A CRIMINAL HISTORY OF MANKIND

after executing four children, all sisters. Then Carrier invented a new and more efficient method of
execution: drowning, or ‘noyades’. Barges filled with prisoners were towed into the middle of the
river, then sunk while men waited on the banks with hatchets in case any escaped. One man and
woman were tied together naked, face to face, and drowned.
Just as in ancient Rome, terror led to more terror. The humanitarian Robespierre was actually
worried by the bloodbath, and felt his followers were going too far; yet he failed to grasp that both
he and they had fallen a victim to one of the basic laws of criminality: what might be called ‘the
snowball effect’. Mass murderers usually commit widely-spaced crimes, then commit them with
increasing frequency until they are caught or commit suicide. The Revolution had filled France
with mass murderers like Carrier. Even humanitarian judges were afraid to be lenient in case they
were arrested and executed. (Amusingly enough, the Marquis de Sade, now ‘Citizen Sade’ and
secretary of an assembly of revolutionaries, resigned when they proposed acts that were ‘horrible
and utterly inhuman’; he was arrested later that year - 1793 - and spent much of the rest of his life
in prison.) In 1794, Robespierre agreed that the Terror had to be intensified, and that anyone who
disagreed with the government should be sentenced to death. In one month, 1,300 were beheaded in
Paris. All this bloodshed finally sickened the citizens of Paris. On 28 July 1794, in the midst of the
new Terror, Robespierre and his friends were planning more mischief in the city hall when troops
burst into the room. There was a shot, and Robespierre fell forward with a shattered jaw. Some of
his friends jumped from windows, and were horribly injured on the pointed railings below. Later
the same day, Robespierre and nineteen of his followers were guillotined. Soon after, Carrier, the
butcher of Nantes, was tried and guillotined. All over France, Jacobins were killed by mobs. The
French Revolution, one of the most extraordinary outbreaks of mass murder in human history, was
over.
We can see, in retrospect, that the French Revolution was caused by individuals rather than by
economic conditions; by nobles who believed they had a divine right to their riches and titles, and
by individuals like the king (who secretly regarded the people as scum, and who trampled the
tricolour flag underfoot at a banquet of his officers). If Louis had been capable of reason, he would
have accepted the new Assembly, endorsed its declaration of the Rights of Man, and quietly waited
for the storm to blow over. Instead, he dreamed of returning to Paris at the head of an army and
suppressing the scum. It was pure ego-assertion, the same kind of ego-assertion that had made
Louis XIV humiliate Spain, that had made the Chevalier de Rohan humiliate Voltaire, that had
made Voltaire direct his venom at the ancien régime, that had made Marie Antoinette demand the
arrest of Cardinal Rohan - and that later made Robespierre establish himself as dictator of France.
In England there was no revolution - although the poor had as much ground for complaint - because
there were no nobles like Rohan to arouse hatred. The king had been executed in 1649, and the idea
of ‘divine right’ had died with him. In fact, George III had made a determined attempt to rule
without parliament; but the American Revolution had undone him. In France, a labourer touched
his hat as a gentleman passed; in England, he might well spit. Foreigners were amazed at the lack
of deference shown by the English poor. When they felt dissatisfied, they rioted, and on two
occasions - in 1795 and 1820 - they even mobbed the king. When Voltaire returned from England
and published letters in favour of English liberty, he had to flee Paris; towards the end of his life he
chose to live at Ferney, conveniently close to the Swiss border. But an English rabble-rouser like
John Wilkes could be hated by the aristocracy and the middle classes and still rely on the support of
the London mob to keep him out of prison while he continued to defy parliament. In 1791, Tom
Paine, an Englishman who had helped inspire and guide the American Revolution, was able to