France -- History -- Revolution, 1789-1799 -- Causes; Revolutions; Social psychology
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?''
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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