Bordeaux, either surrendered, or were taken by force, at the same time as that of Paris. At Rennes, Saint Malo, and Strasburg, the troops sided with the people. At Caen there was a fight among See Necker, Œuvres, vi., pp. 298-324. 186 DEATH OF FOULON AND BERTHIER. the soldiers. A few men of the Artois regiment were wearing the patriotic symbols; those of the Bourbon regiment, taking advantage of their being unarmed, tore them away. It was thought that Major Belzunce had paid them to offer this insult to their companions. Belzunce was a smart, witty officer, but impertinent, violent, and haughty. He was loud in expressing his contempt for the National Assembly, for the people, the canaille; he used to walk in the town, armed to the teeth, with a ferocious-looking servant.* His looks were provoking. The people lost patience, threatened, and besieged the barracks; an officer had the imprudence to fire; and then the people ran to fetch cannon; Belzunce surrendered, or was given up to be conducted to prison; he could not reach it; he was fired upon and killed, and his body torn piece-meal: a woman ate his heart. There was blood-shed at Rouen and Lyons at Saint Germain, a miller was beheaded: a monopolist baker was near being put to death at Poissy; he was saved only by a deputation of the Assembly, who showed themselves admirable for courage and humanity, risked their lives, and preserved the man only after having begged him of the people on their knees. 66 Foulon would perhaps have outlived the storm, if he had not been hated by all France. His misfortune was to be so by those who knew him best, by his vassals and servants. They did not lose sight of him, neither had they been duped by the pretended burial. They followed and found the dead man alive and well, walking in M. de Sartine's park: "You wanted to give us hay," said they, you shall eat some yourself!" They put a truss of hay on his back, and adorn him with a nosegay of nettles, and a collar of thistles. They then lead him on foot to Paris, to the Hôtel-de-Ville, and demand his trial of the electors, the only authority that remained. The latter must then have regretted they had not hastened the popular decision which was about to create a real municipal power, give them successors, and put an end to their royalty. Royalty is the word; the French Guards mounted guard at the royal palace of Versailles only on orders received (strange to say) from the electors of Paris. *Mémoires de Dumouriez, ii., p. 53. |