"Many of the cultivators," writes Dartigoyte,[93] "affect a supreme indifference for this splendid crop. One must have seen it, as Ihave, to believe how great the neglect of the wheat is in certain parts, how it is smothered by the grass . . . . Draft, if the case requires it, a certain number of inhabitants in this or that commune to work in another one. . . . Every man who refuses to work, except on the 'decade' day, must be punished as an ill-disposed citizen, as a royalist." -" Generous friends of nature," writes Ferry,[94] introduce amongst you, perpetuate around you, the habit of working in common and begin with the present crop. Do not spare either indolent women or indolent men, those social parasites, many of whom you doubtless have in your midst. What! allow lazy men and lazy women where we are! Where should we find a Republican police? . . . Immediately on the reception of this present order the municipal officers of each commune will convoke all citoyennes in the Temple of the Eternal and urge them, in the name of the law, to devote themselves to the labors of harvesting. Those women who fail in this patriotic duty, shall be excluded from the assemblies, from the national festivals, while all good citoyennes are requested to repel them from their homes. All good citizens are requested to give to this rural festivity that sentimental character which befits it."- And the programme is carried out, here in idyllic shape and there under compulsion. Around Avignon,[95] the commanding officer, the battalions of volunteers, and patriotic ladies, "the wives and daughters of patriots," inscribe themselves as harvesters. Around Arles, "the municipality drafts all the inhabitants; patrols are sent into the country to compel all who are engaged on other work to leave it and do the harvesting." The Convention, on its side, orders[96] the release, "provisionally, of all ploughmen, day-laborers, reapers, and professional artisans and brewers, in the country and in the market towns and communes, the population of which is not over twelve hundred inhabitants, and who are confined as 'suspects.' " - In other terms, physical necessity has imposed silence on the inept theory; above all things, the crop must be harvested, and indispensable arms be restored to the field of labor. The governors of France are compelled to put on the brake, if only for an instant, at the last moment, at sight of the yawning abyss, of approaching and actual famine; France was then gliding into it, and, if not engulfed, it is simply a miracle.
Four fortunate circumstances, at the last hour, concur to keep her suspended on the hither brink of the precipice. - The winter chances to be exceptionally mild.[97] The vegetables which make up for the absence of bread and meat provide food for April and May, while the remarkably fine harvest, almost spontaneous, is three weeks in advance. - Another, and the second piece of good fortune, consists in the great convoy from America, one hundred and sixteen vessels loaded with grain, which reached Brest on the 8th of June, 1794, in spite of English cruisers, thanks to the sacrifice of the fleet that protected it and which, eight days previously, had succumbed in its behalf. The third stroke of fortune is the entry of a victorious army into the enemies country and feeding itself through foreign requisitions, in Belgium, in the Palatinate and on the frontier provinces of Italy and Spain. - Finally, most fortunate of all, Robespierre, Saint Just and Couthon, the Paris commune and the theorist Jacobins, are guillotined on the 23rd of July, and with them falls despotic socialism.
Henceforth, the Jacobin edifice crumbles, owing to great crevices in its walls. The "maximum," in fact, is no longer maintained, while the Convention, at the end of December, 1794, legally abolishes it. The farmers now sell as they please and at two prices, according as they are paid in assignats or coin; their hope, confidence and courage are restored; in October and November, 1794, they voluntarily do their own plowing and planting, and still more gladly will they gather in their own crops in July, 1795. Nevertheless, we can judge by the discouragement into which they had been plunged by four months of the system, the utter prostration into which they would have fallen had the system lasted an indefinite time. It is very probable that cultivation at the end of one or two years would have proved unproductive or have ceased altogether. Already, subject to every sort of exhortation and threat, the peasant had remained inert, apparently deaf and insensible, like an overloaded beast of burden which, so often struck, grows obstinate or sinks down and refuses to move. It is evident that he would have never stirred again could Saint-Just, holding him by the throat, have bound him hand and foot, as he had done at Strasbourg, in the multiplied knots of his Spartan Utopia. We should have seen what labor and the stagnation it produces comes to, when managed through State maneuvers by administrative manikins and humanitarian automatons. This experiment had been tried in China, in the eleventh century, and according to principles, long and regularly, by a well manipulated and omnipotent State, on the most industrious and soberest people in the world, and men died in myriads like flies. If the French, at the end of 1794 and during the following years did not die like flies, it was because the Jacobin system was relaxed too soon.[98]
VI. Relaxation.
Relaxation of the Revolutionary system after Thermidor. - Repeal of the Maximum. - New situation of the peasant. - He begins to cultivation again. - Requisition of grain by the State. - The cultivator indemnifies himself at the expense of private persons. -Multiplication and increasing decline of Assignats. The classes who have to bear the burden. - Famine and misery during year III, and the first half of year IV. - In the country.- In the small towns. - In large towns and cities.