CHAPTER XX

THE ASSOCIATED PATRIOTS
On the restoration of the Bourbons in 1814 France became an unpleasant domicile for anyone professing liberal views in politics. The Charter granted by Louis XVIII limited the exercise of political power to the large landowners and upper classes; the Press was muzzled; freedom of speech became non-existent. A Royalist campaign of reprisals, known as the White Terror, broke out in the southern districts, and the murders and riots that accompanied it enjoyed the tacit approval of the Government, for their perpetrators were never punished.
The partisans of reaction having obtained complete power, the Chambers passed in the session 1815 a measure for the “repression of sedition” which was so comprehensive as to render it “difficult in the extreme for any person who might be obnoxious to the Government to avoid falling into the meshes of the police.”1
In 1815 Cours Prevotales (Provost Courts) were established, which met in every department and were presided over by a Provost, who was usually an old Royalist officer. The Provost executed his functions without a jury, and there was no appeal from his decree. His special object was to arrest and bring before the court all persons disaffected to the Government or engaged in any conspiracy, and in this he was assisted by Royalist committees self-in¬ stituted in every considerable town. The iniquities com¬ mitted by these courts in the name of law and order but really for motives of revenge led to their suppression in 1817; not before they had become an index to the spirit of the Government that employed such means of repression.
1 Thomas Frost, The Societies of the European Revolution , I, 267.
167
1 68 FAMOUS SECRET SOCIETIES
It was in these bad times that the short-lived secret society known as the Associated Patriots was founded. Its object was to effect a revolution and re-establish a re¬ public. Paris was the seat of its Directorate, and it had branches in many other towns.
The true personnel of its Directorate was never proved; but the Government suspected Lafayette, the veteran Republican leader, with his friends Manuel and Argenson, both leading Liberals, of being the secret leaders of the conspiracy. The rank and file of the membership consisted mainly of dismissed officers who had held important positions under the Republic or Empire, non-commissioned officers and privates who had also been disbanded from the army, and workmen with a grievance.
The society began its operations before the close of 1815. A gunpowder plot, in which the Tuileries Palace was to be blown up with the royal family, such were its intentions as the Government believed, or pretended to believe; but no sufficient evidence has ever been produced to warrant the charge.
Much as the Government was afraid of the conspiracy, it was even more afraid to take the bold step of arresting Lafayette and his friends on mere suspicion based on nothing but rumour. In default of the big fish any victim would be welcome in the net, so the authorities adopted the system of agents provocateurs in order to sweep in some of the smaller fry. According to Vidocq, these police agents were sent into the guingettes, the singing clubs held in cheap taverns, in order to inflame the discontented artizans with patriotic declarations and draw the more dangerous of them into mock conspiracies. This method had a certain amount of success, for as a result three poor wretches were arrested, found guilty of treason, and executed with attendant circumstances of peculiar barbarity. These victims were accused of preparing and circulating a treasonable document. The chief evidence produced against them at the trial was that they had been found in the possession of cards revealing their membership of the society of Associated Patriots.
When merely the membership of a society was sufficient
THE ASSOCIATED PATRIOTS 1 69
to entail a violent and painful death, few would be strong- minded enough to persist in retaining their connexion with such a dangerous body; it is not surprising, therefore, that these executions for high treason were followed by a collapse of the Associated Patriots.
A couple of spasmodic outbreaks at Grenoble and Lyons which seem to have occurred quite independently of the Associated Patriots led shortly after to a change in the French ministry. Though this was little change for the better, the Republican party had been taught caution, and the leaders of the Associated Patriots made no effort to revive the society. No doubt those former members who wished to go on conspiring found an opportunity to do so in the ranks of the French Carbonari and other successive secret societies that aimed at revolution.