CONVENTION INVADED: BREAD AND THE CONSTITUTION DEMANDED

PARIS, 20 May 1795 — 1 Prairial, Year III. — PARIS, this evening.—The cry for bread hath this day passed from the doors of the bakers to the very sanctuary of the laws. A multitude, comprising women, workmen, and men bearing arms, has broken into the National Convention, demanding provisions and the execution of the Constitution of 1793. The deliberations of the representatives have been overwhelmed by cries from the galleries and the floor; violence has reached the deputies themselves. Citizen Féraud is dead, and his severed head has been displayed before the chair. At this hour no man may safely pronounce whether the Convention commands Paris, or whether Paris shall dictate to the Convention.

The movement declared itself early, with women conspicuous among those calling the inhabitants into the streets. From the eastern quarters, where distress is familiar at almost every hearth, the summons travelled towards the centre of government. “Bread and the Constitution of 1793!” was the demand which united complaints otherwise various and confused. An appeal circulated under the title of an insurrection of the people to obtain bread and reconquer their rights, giving the agitation a political object beyond the opening of a baker’s shop. This was no ordinary deputation presenting a petition and awaiting an answer: the petitioners came in numbers sufficient to enforce their admission.

Within the Convention, the accustomed forms of debate proved a slender barrier against such an assault. Women pressed their demands from the galleries; the approaches filled; the force appointed to preserve the assembly could not keep the multitude without. When the doors were forced, the distinction between spectator and legislator was lost in the tumult. Cries of “Bread!” interrupted every endeavour to recover attention. Members sought to be heard, but a chamber filled with hunger and suspicion is little disposed to the niceties of procedure. The question was no longer merely what relief should be voted, but whether any vote could be accounted free.

The most dreadful circumstance of the day is the murder of Jean-Bertrand Féraud, representative of the people, who opposed the irruption. He was struck down, killed, and beheaded; his head was afterwards carried into the hall upon a pike. Before this spectacle, calculated to extinguish the courage of the stoutest assembly, Boissy d’Anglas remained at the president’s chair. When the bloody trophy was presented to him, he saluted it and did not surrender his station. That gesture, amidst the general disorder, marked at once respect for a murdered colleague and a refusal to acknowledge the authority of his murderers. Yet courage in the chair could not restore quiet to the benches.

To understand the fury without excusing its crimes, one must look beyond the doors of the Convention. Bread has become the daily anxiety of households which formerly contrived, though poorly, to subsist by labour. The severe winter has aggravated the difficulties of supply, and the paper money passes from hand to hand with a continually diminishing command over necessities. A workman may receive assignats and yet discover that his earnings purchase less than before. The abolition of the Maximum has removed the legal restraint upon prices, but it has not filled every market nor reconciled the purchaser to the sums now demanded of him.

At the market and the shop-counter, the same transaction admits of two angry explanations. The buyer sees provisions offered at prices beyond his means and accuses the seller of withholding the people’s subsistence. The seller, receiving paper whose value declines, fears that the proceeds will not replace his stock. Between these apprehensions, confidence perishes. A nominal increase in wages or receipts is a poor consolation when the loaf advances faster still. Thus the depreciation of the assignat is not an affair confined to financiers or the Treasury: it enters the lodging of the labourer and determines whether his family shall eat. To call such distress imaginary is to invite its return in a more terrible form.

Nor is the constitutional demand an idle addition to the demand for food. The Constitution of 1793 was accepted by the people, but its operation was suspended under the necessities alleged for revolutionary government. Those who invoke it now require the Convention to explain why a charter so solemnly sanctioned remains without execution. For many in the multitude, that instrument signifies the recovery of a political voice as well as a remedy against arbitrary power. The men who have governed since the overthrow of Robespierre reply, in effect, that public liberty cannot subsist beneath the threats of an armed crowd. Each party appeals to the sovereignty of the people; neither accepts the other’s manner of expressing it.

The remembrance of 12 Germinal sharpens every apprehension. On that day also, the Convention was invaded amid demands for bread and the Constitution; order was restored, and measures against prominent revolutionaries followed. The present outbreak therefore finds neither government nor populace innocent of former resentments. Those who believe themselves persecuted since Thermidor see fresh evidence that their complaints are treated as conspiracy. Their adversaries discern, beneath the language of subsistence, an attempt to revive the dominion of terror. Yet these explanations do not wholly coincide with the plain necessity of the household. A woman seeking flour need not possess the design of a faction, though a faction may endeavour to turn her suffering to account.

Under the pressure within the hall, members of the Mountain have endeavoured to give legislative expression to the demands, bringing forward proposals concerning subsistence, prisoners, and the means of directing the government. Such proceedings disclose the perilous position of the remaining deputies attached to the popular cause: silence may estrange the multitude, whilst compliance may afterwards be charged as participation in revolt. Elsewhere, the defenders of the Convention seek the support of forces upon which they can rely. The national representation is consequently not confronted by argument alone, but by the uncertain disposition of armed citizens. Until that disposition is known, every resolution pronounced within the chamber rests upon an insecure foundation.

What shall follow this evening cannot yet be reported with certainty. The first duty of the authorities is plainly to secure the representatives against assassination; their next cannot be discharged by declaring hunger an enemy of the Republic. Neither a pike nor a decree can of itself bring grain to Paris, restore credit to the assignat, or make wages equal to the price of food. If force alone prevails, the original grievance will remain; if the assembly yields solely to violence, the law will have no certain dwelling-place. France must await the issue of this extraordinary day, whilst Paris asks the question with which it began: where is bread to be obtained?