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Handbook of Firearms and
Ballistics
Examining and Interpreting
Forensic Evidence
Second Edition
Brian J. Heard

A John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Publication

Handbook of Firearms and Ballistics

Second Edition
Handbook of Firearms and
Ballistics
Examining and Interpreting
Forensic Evidence
Second Edition
Brian J. Heard

A John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Publication

This edition first published 2008, © 2008 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Wiley-Blackwell is an imprint of John Wiley & Sons, formed by the merger of Wiley’s global Scientific,
Technical and Medical business with Blackwell Publishing.

Registered office: John Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19
8SQ, UK

Other Editorial Offices:

9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK
111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, USA

For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services and for information about how to apply
for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at www.wiley.com/
wiley-blackwell

The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior
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Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may
not be available in electronic books.

Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All
brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or
registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publisher is not associated with any product
or vendor mentioned in this book. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative
information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold on the understanding that the publisher
is not engaged in rendering professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is
required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Heard, Brian J.
Handbook of firearms and ballistics : examining and interpreting forensic evidence / by Brian J. Heard.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-470-69460-2
1. Forensic ballistics. 2. Firearms. 3. Firearms–Identification. I. Title.
HV8077.H43 2008
363.25′62–dc 22
2008029101

ISBN: 978-0-470-69460-2

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Set in 10.5/12.5 Sabon by SNP Best-Set Typesetter Ltd, Hong Kong.

Printed in Singapore by Markono Print Media Pte Ltd.

First Impression 2008
Contents

Developments in Forensic Science ix

Acknowledgements xi
Foreword xiii
1 Firearms 1
1.1 A Brief History of Firearms 1
1.2 Weapon Types and Their Operation 19
1.3 Proof Marks 32
Further Reading 42

2 Ammunition 43
2.1 A Brief History of Ammunition 43
2.2 Ammunition Components 48
2.3 Non-toxic Shot 77
2.4 A Brief History of Propellants 80
2.5 Priming Compounds and Primers 86
2.6 Headstamp Markings on Ammunition 94
Reference 99

3 Ballistics 101
3.1 Internal, External and Terminal Ballistics 101
3.2 Internal Ballistics 102
3.3 External Ballistics 109
3.4 Terminal Ballistics 124
References 143

4 Forensic Firearms Examination 145

4.1 A Brief History of Forensic Firearms Identification 145
4.2 Rifling Types and Their Identification 154
4.3 Fluted, Annular Ringed, Helical, Perforated and Oversized Chambers 166
4.4 Basic Concepts of Striation Matching 170
4.5 Basic Methodology Used in Comparison Microscopy 182
4.6 Mathematical Proof of Striation Matches 186
4.7 Accidental Discharge 191
4.8 Identification of Calibre from the Bullet Entry Hole 197
4.9 Ricochet Analysis 200
4.10 Bullet Penetration and Trajectory through Glass 204
References 208
vi CONTENTS

5 Range of Firing Estimations and Bullet Hole Examinations 211

5.1 Introduction 211
5.2 The Use of X-ray Photography 212
5.3 Range of Firing Estimations for Pistols and Rifles 219
5.4 Chemical Tests for Range of Firing Estimations and Bullet Entry/Exit
Hole Identification 227
5.5 Range of Firing Estimations for Shotguns 233
References 239

6 Gunshot Residue Examination 241

6.1 Introduction 241
6.2 Formation of Discharge Residue 241
6.3 Distribution of GSR Particles 242
6.4 Identification of GSR Particles 243
6.5 The Use of the SEM for GSR Detection 247
6.6 Sample Collection 248
6.7 GSR Retention 251
6.8 Conservation of GSR Particles on the Hands 251
6.9 GSR Distribution on the Hands 252
6.10 Identification of Type of Ammunition, Country of Origin from
GSR Analysis 255
6.11 Environmental Contaminants 256
6.12 Sources of Elements Commonly Found in Lead-Based GSRs 257
6.13 Extending the Recovery Period for GSR 259
References 268

7 Gun-Handling Tests 271

7.1 Introduction 271
7.2 Methodology for Ferrozine Use 274
7.3 Case Notes 275
References 276

8 Restoration of Erased Numbers 277

8.1 Introduction 277
8.2 Methods Used for Removal of Serial Numbers 277
8.3 Theory behind Number Restoration 278
8.4 Non-recoverable Methods of Number Removal 279
8.5 Practice of Number Restoration 280
8.6 Chemical Methods of Restoration 280
8.7 Reagents Used for Various Metals 281
8.8 Electrolytic Methods of Restoration 283
8.9 Reagents Used 283
8.10 Ultrasonic Cavitation for Restoration 284
8.11 Magnetic Particle Method for Restoration 284
8.12 Other Methods of Restoration 285
8.13 Laser-Etched Serial Numbers and Bar Codes and Their Restoration 286
References 288

9 Qualifying the Expert and Cross-Examination Questions 291

9.1 Introduction 291
9.2 General Background Questions 293
 CONTENTS vii

9.3 Comparison Microscopy 294

9.4 GSRs 297
9.5 Ferrozine Test 300
9.6 Standard of Review: ‘Daubert Trilogy’ 300
References 302

10 Classification of Firearm-Related Death 305

10.1 Multiple-Shot Suicides 307
References 309

11 Glossary 311
Appendix 1 Important dates in the History of Firearms from 1247 333
Appendix 2 GSR results for Chinese and USSR ammunition 341
Appendix 3 Primer content of some cartridge-operated nail guns 345
Appendix 4 Commercial and General Abbreviations for
Bullet Configurations 347
Appendix 5 Trade Names 353
Appendix 6 Gun Marks 373
Appendix 7 Powder Burn Rate 377
Appendix 8 Hearing Loss 381
Appendix 9 General Firearms Values Conversion Table 389
Index 393
Developments in Forensic Science

The world of forensic science is changing at a very fast pace. This is in terms
of the provision of forensic science services, the development of technologies
and knowledge and the interpretation of analytical and other data as it is applied
within forensic practice. Practicing forensic scientists are constantly striving to
deliver the very best for the judicial process and as such need a reliable and
robust knowledge base within their diverse disciplines. It is hoped that this book
series will be a valuable resource for forensic science practitioners in the pursuit
of such knowledge.
The Forensic Science Society is the professional body for forensic practitioners
in the United Kingdom. The Society was founded in 1959 and gained profes-
sional body status in 2006. The Society is committed to the development of the
forensic sciences in all of its many facets and in particular to the delivery of
highly professional and worthwhile publications within these disciplines through
ventures such as this book series.

Dr. Niamh Nic Daéid

Series editor.
Acknowledgements

In writing the second edition of this book I have been assisted by more people
than I could begin to recount. Of these, a few deserve special mention.
Quenten Ford not only for his invaluable help in formulating the outline of
the original book, but also for his assistance in correcting the many typos that
crept in.
Barbara Scott for her help with the statistics and various formulae used in
both editions.
Dr James Hamby, Evan Thompson and Chris Trumble for all their help and
advice in so many ways.
And last, but not least Barbara, Edward and Emily, my wife and children, for
all their support and understanding without which I could never have written
this book.
Foreword

Medico-legal analysis forms, perhaps beyond all other branches, the most impor-
tant work undertaken by the Analyst . . . its responsibility and importance lies in
the fact that, as the term itself suggests, questions of health, or even of life or death
are involved, and secondly, that the work performed will usually result in an action
at law, either civil or criminal . . . For these reasons the work demands the greatest
skill and experience that can be brought to bear upon it the best instrumental
equipment that can be procured, the utmost patience, the most rigidly exact work,
and, lastly, a sufficiency of time. . . .

Stirring and eminently appropriate sentiments which would do justice to any

modern forensic laboratory administrator. The fact that these words were spoken
by E.R. Dovey, Government Analyst of Hong Kong, in an address in 1917, is
both a remarkable testament to that scientist and a realization that even 80
years ago, the profession he represented fully appreciated the vital role that
forensic science can play in the justice system.
Incredible advances have been made in the sciences over the last few decades,
and modern forensic laboratories are now staffed by teams of specialists, all
experts in their own particular fields. The days are past when a forensic scientist
appeared in the witness box one day as an expert in blood grouping, the next
as a questioned document examiner and a third day as a suspicious fire investi-
gator. Such ‘generalists’ do still present themselves from time to time, but
informed courts now afford them a level of credence bordering on ridicule, and
rightly so!
Increasing specialization and sophistication of scientific method has, however,
widened the gulf of knowledge between the scientist, the lawyer and the jury.
With a poor level of scientific literacy in the population at large, frequent
criticism of the capacity of scientists to express themselves intelligibly to a lay
xiv FOREWORD

audience, and a predominance of barristers who are unable or unwilling to help

bridge the comprehension gap, that gulf is in danger of widening further.
The Select Committee on Science and Technology (House of Lords 5th Report
1992/3) has constructively, and to some, controversially, pointed the way
forward with recommendations for pre-trial conferences between counsel and
own experts as a norm rather than an occasion; pre-trial review between experts
of both sides to define disagreements; encouragement for concluding statements
by experts before leaving the witness box; increasing use of visual aids; and
finally, for forensic science to feature more prominently in a lawyer’s training.
To satisfy the last recommendation, however, there is a need for instructional
and informational textbooks on the specialist areas of the forensic sciences
written with the practising criminal lawyer in mind, which bridge the gap
between the handbooks for the expert and a ‘good read’ for the lay reader of
scientific bent. It is to be hoped that this book fills that purpose in the ballistics
field.

BRYCE N. DAILLY BSc, PhD, JP

Government Chemist, Hong Kong, (retired)
1
Firearms

1.1 A Brief History of Firearms

1.1.1 Early hand cannons

The earliest type of handgun was simply a small cannon of wrought iron or
bronze, fitted to a frame or stock with metal bands or leather thongs. These
weapons were loaded from the muzzle end of the barrel with powder, wad and
ball. A small hole at the breech end of the barrel, the touch hole, was provided
with a pan into which a priming charge of powder was placed. On igniting this
priming charge, either with a hot iron or lighted match, fire flashed through the
touch hole and into the main powder charge to discharge the weapon.
These early weapons could have been little more than psychological deterrents
being clumsy, slow to fire and difficult to aim. In addition, rain or damp weather
had an adverse effect on the priming charge making it impossible to ignite.
Their first reported use is difficult to ascertain with any degree of certainty,
but a number of instances are reported in Spain between 1247 and 1311. In the
records for the Belgian city of Ghent, there are confirmed sightings of the use
of hand cannons in Germany in 1313. One of the earliest illustrations concern-
ing the use of hand cannons appears in the fifteenth century fresco in the Palazzo
Publico, Sienna, Italy.
The first recorded use of the hand cannon as a cavalry weapon appeared in
1449 in the manuscripts of Marianus Jacobus. This shows a mounted soldier
with such a weapon resting on a fork attached to the pommel of the saddle. It
is interesting to note that the use of the saddle pommel to either carry or aim

Handbook of Firearms and Ballistics: Second Edition Brian J. Heard

© 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
2 CH1 FIREARMS

Figure 1.1 Early hand cannon.

the hand guns could be the origin of the word ‘pistol’, the early cavalry word
for the pommel of the saddle being ‘pistallo’.
Combinations of the battle axe and hand cannon were used in the sixteenth
century, and a number of these can be found in the Tower of London. One
English development of this consisted of a large mace, the head of which had
a number of separate barrels. At the rear of the barrels, a concealed chamber
containing priming powder led to all the barrels. When the priming compound
was ignited, all the barrels discharged at once.

1.1.2 The matchlock

This was really the first major advance in pistols as it enabled the weapon to
be fired in one hand and also gave some opportunity to aim it as well.
The construction of the matchlock was exactly the same as the hand cannon
in that it was muzzle loaded and had a touch hole covered with a priming
charge. The only difference was that the match, a slow-burning piece of cord
used to ignite the priming charge, was held in a curved hook screwed to the
side of the frame. To fire the gun, the hook was merely pushed forward to drop
 A BRIEF HISTORY OF FIREARMS 3

Figure 1.2 Matchlock (by courtesy of the Association of Firearms and Toolmark
Examiners).

the burning end of the match into the priming charge. As these weapons became
more sophisticated, the curved hook was embellished and took on the form of
a snake and became known as the weapon’s serpentine.
Eventually, the tail of the serpentine was lengthened and became the forerun-
ner of the modern trigger. Further refinements included the use of a spring to
hold the head back into a safety position. The final refinement consisted of a
system whereby when the tail of the serpentine was pulled, the match rapidly
fell into the priming compound under spring pressure. This refinement, a true
trigger mechanism, provided better ignition and assisted aiming considerably
(Figure 1.2).
It was during the era of the matchlock that reliable English records appeared,
and it is recorded that Henry VIII, who reigned from 1509 until 1547, armed
many of his cavalry with matchlocks. The first true revolving weapon is also
attributed to the period of Henry VIII and is on show in the Tower of London.
This weapon consists of a single barrel and four revolving chambers. Each
chamber is provided with its own touch hole and priming chamber which has
a sliding cover. Although the actual lock is missing from the Tower of London
weapon, its construction strongly suggests a single matchlock was used.
The major defect with the matchlock design was that it required a slow-
burning ‘match’ for ignition. As a result, it was of little use for surprise attack
or in damp or rainy conditions.

1.1.3 The wheel lock

With the advent of the wheel lock the lighted match used in the matchlock was no
longer necessary. This important innovation in the field of firearms design made
ambush possible as well as making the firearm a practical weapon for hunting.
When fired from the shoulder, the wheel lock was often referred to as an
arquebus from the shape of the butt which was often curved to fit the shoulder.
4 CH1 FIREARMS

Another name, strictly only for much heavier calibre weapons, was the hacque-
but, which literally means ‘gun with a hook’. This referred to a hook projecting
from the bottom of the barrel. This hook was placed over a wall, or some other
object, to help take up the recoil of firing.
In its simplest form, the wheel lock consisted of a serrated steel wheel,
mounted on the side of the weapon at the rear of the barrel. The wheel was
spring-loaded via a chain round its axle with a small key or spanner similar to
a watch drum (Figure 1.3). When the wheel was turned with a spanner, the
chain wound round the axle and the spring was tensioned. A simple bar inside
the lockwork kept the wheel from unwinding until released with the trigger.
Part of the wheel protruded into a small pan, the flash pan or priming pan,
which contained the priming charge for the touch hole. The serpentine, instead
of containing a slow-burning match, had a piece of iron pyrite fixed in its jaws.
This was kept in tight contact with the serrated wheel by means of a strong
spring. On pressing the trigger, the bar was withdrawn from the grooved wheel
which then turned on its axle. Sparks produced from the friction of the pyrite
on the serrated wheel ignited the priming charge which in turn ignited the main
powder charge and fired the weapon.
The wheel lock was a tremendous advance over the slow and cumbersome
matchlock. It could be carried ready to fire and with a small cover over the flash
pan, it was relatively impervious to all but the heaviest rain. The mechanism
was, however, complicated and expensive, and if the spanner to tension the
spring was lost, the gun was useless.
There is some dispute as to who originally invented the wheel lock, but it has
been ascribed to Johann Kiefuss of Nuremberg, Germany in 1517.
Whilst the wheel lock reached an advanced stage of development in Germany,
France, Belgium and Italy towards the close of the sixteenth century, England
showed little interest in this type of weapon.

Figure 1.3 Wheel lock (by courtesy of the Association of Firearms and Toolmark
Examiners).
 A BRIEF HISTORY OF FIREARMS 5

Records show that the wheel lock was still being widely manufactured in
Europe as late as 1640, but by the turn of the century, it was making way for
its successor.

1.1.4 The snaphaunce

The snaphaunce first appeared around 1570, and was really an early form of
the flintlock. This mechanism worked by attaching the flint to a spring-loaded
arm. When the trigger is pressed, the cover slides off the flash pan, then the arm
snaps forward striking the flint against a metal plate over the flash pan produc-
ing sparks to ignite the powder.
Whilst this mechanism was much simpler and less expensive than the wheel
lock, the German gunsmiths, who tended to ignore the technical advances of
other nationalities, continued to produce and improve upon the wheel lock up
until the early eighteenth century.

1.1.5 The flintlock

The ignition system which superseded that of the wheel lock was a simple
mechanism which provided a spark by striking a piece of flint against a steel
plate. The flint was held in the jaws of a small vice on a pivoted arm, called the
cock. This was where the term to ‘cock the hammer’ originated.
The steel, which was called the frizzen, was placed on another pivoting arm
opposite the cock, and the pan containing the priming compound was placed
directly below the frizzen. When the trigger was pulled, a strong spring swung
the cock in an arc so that the flint struck the steel a glancing blow. The glancing
blow produced a shower of sparks which dropped into the priming pan igniting
the priming powder. The flash produced by the ignited priming powder travelled
through the touch hole, thus igniting the main charge and discharging the weapon.
The flintlock represented a great advance in weapon design. It was cheap,
reliable and not overly susceptible to damp or rainy conditions. Unlike the
complicated and expensive wheel lock, this was a weapon which could be issued
in large numbers to foot soldiers and cavalry alike.
As is the case with most weapon systems, it is very difficult to pinpoint an
exact date for the introduction of the flintlock ignition system. There are indica-
tions of it being used in the middle of the sixteenth century, although its first
wide use cannot be established with acceptable proof until the beginning of the
seventeenth century (Figure 1.4).
Three basic types of flintlock were made:

• Snaphaunce – a weapon with the mainspring inside the lock plate and a
priming pan cover which had to be manually pushed back before firing.
6 CH1 FIREARMS

Figure 1.4 Flintlock (by courtesy of the Association of Firearms and Toolmark
Examiners).

• Miquelet – a weapon with the mainspring outside the lockplate, but with a
frizzen and priming pan cover all in one piece. In this lock type, the pan cover
was automatically pushed out of the way as the flint struck the frizzen.
• True flintlock – a weapon with a mainspring inside the lock plate and with
the frizzen and priming pan cover in one piece. This also had a half-cock
safety position enabling the weapon to be carried safely with the barrel loaded
and the priming pan primed with powder. This system was probably invented
by Mann Le Bourgeoys, a gunmaker for Louis XIII of France, in about 1615.

Flintlock pistols, muskets (long-barrelled weapons with a smooth bore) and

shotguns were produced with the flintlock mechanism. There was even a patent
for flintlock revolvers issued in 1661.

1.1.6 The percussion system

The flintlock continued to be used for almost 200 years and it was not until
1807 that a Scottish minister, Alexander John Forsyth, revolutionized the igni-
tion of gunpowder by using a highly sensitive compound which exploded on
being struck. This compound, mercury fulminate, when struck by a hammer,
produced a flash strong enough to ignite the main charge of powder in the
barrel. A separate priming powder and sparking system was now no longer
required (Figure 1.5). With this invention, the basis for the self-contained car-
tridge was laid and a whole new field of possibilities was opened up.
Once this type of ignition, known as percussion priming, had been invented,
it still took some time to perfect ways of applying it. From 1807 until 1814, a
wide range of systems were invented for the application of the percussion
 A BRIEF HISTORY OF FIREARMS 7

Figure 1.5 Percussion cap system (by courtesy of the Association of Firearms and
Toolmark Examiners).

priming system including the Forsyth scent bottle, pill locks, tube locks and the
Pauly paper cap.
The final form, the percussion cup, was claimed by a large number of inven-
tors. It is probably attributable to Joshua Shaw, an Anglo-American living in
Philadelphia in 1814. Shaw employed a small iron cup into which was placed
a small quantity of mercury fulminate. This was placed over a small tube, called
a nipple, projecting from the rear of the barrel. The hammer striking the mercury
fulminate in the cup caused it to detonate and so send a flame down the nipple
tube igniting the main charge in the barrel.

1.1.7 The pinfire system

Introduced to the United Kingdom at the Great Exhibition in London in 1851

by Lefaucheux, the pinfire weapon was one of the earliest true breech-loading
weapons using a self-contained cartridge in which the propellant, missile and
primer were all held together in a brass case.
In this system, the percussion cup was inside the cartridge case whilst a pin,
which rested on the percussion cup, protruded through the side of the cartridge
case. Striking the pin with the weapon’s hammer drove the pin into the priming
compound causing it to detonate and so ignite the main propellant charge
(Figure 1.6).
The pin, which protruded through the weapon’s chamber, not only served to
locate the round in its correct position, but also aided extraction of the fired
cartridge case.
The pinfire was at its most popular between 1890 and 1910 and was still
readily available in Europe until 1940. It had, however, fallen out of favour in
England by 1914 and was virtually unobtainable by 1935.
8 CH1 FIREARMS

Figure 1.6 Pinfire system (by courtesy of the Association of Firearms and Toolmark
Examiners).

Calibres available in the pinfire revolvers were 5, 7, 9, 12 and 15 mm, whilst

shotgun and rifle ammunition in 9 mm, 12 bore and various other calibres was
also available.
The really great advance of the pinfire system was, however, not just the
concept of a self-contained cartridge, but obturation, the ability of the cartridge
case under pressure to swell and so seal the chamber preventing the rearward
escape of gases.

1.1.8 The rimfire system

Whilst the pinfire system was a significant step forward, it did have a number
of drawbacks, not least of which was the propensity of the cartridge to discharge
if dropped onto its pin. This problem was all but eliminated by the rimfire
which, like the pinfire, was exhibited at the Great Exhibition in 1851.
The rimfire cartridge is a thin-walled cartridge with a hollow flanged rim.
Into this rim is spun a small quantity of a priming compound. Crushing the rim
with the firing pin causes the priming compound to explode, thus igniting the
propellant inside the case.
The initial development of this system was made by a Paris gunsmith, Flobert,
who had working examples of it as early as 1847 (Figure 1.7).
It was, however, some time before it gained acceptance, and it was not until
1855 that Smith and Wesson manufactured the first revolver to fire rimfire car-
tridges. This was a hinged-frame 0.22″ calibre weapon in which the barrel
tipped up by means of a hinge on the top of the frame. This enabled the cylinder
to be removed when loading and unloading the weapon.
Although a great step forward, the rimfire was only suitable for high-pressure
weapons in small calibre. Anything above 0.22″ and the soft rim necessary for
the ignition system resulted in cartridge case failures.
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to his character. A Bohemian he was not; he was a successful and
an orderly man; but energy he had, and if there are writers who
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in their surroundings.
As to his private life, affection dominated him. Upon the faith of
some who did not know him he acquired the character of a
debauchee. For the support of this view there is not a tittle of direct
evidence. He certainly loved those pleasures of the senses which
Robespierre refused, and which Roland was unable to enjoy; but
that his good dinners were orgies or of any illegitimate loves (once
he had married the woman to whom he was so devotedly attached)
there is no shadow of proof. His friends also he loved, and above all,
from the bottom of his soul, he loved France. His faults—and they
were many—his vices (and a severe critic would have discovered
these also) flowed from two sources: first, he was too little of an
idealist, too much absorbed in the immediate thing; secondly, he
suffered from all the evil effects that abundant energy may produce
—the habit of oaths, the rhetoric of sudden diatribes, violent and
overstrained action, with its subsequent demand for repose.
Weighted with these conditions he enters the arena, supported by
not quite thirty fruitful years, by a happy marriage, by an intense
conviction, and by the talents of a man who has not yet tasted
defeat. I repeat the sentence applied to another: “Active and sane,
robust and ready for glory, the things he loved were his wife and the
circumstance of power.”
 CHAPTER III
DANTON AT THE CORDELIERS

A man who is destined to represent at any moment the chief

energies of a nation, especially a man who will not only represent but
lead, must, by his nature, follow the national methods on his road to
power.
His career must be nearly parallel (so to speak) with the direction
of the national energies, and must merge with their main current at
an imperceptible angle. It is the chief error of those who deliberately
plan success that they will not leave themselves amenable to such
influences, and it is the most frequent cause of their failure. Thus
such men as arrive at great heights of power are most often
observed to succeed by a kind of fatality, which is nothing more than
the course of natures vigorous and original, but, at the same time,
yielding unconsciously to an environment with which they
sympathise, or to which they were born.
It is not difficult to determine the accidents of action, temperament,
and locality which predispose to success in one’s own society. It is
less easy to appreciate what corresponds to them under foreign
conditions.
It was seen in the first chapter that Paris sums up in herself those
conditions in the case of the French nation; and it was seen also (a
point of peculiar importance) that Paris at the close of the eighteenth
century was ill at ease—out of herself, demanding her place and yet
anxious as to the means by which it might be attained.
It might be imagined that this was a kind of usurpation. Such a
belief is entertained by most foreigners, and certainly it has not been
lacking among the more idealist of the French Republicans.
Nevertheless, such a view is erroneous, and the Girondists, for all
their virtues, went (as we shall discover) against the nature of things
when they would have made of Paris but one of the cities, or rather
but “an aliquot voting part” of the nation. The demand of Paris was
essentially reasonable, and had to be satisfied. Why? Because
without her leadership not this thing or that thing would have been
done, but nothing would have been done. The crowds who waited
round the coaching inns in the country towns for news of the city in
the great early days of ’89, by their very attitude asked and expected
Paris to move.
Paris, then, is Danton’s gate. It is up the flood of the Parisian tide
that he floats. That tide rises much higher than even he had thought
possible, and it throws him at last on the high inaccessible place of
the 10th of August. Once there, from a pinnacle he sees all France.
Just as Cromwell was the Puritan soldier till he reached power, and
then became, or desired to become, the representative of England,
so Danton is the Parisian Frondeur till from a place of responsibility
and direction he aims partly at the realisation of French ideas, but
mainly at the integrity and salvation of France itself.
Here he is, then, in the two years of active discussion that precede
the elections, by an accident of ambition, Parisian; one of a group of
young provincial lawyers, but the most successful of them all. Some
months after his marriage, in the course of 1788[33] (we are not
certain of the exact date), he moved into the house in which he lived
to his death, six angry years. It was the corner house of the Cour du
Commerce and the Rue des Cordeliers.[34] The house was better
than that which he had inhabited in the Rue des Mauvaises Paroles,
when he bought his practice; on the other hand, it was in a
somewhat less expensive neighbourhood. We may justly infer,
however, from the greater size of his new apartments, and from the
fact that he kept his office still in the old house in the Rue de la
Tixanderie, just behind the Hotel de Ville, that he had prospered in
his profession, and the inference is sustained by our knowledge of
the importance of his cases and his clients. As to the exact situation
which he chose, it was doubtless determined by its proximity to the
apartments of his friends. Here lived Desmoulins, his chief friend, a
year younger than himself, coming (after his marriage in 1790) to live
in the same house; for then, as now, in Paris it was not the habit to
take a whole house but a flat, and Danton was on the first,
Desmoulins on the second floor. Just across the river, over the Pont
Neuf, was the café on the Quai de l’École which his father-in-law had
kept, and above all, he was here in the midst of the youth of the
schools. It was the slope of the famous hill of the University. Close
by he would find the Café Procope, of which Desmoulins had written
with such enthusiasm, which had once been illuminated with the little
smile of Voltaire, which had heard the assertion of Diderot, and
which in 1788 was noisy every night with discussion and speech and
applause. All that atmosphere of debate which comes unconsciously
to young men learning rose on the sides of the Mont Parnasse and
centred in the room; and here in the winter of the year, in a society
so entirely of his own rank that the high bourgeoisie and the
noblesse knew nothing of its power, his great voice and generous
face filled the circle with their energy. But there was yet no dream of
revolution, still less of violence. France was waiting for great things,
but they were to come of themselves, or on the wave of universal
enthusiasm. The fire, however, was lit, and the group which
afterwards passed from the Montagne to the scaffold of Germinal
was already formed.
To all this, however, which was but the relaxation of an abundant
spirit, must be added days of continual and serious work on the other
side of the river. If his nights were in the Latin Quarter, his days were
in the office of the Rue de la Tixanderie. A minister of the crown[35]
does not intrust his family affairs to such a wastrel as the chance
memoirs of opponents would make of Danton at this period, nor a
lawyer who is never in his chambers, but gadding about politicising,
get the conduct of one of the most important Chancery cases of his
day.
There is one matter in these pre-revolutionary months which is of
no very great importance, but which is well worth noticing, though
the confusion apparent in our one account of it has lessened its
value. There can be no doubt that Barentin, apart from his business
relations, was personally intimate with Danton; and when that careful
and moderate man had succeeded Lamoignon in September 1788,
there was some kind of informal offer made to Danton of what we
should call an official secretaryship to the minister[36]—or rather we
have no name for it, for the ministry in France was not associated
with legislation, but only with executive power, and therefore
positions in its gifts had not the political importance they have with
us.
As to the precise date of the offer, how far it was pressed, or how
seriously it was made, we can have no exact knowledge. But it
seems to me unwise to reject so characteristic an anecdote, and one
which fits in so well with Danton’s known position, merely on the
somewhat strained theory that documentary evidence alone should
be admitted in history, and documentary evidence sifted by the rules
of a rigid cross-examination.[37]
At any rate, Danton refused it. And not only did he refuse it, but
there is no trace of an attempt to use his friend’s influence or to
make a political success at a time when nearly every man’s head
was turned by the chances of a great social change. He felt no need
of politics, and it was not till much later, after quite twelve months of
action and speech, that his oratory found foothold, and he felt the
imperious appetites of a new power. Success in his profession was
without question the one ambition which occupied him in the close of
1788, it was an ambition closely bound up with that business sense
which was a strong element in the sane and practical mind of the
Champenois lawyer.
It was upon him and his group of friends, in a Paris that every day
grew keener in its discussion and attention, that the long-expected
decree of the 27th of December fell. There were to be elections.
Paris, all pamphleteered to death, but inclining as a whole to the
moderate criticism of the more practical men, was at last called upon
to act.
Many conditions must be made clear before we can understand
the effect of these elections upon the history of the next three years.
In the first place, France was suffering from a great material evil: she
was going bankrupt, her agriculture was hopelessly depressed, her
industries ruined, and thousands and thousands of men out of work
were wandering about the streets of the cities. In the second place,
the class which was going to vote for the Commons was the tax-
paying class. And in the third place, the voting was by two degrees. I
name these three conditions as qualifying a broad and often
erroneous impression. I do not mean that the ideals were not
abroad; all the world knows how bright the eyes of the young men
were getting, and we are all familiar with Desmoulins, eager,
passionate, stuttering but voluble, and passing from group to group
as they discussed or dreamed. But it is too common to read the spirit
of ’93 into those elections of ’89, and the error is a grievous one. As
well might you interpret the spirit of an eloquent man who is about to
defend a just and practical cause by hearing what he said later in the
day, should his opponents have taken to fists and fought him heavily
for several hours.
The immediate need was fiscal; the class called upon to meet it
were the middle class; the men they were about to elect were of
professional rank.
The electoral units and all corporations were asked to state their
grievances before the gathering of the Parliament, and it is in these
“cahiers” that the spirit of the time is best discovered. The
abstractions, the phrases, the great general conceptions are found
(as we might have expected, though it comes as a new thing) mainly
in the complaints of the clergy and nobility; the peasant, the
bourgeois, and the artisan have a more material grievance.
Thus the nobility of Caen in their cahier talk of the “National
Contract,” and the clergy of Forez (after some remarks on the care
and cleansing of ponds) end up with an admirable little essay on
individual liberty, its limits and proper extension.[38] The nobility of
Nantes and of Meulan talk roundly of the “rights of man,”[39] and
generally this order calls for a Constitution—of which word they had
in a very short time supped and dined. With lesser men the demands
are rather for sublunary things, but the complaints that made
Beugnot laugh give a good picture. “To have one’s dogs killed if
necessary but not hamstrung, to be allowed to keep a cat, to be
allowed to light a fire without paying dues, to sell one’s wine when
one liked;” and from the bourgeoisie, regular trial, abolition of lettres
de cachet, the old European policy that the growth of rich
corporations should be checked and much of their property
confiscated, the equalisation of taxation—such are the points upon
which (a mere redress) the great bulk of Frenchmen were
determined. One might sum up and say, “They demanded the
freedom and common justice obtainable in the modern State.” But
the privileged orders, for all their phrases, resisted when the time for
reform was come, and their friction lit the flame of the ideal,
disastrously for themselves and happily for the world.
As for the cahier sent from the electoral district of Paris in which
Danton lived, it was destroyed by the Commune when they burnt the
Hotel de Ville in 1871. We know, however,[40] that it demanded “the
destruction of the Bastille,” a symbolic act ever present to the minds
of Parisians, and, for the matter of that, by several cahiers of the
provincial noblesse and clergy. There is no direct documentary
evidence that Danton helped to draw up this cahier, but I cannot
believe that a man of such influence in so small a space and among
(comparatively) so few voters[41] had nothing to do with the framing
of this document, especially when we consider the cry he gave as a
boy, swimming in the river just beneath the walls of the prison.[42]
There is, however, nothing to prove it, and he certainly took no
memorable part in an action where all was tranquil and even tedious.
The mention, however, of the districts of Paris, and especially of
that which could claim Danton, makes very necessary a view of that
focus of revolutionary energy. It was called the district of the
Cordeliers. It was small, one of the smallest of the sixty into which
Paris was divided, yet it contained the very strongest of the brains
and eloquence of its time, very few nobles, and, for the matter of
that, very few of the artisans and hardly any of the proletariat. Later,
when Danton threatened the reactionaries with the populace, it was
not to the district of the Cordeliers, but to the Faubourg St. Marceau
that he appealed; for the workmen were rare in its ancient, narrow
streets, with their tall houses and little dark courts framing each
some relic of the Middle Ages. Here were found many of the clergy,
but above all a swarm of the young lawyers and students, the class
that think high and hard and breed thoughts in others, a kind of little
united clan of what was strongest in the youth of the University and
the professions; and the whole homogeneous group centred round
Danton.
If you stood in the Cour du Commerce in Danton’s time, and
looked north to where his house made the corner of the narrow
entry, you would have seen a main street only a trifle broader than
the court, and running at right angles. Standing in the mouth of the
narrow passage, you would have seen on the other side of the main
street, and a hundred yards up it, a little fifteenth-century turret,
capped with a pointed slate roof and jutting outward on round
supports.[43] This was the extreme angle of an old convent called the
Cordeliers.[44] Here the Franciscans had settled in St. Louis’s time,
five hundred years before, but the walls you would have seen were
not of the thirteenth, but rather of the early fourteenth century, while
the church which flanked the street was of the sixteenth, and
additions had been made of all periods. As you came out of the Cour
du Commerce and went up the street, you would have the convent
running all along the opposite side, from the little turret on the corner
to the church of St. Come in the Rue de la Harpe, save where it was
interrupted by private houses, and where it was broken in one place
by a little lane leading to the hall of the University College, which the
convent supported. Like so many great foundations, this rich place
was in full decay, and the vaulted hall, with its dim light and resonant
echoes, was given over to the meeting of the district, and later to the
thunder of the voice that threw back the armies of Europe. Alone of
all the mediæval buildings of the Cordeliers this hall remains to-day
as the Musée Dupuytren.
There is yet one further point to be mentioned before we can make
a complete picture of Danton’s position before these elections of
1789. There can be no doubt that the Masonic lodges had proved a
powerful instrument in the preparation of opinion, and though our
information on their formation in Paris is scanty, we can safely affirm
that Danton belonged to the lodge of the “Nine Sisters,” which
included such members as Sieyès or Bailly on the one hand and
Collot D’Herbois on the other.[45] It would be foolish to over-estimate
the influence of these societies. The subsequent history of their
members proves quite clearly that the bond between them was slight
(who can, for instance, reproach Desmoulins with a secret support of
Bailly?), and (what is much more important) the very character of
their composition disproves effectually any secret or prearranged
action. The foolish Bailly, the learned Sieyès, the admirable,
unpractical, high-minded Condorcet, the weak Garat, Collot
D’Herbois the potential Red, all members of one lodge! They can
have been little more than associations whose character of mutual
help and whose opportunities of club-life (that comfort so lacking in
Paris) attracted men. They were authorised, and were one of the
very few kinds of refuge from a society where political discussion
had decayed and where combined action was almost unknown.
This is all the importance, I think, which should be attached to
them. Where men are free, and where the suffrage is open and
common, secret societies may very justly be dreaded; their action
will be at all times separate from that of society in general, and may
be in a hidden antagonism to the will of the nation. But in a society
where reunion, discussion, and all that is the blood of civic political
life has been exhausted, then, like a special drug which cures, they
have an excellent use. They may, in such societies, just keep alive
the habit of political conversation and expectancy, and they may
develop in some at least that organising spirit without which a
political movement degenerates into anarchy.
This, then (to recapitulate), is Danton’s position just before the
Parisian elections. He is in the midst of what are to be his group of
young Revolutionary friends on the outskirts of the Latin quarter; his
daily occupation is the conducting in his office on the north bank and
at the Palace in the Cité of those important pleas in the highest
court, which bring him into contact with the ministers, with the great
corporations, and especially with the various organs of government
of the old regime—for it was in cases for and against these that the
Conseil du Roi came into play. His income is sufficient for his needs
and for a slow but methodical payment of the price of his practice. It
amounted (we may presume) to something in the neighbourhood of
25,000 francs, possibly a little less, but not much, for it was drawn
from one of the most important Chancery cases of his day, and his
clientele, to judge by the names which alone have reached us, was
wealthy and of influence. He was thoroughly well read; he was not
expecting nor planning a political career, as were so many of his
friends (for instance, Desmoulins), but certain characters which he
was rapidly developing, or rather discovering, in himself were
preparing that career of necessity. He was learning in discussion and
laughter, first that he was an orator, and secondly that his energy
sufficed for a whole group of men, and that he could avoid
leadership only at the expense of entire seclusion. In a time of
innumerable pamphlets, he never put pen to paper outside his
profession; and in days that were producing the ardent similes of
Camille, and that were just beginning to feel the ravings of Marat, he
wrote nothing but three grave, learned, concise, and dull opinions,
which were admirable in argument, clear in exposition, and tolerable
only to elderly lawyers.
As for his politics, he was centred wholly on the outward thing. He
seems to have lacked almost entirely the metaphysic. Here was
France all ruined and every day approaching more nearly to disaster;
let her be turned into a place where men should be happy, should
have enough to eat and drink, should be good citizens to the extent
of making the nation homogeneous and strong. Reform should be
practical: in part it would require discussion, not too much of it. In
part, however, its lines were laid down for it. Economics taught
certain truths; let them be applied. He had read in Adam Smith
certain indubitable principles of this science; let them be used.
Science had in such and such matters definite remedies to offer; let
them be applied. Such were his over-simple aims. He was of the
Encyclopædists. Had he no beliefs, then, in his politics? Undoubtedly
he had; no man could desire “the good” without feeling it. But, like all
minds of his type, he refused to analyse. His dogmas were all the
more dogmas because he took them so entirely for granted that he
refused even to define them. At a time when all men had their first
principles ready-made in words, his was rather that confused instinct
which is, after all, nearest to the truth. Patriotism, good-fellowship,
freedom for his activities, the satisfaction of the thirst for knowledge
—all these he desired in himself and for the State. And that is why
you will find his great body at the head of mobs and daring criminal
things when it is a question of saving the nation, or later of breaking
an inquisitorial idea. It is this simplicity which makes him daring, and
this concentration on a few obvious points which makes him
judicious, unscrupulous, and successful in the choice of means and
of phrases.
On the 24th of January 1789, the Primaries were convened. It was
the opportunity for movement, in Paris especially, since it was the
first definite action after so much discussion, attention, and fever.
The district of the Cordeliers met in the hall of which so much
mention has been made above. But there does not seem to have
been anything of importance transacted, unless we call this
important; I mean the beginnings of the habit of reunion and of open
discussion. For three months the place seems to have had its doors
open to the first comer of the quarter. The cahier was drawn up here,
and the rough foundations of what was to be the famous permanent
survival of the “République des Cordeliers” were laid. But of
Danton’s part in all this we have, as I have said above, no trace. We
can only conjecture and infer.
It was on April 21 that the elections were finally held. The voters all
met together in the central halls of their districts (churches for the
most part) and elected the electors, who in their turn were to
nominate the deputies for Paris. Of Danton’s rôle in this important
action, again we know nothing. M. Bougeart[46] has taken it for
granted that he was at least “president of the district,” chairman (as
we should say) of the electoral meeting; but he is either in error, or
else he is relying on some verbal evidence which he has not given
us. We have no document to prove it, and we know that three
months later Timbergue and Achimbault, two barristers of the district,
were successively presidents, not Danton.[47] What we do know of
importance is that the Cordeliers were among those districts which
did not disperse after the elections, but maintained themselves as a
permanent club. This action by the districts was of the very first
importance in the history of the Revolution. It created the municipal
movement in July, it made Paris an organisation, gave the town a
method and a voice, and more than any other accident it placed the
ladder for Danton’s feet.
 The elections of Paris once completed, the gates of the Revolution
are passed, and the States-General, whose Commons formulated its
first principles, are definitely formed; for Paris completed its voting
much later than the provinces. The Parliament meets at Versailles,
and that town presents for the next six months the centre of official
interest. But since Paris is going to be, by its destiny, the heart of the
reform, and since Danton is the tribune of Paris, we must, for the
purposes of this biography, mention the assembly only in its relation
to what passed in the capital.
The tone of Paris during the first two months of the Parliament
was, as has been expressed earlier in this chapter, essentially one of
ill-ease and watching. But this anxiety of the town took long to find a
formula and to recognise its own nature. What Paris needed was the
leadership; but to hear the confused murmur of the thousand voices,
you would have thought that all her demands were for a number of
more or less conflicting ideals. And yet there was no appearance of
Party. One may say, by a just paradox, that her very cliques made for
solidarity. The higher bourgeoisie could afford at first to ignore the
group of the Latin Quarter, thinking the young lawyers and students
to be merely foolish demagogues, not even dangerous. The ears of
these last were closed to the confused demands of the populace,
and the orators could honestly believe that ideas rather than hunger
were to be the goad of change. By great good fortune their position
was never wholly abandoned, and the Revolution from first to last
mastered Materialism and its attendant Anarchy. Finally, the poor—
the out-of-work, the starving labourers of the economic crisis—
standing apart from both these leading classes, could convince
themselves that the great phrases meant bread, and that a
constitution was allied in some vague way to a lowering of prices.
They were right in that instinct, but, with the picturesque inexactitude
of mobs, they fearfully under-estimated the length of the connecting
links.
The place where the average of these different views could best
be found was the Palais Royal. Here a great popular forum gathered
in the gardens which the Duke of Orleans had thrown open to the
people. It was not a bad thing that the debts of this debauchee and
adventurer had led him to let out the ground-floor of the wide
quadrangle, for the cafés and shops that surrounded it made it a
more permanent resort than the squares or gardens could have
been, and there could be a perpetual mob-parliament held from day
to day. Its orators were the Dantonist group; its instigators, I fear, the
unprincipled men who surrounded D’Orleans, its committee-room
and centre (as it were) the Café Foy. Still, by the action of the main
virtue of revolutions, the general sense of the meeting was stronger
than any demagogue; for in such times society is not only turbulent
but fluid, and while it will support a leader who can swim, no mortal
force can give it any direction other than that which it desires.
In this great daily crowd Danton was a prominent but not a
principal figure; undoubtedly (though we cannot prove it by any
record) he had begun to speak in his district, and we may presume
that his voice had been heard in the Palais Royal before July; for just
after the fall of the Bastille his name is mentioned familiarly. But even
had he desired to identify himself with the place, which is doubtful,
his profession would not have permitted it. He was not briefless,
unmarried, and free, like Desmoulins, but a man of three years’
standing in the highest branch of his profession; doubtless, however,
he was present daily when the crowd was thickest—I mean on the
holidays and during the summer evenings.
All this pamphleteering, discussion, violence, salonising, oratory,
and anxious criticism, even the mob violence which hunger and bad
laws had inflamed, found a head in the three famous days that
followed July 12, 1789. All the world knows the story, and even were
it unfamiliar it would be impossible to treat of it at any length in this
book, for Danton’s name hardly touches it, and our only interest
here, in connection with his life, is to discover if he took part in the
street fighting; for the event itself, one of the most decisive in history,
a few words must suffice.
Paris, and especially the Palais Royal, had been watching the
struggle at Versailles with gathering anger. There, twelve miles off,
every purpose for which the Parliament had met, and every good
thing which the elections had seemed to ensure, lay in jeopardy.
Step after step the Commons had in fact, though not in their
phrases, been beaten, and the promises of six months before
seemed in danger, not through any known or calculable enemy, but
from the sudden appearance of an opposition which the nation, and
especially Paris, had ignored. The King had retreated from his
position of the last December, and the privileged orders were
sympathising with a growing reaction. How far all this was due to the
unconstitutional and unprecedented action of the Commons in
insisting on a General Assembly cannot be discussed here. Suffice it
to say that, in the opinion of the nation, the new departure of the
Commons was in thorough accordance with the spirit, if not with the
letter, of the recent decrees; the King was held to have broken his
word, and the privileged orders to have abandoned their declarations
in the face of facts. The symbol, though a poor one, of the
constitutional position was the personality of Necker. Conceited,
foreign, and common-place, the father of an authoress whom neither
Napoleon nor posterity could tolerate, Genevese and bourgeois to
the backbone, this mass of impotence yet stood, by one of the
ironies of history, in the place of an idol. He, the banker, was the
imagined champion for the moment of that other man from Geneva,
who had died of persecution ten years before, the tender-eyed,
wandering, unfortunate Rousseau, between whom and him was the
distance between a financier and an apostle.
While the king was changing his advisers, and even while the
foreign troops—fatal error—were being massed in wretched
insufficiency on the Champ de Mars (not three miles from the Palais
Royal) Necker still stood like a wooden idol, a kind of fetish
safeguard against force. He just prevented the growing belief in the
dissolution from becoming a certitude, and on account of his attitude
Paris waited. These things being so, the king began his great
programme of working out the good of his people alone. Relying on
the three thousand foreigners, a regiment of home troops, and
practically no guns wherewith to hold in check a tortuous city of close
on a million souls, the king on Saturday, July 11, dismissed Necker.
Desmoulins first brought the news, running. It was the morrow,
Sunday, and the Palais Royal was crowded. He forgot his stammer
and hesitancy, and shouted to the great holiday crowd in the gardens
to strip the trees for emblems, led them as they marched to the
Place Louis Quinze, saw the French troops defend their fellow-
citizens against the mounted mercenaries, and heard during a night
of terror and of civil war the first shots of Revolution.
All the next day, Monday, July 13, 1789, Paris organised and
prepared. Thanks to the permanence of the assemblies in certain
districts, a rough machinery was ready, and on the 14th, a Tuesday,
two great mobs determined upon arms. The time is not untainted, for
St. Huruge was there promising and leading, but if D’Orleans was
trying to make the most of the adventure, he no more created the
uprising than a miller makes the tide. One stream of men seized the
arsenal at the Invalides on the west side of the town, the other going
east in a smaller band demanded arms of the governor of the
Bastille, a place impossible to take by assault. The demand was
refused.
A body of men, however, were permitted to enter the courtyard, for
which purpose the drawbridge had been lowered: once in that trap,
De Launay fired upon them and shot them down. There is no
evidence, nor ever will be, as to the motives of that extraordinary act;
but to the general people who were gathering and gathering all about
in the narrow streets, it was an act of deliberate treason, part of that
spirit with which our own time is not unfamiliar, and which has ruined
a hundred reforms,—I mean the sentiment that there is no honour to
be kept between government and insurrection. The misfortune or
crime of De Launay struck a clear note in the crowd; if after that they
failed, the blow that was being struck for the Parliament would fail
also. Thus it was that, under a dull grey sky, the whole of Paris, as it
were, ran up together to the siege of the fortress. Curés were there
gathering up their soutanes and joining the multitude, notably the
man who had once been Danton’s parish priest, the vicar of St.
Germains, with his flock at his heels, like the good Curé of Bazeilles
in later times, or the humorous Bishop of Beauvais six centuries
before. Lawyers, students, shopkeepers, merchants, the big brewer
of the quarter, the pedants, the clerks in the offices, soldiers and
their officers, the young nobles even—there was nothing in Paris that
did not catch the fever. The castle fell at last, because its garrison
sympathised with the mob (of itself it was impregnable); the old
governor made a futile attempt to blow up his stronghold and his
command; some few who still obeyed him (probably the twenty
Swiss) fired on the mob just after the white flag had been hoisted on
the Bazinière tower, and a great tide of men mad with a double
treason swirled up the fortress. Second on the wall was a man with
whom this book will have to deal again—Hérault de Séchelles,
young, beautiful, and of great family, beloved at the court and even
pampered with special privilege, the friend and companion of
Danton, and destined five years later to stand in the cart with him
when they all went up to the scaffold together on a clear April
evening in the best time of their youth.
The Cordeliers were in the attack, and presumably Danton also,
since all the world was there. But his only allusion to the scene is a
phrase of his circular to the courts when he took the Ministry of
Justice in 1792, and he mentions his district only without including
his own name. One anecdote, and only one, connects him with the
days of July. It seems that in the night of the morrow, the early
morning of the 16th, he was at the head of a patrol in that sudden
levy of which mention will be made in this chapter. He thought it his
duty to pass into the court of the Bastille, probably in order to gather
some detached portion of his command; but he was met by Soulès,
whom the informal meeting at the Hotel de Ville had named
governor. Full of new-fangled importance, Soulès pompously forbad
him to enter, and showed his commission. Danton did a
characteristic thing, part and parcel of that intense sectionalism upon
which he based all his action until Paris was at last in possession of
herself: for him power was from below, and the armed district had a
right of passage: he called the informal commission a rag, arrested
Soulès, and shut him up in the guardroom at the Cordeliers; then,
with a rather larger force, he marched him back through the streets
and gave him into the custody of the Hotel de Ville, whose authority
for judgment he admitted. The matter would be of no importance
were it not for the fact that, in the very natural and on the whole just
censure which the informal municipality passed on Danton’s action,
Lafayette showed an especial bitterness.[48] It was the first clash
between two men one of whom was to conquer and drive out the
other; and it was a typical quarrel, for Danton stood in the matter for
the independence of the electoral unit and for the power of Paris
over itself: Lafayette represented the principle of a strong
municipality based on moderate ideas and on a limited suffrage; in
other words, the compromise which was planned for the very
purpose of muzzling the capital.
I have spoken of an armed force and a patrol: it is in this
connection that the meaning of the days of July—for Danton and for
the Revolution—must be considered. They form above all a
municipal reform. Those towns of which I have spoken as being the
bond of France harked back suddenly to their primitive institutions,
and were organising communal government. Paris of course was the
leader. Even before the taking of the Bastille, the districts had in
some cases maintained their electoral colleges as a permanent
committee, and these electoral colleges met at the Hotel de Ville,
forming a rough government for the two nights of the revolt, and
finally directing the whole movement. Such a body was of necessity
too large to work. But its plans were rapidly formed. They named a
committee, which was formed of electors with one citizen (not an
elector) added. They invited and obtained the aid of the permanent
officers of what had once been the old dying and corrupt corporation,
and they thus had formed an irregular but sufficient organ of
government for the city. It was not confirmed from above, nor had it,
for days, any authority from the King, but it reposed on a force which
was admitted in the theory of those times to be the source of power,
for it was composed of men elected by the new suffrage. They had
been elected for another purpose, but they were the only popular
representatives present at all in Paris.
Their weakness, however, lay in this quality of theirs. Reposing
merely upon power from the districts, they could not act with central
authority, nor had they an armed force of their own. They could,
indeed, prevent the success of the rough anarchy which threatened
the Hotel de Ville itself in the early morning of July 14, before the
attack on the Bastille, but they could not prevent the lynching of
those against whom the popular rage had arisen—De Launey, De
Méray, De Persan. As for force, they organised a huge levy of 1200
men from each of the sixty districts, a force which, with certain
additions, rose to 78,000. It was in this suddenly armed militia that
Danton was elected a captain (for the moment), and in connection
with its duties of police on the nights following the taking of the
Bastille that his quarrel with Soulès had occurred. They named Bailly
their first mayor. They gave the command of the new national guard
to Lafayette; on the 16th they ordered, with a pomp of trumpets in
the Place de Grève, the destruction of the Bastille, in which their new
governor was installed. But through all this vigorous action there is
one cardinal fact to be remembered: the whole of their power was
from below, not only in theory but in fact. We may construct a
metaphor to express the future effect of this, and say that, at the very
origin of the Revolution, the body of government in Paris was tainted
by an organic weakness which no structural changes could remove,
and to whose character all subsequent events for three years can be
traced. It was essentially federal; feeble at the centre, continually
asking leave, morally a servant and not a master; lacking above all
things the supreme force of conviction, it acted without power
because it did not believe in itself.
The history, then, of its struggle with the extremists is the history of
a body attempting by compromise and ruse to attain a position
whose theory it openly denies, whose moral right it will not affirm,
and whose very existence is made dependent upon those whom it
would coerce against their will. The municipality tried to be a strong
government while it openly approved of voluntaryism, to be powerful
in its acts and weak in its structure. Ultimately the centre of
compromise is captured by ardent revolutionaries whom it has
attempted to check, and then we get a true despotism in Paris—the
terrible commune of the second period of the Republic and of the
Terror.
But if the character of the new municipal government (a character
which became specially prominent after the legislation of the whole
system later in the year) is the special feature of the movement, its
general motive is of course more important. We have called it the
Reform; what occurred in the next few days was without any
question the origin of the active Revolution, and a little examination
of facts will show that the taking of the Bastille was not merely a
dramatic incident, still less the exaggerated bagarre that certain
modern special pleaders would make it, but, on the contrary, the
foundation of everything. The contemporaries are proved to have
been right in their view of this matter, as of so many others.
Why was this? Because, first, in taking the Bastille, after having
sacked the Invalides, the people of Paris (for it was not a particular
mob, but a gathering of every possible class) held all the cannon in
the city, and were thoroughly provided with small arms. They were
suddenly become the masters of that insufficient camp in the Champ
de Mars on which the King had relied. In open country and without
artillery these seventy thousand civilians would, of course, have
been so many sheep, but in the town and with a number of old
artillerymen (officers and men) to work their guns, it was another
matter. On and after July 14, 1789, Paris had found that possession
of herself which we postulated as her first great appetite in the
Revolution.
Secondly, by this sudden stroke Paris forced the Court to
capitulate. At Versailles the King went bareheaded to the Assembly,
gave permission for the reunion of the three orders, for a discussion
of grievances before supply, for the title of National Assembly, for the
formation of a constitution before the voting of fiscal measures—in a
word, for all that the Commons had demanded, and for the fulfilment
of all the promises from which he had attempted to recede.
Thirdly, the victory, or rather the act of Paris, changed and
weakened the opposition. From openly gathering troops, and
boasting an approaching attack on the Parliament, they are reduced
to intrigue and to the difficult business of arming in the dark. Many of
the heads of the reaction (notably the Comte d’Artois) leave France
in the “first emigration,” and the whole action of the uncompromising
party is made weaker, and clearly unnational.
Fourthly (and perhaps this is the most important point), that
municipal movement, of which mention has been made above, took
its rise directly from the 14th of July. The towns hear of Necker’s
dismissal and of the Parisian rising by the same courier, and in a
week or ten days the story is repeated all over France. Rouen,
Lyons, Valence, Montpellier, Nîmes, Tours, Amiens (to cite but a few
of the more prominent examples), organise a new town government.
Sometimes the old hereditary or appointed body is deposed, more
often it is enlarged by the addition of the electoral college of the city;
occasionally it takes upon itself the task of adding to itself
representatives of the three orders. Again, the towns arm
themselves as Paris did; and finally, by what a contemporary called
“spontaneous anarchy,” the whole network of cities has received the
pulse and vibration of Paris; the National Guards are being drilled in
thousands; the rusty, confused, and broken machinery of the ancien
régime is replaced by a simple if rough system of local government.
Moreover, since all this has been done by the people themselves,
and without a command or a centralised effort, since it is natural and
not artificial, it has entered into the body of the Revolution and
cannot be undone.
You see, then, that the days of July gave Paris the first word, and
made the spirit of sectionalism and local autonomy based upon a
highly democratic theory. All these things are the conditions of
Danton’s rise; they make possible, and even necessary, the society
of which he is to be the guide. After the 14th of July the Cordeliers
meet daily; the bell was rung above the church at nine in the
morning, and an assembly of the district was held.[49] It was not yet
in name the famous “club”; but when we consider the action of the
popular societies in Paris, we must always remember that this, even
before it regularly assumed its final name and functions, was a
society organised for debate and action, and that it was the first to be
established.
From its origin, this famous meeting is sharply marked in its spirit
—the spirit that will later divide it not only from the moderate clubs,
such as the Feuillants, but from the Jacobins themselves. In the first
place, it is Parisian; it attempts no provincial propaganda; it confines
itself to action in Paris, and even to its own immediate
neighbourhood. In the second place, it is purely popular. But (it may
be asked) were not the Jacobins in their later stage a purely popular