Daily Life During the French Revolution (42 page)

ÉMIGRÉ
ARMIES

The defection of numerous officers from the regular army
and from France led to the formation of an
émigré
army, the first of
which was created in Baden in September 1790. Called the Black Legion, it was
commanded by the younger brother of Mirabeau. This unit was absorbed into the
army led by the counts of Provence and Artois—brothers of the king—who had
their headquarters at Koblenz. Other units were formed by the prince of Condé
and by the duke of Bourbon. The three forces reached their maximum strength of
nearly 25,000 by the summer of 1792. They were financed, in part, by the courts
of Spain, Austria, and Prussia, but the funds were never adequate. A major
problem was the lack of rank and file to serve under the aristocrats, who all
insisted on being officers. The result was companies of gentlemen who demanded
the same pay that they had received in the French royal army, a bone of
contention with the donor countries. Insolent and irresponsible behavior
reduced their effectiveness as a fighting force. For example, some 200
émigrés
were dismissed for pillage in the winter of 1791.

The
emigrés
gave advice to the duke of Brunswick,
commander of the Austro-Prussian armies, that was pure wishful thinking. They
drafted a manifest that was issued by the duke on July 25, 1792, threatening
the people of Paris. This only strengthened Parisians’ resolve to fight and
precipitated the overthrow of the monarchy two weeks later. They also
petitioned the duke to allow them to spearhead the assault on France, assuring
him that they would have the full support of the peasantry and would be able to
rally loyal regiments of the French frontline army to their cause. In the
summer of 1792, they invaded France, failing in even the simplest missions,
such as the capture of the small town of Thionville. Instead of attracting
popular support, they alienated the peasantry, arousing determined resistance
and increased national patriotism.

The haughty
émigrés
refused to follow orders, and,
on one occasion, Brunswick put the prince of Condé under arrest for
insubordination. They proved so incompetent that the emperor Francis II ordered
the dissolution of their army. By the end of 1792, only 5,000 men remained in
the army of Condé.

AFTER THE REVOLUTION

A law of September 5, 1798, enabled some young men to buy
their way out of conscription by paying a replacement, and many did. Those who
did fight in the Revolutionary Wars, which for many stretched into the
Napoleonic Wars, were disillusioned and resentful. The alien and distant government
and its laws had made an unwelcome intrusion into their lives in villages where
there was little or no sentiment of nationalism. Many who returned after the
wars found the local economy in worse shape than when they left, and their long
absences had been detrimental to the upkeep of the land, buildings, crops, and
livestock. Those who came back with disabilities, mental and physical, and
unable to work joined the destitute. Most had spent what would have been the
best years of their lives in military uniforms and regarded the experience with
bitterness, well aware that they had missed the chance to perhaps acquire some
land and build a modest life for themselves and raise a family. Their youth had
been wasted serving their country, while others with money had evaded that
obligation. Everyone knew that the system of conscription was grossly unfair.
The high rate of desertions also fed the increasing threat of banditry.

In the words of one ex-soldier,

Six
or seven years of lost youth . . . and all that because we had bad luck in the
lottery and that we lacked 3,000 francs to pay for a replacement.

THE NAVY

Like the army, the ranks of officers were theoretically
restricted to those of noble birth, but most nobles were not interested in the
navy, preferring not to risk the rigors of the sea. Competition for places in
the navy was thus much less keen than that in the army, even though there was
no purchase price—at least for ranks below that of admiral. In times of
shortage, officers had to be selected from commoners.

There was a type of naval conscription according to which
men under 60 years of age who lived in coastal districts or along navigable
rivers had to register in the naval reserve if they had any experience afloat.
They also had to be available for call-up in times of crisis. The system was as
unpopular with fishermen and bargemen as was the militia lottery with the
peasants.

A good deal of money was spent on the navy, for Louis XVI
wanted to keep France a strong sea power. Building new frigates and ships of
the line was not cheap, and a new naval harbor under construction at Cherbourg,
employing 3,000 men just before the Revolution, played its part in the huge and
growing deficit.

A French shipyard ca. 1774. The
hull of a new ship under construction can be seen in the background. In the
foreground is a dry dock into which the ship will later be moved and floated.
The large building is where the head shipwright oversees all the work.

14 - LAW AND ORDER

The
administration of justice in prerevolutionary times was “partial, venal,
infamous” in the words of Arthur Young. It was generally agreed that there was
no such thing in France as a fair and impartial verdict. In every case that
came before the court, judges favored the party that had bought them off.

In instances of land dispute, a party in the argument might
also be one of the several dozen judges of the court, all of whom had bought
their high positions. To counterbalance control in the provinces by the local
nobility and the 13 local parlements, the crown sent out intendants to each
area to enforce royal authority (especially taxation), and these officials
often came into conflict with the local courts and aristocracy.

The 13 regional parlements were judicial bodies of appeal;
they also were supposed to register royal edicts, although they sometimes did
also make laws. They might defy the king by refusing to register his edicts, in
which case the king could issue a
lit de justice,
forcing registration.
If this failed, he could exile the parlement to a provincial town where its
voice would be diminished, as Louis XVI did to the powerful parlement of Paris
in 1787 when it refused to register a new land tax. The members became heroes
to the people for defying the despotic king, who backed down, and the parlement
returned to Paris. It soon lost its popularity at the beginning of the
revolution when it opposed both the doubling of the number of members of the
Third Estate and voting by head in the Estates-General. All the parlements
played little or no role in the early months of the revolution and were
abolished by law on September 6, 1790.

The royal system of justice contained about 400 provincial
(or
bailliage
) courts. In the towns there were also municipal courts,
while throughout the countryside there were thousands of seigneurial and
ecclesiastical courts. The king still presided over all justice, but the
further one got from Versailles, the less influence he had, since royal demands
could take weeks to reach all corners of the country.

A Revolutionary Committee in
session.

CRIMES AND THE FRINGE SOCIETY

The old regime wanted social stability and hierarchy, but
absolute order had not been attained. There were riots from time to time in the
cities and insurrections among the peasants in the countryside. There was also
a fair amount of crime in the streets of the larger towns, where underworld
vagrants, thieves, and other marginal people posed a threat to established
society. Strict regulations were set out to curb their habits and to produce
order, backed by the police and, if necessary, the army. State control over
workers’ guilds (in theory if not so much in practice) and the regulation of
the wet-nursing trade and of prostitutes, among others, were attempts to bring
about order. Paris police inspectors responsible for keeping a check on
criminals operated a network of secret agents generally recruited from the
criminal class itself. The police were feared for their arbitrary capability to
snatch people off the street and, in the course of a few minutes, confine them
to a prison cell.

Physical pain formed a large part of the justice system. A
period in the pillory, which entailed great discomfort and public abuse, was in
itself unpleasant enough, but this might be followed by routine whippings and
even branding. A weekly occurrence in major cities, hanging of criminals for
aggravated crimes was a spectator sport. Prior to death, the condemned person
was subject to excruciating pain caused by tortures such as the breaking of all
four limbs with an iron bar, and the hanging itself was a prolonged ordeal of
strangulation.

LETTRES DE CACHET
AND LAW OF SUSPECTS

Introduced about the middle of the eighteenth century, the
lettres
de cachet
were anathema to the people. By royal decree, anyone could be
arrested and imprisoned without trial for an indefinite period of time. A
husband could have his wife incarcerated if he even suspected her of
infidelity. Unruly or uncontrollable sons and daughters might go to prison at
the request of their parents. Family honor was important, and the police and
government were ready to help protect it. Under Louis XVI, some 14,000
lettres
de cachet
were issued. The king simply signed the forms and had them sent
to the police or ministers who had requested them; these officials then filled
in the name of the person to be arrested.

This administrative arrest posed a continuous threat to
everyone, even nobles such as the duke of Orléans, who, by such a letter, was exiled
for disagreeing with the king. The system of
lettres de cachet,
which
promoted arbitrary arrest, was often condemned in the
cahiers
by members
of the Third Estate as an abuse of the people. The use of the
lettres
was
abolished by the Estates-General except in cases of sedition and family
delinquency.

One of the most draconian laws for the French people,
enacted on September 17, 1793, was the Law of Suspects, which formed the
underlying code of the Terror by giving the Committee of Public Safety broad
powers of arrest and punishment over the masses of humanity. It also gave
wide-ranging powers to local revolutionary committees. The Surveillance
Committees that had been constituted according to a law of March 21, 1793, were
responsible for drawing up the lists of suspects and for issuing arrest
warrants.

The
proof necessary to convict the enemies of the people is every kind of evidence,
either material or moral or verbal or written. . . . Every citizen has the
right to seize conspirators and counterrevolutionaries and to arraign them
before magistrates. He is required to denounce them when he knows of them. Law
of 22 Prairial Year II (June 10, 1794)