Latest / The French Revolution Volume 1 - The Bastille / 023 - Book 4 Chapter 2 The Election

Transcript

023 - Book 4 Chapter 2 The Election · The French Revolution Volume 1 - The Bastille

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: The French Revolution, A history by Thomas Carlyle, Volume one,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Book four States General, Chapter two, The Election. This LibriVox
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: recording is in the public domain. Read by Peter Dan
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Book four, Chapter two, The Election. Up then and be doing.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: The royal signal word flies through France as through vast forests,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: the rushing of a mighty wind at parish churches, in
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: town halls, and every house of convocation by bailliages by
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: senatchalcis in whatever four men convene there with confusion, enough
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: are primary assemblies forming to elect your electors, such as
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: the form prescribed. Then to draw up your writ of
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: plaints and grievances, cayere de plaint de doliance, of which
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: latter there is no lack. With such virtue works this
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Royal January edict as it rolls rapidly in a leathern
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: males along these frost bound highways towards all the four winds,
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: like some fiatt or magic spell word, which such things
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: do resemble for always, as it sounds out at the
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: market cross accompanied with trumpet blast presided by by ye
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: seneschal or other minor functionary with beefeaters, or in country churches,
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: is droned forth after sermon or prone to de mess parasal,
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: and is registered posted and let fly all over the world.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: You behold how this multitudinous French people, so long simmering
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: and buzzing in eager expectancy, begins heaping and shaping itself
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: into organic groups, which organic groups again hold smaller organic
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: group lets. The inarticulate buzzing becomes articulate, speaking and acting
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: by primary assembly and then by secondary by successive elections
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: and infinite elaboration and scrutiny. According to prescribed process, Shall
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: the genuine plant and grievances be at length got to paper,
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: Shall the fit national representative be at length laid hold of?
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: How the whole people shakes itself as if it had
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: one life, And in thousand voiced rumor announces that it
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: is awake, suddenly out of long death sleep, and will
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: thenceforth sleep no more. The long looked for has come
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: at last. Wondrous news of victory, deliverance, enfranchisement sounds magical
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: through every heart. To the proud strong man it has come,
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: whose strong hands shall no more be guithed, to whom
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: bountless unconquered continents lie disclos'd. The weary day drudge has
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: heard of it. The beggar, with his crusts moistened in tears,
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: what to us also has hope reach'd down even to us.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: Hunger and hardship are not to be eternal. The bread
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: we extorted from the rugged glebe, and with the toil
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: of our sinews reaped and ground and kneaded into loaves,
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: was not wholly for another. Then, But we also shall
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: eat of it and be filled glorious news, answer the
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: prudent elders, But all too unlikely. Thus, at any rate,
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: may the lower people, who pay no money taxes and
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: have no right to vote, assiduously crowd round those that do,
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: And most halls of assembly within doors and without seem
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: animated enough. Paris alone of towns, is to have representatives,
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: the number of them twenty. Paris is divided into sixty districts,
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: each of which, assembled in some church or the like,
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: is choosing two electors. Official deputations pass from district to district.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: For all is inexperience as yet, and there is endless consulting.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: The streets swarm strangely with busy crowds, pacific, yet restless
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: and loquacious. At intervals is seen the gleam of military muskets,
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: especially about the palais, where Parliament, once more on duty,
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: sits querulous, almost tremulous. Busy is the French world in
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: those great days. What poorest speculative craftsman but will leave
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: his workshop if not to vote, yet to assist in
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: voting on all highways is all rustling and bustling over
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: the wide surface of France. Ever and anon through the
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: spring months. As the sower casts his corn abroad among
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: the furrows, sounds of congregating and dispersing of crowds in deliberation, acclamation,
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: voting by ballot and by voice rise discrepant towards the
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: ear of heaven, to which political phenomena add this economical one.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: The trade is stagnant and also bred getting deer. For
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: before the rigorous winter there was, as we said, a
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: rigorous summer with drought, and on the thirteenth of July
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: with destructive hail. What a fearful day all cried while
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: that tempest fell alas the next anniversary of it will
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: be worse. Under such aspect is France electing national representatives.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: The incidents and specialties of these elections belong not to
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: universal but to local or parish history. For which reason
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: let not the new troubles of Grenoble or Bessanson, the
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: bloodshed on the streets of Ran and consequent march thither
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: of the Breton young men, with manifesto by their mothers,
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: sisters and sweethearts, nor such like detain us. Here. It
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: is the same sad history everywhere, with superficial variations. A
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: reinstated parliament, as at Bessanson, which stands astonished at this
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: behemoth of a states general it had itself evoked, starts
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: forward with more or less audacity to fix a thorn
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: in its nose, and alas is instantaneously struck down and
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: hurled quite out. For the new popular force can use
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: not any arguments but breck bats or else. And perhaps
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: combined with this, it is an order of no bless
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: as in Brittany, which will beforehand tie up the third
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: estate that it harm not the old privileges, in which
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: act of tying up never so skillfully set about. There
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: is likewise no possibility of prospering. But the Bahamoth Briaraeus
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: snaps your cords like green rushes, tie up alas monsieur.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: And then as for your chivalry, rapier's valor and wager
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: of battle, think one moment, how can that answer? The
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: plebeian heart too has read life in it, which changes
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: not to paleness at glance. Even of you and the
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: six hundred Breton gentlemen assembled in arms for seventy two hours,
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: and the Cordelia's croister at Wrenn have to come out
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: again wiser than they entered. For the gnant youth, the
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: anger youth. All Brittany was a stir, mothers, sisters and
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: sweethearts shrieking after the march, the Breton no bless must
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: even let the mad world have its way. In other provinces,
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: the no bless, with equal good will finds it better
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: to stick to protests to well redacted cair of grievances
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: and satirical writings and speeches. Such is partially their course
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: in Provence, whether indeed Gabriel Honore Riquet, de Comte de
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: Mirabeau has rushed down from Paris to speak a word
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: in season. In Provence, the privileged, backed by their a parliament,
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: discover that such novelties, enjoined, though they be by royal edict,
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: tend to national detriment, and what is still more indisputable,
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: to impair the dignity of the no bless. Whereupon Mirabeau,
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: protesting allowed this same no bless amid huge tumult withindoors,
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: and without flatly determines to expel him from their assembly.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: No other method, not even that of silin excessive duels,
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: would answer with him. The obstraperous, fierce, glaring man expelled
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: he accordingly is in all countries at all times, exclaims
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: he departing. The aristocrats have implacably pursued every friend of
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: the people, and with tenfold implacability, if such a one
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: were himself born of the aristocracy. It was thus that
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: the last of the Gratchy perished by the hands of
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: the patricians. But he, being struck with the mortal stab,
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: flung dust towards heaven and called on the avenging deities.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: And from this dust there was born Marius. Marius not
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: so illustrious for exterminating the Kimbri as for overturning in
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: Rome the tyranny of the nobles, casting up which new
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: curious handful of dust through the printing press to breed
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: what it can and may Mirabeau stalks forth into the
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: third estate that he now to ingratiate himself with this
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: third estate, opened a cloth shop in Marseilles, and for
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: moments became a furnishing tailor. Or even the fable that
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: he did so is to us always among the pleasant
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: memorabilities of this era. Stranger Clothier never wielded the ell
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: wand and rent webs for men, or fractional parts of
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: men the feasts adoptif is indignant at such disparaging fable,
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: which nevertheless was widely believed in those days, But indeed
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: of a chili's in the heroic aged killed mutton, why
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: should not mirror Beau in the unheroic one's measure broadcloth.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: More authentic are his triumph progress, as through that disturbed district,
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: with mob jubilee, flaming torches, windows hired for two lowis,
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: and voluntary guard of a hundred men. He is deputy
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: elect both of A and of Marseilles, but will prefer A.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: He has opened his far sounding voice, the depths of
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: his far sounding soul. He can quell such virtue as
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: in a spoken word, the pride tumults of the rich,
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: the hunger tumults of the poor, and wild multitudes move
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: under him, as under the moon do billows of the sea.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: He has become a world compeller and ruler over men.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: One other incident and specialty, we note with how different
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: an interest it is of the Parliament of Paris, which
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: starts forward like the others, only with less audacity, seeing
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: better how it lay to nose ring that bahemoth of
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: a states general. Worthy Doctor Guillotin, respectable practitioner in Paris,
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: has drawn up his little plan of a cayear of Dolioces,
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: as had he not having the wish and gift the
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: clearest liberty to do. He is getting the people to
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: sign it, whereupon the surly Parliament summons him to give
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: an account of himself. He goes, but with all Paris
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: at his heels, which floods the outer courts, and obviously
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: signs the k even there. While the doctor is giving
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: account of himself within the parliament cannot too soon dismiss
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: Guillotine with compliments, to be borne home shoulder high. This
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: respectable guillotine we hope to behold once more, and perhaps
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: only once the parliament, not even once, but let it
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: be engulfed unseen by us. Meanwhile, such things, cheering as
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: they are, tend little to cheer the national creditor, or
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: indeed the creditor of any kind, In the midst of
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: universal portentous doubt. What's certainty can seem so certain as
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: money in the purse and the wisdom of keeping it there. Trading, speculation,
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: commerce of all kinds has, as far as possible, come
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: to a dead pause, and the hand of the industrious
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: lies idle in his bosom. Frightful enough, when now the
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: rigor of seasons has also done its part, and to
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: the scarcity of work is added scarcity of food. In
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: the opening spring, there come rumors of forestallment. There come kings, edicts,
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: petitions of bakers against millers, and at length, in the
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: month of April, troops of ragged lackaws and fierce cries
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: of starvation. These are the thrice famed brigands, an actual
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: existing quotity of persons, who long reflected and reverberated through
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: so many millions of heads, as in concave, multiplying mirrors
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: become a whole brigand world, and like a kind of
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: supernatural machinery, wondrously move the epochs of the revolution. The
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: brigands are here. The brigands are there, The brigands are coming.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: Not otherwise sounded the clang of Phoebus Apollo's silver bow,
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: scattering pestilence and pale terror. For this clang, too was
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: of the imagination preternatural, and it too walked in formless
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: and miserability, having made it itself alike to the night
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: nectycoss But remark at least for the first time, the
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: singular empire of suspicion in those lands in those days,
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: If poor famishing men shall, prior to death, gather in
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: groups and crowds, as the poor field fairs and plovers
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: do in bitter weather, were it but that they may
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: chirp mournfully together, and misery look in the eyes of misery.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: If famishing men what famishing field fairs cannot do, should discover,
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: once congregated, that they need not die while food is
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: in the land, since they are many, and with empty wallets,
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: have right hands. In all this, What need were there
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: of preternatural machinery to most people? None, but not to
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: French people. In a time of revolution, these brigands, as
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: Turgos also were fourteen years ago, have all been set
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: on enlisted, though without tuck of drum, by aristocrats, by democrats,
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: by dr Leon d'Artois, and enemy mean is the public
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: wheel Nay. Historians to this day will prove it by
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: one argument. These brigands, pretending to have no vital nevertheless
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: contrived to drink nay, have been seen drunk, an unexampled fact.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: But on the whole may we not predict that a
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: people with such a width of credulity and of incredulity,
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: the proper union of which makes suspicion and indeed unreasoned generally,
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: will see shapes enough of immortals fighting in its battle ranks,
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: and never want for epequ or machinery. Be this as
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: it may, the brigands are clearly got to Paris in
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: considerable multitudes, with sallow faces, lank hair, the true enthusiast complexion,
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: with sooty rags, and also with large clubs, which they
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: smite angrily against the pavement. These mingled in the election tumult,
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: would fain sign Guillotine's cair or any cahir or petition whatsoever.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: Could they but write their enthusiast complexion. The smiting of
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: their sticks bodes little good to any one, least of
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: all to rich master manufacturers of the suburb Sainte Antoine,
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: with whose workmen they can sort. End of Book four,
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: Chapter two,