BOOK THIRD. THE SECOND STAGE OF THE CONQUEST. CHAPTER I. Mob rule in times of anarchy. I. Brigands. II. Homicidal Part of Revolutionary Creed. III. Terror is their Salvation. IV. Carnage. V. Abasement and Stupor. VI. Jacobin Massacre. CHAPTER II. THE DEPARTMENTS. I. The Sovereignty of the People.. II. Robbers and Victims. III. Local Dictature. IV. Jacobin Violence, Rape and Pillage. V. The Roving Gangs. VI. The Programme of the Party. CHAPTER III. The New Sovereigns.. I. Sharing the Spoils. II. Doctoring the Elections III Electoral Control.. IV: The New Republican Assembly. V. The Jacobins forming alone the Sovereign People. VI. Composition of the Jacobin Party. VII. The Jacobin Chieftains. CHAPTER IV. TAKEN HOSTAGE. I. Jacobin tactics and power. II. Jacobin characters and minds. III. Physical fear and moral cowardice. IV. Jacobin victory over Girondist majority. V. Jacobin violence against the people. VI. Jacobin tactics. VII. The central Jacobin committee in power. VIII. Right or Wrong, my Country. PREFACE: In this volume, as in those preceding it and in those to come, there will be found only the history of Public Authorities. Others will write that of diplomacy, of war, of the finances, of the Church; my subject is a limited one. To my great regret, however, this new part fills an entire volume; and the last part, on the revolutionary government, will be as long. I have again to regret the dissatisfaction I foresee this work will cause to many of my countrymen. My excuse is, that almost all of them, more fortunate than myself, have political principles which serve them in forming their judgments of the past. I had none; if indeed, I had any motive in undertaking this work, it was to seek for political principles. Thus far I have attained to scarcely more than one; and this is so simple that will seem puerile, and that I hardly dare express it. Nevertheless I have adhered to it, and in what the reader is about to peruse my judgments are all derived from that; its truth is the measure of theirs. It consists wholly in this observation: that HUMAN SOCIETY, ESPECIALLY A MODERN SOCIETY, IS A VAST AND COMPLICATED THING. Hence the difficulty in knowing and comprehending it. For the same reason it is not easy to handle the subject well. It follows that a cultivated mind is much better able to do this than an uncultivated mind, and a man specially qualified than one who is not. From these two last truths flow many other consequences, which, if the reader deigns to reflect on them, he will have no trouble in defining. H. A. Taine, Paris 1881. ***** BOOK FIRST. THE JACOBINS. CHAPTER I. THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE NEW POLITICAL ORGAN.