One of the chief causes of this feeling resided in the fact that these furious sectaries, being apostles in possession of the absolute verity, were unable, like all believers, to tolerate the sight of infidels.A mystic or sentimental certitude is always accompanied by the need of forcing itself on others, is never convinced, and does not shrink from wholesale slaughter when it has the power to commit it.
If the hatreds that divided the men of the Revolution had been of rational origin they would not have lasted long, but, arising from affective and mystic factors, men could neither forget nor forgive.Their sources being identical in the different parties, they manifested themselves on every hand with identical violence.
It has been proved, by means of documents, that the Girondists were no less sanguinary than the Montagnards.They were the first to declare, with Petion, that the vanquished parties should perish.They also, according to M.Aulard, attempted to justify the massacres of September.The Terror must not be considered simply as a means of defence, but as the general process of destruction to which triumphant believers have always treated their detested enemies.Men who can put up with the greatest divergence of ideas cannot tolerate differences of belief.
In religious or political warfare the vanquished can hope for no quarter.From Sulla, who cut the throats of two hundred senators and five or six thousand Romans, to the men who suppressed the Commune, and shot down more than twenty thousand after their victory, this bloody law has never failed.Proved over and over again in the past, it will doubtless be so in the future.
The hatreds of the Revolution did not arise entirely from divergence of belief.Other sentiments--envy, ambition, and self-love--also engendered them.The rivalry of individuals aspiring to power led the chiefs of the various groups in succession to the scaffold.
We must remember, moreover, that the need of division and the hatred resulting therefrom seem to be constituent elements of the Latin mind.They cost our Gaulish ancestors their independence, and had already struck Caesar.
``No city,'' he said, ``but was divided into two factions; no canton, no village, no house in which the spirit of party did not breathe.It was very rarely that a year went by without a city taking up arms to attack or repulse its neighbours.''
As man has only recently entered upon the age of knowledge, and has always hitherto been guided by sentiments and beliefs, we may conceive the vast importance of hatred as a factor of his history.
Commandant Colin, professor at the College of War, remarks in the following terms on the importance of this feeling during certain wars:--``In war more than at any other time there is no better inspiring force than hatred; it was hatred that made Blucher victorious over Napoleon.Analyse the most wonderful manoeuvres, the most decisive operations, and if they are not the work of an exceptional man, a Frederick or a Napoleon, you will find they are inspired by passion more than by calculation.What would the war of 1870 have been without the hatred which we bore the Germans?''
The writer might have added that the intense hatred of the Japanese for the Russians, who had so humiliated them, might be classed among the causes of their success.The Russian soldiers, ignorant of the very existence of the Japanese, had no animosity against them, which was one of the reasons of their failure.
There was assuredly a good deal of talk of fraternity at the time of the Revolution, and there is even more to-day.Pacificism, humanitarianism, and solidarity have become catchwords of the advanced parties, but we know how profound are the hatreds concealed beneath these terms, and what dangers overhang our modern society.
Fear.--Fear plays almost as large a part in revolutions as hatred.During the French Revolution there were many examples of great individual courage and many exhibitions of collective cowardice.
Facing the scaffold, the men of the Convention were always brave in the extreme; but before the threats of the rioters who invaded the Assembly they constantly exhibited an excessive pusillanimity, obeying the most absurd injunctions, as we shall see if we re-read the history of the revolutionary Assemblies.
All the forms of fear were observed at this period.One of the most widespread was the fear of appearing moderate.Members of the Assemblies, public prosecutors, representatives ``on mission,'' judges of the revolutionary tribunals, &c., all sought to appear more advanced than their rivals.Fear was one of the principal elements of the crimes committed at this period.
