Les Misérables
hopes for a downfall, some outcome, in short, at the very bottom, the
rabble, that mud which catches fire,—such are the elements of revolt.
That which is grandest and that which is basest; the beings who prowl
outside of all bounds, awaiting an occasion, bohemians, vagrants,
vagabonds of the crossroads, those who sleep at night in a desert of
houses with no other roof than the cold clouds of heaven, those who,
each day, demand their bread from chance and not from toil, the unknown
of poverty and nothingness, the bare-armed, the bare-footed, belong to
revolt. Whoever cherishes in his soul a secret revolt against any deed
whatever on the part of the state, of life or of fate, is ripe for
riot, and, as soon as it makes its appearance, he begins to quiver, and
to feel himself borne away with the whirlwind.
Revolt is a sort of waterspout in the social atmosphere which forms
suddenly in certain conditions of temperature, and which, as it eddies
about, mounts, descends, thunders, tears, razes, crushes, demolishes,
uproots, bearing with it great natures and small, the strong man and
the feeble mind, the tree trunk and the stalk of straw. Woe to him whom
it bears away as well as to him whom it strikes! It breaks the one
against the other.
It communicates to those whom it seizes an indescribable and
extraordinary power. It fills the firstcomer with the force of events;
it converts everything into projectiles. It makes a cannon-ball of a
rough stone, and a general of a porter.
If we are to believe certain oracles of crafty political views, a
little revolt is desirable from the point of view of power. System:
revolt strengthens those governments which it does not overthrow. It
puts the army to the test; it consecrates the bourgeoisie, it draws out
the muscles of the police; it demonstrates the force of the social
framework. It is an exercise in gymnastics; it is almost hygiene. Power
is in better health after a revolt, as a man is after a good rubbing
down.
Revolt, thirty years ago, was regarded from still other points of view.
There is for everything a theory, which proclaims itself “good sense”;
Philintus against Alcestis; mediation offered between the false and the
true; explanation, admonition, rather haughty extenuation which,
because it is mingled with blame and excuse, thinks itself wisdom, and
is often only pedantry. A whole political school called “the golden
mean” has been the outcome of this. As between cold water and hot
water, it is the lukewarm water party. This school with its false
depth, all on the surface, which dissects effects without going back to
first causes, chides from its height of a demi-science, the agitation
of the public square.
If we listen to this school, “The riots which complicated the affair of
1830 deprived that great event of a portion of its purity. The
Revolution of July had been a fine popular gale, abruptly followed by
blue sky. They made the cloudy sky reappear. They caused that
revolution, at first so remarkable for its unanimity, to degenerate
into a quarrel. In the Revolution of July, as in all progress
accomplished by fits and starts, there had been secret fractures; these
riots rendered them perceptible. It might have been said: ‘Ah! this is
broken.’ After the Revolution of July, one was sensible only of
deliverance; after the riots, one was conscious of a catastrophe.
“All revolt closes the shops, depresses the funds, throws the Exchange
into consternation, suspends commerce, clogs business, precipitates
failures; no more money, private fortunes rendered uneasy, public
credit shaken, industry disconcerted, capital withdrawing, work at a
discount, fear everywhere; counter-shocks in every town. Hence gulfs.
It has been calculated that the first day of a riot costs France twenty
millions, the second day forty, the third sixty, a three days’ uprising
costs one hundred and twenty millions, that is to say, if only the
financial result be taken into consideration, it is equivalent to a
disaster, a shipwreck or a lost battle, which should annihilate a fleet
of sixty ships of the line.
“No doubt, historically, uprisings have their beauty; the war of the
pavements is no less grandiose, and no less pathetic, than the war of
thickets: in the one there is the soul of forests, in the other the
heart of cities; the one has Jean Chouan, the other has a Jeanne.
Revolts have illuminated with a red glare all the most original points
of the Parisian character, generosity, devotion, stormy gayety,
students proving that bravery forms part of intelligence, the National
Guard invincible, bivouacs of shopkeepers, fortresses of street
urchins, contempt of death on the part of passers-by. Schools and
legions clashed together. After all, between the combatants, there was
only a difference of age; the race is the same; it is the same stoical
men who died at the age of twenty for their ideas, at forty for their
families. The army, always a sad thing in civil wars, opposed prudence
to audacity. Uprisings, while proving popular intrepidity, also
educated the courage of the bourgeois.
“This is well. But is all this worth the bloodshed? And to the
bloodshed add the future darkness, progress compromised, uneasiness
among the best men, honest liberals in despair, foreign absolutism
happy in these wounds dealt to revolution by its own hand, the
vanquished of 1830 triumphing and saying: ‘We told you so!’ Add Paris
enlarged, possibly, but France most assuredly diminished. Add, for all
must needs be told, the massacres which have too often dishonored the
victory of order grown ferocious over liberty gone mad. To sum up all,
uprisings have been disastrous.”
Thus speaks that approximation to wisdom with which the bourgeoisie,
that approximation to the people, so willingly contents itself.
For our parts, we reject this word _uprisings_ as too large, and
consequently as too convenient. We make a distinction between one
popular movement and another popular movement. We do not inquire
whether an uprising costs as much as a battle. Why a battle, in the
first place? Here the question of war comes up. Is war less of a
scourge than an uprising is of a calamity? And then, are all uprisings
calamities? And what if the revolt of July did cost a hundred and
twenty millions? The establishment of Philip V. in Spain cost France
two milliards. Even at the same price, we should prefer the 14th of
July. However, we reject these figures, which appear to be reasons and
which are only words. An uprising being given, we examine it by itself.
In all that is said by the doctrinarian objection above presented,
there is no question of anything but effect, we seek the cause.
We will be explicit.
CHAPTER II—THE ROOT OF THE MATTER
There is such a thing as an uprising, and there is such a thing as
insurrection; these are two separate phases of wrath; one is in the
wrong, the other is in the right. In democratic states, the only ones
which are founded on justice, it sometimes happens that the fraction
usurps; then the whole rises and the necessary claim of its rights may
proceed as far as resort to arms. In all questions which result from
collective sovereignty, the war of the whole against the fraction is
insurrection; the attack of the fraction against the whole is revolt;
according as the Tuileries contain a king or the Convention, they are
justly or unjustly attacked. The same cannon, pointed against the
populace, is wrong on the 10th of August, and right on the 14th of
Vendémiaire. Alike in appearance, fundamentally different in reality;
the Swiss defend the false, Bonaparte defends the true. That which
universal suffrage has effected in its liberty and in its sovereignty
cannot be undone by the street. It is the same in things pertaining
purely to civilization; the instinct of the masses, clear-sighted
to-day, may be troubled to-morrow. The same fury legitimate when
directed against Terray and absurd when directed against Turgot. The
destruction of machines, the pillage of warehouses, the breaking of
rails, the demolition of docks, the false routes of multitudes, the
refusal by the people of justice to progress, Ramus assassinated by
students, Rousseau driven out of Switzerland and stoned,—that is
revolt. Israel against Moses, Athens against Phocian, Rome against
Cicero,—that is an uprising; Paris against the Bastille,—that is
insurrection. The soldiers against Alexander, the sailors against
Christopher Columbus,—this is the same revolt; impious revolt; why?
Because Alexander is doing for Asia with the sword that which
Christopher Columbus is doing for America with the compass; Alexander
like Columbus, is finding a world. These gifts of a world to
civilization are such augmentations of light, that all resistance in
that case is culpable. Sometimes the populace counterfeits fidelity to
itself. The masses are traitors to the people. Is there, for example,
anything stranger than that long and bloody protest of dealers in
contraband salt, a legitimate chronic revolt, which, at the decisive
moment, on the day of salvation, at the very hour of popular victory,
espouses the throne, turns into _chouannerie_, and, from having been an
insurrection against, becomes an uprising for, sombre masterpieces of
ignorance! The contraband salt dealer escapes the royal gibbets, and
with a rope’s end round his neck, mounts the white cockade. “Death to
the salt duties,” brings forth, “Long live the King!” The assassins of
Saint-Barthélemy, the cut-throats of September, the manslaughterers of
Avignon, the assassins of Coligny, the assassins of Madam Lamballe, the
assassins of Brune, Miquelets, Verdets, Cadenettes, the companions of
Jéhu, the chevaliers of Brassard,—behold an uprising. La Vendée is a
grand, catholic uprising. The sound of right in movement is
recognizable, it does not always proceed from the trembling of excited
masses; there are mad rages, there are cracked bells, all tocsins do
not give out the sound of bronze. The brawl of passions and ignorances
is quite another thing from the shock of progress. Show me in what
direction you are going. Rise, if you will, but let it be that you may
grow great. There is no insurrection except in a forward direction. Any
other sort of rising is bad; every violent step towards the rear is a
revolt; to retreat is to commit a deed of violence against the human
race. Insurrection is a fit of rage on the part of truth; the pavements
which the uprising disturbs give forth the spark of right. These
pavements bequeath to the uprising only their mud. Danton against Louis
XIV. is insurrection; Hébert against Danton is revolt.
Hence it results that if insurrection in given cases may be, as
Lafayette says, the most holy of duties, an uprising may be the most
fatal of crimes.
There is also a difference in the intensity of heat; insurrection is
often a volcano, revolt is often only a fire of straw.
Revolt, as we have said, is sometimes found among those in power.
Polignac is a rioter; Camille Desmoulins is one of the governing
powers.
Insurrection is sometimes resurrection.
The solution of everything by universal suffrage being an absolutely
modern fact, and all history anterior to this fact being, for the space
of four thousand years, filled with violated right, and the suffering
of peoples, each epoch of history brings with it that protest of which
it is capable. Under the Cæsars, there was no insurrection, but there
was Juvenal.
The _facit indignatio_ replaces the Gracchi.
Under the Cæsars, there is the exile to Syene; there is also the man of
the _Annales_. We do not speak of the immense exile of Patmos who, on
his part also, overwhelms the real world with a protest in the name of
the ideal world, who makes of his vision an enormous satire and casts