been advised that
the king wished it."[5315] At Lyons, when the tapsters of the town and
the peasants of the neighborhood trample the customs officials underfoot
they believe that the king has suspended all customs dues for three
days.[5316] The scope of their imagination is proportionate to their
shortsightedness. "Bread, no more rents, no more taxes!" is the sole
cry, the cry of want, while exasperated want plunges ahead like a
famished bull. Down with the monopolist!--storehouses are forced open,
convoys of grain are stopped, markets are pillaged, bakers are hung, and
the price of bread is fixed so that none is to be had or is concealed.
Down with the octroi!--barriers are demolished, clerks are beaten,
money is wanting in the towns for urgent expenses. Burn tax registries,
account-books, municipal archives, seigniors' charter-safes, convent
parchments, every detestable document creative of debtors and sufferers!
The village itself is no longer able to preserve its parish property.
The rage against any written document, against public officers, against
any man more or less connected with grain, is blind and determined.
The furious animal destroys all, although wounding himself, driving and
roaring against the obstacle that ought to be outflanked.

III.

Destructive impulses.--The object of blind rage.--Distrust
of natural leaders.--Suspicion of them changed into hatred.
--Disposition of the people in 1789.

This owing to the absence of leaders and in the absence of organization,
a mob is simply a herd. Its mistrust of its natural leaders, of the
great, of the wealthy, of persons in office and clothed with authority,
is inveterate and incurable. Vainly do these wish it well and do it
good; it has no faith in their humanity or disinterestedness. It has
been too down-trodden; it entertains prejudices against every measure
proceeding from them, even the most liberal and the most beneficial. "At
the mere mention of the new assemblies," says a provincial commission in
1787,[5317] "we heard a workman exclaim, 'What, more new extortioners!'"
Superiors of every kind are suspected, and from suspicion to
hostility the road is not long. In 1788[5318] Mercier declares that
"insubordination has been manifest for some years, especially among the
trades. . . . Formerly, on entering a printing-office the men took off
their hats. Now they content themselves with staring and leering at
you; scarcely have you cro