The philosophical conceptions of the members of this Assembly seem rudimentary enough.Many were imbued with Rousseau's idea of a return to a state of nature.But all, like their predecessors, were dominated more especially by recollections of Greek and Latin antiquity.Cato, Brutus, Gracchus, Plutarch, Marcus Aurelius, and Plato, continually evoked, furnished the images of their speech.When the orator wished to insult Louis XVI.he called him Caligula.
In hoping to destroy tradition they were revolutionaries, but in claiming to return to a remote past they showed themselves extremely reactionary.
For the rest, all these theories had very little influence on their conduct.Reason was continually figuring in their speeches, but never in their actions.These were always dominated by those affective and mystic elements whose potency we have so often demonstrated.
The psychological characteristics of the Legislative Assembly were those of the Constituent Assembly, but were greatly accentuated.They may be summed up in four words:
impressionability, mobility, timidity, and weakness.
This mobility and impressionability are revealed in the constant variability of their conduct.One day they exchange noisy invective and blows.On the following day we see them ``throwing themselves into one another's arms with torrents of tears.''
They eagerly applaud an address demanding the punishment of those who have petitioned for the king's dethronement, and the same day accord the honours of the session to a delegation which has come to demand his downfall.
The pusillanimity and weakness of the Assembly in the face of threats was extreme.Although royalist it voted the suspension of the king, and on the demand of the Commune delivered him, with his family, to be imprisoned in the Temple,Thanks to its weakness, it was as incapable as the Constituent Assembly of exercising any power, and allowed itself to be dominated by the Commune and the clubs, which were directed by such influential leaders as Hebert, Tallien, Rossignol, Marat, Robespierre, &c.
Until Thermidor, 1794, the insurrectionary Commune constituted the chief power in the State, and behaved precisely as if it had been charged with the government of Paris.
It was the Commune that demanded the imprisonment of Louis XVI.
in the tower of the Temple, when the Assembly wished to imprison him in the palace of the Luxembourg.It was the Commune again that filled the prisons with suspects, and then ordered them to be killed.
We know with what refinements of cruelty a handful of some 150bandits, paid at the rate of 24 livres a day, and directed by a few members of the Commune, exterminated some 1,200 persons in four days.This crime was known as the massacre of September.
The mayor of Paris, Petion, received the band of assassins with respect, and gave them drink.A few Girondists protested somewhat, but the Jacobins were silent.
The terrorised Assembly affected at first to ignore the massacres, which were encouraged by several of its more influential deputies, notably Couthon and Billaud-Varenne.When at last it decided to condemn them it was without attempting to prevent their continuation.
Conscious of its impotence, the Legislative Assembly dissolved itself a fortnight later in order to give way to the Convention.
Its work was obviously disastrous, not in intention but in fact.
Royalist, it abandoned the monarchy; humanitarian, it allowed the massacres of September; pacific, it pushed France into a formidable war, thus showing that a weak Government always ends by bringing ruin upon its country.
The history of the two previous revolutionary Assemblies proves once more to what point events carry within them their inevitable consequences.They constitute a train of necessities of which we can sometimes choose the first, but which then evolve without consulting us.We are free to make a decision, but powerless to avert its consequences.
The first measures of the Constituent Assembly were rational and voluntary, but the results which followed were beyond all will or reason or foresight.
Which of the men of 1789 would have ventured to desire or predict the death of Louis XVI., the wars of La Vendee, the Terror, the permanent guillotine and the final anarchy, or the ensuing return to tradition and order, guided by the iron hand of a soldier?
In the development of events which ensued from the early actions of the revolutionary Assemblies the most striking, perhaps, was the rise and development of the government of the crowd--of mob rule.
Behind the facts which we have been considering--the taking of the Bastille, the invasion of Versailles, the massacres of September, the attack on the Tuileries, the murder of the Swiss Guards, and the downfall and imprisonment of the king--we can readily perceive the laws affecting the psychology of crowds and their leaders.
We shall now see that the power of the multitude will progressively increase, overcome all other powers, and finally replace them.
