33 10 1079 Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document It is no wonder therefore, that with these ideas of every thing in their constitution and government at home, either in church or state, as illegitimate and usurped, or at best as a vain mockery, they look abroad with an eager and passionate enthusiasm. Whilst they are possessed by these notions, it is vain to talk to them of the practice of their ancestors, the fundamental laws of their country, the fixed form of a constitution, whose merits are confirmed by the solid test of long experience, and an increasing public strength and national prosperity. They despise experience as the wisdom of unlettered men; and as for the rest, they have wrought under-ground a mine that will blow up at one grand explosion all examples of antiquity, all precedents, charters, and acts of parliament. They have "the rights of men." Against these there can be no prescription; against these no argument is binding: these admit no temperament, and no compromise: any thing withheld from their full demand is so much of fraud and injustice. Against these rights of men let no government look for security in the length of its continuance, or in the justice and lenity of its administration. The objections of these speculatists, if its forms do not quadrate with their theories, are as valid against such an old and beneficent government as against the most violent tyranny or the greenest usurpation. They are always at issue with governments, not on a question of abuse, but a question of competency and a question of title. I have nothing to say to the clumsy subtilty of their political metaphysics. . . . Far am I from denying in theory, full as far is my heart from withholding in practice (if I were of power to give or to withhold) the real rights of men. In denying their false claims of right, I do not mean to injure those which are real, and are such as their pretended rights would totally destroy. If civil society be made for the advantage of man, all the advantages for which it is made become his right. It is an institution of beneficence; and law itself is only beneficence acting by a rule. Men have a right to live by that rule; they have a right to do justice, as between their fellows, whether their fellows are in public function or in ordinary occupation. They have a right to the fruits of their industry and to the means of making their industry fruitful. They have a right to the acquisitions of their parents, to the nourishment and improvement of their offspring, to instruction in life, and to consolation in death. Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing upon others, he has a right to do for himself; and he has a right to a fair portion of all which society, with all its combinations of skill and force, can do in his favor. In this partnership all men have equal rights, but not to equal things. He that has but five shillings in the partnership has as good a right to it as he that has five hundred pounds has to his larger proportion. But he has not a right to an equal dividend in the product of the joint stock; and as to the share of power, authority, and direction which each individual ought to have in the management of the state, that I must deny to be amongst the direct original rights of man in civil society; for I have in my contemplation the civil social man, and no other. It is a thing to be settled by convention. If civil society be the offspring of convention, that convention must be its law. That convention must limit and modify all the descriptions of constitution which are formed under it. Every sort of legislative, judicial, or executory power are its creatures. They can have no being in any other state of things; and how can any man claim under the conventions of civil society rights which do not so much as suppose its existence—rights which are absolutely repugnant to it? One of the first motives to civil society, and which becomes one of its fundamental rules, is that no man should be judge in his own cause. By this each person has at once divested himself of the first fundamental right of uncovenanted man, that is, to judge for himself and to assert his own cause. He abdicates all right to be his own governor. He inclusively, in a great measure, abandons the right of self-defense, the first law of nature. Men cannot enjoy the rights of an uncivil and of a civil state together. That he may obtain justice, he gives up his right of determining what it is in points the most essential to him. That he may secure some liberty, he makes a surrender in trust of the whole of it. Government is not made in virtue of natural rights, which may and do exist in total independence of it, and exist in much greater clearness and in a much greater degree of abstract perfection; but their abstract perfection is their practical defect. By having a right to everything they want everything. Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom. Among these wants is to be reckoned the want, out of civil society, of a sufficient restraint upon their passions. Society requires not only that the passions of individuals should be subjected, but that even in the mass and body, as well as in the individuals, the inclinations of men should frequently be thwarted, their will controlled, and their passions brought into subjection. This can only be done by a power out of themselves, and not, in the exercise of its function, subject to that will and to those passions which it is its office to bridle and subdue. In this sense the restraints on men, as well as their liberties, are to be reckoned among their rights. But as the liberties and the restrictions vary with times and circumstances and admit to infinite modifications, they cannot be settled upon any abstract rule; and nothing is so foolish as to discuss them upon that principle. The moment you abate anything from the full rights of men, each to govern himself, and suffer any artificial, positive limitation upon those rights, from that moment the whole organization of government becomes a consideration of convenience. This it is which makes the constitution of a state and the due distribution of its powers a matter of the most delicate and complicated skill. It requires a deep knowledge of human nature and human necessities, and of the things which facilitate or obstruct the various ends which are to be pursued by the mechanism of civil institutions. The state is to have recruits to its strength, and remedies to its distempers. What is the use of discussing a man's abstract right to food or medicine? The question is upon the method of procuring and administering them. In that deliberation I shall always advise to call in the aid of the farmer and the physician rather than the professor of metaphysics. The science of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is, like every other experimental science, not to be taught a priori. Nor is it a short experience that can instruct us in that practical science, because the real effects of moral causes are not always immediate . . . . The nature of man is intricate; the objects of society are of the greatest possible complexity; and, therefore, no simple disposition or direction of power can be suitable either to man's nature or to the quality of his affairs. When I hear the simplicity of contrivance aimed at and boasted of in any new political constitutions, I am at no loss to decide that the artificers are grossly ignorant of their trade or totally negligent of their duty. . . . The rights of men are in a sort of middle, incapable of definition, but not impossible to be discerned. . . . But now all is to be changed. All the pleasing illusions which made power gentle and obedience liberal, which harmonized the different shades of life, and which, by a bland assimilation, incorporated into politics the sentiments which beautify and soften private society, are to be dissolved by this new conquering empire of light and reason. All the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off. All the super-added ideas, furnished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the heart owns and the understanding ratifies as necessary to cover the defects of our naked, shivering nature, and to raise it to dignity in our own estimation, are to be exploded as a ridiculous, absurd, and antiquated fashion. . . . But power, of some kind or other, will survive the shock in which manners and opinions perish; and it will find other and worse means for its support. The usurpation which, in order to subvert ancient institutions, has destroyed ancient principles will hold power by arts similar to those by which it has acquired it. When the old feudal and chivalrous spirit of fealty, which, by freeing kings from fear, freed both kings and subjects from the precautions of tyranny, shall be extinct in the minds of men, plots and assassinations will be anticipated by preventive murder and preventive confiscation, and that long roll of grim and bloody maxims which form the political code of all power not standing on its own honor and the honor of those who are to obey it. Kings will be tyrants from policy when subjects are rebels from principle. . . . We are but too apt to consider things in the state in which we find them, without sufficiently adverting to the causes by which they have been produced and possibly may be upheld. Nothing is more certain than that our manners, our civilization, and all the good things which are connected with manners and with civilization have, in this European world of ours, depended for ages upon two principles and were, indeed, the result of both combined: I mean the spirit of a gentleman and the spirit of religion. The nobility and the clergy, the one by profession, the other by patronage, kept learning in existence, even in the midst of arms and confusions, and whilst governments were rather in their causes than formed. Learning paid back what it received to nobility and to priesthood, and paid it with usury, by enlarging their ideas and by furnishing their minds. Happy if they had all continued to know their indissoluble union and their proper place! Happy if learning, not debauched by ambition, had been satisfied to continue the instructor, and not aspired to be the master! Along with its natural protectors and guardians, learning will be cast into the mire and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude. See the fate of Bailly and Condorcet, supposed to be here particularly alluded to. Compare the circumstances of the trial and execution of the former with this prediction. . . . I wish you may not be going fast, and by the shortest cut, to that horrible and disgustful situation. Already there appears a poverty of conception, a coarseness, and a vulgarity in all the proceedings of the Assembly and of all their instructors. Their liberty is not liberal. Their science is presumptuous ignorance. Their humanity is savage and brutal. Sortable Date 1790-11-00 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Edmund Burke, The Works of Edmund Burke, 3 vols. (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1860), 1:481–83, 488–91. Description An account of the resource Born in Ireland, Edmund Burke (1729–97) immediately opposed the French Revolution, warning his countrymen against the dangerous abstractions of the French. He argued the case for tradition, continuity, and gradual reform based on practical experience. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 563 Title A name given to the resource Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France Relation A related resource https://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/563/ Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource November 1790 Counterrevolution Monarchy Nobility Public Opinion Religion Text The US and Great Britain in Revolution Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document On the subject of Jacobinism and the Action Party, an element to be highlighted is the following: that the Jacobins won their function of "leading" [dirigente] party by a struggle to the death; they literally "imposed" themselves on the French bourgeoisie, leading it into a far more advanced position than the originally strongest bourgeois nuclei would have spontaneously wished to take up, and even far more advanced than that which the historical premises should have permitted—hence the various forms of backlash and the function of Napoleon I. This feature, characteristic of Jacobinism (but before that, also of Cromwell and the "Roundheads") and hence of the entire French Revolution, which consists in (apparently) forcing the situation, in creating irreversible faits accomplis, and in a group of extremely energetic and determined men driving the bourgeois forward with kicks in the backside, may be schematized in the following way. The Third Estate was the least homogeneous; it had a very disparate intellectual elite, and a group which was very advanced economically but politically moderate. Events developed along highly interesting lines. The representatives of the Third Estate initially only posed those questions which interested the actual physical members of the social group, their immediate "corporate" interests (corporate in the traditional sense, of the immediate and narrowly selfish interests of a particular category). The precursors of the Revolution were in fact moderate reformers, who shouted very loud but actually demanded very little. Gradually a new elite was selected out which did not concern itself solely with "corporate" reforms, but tended to conceive of the bourgeoisie as the hegemonic group of all the popular forces. This selection occurred through the action of two factors: the resistance of the old social forces, and the international threat. The old forces did not wish to concede anything, and if they did concede anything they did it with the intention of gaining time and preparing a counteroffensive. The Third Estate would have fallen into these successive "pitfalls" without the energetic action of the Jacobins, who opposed every immediate halt in the revolutionary process, and sent to the guillotine not only the elements of the old society which was hard a-dying, but also the revolutionaries of yesterday—today become reactionaries. The Jacobins, consequently, were the only party of the revolution in progress, in as much as they not only represented the immediate needs and aspirations of the actual physical individuals who constituted the French bourgeoisie, but they also represented the revolutionary movement as a whole, as an integral historical development. For they represented future needs as well, and, once again, not only the needs of those particular physical individuals, but also of all the national groups which had to be assimilated to the existing fundamental group. It is necessary to insist against a tendentious and fundamentally anti-historical school of thought, that the Jacobins were realists of the Machiavelli stamp and not abstract dreamers. They were convinced of the absolute truth of their slogans about equality, fraternity and liberty, and, what is more important, the great popular masses whom the Jacobins stirred up and drew into the struggle were also convinced of their truth. The Jacobins' language, their ideology, their methods of action reflected perfectly the exigencies of the epoch, even if "today," in a different situation and after more than a century of cultural evolution, they may appear "abstract" and "frenetic." Naturally they reflected those exigencies according to the French cultural tradition. One proof of this is the analysis of Jacobin language which is to be found in The Holy Family. Another is Hegel's admission, when he places as parallel and reciprocally translatable the juridico political language of the Jacobins and the concepts of classical German philosophy—which is recognized today to have the maximum of concreteness and which was the source of modern historicism. The first necessity was to annihilate the enemy forces, or at least to reduce them to impotence in order to make a counterrevolution impossible. The second was to enlarge the cadres of the bourgeoisie as such, and to place the latter at the head of all the national forces; this meant identifying the interests and the requirements common to all the national forces, in order to set these forces in motion and lead them into the struggle, obtaining two results: (a) that of opposing a wider target to the blows of the enemy, i.e., of creating a politico-military relation favorable to the revolution; (b) that of depriving the enemy of every zone of passivity in which it would be possible to enroll Vendée-type armies. Without the agrarian policy of the Jacobins, Paris would have had the Vendée at its very doors. The resistance of the Vendée properly speaking is linked to the national question, which had become envenomed among the peoples of Brittany and in general among those alien to the slogan of the "single and indivisible republic" and to the policy of bureaucratic-military centralization—a slogan and a policy which the Jacobins could not renounce without committing suicide. The Girondins tried to exploit federalism in order to crush Jacobin Paris, but the provincial troops brought to Paris went over to the revolutionaries. Except for certain marginal areas, where the national (and linguistic) differentiation was very great, the agrarian question proved stronger than aspirations to local autonomy. Rural France accepted the hegemony of Paris; in other words, it understood that in order definitively to destroy the old regime it had to make a bloc with the most advanced elements of the Third Estate, and not with the Girondin moderates. If it is true that the Jacobins "forced" its hand, it is also true that this always occurred in the direction of real historical development. For not only did they organize a bourgeois government, i.e., make the bourgeoisie the dominant class—they did more. They created the bourgeois State, made the bourgeoisie into the leading, hegemonic class of the nation, in other words gave the new State a permanent basis and created the compact modern French nation. That the Jacobins, despite everything, always remained bourgeois ground is demonstrated by the events which marked their end, as a party cast in too specific and inflexible a mold, and by the death of Robespierre. Maintaining the Le Chapelier law, they were not willing to concede to the workers the right of combination; as a consequence they had to pass the law of the maximum. They thus broke the Paris urban bloc: their assault forces, assembled in the Commune, dispersed in disappointment, and Thermidor gained the upper hand. The Revolution had found its widest class limits. The policy of alliances and of permanent revolution had finished by posing new questions which at that time could not be resolved; it had unleashed elemental forces which only a military dictatorship was to succeed in containing. If in Italy a Jacobin party was not formed, the reasons are to be sought in the economic field, that is to say in the relative weakness of the Italian bourgeoisie and in the different historical climate in Europe after 1815. The limit reached by the Jacobins, in their policy of forced reawakening of French popular energies to be allied with the bourgeoisie, with the Le Chapelier law and that of the maximum, appeared in 1848 as a "specter" which was already threatening—and this was skillfully exploited by Austria, by the old governments and even by Cavour (quite apart from the Pope). The bourgeoisie could not (perhaps) extend its hegemony further over the great popular strata—which it did succeed in embracing in France (could not for subjective rather than objective reasons); but action directed at the peasantry was certainly always possible. Differences between France, Germany and Italy in the process by which the bourgeoisie took power (and England). [sic] It was in France that the process was richest in developments, and in active and positive political elements. In Germany, it evolved in ways which in certain aspects resembled what happened in Italy, and in others what happened in England. In Germany, the movement of 1848 failed as a result of the scanty bourgeois concentration (the Jacobin-type slogan was furnished by the democratic Far Left: "Permanent revolution"), and because the question of renewal of the State was intertwined with the national question. The wars of 1864, 1866 and 1870 resolved both the national question and, in an intermediate form, the class question: the bourgeoisie obtained economic-industrial power, but the old feudal classes remained as the government stratum of the political State, with wide corporate privileges in the army, the administration and on the land. Yet at least, if these old classes kept so much importance in Germany and enjoyed so many privileges, they exercised a national function, became the "intellectuals" of the bourgeoisie, with a particular temperament conferred by their caste origin and by tradition. In England, where the bourgeois revolution took place before that in France, we have a similar phenomenon to the German one of fusion between the old and the new—this notwithstanding the extreme energy of the English "Jacobins," i.e., Cromwell's "roundheads." The old aristocracy remained as a governing stratum, with certain privileges, and it too became the intellectual stratum of the English bourgeoisie (it should be added that the English aristocracy has an open structure, and continually renews itself with elements coming from the intellectuals and the bourgeoisie). In Germany, despite the great capitalist development, the class relations created by industrial development, with the limits of bourgeois hegemony reached and the position of the progressive classes reversed, have induced the bourgeoisie not to struggle with all its strength against the old regime, but to allow a part of the latter's facade to subsist, behind which it can disguise its own real domination. Sortable Date 1929-00-00 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Antonio Gramsci, in Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci (New Yorl: International Publishers, 1971) 77–80, 82–83. Description An account of the resource Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) was an Italian intellectual who joined first the Socialist and then the Communist Party. Between 1924 and 1926 Gramsci was the head of the Italian Communist Party. In 1926 he was arrested by the Mussolini fascist government and sent to prison where he remained until 1937. The excerpt that follows comes from his prison notebooks and demonstrates his fascination with the French Revolution, especially its Jacobin phase. Although Gramsci was a devoted Marxist, he helped turn Marxism toward an interest in local conditions, particularly toward the alliance between intellectuals and workers. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 562 Title A name given to the resource Antonio Gramsci: Selections from The Prison Notebooks Relation A related resource https://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/562/ Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1929 Europe in Revolution Popular Politics Public Opinion Text The Terror Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document History does not repeat itself. However much one may compare the Russian Revolution with the Great French Revolution, the former can never be transformed into a repetition of the latter. The 19th century has not passed in vain. Jacobinism is now a term of reproach on the lips of all liberal wiseacres. Bourgeois hatred of revolution, its hatred towards the masses, hatred of the force and grandeur of the history that is made in the streets, is concentrated in one cry of indignation and fear—Jacobinism! We, the world army of Communism, have long ago made our historical reckoning with Jacobinism. The whole of the present international proletarian movement was formed and grew strong in the struggle against the traditions of Jacobinism. We subjected its theories to criticism, we exposed its historical limitations, its social contradictoriness, its utopianism, we exposed its phraseology, and broke with its traditions, which for decades had been regarded as the sacred heritage of the revolution. But we defend Jacobinism against the attacks, the calumny, and the stupid vituperations of anemic, phlegmatic liberalism. The bourgeoisie has shamefully betrayed all the traditions of its historical youth, and its present hirelings dishonor the graves of its ancestors and scoff at the ashes of their ideals. The proletariat has taken the honor of the revolutionary past of the bourgeoisie under its protection. The proletariat, however radically it may have, in practice, broken with the revolutionary traditions of the bourgeoisie, nevertheless preserves them, as a sacred heritage of great passions, heroism and initiative, and its heart beats in sympathy with the speeches and acts of the Jacobin Convention. What gave liberalism its charm if not the traditions of the Great French Revolution? At what other period did bourgeois democracy rise to such a height and kindle such a great flame in the hearts of the people as during the period of the Jacobin, sans-culotte, terrorist, Robespierrian democracy of 1793? What else but Jacobinism made and still makes it possible for French bourgeois-radicalism of various shades to keep the overwhelming majority of the people and even the proletariat under its influence at a time when bourgeois radicalism in Germany and Austria has closed its brief history in deeds of pettiness and shame? What is it if not the charm of Jacobinism, with its abstract political ideology, its cult of the Sacred Republic, its triumphant declarations, that even now nourishes French radicals and radical socialists like Clemenceau, Millerand, Briand and Bourgeois, and all those politicians who know how to defend the mainstays of bourgeois society no worse than the dull-witted Junkers of Wilhelm II by the Grace of God? They are envied hopelessly by the bourgeois democrats of other countries; and yet they shower calumnies upon the source of their political advantage—heroic Jacobinism. Even after many hopes had been destroyed, Jacobinism remained in the memory of the people as a tradition. For a long time the proletariat spoke of its future in the language of the past. In 1840, almost half a century after the government of the "Mountain," eight years before the June days of 1848, Heine visited several workshops in the faubourg of Saint-Marceau and saw what the workers, "the soundest section of the lower classes," were reading. "I found there," he wrote to a German newspaper, "several new speeches by old Robespierre and also pamphlets by Marat issued in two-sous editions; Cabet's History of the Revolution; the malignant lampoons of Carmenen; the works of Buonarroti, The Teachings and Conspiracy of Babeuf, all productions reeking with blood. . . . As one of the fruits of this seed," prophesies the poet, "sooner or later a republic will threaten to spring up in France." In 1848 the bourgeoisie was already unable to play a comparable role. It did not want and was not able to undertake the revolutionary liquidation of the social system that stood in its path to power. We know now why that was so. Its aim was—and of this it was perfectly conscious—to introduce into the old system the necessary guarantees, not for its political domination, but merely for a sharing of power with the forces of the past. It was meanly wise through the experience of the French bourgeoisie, corrupted by its treachery and frightened by its failures. It not only failed to lead the masses in storming the old order, but placed its back against this order so as to repulse the masses who were pressing it forward. The French bourgeoisie succeeded in bringing off its Great Revolution. Its consciousness was the consciousness of society and nothing could become established as an institution without first passing through its consciousness as an aim, as a problem of political creation. It often resorted to theatrical poses in order to hide from itself the limitations of its own bourgeois world but it marched forward. The National Convention, as an organ of the Jacobin dictatorship, was by no means composed of Jacobins alone. More than that—the Jacobins were in a minority in it; but the influence of the sans-culottes outside the walls of the Convention, and the need for a determined policy in order to save the country, gave power into the hands of the Jacobins. Thus, while the Convention was formally a national representation, consisting of Jacobins, Girondins, and the vast wavering center known as the "marsh" [Plain], in essence it was a dictatorship of the Jacobins. When we speak of a workers' government we have in view a government in which the working-class representatives dominate and lead. The proletariat, in order to consolidate its power, cannot but widen the base of the revolution. Many sections of the working masses, particularly in the countryside, will be drawn into the revolution and become politically organized only after the advance-guard of the revolution, the urban proletariat, stands at the helm of state. Revolutionary agitation and organization will then be conducted with the help of state resources. The legislative power itself will become a powerful instrument for revolutionizing the masses. The nature of our social-historical relations, which lays the whole burden of the bourgeois revolution upon the shoulders of the proletariat, will not only create tremendous difficulties for the workers' government but, in the first period of its existence at any rate, will also give it invaluable advantages. This will affect the relations between the proletariat and the peasantry. In the revolutions of 1789–93 and 1848 power first of all passed from absolutism to the moderate elements of the bourgeoisie, and it was the latter class which emancipated the peasantry (how, is another matter) before revolutionary democracy received or was even preparing to receive power. The emancipated peasantry lost all interest in the political stunts of the "townspeople," that is, in the further progress of the revolution, and placing itself like a heavy foundation-stone at the foot of order, betrayed the revolution to the Caesarist or old-regime absolutist reaction. The Russian revolution does not, and for a long time will not, permit the establishment of any kind of bourgeois-constitutional order that might solve the most elementary problems of democracy. All the "enlightened" efforts of reformer—bureaucrats like Witte and Stolypin are nullified by their own struggle for existence. Consequently, the fate of the most elementary revolutionary interests of the peasantry—even the peasantry as a whole, as an estate, is bound up with the fate of entire revolution, that is, with the fate of the proletariat. The proletariat in power will stand before the peasants as the class which has emancipated it. The domination of the proletariat will mean not only democratic equality, free self-government, the transference of the whole burden of taxation to the rich classes, the dissolution of the standing army in the armed people and the abolition of compulsory church imposts, but also recognition of all revolutionary changes (expropriations) in land relationships carried out by the peasants. The proletariat will make these changes the starting-point for further state measures in agriculture. Sortable Date 1919-00-00 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Leon Trotsky, The Permanent Revolution and Results and Prospects (New York: Merit, 1969), 52, 54–56, 70–71. Description An account of the resource Leon Trotsky (1879–1940), whose original name was Lev Davidovich Bronstein, was one of the chief figures in the Russian Revolution of 1917. After years spent in exile agitating in favor of Russian communism, he put his ideas into practice as one of the leaders of the Bolshevik Revolution. After falling out with Stalin, he was expelled from the Russian Communist Party in 1927 and forced into exile once again. There he wrote prolifically about the meaning of the Russian—and French—revolutions. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 561 Title A name given to the resource Leon Trotsky, The Permanent Revolution Relation A related resource https://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/561/ Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1919 Economic Conditions Europe in Revolution Popular Politics Public Opinion Text The Terror Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document There are periods in the life of human society when revolution becomes an imperative necessity, when it proclaims itself as inevitable. New ideas germinate everywhere, seeking to force their way into the light, to find an application in life; everywhere they are opposed by the inertia of those whose interest it is to maintain the old order; they suffocate in the stifling atmosphere of prejudice anti traditions. The accepted ideas of the constitution of the State, of the laws of social equilibrium, of the political and economic interrelations of citizens, can hold out no longer against the implacable criticism which is daily undermining them whenever occasion arises,—in drawing room as in cabarets, in the writing of philosophers as in daily conversation. Political, economic, and social institutions are crumbling; the social structure, having become uninhabitable, is hindering, even preventing the development of the seeds which are being propagated within its damaged walls and being brought forth around them. The need for a new life becomes apparent. The code of established morality, that which governs the greater number of people in their daily life, no longer seems sufficient. What formerly seemed just is now felt to be a crying injustice. The morality of yesterday is today recognized as revolting immorality. The conflict between new ideas and old traditions flames in every class of society, on in every possible environment, in the very bosom of the family. The son struggles against his father, he finds revolting what his father has all his life found natural; the daughter rebels against the principles which her mother has handed down to her as the result of long experience. Daily, the popular conscience arises up against the scandals which breed amidst the privileged and the leisured, against the crimes committed in the name of the law of the stronger, or in order to maintain these privileges. Those who long for the triumph of justice, those who would put new ideas into practice, are soon forced to recognize that the realization of their generous, humanitarian and regenerating ideas cannot take place in a society thus constituted; they perceive the necessity of a revolutionary whirlwind which will sweep away all this rottenness, revive sluggish hearts with its breath, and bring to mankind that spirit of devotion, self-denial, and heroism, without which society sinks through degradation and vileness into complete disintegration. When we study in the works of our greatest historians the genesis and development of vast revolutionary convulsions we generally find under the heading, "The Cause of the Revolution," a gripping picture of the situation on the eve of events. The misery of the people, the general insecurity, the vexatious measures of the government, the odious scandals laying bare the immense vices of society, the new ideas struggling to come to the surface and repulsed by the incapacity of the supporters of the former regime,—nothing is omitted. Examining this picture, one arrives at the conviction that the Revolution was indeed inevitable, and that there was no other way out than by the road of insurrection. Take, for example, the situation before 1789 as the historians picture it. You can almost hear the peasant complaining of the salt tax, of the tithe, of the feudal payments, and vowing in his heart an implacable hatred towards tile feudal baron, the monk, the monopolist, the bailiff. You can almost see the citizen bewailing the loss of his municipal liberties, and showering maledictions upon the king. The people censure the queen; they are revolted by the reports of ministerial action, and they cry out continually that file taxes are intolerable and revenue payments, exorbitant, that crops are bad and winters hard, that provisions are too dear and the monopolists too grasping, that the village lawyer devours the peasant's crops and the village constable tries to play the role of a petty king, that even the mail service is badly organized and the employees too lazy. In short, nothing works well, everybody complains. "It can last no longer, it will come to a bad end," they cry everywhere. But, between this pacific arguing and insurrection or revolt, there is a wide abyss,—that abyss which, for the greatest part of humanity, lies between reasoning and action, thought and will,—the urge to act. Now has this abyss been bridged? How is it that men who only yesterday were complaining quietly of their lot as they smoked their pipes, and the next moment were humbly saluting the local guard and gendarme whom they had just been abusing,—how is it that these same men a few days later were capable of seizing their scythes and their iron-shod pikes and attacking in his castle the lord who only yesterday was so formidable? By what miracle were these men, whose wives justly called them cowards, transformed in a day into heroes, marching through bullets and cannon balls to the conquest of their rights? How was it that words, so often spoken and lost in the air like the empty chiming of hells, were changed into actions? The answer is easy. Action, the continuous action, ceaselessly renewed, of minorities brings about action. Courage, devotion, the spirit of sacrifice, are as contagious as cowardice, submission, and panic. What forms will this action take? All forms,—indeed, the most varied forms, dictated by circumstances, temperament, and the means at disposal. Sometimes tragic, sometimes humorous, but always daring; sometimes collective, sometimes purely individual, this policy of action will neglect none of the means at hand, no event of public life, in order to keep the spirit alive, to propagate and find expression for dissatisfaction, to excite hatred against exploiters, to ridicule the government and expose its weakness, and above all and always, by actual example, to awaken courage and fan the spirit of revolt. When a revolutionary situation arises in a country, before the spirit of revolt is sufficiently awakened in the masses to express itself in violent demonstrations in the streets or by rebellions and uprisings, it is through action that minorities succeed in awakening that feeling of independence and that spirit of audacity without which no revolution can come to a head. Men of courage, not satisfied with words, but ever searching for the means to transform them into action,—men of integrity for whom the act is one with the idea, for whom prison, exile, and death are preferable to a life contrary to their principles,—intrepid souls who know that it is necessary to dare in order to succeed,—these are the lonely sentinels who enter the battle long before the manes are sufficiently roused to raise openly the banner of insurrection and to march, arms in hand, to the conquest of their rights. In the midst of discontent, talk, theoretical discussions, an individual or collective act of revolt supervenes, symbolizing the dominant aspirations. It is possible that at the beginning the masses will remain indifferent. It is possible that while admiring the courage of the individual or the group which takes the initiative, the masses will at first follow those who are prudent and cautious, who will immediately describe this act as "insanity" and say that "those madmen, those fanatics will endanger everything." They have calculated so well, those prudent and cautious men, that their party, slowly pursuing its work would, in a hundred years, two hundred years, three hundred years perhaps, succeed in conquering the whole world,—and now the unexpected intrudes! The unexpected, of course, is whatever has not been expected by them,—those prudent and cautious ones! Whoever has a slight knowledge of history and a fairly clear head knows perfectly well from the beginning that theoretical propaganda for revolution will necessarily express itself in action long before the theoreticians have decided that the moment to act has come. Nevertheless the cautious theoreticians are angry at these madmen, they excommunicate them, they anathematize them. But the madmen win sympathy, the mass of the people secretly applaud their courage, and they find imitators. In proportion as the pioneers go to fill the jails and the penal colonies, others continue their work; acts of illegal protest, of revolt, of vengeance, multiply. Indifference from this point on is impossible. Those who at the beginning never so much as asked what the "madmen" wanted, are compelled to think about them, to discuss their ideas, to take sides for or against. By actions which compel general attention, the new idea seeps into people's minds and wins converts. One such act may, in a few days, make more propaganda than thousands of pamphlets. Above all, it awakens the spirit of revolt: it breeds daring. The old order, supported by the police, the magistrates, the gendarmes and the soldiers, appeared unshakable, like the old fortress of the Bastille, which also appeared impregnable to the eyes of the unarmed people gathered beneath its high walls equipped with loaded cannon. But soon it became apparent that the established order has not the force one had supposed. One courageous act has sufficed to upset in a few days the entire governmental machinery, to make the colossus tremble; another revolt has stirred a whole province into turmoil, and the army, till now always so imposing, has retreated before a handful of peasants armed with sticks and stones. The people observe that the monster is not so terrible as they thought; they begin dimly to perceive that a few energetic efforts will be sufficient to throw it down. Hope is born in their hearts, and let us remember that if exasperation often drives men to revolt, it is always hope, the hope of victory, which makes revolutions. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Philip B. Springer and Marcello Truzzi, eds., Revolutionaries on Revolution: Participants' Perspectives on the Strategies of Seizing Power (Pacific Palisades, Calif.: Goodyear Publishing Company, 1973), 59–62. Description An account of the resource The Russian author Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) wrote prolifically about the French Revolution and about the ideology known as anarchism. He joined in the Russian revolutionary movement in 1872, was imprisoned by the tsarist state, and fled, escaping to Paris and then Switzerland, where he founded and edited a revolutionary newspaper. When he returned to Russia in 1917 he denounced the Bolshevik dictatorship installed during the recent revolutionary coup d’état. In this excerpt Kropotkin uses the French Revolution of 1789 as his model for revolution more generally. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 560 Title A name given to the resource Peter Kropotkin on the Need for Individual Action Relation A related resource https://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/560/ Europe in Revolution Popular Politics Public Opinion Text The Terror Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document Every revolution is the work of a principle which has been accepted as a basis of faith. Whether it invoke nationality, liberty, equality, or religion, it always fulfills itself in the name of a principle, that is to say, of a great truth, which being recognized and approved by the majority of the inhabitants of a country, constitutes a common belief, and sets before the masses a new aim, while authority misrepresents or rejects it. A revolution, violent or peaceful, includes a negation and an affirmation: the negation of an existing order of things, the affirmation of a new order to be substituted for it. A revolution proclaims that the state is rotten; that its machinery no longer meets the needs of the greatest number of the citizens; that its institutions are powerless to direct the general movement; that popular and social thought has passed beyond the vital principle of those institutions; that the new phase in the development of the national faculties finds neither expression nor representation in the official constitution of the country, and that it must therefore create one for itself. This revolution does create. Since its task is to increase, and not diminish the nation's patrimony, it violates neither the truths that the majority possess, nor the rights they hold sacred; but it reorganizes everything on a new basis; it gathers and harmonizes round the new principle all the elements and forces of the country; it gives a unity of direction toward the new aim, to all those tendencies which before were scattered in the pursuit of different aims. Then the revolution has done its work. We recognize no other meaning in revolution. If a revolution did not imply a general reorganization by virtue of a social principle; if it did not remove a discord in the elements of a state, and place harmony in its stead; if it did not secure a moral unity; so far from declaring ourselves revolutionists, we should believe it our duty to oppose the revolutionary movement with all our power. Without the purpose hinted at above, there may be riots, and at times victorious insurrections, but no revolutions. You will have changes of men and administration; one caste succeeding to another; one dynastic branch ousting the other. This necessitates retreat; a slow reconstruction of the past, which the insurrection had suddenly destroyed; the gradual re-establishment, under new names, of the old order of things, which the people had risen to destroy. Societies have such need of unity that if they miss it in insurrection they turn back to a restoration. Then there is a new discontent, a new struggle, a new explosion. France has proven it abundantly. In 1830 she performed miracles of daring and valor for a negation. She rose to destroy, without positive beliefs, without any definite organic purpose, and thought she had won her end when she canceled the old principle of legitimacy. She descended into that abyss which insurrection alone can never fill; and because she did not recognize how needful is some principle of reconstruction, she finds herself today, six years after the July Revolution, five years after the days of November, two years after the days of April, well on her way to a thorough restoration. We cite the case of France because she is expected to give political lessons, hopes, sympathies; and because France is the modern nation in which theories of pure reaction founded on suspicion, on individual right, on liberty alone, are most militant, therefore the practical consequences of her mistakes are shown most convincingly. But twenty other instances might be cited. For fifty years, every movement which, in its turn, was successful as an insurrection, but failed as a revolution, has proven how everything depends on the presence or absence of a principle of reconstruction. Wherever, in fact, individual rights are exercised without the influence of some great thought that is common to all; where every individual's interests harmonized by some organization that is directed by a positive ruling principle, and by the consciousness of a common aim, there must be a tendency for some to usurp others' rights. In a society like ours, where a division into classes, call them what you will, still exists in full strength, every right is bound to clash with another right, envious and mistrustful of it; every interest naturally conflicts with an opposing interest: the landlord's with the peasant's; the manufacturer's or capitalist's with the workman's. All through Europe—since equality, however accepted in theory, has been rejected in practice, and the sum of social wealth has accumulated in the hands of a small number of men, while the masses gain but a mere pittance by their relentless toil; it is a cruel irony, it gives inequality a new lease of life, if you establish unrestricted liberty, and tell men they are free, and bid them use their rights. A social sphere must have its center; a center to the individualists that jostle with each other inside it; a center to all the scattered rays that diffuse and waste their light and heat. The theory that bases the social structure on individual interests cannot supply this center. The absence of a center, or the selection among opposing interests of that which has the most vigorous life, means either anarchy or privilege—that is, either barren strife or the germ of aristocracy, under whatever name it disguises itself, this is the parting of the ways, which it is impossible to avoid. Is this what we want when we invoke a revolution, since a revolution is indispensable to reorganize our nationality? . . . We are therefore driven to the sphere of principles. We must revive belief in them, we must fulfill a work of faith. The logic of things demands it. Principles alone are constructive. Ideals are never translated into facts without the general recognition of some strong belief. Great things are never done except by the rejection of individualism and a constant sacrifice of self to the common progress. Self-sacrifice is the sense of duty in action. . . . The individual is sacred; his interests, his rights are inviolable. But to make them the only foundation of the political structure, and tell each individual to win his future with his own unaided strength, is to surrender society and progress to the accidents of chance nature, his social instinct; to plant egotism in the soul; and in the long run impose the dominion of the strong over the weak, of those who have over those who have not. The many futile attempts of the past forty years prove this. . . . If by dint of example you can root in a nation's heart the principle that the French Revolution proclaimed but never carried out, that the State owes every member the means of existence or the chance to work for it, and add a fair definition of existence, you have prepared the triumph of right over privilege; the end of the monopoly of one class over another, and the end of pauperism; for which at present there are only palliatives. . . Christian charity, or cold and brutal maxims like those of the English school of political economists. When you have raised men's minds to believe in the other principle that society is an association of laborers—and can, thanks to that belief, deduce both in theory and practice all its consequences; you will have no more castes, no more aristocracies, or civil wars, or crisis. You will have a People. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Thomas E. Hachey and Ralph E. Weber, European Ideologies since 1789: Rebels, Radicals and Political Ferment, repr. (Malabar, Fla.: Krieger, 1979), 33–36. Description An account of the resource The journalist and politician Guiseppi Mazzini (1805–72) was the apostle of nationalism during the first half of the nineteenth century. He was exiled by the Austrians from his native Italy in 1831 and spent the next two decades working unsuccessfully through Young Italy, a secret society dedicated to beginning a European–wide revolution on the Italian peninsula. In the revolutions of 1848, he returned to Italy and became president of the short–lived Roman republic before it fell to French forces protecting the papacy. Mazzini played an important role in spreading the cause of Italian nationalism and Italian unity, although his hope for a revolution proved to be greatly delayed. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 559 Title A name given to the resource Mazzini on Revolutionary Nationalism Relation A related resource https://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/559/ Europe in Revolution Popular Politics Public Opinion Text The Terror Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document Condolences from the community and congregation of Lignère la Doucelle. For a long time now, the inhabitants have been crushed beneath the excessive burden of the multiplicity of taxes that they have been obliged to pay. Their parish is large and spread out, but it is a hard land with many uncultivated areas, almost all of it divided into small parcels. There is not one single farm of appreciable size, and these small properties are occupied either by the poor or by people who are doing so poorly that they go without bread every other day. They buy bread or grain nine months of the year. No industries operate in this parish, and from the time they began complaining, no one has ever listened. The cry of anguish echoed all to the way to the ministry after having fruitlessly worn out their intendants. They have always seen their legitimate claims being continuously denied, so may the fortunate moment of equality revive them. These inhabitants request that there be only two taxes in the realm, one called the land tax, and the other designated for industry. That the fees regulating water and forests, crane's nests and Table marble be abolished, to be informed of the claims granted as leases, and that the woods and forests belonging to the crown be leased for periods of 100 years. That the finance offices, accounting houses, and welfare courts be abolished. That élections [tax collecting officials], salt granaries, milking, and other special fees be abolished. That salt be marketable. That all lords, country gentlemen, and others of the privileged class who, either directly or through their proxies, desire to make a profit on their wealth, regardless of the nature of that wealth, pay the same taxes as the common people. That the rent paid to the seigneur be depreciable to the last twentieth, or to the last thirtieth if so desired, provided that property common to the husband and wife be exempt from division or resulting sale. That the seigneur's mills not be obligatory, allowing everyone to choose where he would like to mill his grain. That all of the goods paid as tribute, either owned by the common people, or exempt from the king's francs fiefs and repurchased by the seigneurs, be finally declared taxable. That the corvées due to the seigneur be abolished, as well as the declarations or vows that are given them in cases where the seigneurial rents are being paid off. That all seigneurial fees be abolished. Or at least that several of them be grouped together, for which each seigneur, for a limited time, can appoint an officer, failing which the king will provide him one. That the children of common people living on a par with nobles be admitted for military service, as the nobility is. That the king not bestow noble titles upon someone and their family line, but that titles be bestowed only upon those deserving it. That nobility not be available for purchase or by any fashion other than by the bearing of arms or other service rendered to the State. That all seigneurs that have more than a lackey in his service or in his wife's service, even though they be widow or daughter, pay to the king the sum of sixty pounds per year for each additional lackey. That all the silk material, ribbons, chiffons, and merchandise imported from foreign countries be taxed at three times the current amount. That women wearing hats pay to the king twenty-four livres per year for each as a female head tax. That those living off their worldly goods shall pay a land tax, as do the other inhabitants for their goods. That church members be only able to take advantage of one position. That those who are enjoying more than one be made to choose within a fixed time period. That future abbeys all be placed into the hands of the king, that His Majesty benefit from their revenue as the head abbots have been able to. That in towns where there are several convents belonging to the same order, there be only one, and the goods and revenue of those that are to be abolished go to the profit of the crown. That the convents where there are not normally twelve residents be abolished. That no tenth of black wheat be paid to parish priests, priors or other beneficiaries, since this grain is only used to prepare the soil for the sowing of rye. That they also not be paid any tenths of hemp, wool, or lamb. That in the countryside they be required to conduct burials and funerals free of charge. That the ten sous for audit books, insinuations, and the 100 [sous] collected for the parish be abolished. That the businessmen and seigneur's guards, even those residing in their own homes, enjoy no exemption or privilege. Finally, the aforementioned inhabitants request that the house of Saint Ursain previously of the Order of the Cross, located in their parish. And thus the goods and income which today are tied up in litigation between Prince Louis de Rohan and the clergy of Le Mans, be accorded to them and used to set up a hospital in view of the large number of poor living in the aforementioned parish. This would be governed by two administrators who would be chosen from among the better known inhabitants. That minors making a profit from their wealth pay taxes as if they were adults. That the seigneurs enjoy no privilege of customs or tolls, nor during measuring in the grain halls, fairs, and animal markets, in view of the fact that they no longer maintain the boards and bridges over their streams and rivers, where several people have perished. That grain be taxed in the realm at a fixed price, or rather that its exportation abroad be forbidden except in the case where it would be sold at a low price. That "eau de vie" [distilled] alcohol be exportable from one province to another. That those making money from outside the parish pay taxes where their funds are located. That two free roads be opened, one from Saint Denis near Alençon to Falaise, passing through the town of Lignères, and the other from there to Préz, in Pail. It is also requested that in the realm there exist only one custom, one measurement, one system of weights, and a common order. And finally, in the case where intendances exist, that for the convenience of the remote parishes, cities, and towns, since the aforementioned parish is over thirty leagues from Tours, that the king establish a commissioner to hold court in the city of Le Mans for questions of administrative jurisdiction and to hear the parish's complaints. As decreed by the General Assembly, this sixth day of March, 1789, in the courtroom of Lignères. Sortable Date 1789-03-06 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Armand Bellée, ed., Cahiers de plaintes & doléances des paroisses de la province du Maine pour les Etats-généraux de 1789, 4 vols. (Le Mans: Monnoyer, 1881–92), 2:578–82. Description An account of the resource The petitions from rural communities focused in part on the abuse of seigneurial dues owed by peasants to lords for which, in principle, they received protection and supervision. But by 1789, these excerpts demonstrate that peasants considered their lords not as protectors but as exploiters who constantly turned the screws to extract ever more rent or other payments. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 558 Title A name given to the resource Attack on Seigneurial Dues Relation A related resource https://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/558/ Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource March 6, 1789 Economic Conditions Nobility Peasants Text Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document Freedom is but an empty illusion when one class of men can starve another with impunity. Equality is but an empty illusion when the rich, through monopolies, have the decision of life or death over their own kind. The Republic is but an empty illusion when the counterrevolution takes place daily because three-quarters of the citizenry cannot afford the price of basic foodstuffs and no one sheds a tear. Stopping trade which is nothing short of highway robbery must be clearly distinguished from simple commerce. It will only be by placing the cost of food within reach of the sans-culottes that you will win them over to Revolution and its constitutional laws. Sortable Date 1793-06-25 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Jacques Roux, Scripta et acta, edited by Walter M. Markov (Berlin: Akademie-Verl., 1969), 140–46. Translated by Exploring the French Revolution project staff from original documents in French found in John Hardman, French Revolution Documents 1792–95, vol. 2 (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1973), 136. Description An account of the resource Jacques Roux, a former priest turned radical revolutionary, became the leading voice for a group known as the "Enraged," because they expressed constant anger at the unfairness shown toward the ordinary, poor people who made up the bulk of the patriotic citizenry and whose plight Roux demanded the government redress by any means necessary. In this speech to the Convention on 25 June 1793, Roux laid out the basic economic demands of this group: more stringent economic measures against the rich, hoarders, speculators, and profiteers, who should be made to justify themselves to the hard–working, honest patriots for whom Roux claimed to speak. Here Roux explains his understanding of equality and trade. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 557 Title A name given to the resource Manifesto of the Enragés Relation A related resource https://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/557/ Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource June 25, 1793 Economic Conditions Popular Politics Sans-culottes Text The Terror Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document The plots and conspiracies are multiplying at an alarming rate. Scarcely does a week go by without another explosion. This is not surprising, however, ever since the stupid People have been content with breaking up the conspirators instead of executing them, ever since the People have allowed them to gather two steps away from where they had just been rousted, ever since the People let them hold their secret meetings in broad daylight, ever since the People have respected those who have declared themselves to be inviolable. I am tired of repeating it, but as long as the conspirators are not killed, the conspiracies will not end. By dint of hatching new plots against public liberty, they will eventually succeed in destroying it. Through underhandedly sapping liberty, these aristocratic conspirators are working today to overthrow it. They are doing this by filling the administrative bodies and the courts with their kind, by hiring only reactionaries of the old regime, by enlisting the services of all bureaucrats, and by corrupting the poor through bribing armies of informers, cutthroats, and bandits. By deluding the People and by winning them over with kindness, promises, and gifts, the nobility will succeed in putting them back in chains and bringing about the counterrevolution. Their last plot that was just exposed consisted of arming the People against the People, and of having the Friends of Liberty's throats slit by the very hands of the poor who they are feeding. This horrible plot had been prepared at leisure. For a long time now, the ministers, and their agents in the provinces, have attracted to the capital a large number of the destitute, the dregs of the army, and the scum from every city in the kingdom. Sortable Date 1791-04-07 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived L'Ami du Peuple, no. 422 (7 April 1791), 5–7. Description An account of the resource In this article, Marat characteristically expresses his concern that, although new governmental institutions had been created, they remained under the control of aristocratic influences, hostile to the Revolution. This fear that those in power were themselves lacking in sincerity and devotion to the people would become more pronounced in Marat’s articles as the Revolution continued. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 556 Title A name given to the resource Marat Attacks the Nobility Relation A related resource https://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/556/ Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource April 7, 1791 Nobility Popular Politics Public Opinion Sans-culottes Text The Terror Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Sortable Date 1899-00-00 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Martyn Lyons, Napoleon Bonaparte and the Legacy of the French Revolution (London: Macmillan, 1994), 75-76. Description An account of the resource The prefect of the Haute-Garonne department headquartered in Toulouse reported on his efforts to establish control in a region known for its rebelliousness. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 553 Title A name given to the resource A Prefect in Action, 1800–1801 Relation A related resource https://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/553/ Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1899 Napoleon Bonaparte Provinces Text Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Text Any textual data included in the document In the centre of the hall, under a statue of justice, holding scales in one hand, and a sword in the other, with the book of laws by her side, sat Dumas, the president, with the other judges. Under them were seated the public accuser, Fouquier-Tinville, and his scribes. Three coloured ostrich plumes waved over their turned-up hats, à la Henri IV, and they wore a tri-coloured scarf. To the right were benches on which the accused were placed in several rows, and gendarmes, with carbines and fixed bayonets by their sides. To the left was the jury. Never can I forget the mournful appearance of these funereal processions to the place of execution. The march was opened by a detachment of mounted gendarmes—the carts followed; they were the same carts as those used in Paris for carrying wood; four boards were placed across them for seats, and on each board sat two, and sometimes three victims; their hands were tied behind their backs, and the constant jolting of the cart made them nod their heads up and down, to the great amusement of the spectators. On the front of the cart stood Samson, the executioner, or one of his sons or assistants; gendarmes on foot marched by the side; then followed a hackney-coach, in which was the Rapporteur [recorder] and his clerk, whose duty it was to witness the execution, and then return to Fouquier-Tinville, the Accusateur Public [public prosecutor], to report the execution of what they called the law. The process of execution was also a sad and heart-rending spectacle. In the middle of the Place de la Révolution was erected a guillotine, in front of a colossal statue of Liberty, represented seated on a rock, a Phrygian cap on her head, a spear in her hand, the other reposing on a shield. On one side of the scaffold were drawn out a sufficient number of carts, with large baskets painted red, to receive the heads and bodies of the victims. Those bearing the condemned moved on slowly to the foot of the guillotine; the culprits were led out in turn, and, if necessary, supported by two of the executioner's valets, as they were formerly called, but now denominated élèves de l'Executeur des hautes oeuvres de la justice [students of the executor of the great works of justice]; but their assistance was rarely required. Most of these unfortunates ascended the scaffold with a determined step—many of them looked up firmly on the menacing instrument of death, beholding for the last time the rays of the glorious sun, beaming on the polished axe; and I have seen some young men actually dance a few steps before they went up to be strapped to the perpendicular plane, which was then tilted to a horizontal plane in a moment, and ran on the grooves until the neck was secured and closed in by a moving board, when the head passed through what was called in derision, la lunette republicaine [the republican telescope]; the weighty knife was then dropped with a heavy fall; and, with incredible dexterity and rapidity, two executioners tossed the body into the basket, while another threw the head after it. Sortable Date 1790-00-00 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived John Gideon Millingen, Recollections of Republican France, from 1790–1801 (London: H. Colburn, 1848), 204–7, 221. Description An account of the resource This description of the proceedings of the revolutionary tribunal, and of the physical setting of the Place de la Révolution where the guillotine stood, by an unsympathetic English observer gives the flavor of the workings of revolutionary justice. The site of hundreds if not thousands of executions, this public space is now called the Place de la Concorde, "the place of peace," and is situated between the Ministries of the Army and Navy and the new meeting place of the National Assembly. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 552 Title A name given to the resource The Revolutionary Tribunal’s Use of the Guillotine Relation A related resource https://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/552/ Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1790 Clubs Laws Popular Politics Public Opinion Sans-culottes Text The Terror