Enlightenment and Revolution Essays in Honour of Norman Hampson
Edited by
MALCOLM CROOK Keele University, UK
WILLIAM DOYLE University of Bristol, UK
ALAN FORREST University of York, UK
Norman Hampson
ASHGATE
© Malcolm Crook, William Doyle and Alan Forrest 2004
Contents
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Gower House Croft Road Aldershot Hampshire GUll 3HR England
List of Contributors Ashgate Publishing Company Suite 420 101 Cherry Street Burlington, VT 0540 1-4405 USA
Ashgate website: http://www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Enlightenment and revolution: essays in honour of Norman Hampson 1. Enlightenment 2. France - History - 18th century 3. France - History - Revolution, 1789-1799 4. France - Politics and government - 18th century I. Crook, Malcolm, 1948- II. Doyle, William, 1942- III. Forrest, Alan, 1945N Hampson, Norman
Introduction: The Life and Opinions of Norman Hampson William Doyle
vii 1
The Writings of Norman Hampson
19
1
Voltaire and Hume Haydn Mason
22
2
Enlightenment, Science and Army Reform in Eighteenth-Century France Alan Forrest
3
Louis XVI and the Public Sphere Tim Blanning
4
Henri-Leonard Bertin and the Fate of the Bourbon Monarchy: the 'Chinese Connection' Gwynne Lewis
38
54
944'.034 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Enlightenment and revolution: essays in honour of Norman Hampson / edited by Malcolm Crook, William Doyle and Alan Forrest p.cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-7546-0682-1 (alk. paper) 1. France-History-Revolution, 1789-1799. 2. Hampson, Norman. I. Hampson, Norman. II. Crook, Malcolm, 1948- III. Doyle, William, 1942- IV. Forrest, Alan I.
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The 'Political Reveries' of Alexander Jardine, (1739?-1799) Jane Rendall
6
Partners in Revolution: Louise de Keralio and Fran<;ois Robert, Editors of the Mercure National, 1789-1791 Leigh Whaley
114
Reason, Revolution and Religion: Gregoire and the Search for Reconciliation James McMillan
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Ideas of the Future in the French Revolution Marisa Linton
153
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Enlightenment and Revolution
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'A Ferocious and Misled Multitude': Elite Perceptions of Popular Action from Rousseau to Robespierre David Andress
10
11
169
'England Expects .. .': Trading in Liberty in the Age of Trafalgar Peter Jones
187
The Haitian Revolution and the Worid of Atlantic Slavery James Walvin
204
Index
220
List of Contributors
David Andress is Principal Lecturer in Modern European History at the University of Portsmouth. He studied under Norman Hampson as an undergraduate at York. He has published a number of works on Paris in the early Revolution, and is currently working on histories of the Terror and of the common people in the Revolution. Tim Blanning is Professor of Modern European History at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College. He is also a Fellow of the British Academy. His most recent publication is The culture of power and the power of culture: old regime Europe 1660-1789, OUP, 2002. Malcolm Crook is Professor of French History at Keele University. His recently edited Revolutionary France 1788-1880 (OUP, 2002). He is working on a history of electoral culture in France from 1789 to 1914, How the French learned to vote, and is currently serving as editor of the journal French History. William Doyle has been Professor of History at the University of Bristol since 1986 and is author of the Oxford History of the French Revolution, second edition, OUP, 2002. Until 1981 he was a colleague of Norman Hampson at the University of York. They seldom meet without talking sooner or later about the French Revolution. Alan Forrest is Professor of Modern History at the University of York. He has written extensively on Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, particularly on provincial politics and on social and military questions. His latest book, Napoleon's men, Hambledon and London, 2002, analyses the writings and motivation of those who served in the French armies. Peter Jones is Professor of French History at the University of Birmingham. He has published a number of books and articles on the French Revolution which explore its rural dimension. The most recent to appear is: Liberty and locality in revolutionary France: six villages compared, 1760-1820, CUP, 2003. He also writes on the subject of European cultural exchange during the second half of the eighteenth
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List of Contributors
century. The correspondence networks of the Scientific Enlightenment are the current focus of his research.
Leigh Whaley is an Associate Professor in the Department of History and Classics at Acadia University, Nova Scotia, Canada. She studied as a postgraduate under Norman Hampson. Her most recent publication on revolutionary France is Radicals: politics and republicanism in the French Revolution, Sutton, 2000. She has just completed Women's history as science forthcoming for ABC-CLIO.
viii
Marisa Linton is a lecturer in European History at Kingston University. She has recently published a book on The politics of virtue in Enlightenment France, Palgrave, 2001, as well as articles on the political ideas of Robespierre and on the origins of the French Revolution. Gwynne Lewis is Emeritus Professor at Warwick University. His publications include The second Vendee: the continuity of counterrevolution in the department of the Gard, 1789-1815, OUP, 1978; The advent of modem capitalism in France: the case of Pierre-Francois TubeuJ, CUP, 1993; and The French Revolution: rethinking the debate, Routledge, 1994. His social history of France, 1715-1804: power and the people will appear in 2003/4. James McMillan is Richard Pares Professor of History at the University of Edinburgh and a former colleague of Norman Hampson at the University of York. He is the author of many works on nineteenth- and twentieth-century France, including France and women: gender, society and politics 17891914, Routledge, 2000. Haydn Mason, Emeritus Professor, Officier des Palmes Linguistiques, was general editor of the Complete works of Voltaire, 1998-2001 and previously Editor of Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 197795. Professor at the Sorbonne, 1979-81 and former President of the International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 1991-95, he is the author of several books on Voltaire and on literature, thought and society in eighteenth-century France. Jane Rendall is a Senior Lecturer in the History Department and the Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies at the University of York. She is currently working on a study of the gendered legacies of the Enlightenment in Scotland, and editing a collection of essays on eighteenth-century York. James Walvin is Professor of History at the University of York, where he studied for his PhD under Gwyn Williams, on England in the 17908. Although most of his work has been on British slavery in the Caribbean, he has retained his interest in the revolutionary decade of the 1790s.
The editors would like to thank Jane Allmark for her splendid work in preparing the camera-ready copy for this volume.
Introduction: The Life and Opinions of Norman Hampson William Doyle
No reviewer noticed, Norman Hampson once complained to me, that the title of his book on Robespierre was taken from that of Tristram Shandy; despite the additional clue on the very first page, when the story begins months before the subject is born. But nobody thinks of historians being influenced by imaginative literature - least of all, perhaps, historians themselves, who do most of the reviewing. We know the opinions of our fellow historians, writing about their subject, as fully as they care to expound them, but we generally know little of the lives that underpin those opinions, including what else they read. Norman Hampson waited fiftyseven years before recording some of his life outside history, having vowed in 1944 never to do any such thing. Even then he only gave us a short (though crucial) slice of it. 1 And from it we learn that he never really wanted to be a historian at all, but a poet. Knowing this, we then notice how rich in literary allusions and awareness his writings are, especially after his reputation as a historian was established, and he could afford to indulge his imagination. The puzzled reaction which The life and opinions of Maximilien Robespierre (1974) continues to provoke among younger historians trained in the graduate student mills of North America shows what history can lose when imagination and literary artifice are systematically squeezed out. Not only did Norman not plan to be a historian; he did not plan to be a French one either. It was all, he assures us, a matter of happy accident. It was an accident that he entered the navy in 1941 rather than a year later, and an accident that, two years late, he had the opportunity to become liaison officer on a Free French sloop when the French of Manchester Grammar School had not prepared him to speak or understand the language. Not only did his two years on La Moqueuse introduce him to the libertarian side of France - 'generous hopes and aspirations for all of I
N. Hampson, Not really what you'd call a war, Caithness, 2001.
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humanity' - it also brought him the sister of one of his shipmates as a wife, or 'war booty' as he has been known to describe her ... 'I have always', he understandably reflects, 'been puzzled by the reluctance of historians to acknowledge the importance of chance,.2 Back in Oxford after the war, Norman took the famous French Revolution special subject at the feet of its designer himself, J.M. Thompson. Later he would dedicate his first book in English to Thompson's memory, and follow him as a biographer of Robespierre. This, as well as his war experience and later domestic circumstances, qualified him in a whole range of ways for the responsibility of teaching French history and civilisation at Manchester from 1948 onwards. While there, he embarked on research for a French doctoral thesis, which became his first book, La marine de l'an II. 'From the time when I was a small boy', he tells US,3 'I have been fascinated by ships', and his practical experience of very small ones during the war seems not to have dampened his interest. One of his best-known party pieces throughout his university career was an illustrated seminar on the 'glorious' first of June 1794, when good French convoy protection thwarted gung-ho British aggression. The British chose to call it a victory because of the French warships they sank, but Norman knew that the real victory was the arrival intact of the French grain ships. And he was impressed by the organisational effort that had gone into the rapid reconstruction of the navy under the Montagnard Republic. Writing a book about it left him even more impressed. When war broke out against the old naval enemy at the beginning of 1793, the Atlantic Fleet operating out of Brest and Rochefort was disorganised, demoralised, undergunned, undersupplied and undermanned. In the course of that year, Rochefort was paralysed by the distractions of the Vendee rebellion in its rear, mutiny at Quiberon in September threatened to leave much of the Atlantic coastline defenceless, and the Republic's entire naval effort was ruptured by the enemy takeover of Toulon and the ships stationed there. Ruthless action by the Committee of Public Safety and its agents almost turned this situation round by the spring of 1794. A crash programme of shipbuilding, requisitioning of supplies and drafting of crews produced an Atlantic Fleet which, given a year or two more training and progress at this rate, could have been stronger than its overstretched British adversary. Particularly impressive was the progress in smaller ships (ancestors of La Moqueuse?) where raw conscripts 'embarked on frigates
and escort vessels sailed a lot and learnt their trade in the best of schools,.4 Strategic confusion quite literally sank all these achievements when the battle fleet was sent out to escort the Van Stabel convoy across the Atlantic in April 1794. If the British attack had been beaten off, not only would the convoy have got through, perhaps the entire English coast would have been open to an invasion of 'fifty thousand liberty caps'. But it was too much to hope from a French fleet still half-trained and weakened by diseases that its opponents had conquered. And when the Committee of Public Safety fell a few weeks later, the impetus went out of naval policy when all was still to play for. Georges Lefebvre, who advised on the research and was thanked in the preface, would have approved of this conclusion. His contempt for the back-peddling Therrnidoreans was well known. He would also have approved of fleeting references to the commercial, indeed Girondin, bourgeoisie more interested in trade protection than manning the battle squadrons which alone could bring about the defeat of the modem Carthage. s Above all he would have shared Norman's admiration for the revolutionary energy which achieved so much in a matter of months, even if its means were terror and economic dictatorship. This admiration would never quite disappear from Norman's later writings, but it is safe to speculate that Lefebvre would have been saddened if not astonished at how far the new docteur d'universite would move in the future from accepting other tenets of classical Jacobinism. For the moment, however, La marine de l'an II, together with a number of articles on related themes, established its author's reputation as a researcher in the field of revolutionary history. Like most research reputations, it was largely confined to fellow specialists, and Frenchspeaking ones at that. A wider reputation in the English-speaking world (at least outside Manchester, where it was already high enough to bring promotion to a senior lectureship) did not come until 1963, which saw the appearance of A social history of the French Revolution. This was the moment when I first heard the name of Hampson. It was in Broad Street in Oxford, outside the gates of Trinity, in February 1964. Scoring points as competitive undergraduates will, a fellow student studying the French Revolution special subject asked if I had come across a new book by Norman Hampson. Perhaps if I had been one of Richard Cobb's students I N. Hampson, La marine de l'an II. Mobilisation de la jlotte de l'Ocean, 1793·4, Paris, 1959, p. 212. 5 Ibid., pp. 91, 238. 4
Ibid., p. 3. 3 Ibid., p. 2.
2
3
4
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would have - because the two were already friends. As it was, I went straight to Blackwell's to investigate whether this was a user-friendly guide to a subject already daunting me by its complexity. It was indeed; and, Reader, I bought it. I never looked back, and nor I suspect have generations of subsequent undergraduates who have kept it in print for forty years. The (still anonymous) reviewer in The Times Literary Supplement predicted that it was 'likely to hold its own for a long time as the most accurate, most thorough and most measured account of the revolutionary crisis'. Translated as well into three languages, it has clearly done so in an ever more crowded field. Its virtues are its clarity, fair-mindedness, and occasional hints of critical irony in describing the more high-flown language and ideas of the men of the Year II. It was written explicitly for the general reader, and it appeared in a pioneering series devoted to studies in social history. It also caught a flowing tide, coming out at a moment when the critical onslaughts of Alfred Cobban were about to make the social interpretation of the Revolution one of the most bitterly contested historical issues for the best part of a generation. Yet by later standards its claims to be a distinctively social history are limited. To be sure, it locates the origins of the Revolution in a 'major social crisis,6 complete with a rising bourgeoisie, increasingly distressed peasantry, and an aristocratic reaction; but in 1963 this interpretation was consensual and would only be shaken to pieces by subsequent controversy. More space than previously was given to the social impact of revolutionary legislation, with an emphasis then unusual on the provinces. A new generation's work on the nature and aspirations of the sans-culottes was for the first time synthesised for an English-speaking readership. All this provided more concrete social context than was to be found in Goodwin's French Revolution, which had held the field as the best account in English for the previous ten years. Nevertheless it remained, like Goodwin, primarily a narrative of public life. As such, its main innovation was to take the story beyond the fall of Robespierre and right down to the end of the Convention. Was this, as the author modestly claimed, simply to gratify the reader's curiosity about what happened next? Or was it because, as he also noted, those living through the upheavals of Thermidor would have been surprised to be told the Revolution was now all over, unaware that later generations of left-wing historians would see the fall of Robespierre as the defeat of the Revolution's most worthwhile achievements, the first 'anticipations' of later socialism?
Not that the young Hampson had been hostile to left-wing causes. An instinctive pacifist, he had nevertheless joined the navy to fight Fascism. It was important to him that the Soviet Union should survive, and he welcomed Attlee's election victory at home in 1945. Yet what he saw of the inhumanity of war, not to mention the anarchy of liberated France in 1944, left him even more confused than he admits to have been when he joined up. While the deceptive order of Toulon without clear constituted authorities made him reflect that this was what revolutionary Paris must have been like, he noted in his diary that 'to shrink from revolutionary disorder' was a 'natural attitude of mind' .7 What was and was not natural, however, was a problem in itself - and one central to the thought of the eighteenth century. Norman was to spend much of his middle career grappling with it. Little in A social history of the French Revolution suggested that his interests would soon move on to more theoretical planes. But the seeds had been sown when he was introduced by the librarian of the John Rylands Library in Manchester to the Crawford Collection of revolutionary pamphlets, the Recueil des pieces interessantes pour servir a l'histoire de la Revolution en France. He recorded his assessment of its importance in the Library's Bulletin in the year after his general history of the Revolution was published. s Post-revisionist historians from across the Channel or the Atlantic seldom cite this article: and yet here, without the benefit of the theoretical insights of Habermas (and indeed only two years after he published them) is the great interpretative theme which the philosopher of Frankfurt is supposed to have inspired. The pamphlets are offered as clear evidence for the creation of 'the public opinion which formed so formidable a force in 1789,.9 Here too is an emphasis on the intellectual continuities between pre- and post-revolutionary France: 'So far as political theory is concerned, it is impossible to separate the "Pre-Revolution" from the revolutionary crisis itself. 10 Indeed (Schama and Furet take comfort!), 'The language used by the protagonists of 1788 was frequently that of the Terror'. 11 It seems improbable that the later Hampson, with his increasing emphasis on the contingent, would continue
6
N. Hampson, A social history of the French Revolution, London, 1963, p. 33.
Hampson, Not really, p. 109. N. Hampson, 'The Recueil des pieces interessantes pour servir a l'histoire de la Revolution en France and the origins of the French Revolution', Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 46, 1964, pp. 385-410. 9 Ibid., p. 403. 10 Ibid. II Ibid., p. 404. 7
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to subscribe to the deterministic implications of such conclusions, except at the most general level of the pervasive influence of key thinkers. But signposts towards this approach were also set up in this crucial article. What Norman found as he steeped himself in the vehement and repetitive rhetoric of 1788, was that two sets of ideas occurred again and again: those of Montesquieu, and those of Rousseau. 'Quotations from De I'esprit des lois', he reported, 'abound throughout the Recueil' , with much commendation of resistance to despotism, the virtues of intermediary powers, and appeals to French traditions. 12 Yet there was also plenty of Rousseau to reinforce invocations of the natural rights of man. A warning note too often unheeded by analysts of French revolutionary rhetoric was at once struck: 'It would perhaps be excessive to see a systematic advocacy of the theories of Du contrat social behind every reference to the volonte generale',13 and it was noted that 'both Montesquieu and Rousseau were grist to the anti-absolutist mill' .14 The theories of Rousseau, Norman also noticed, were 'often enlisted in support of local particularism' .15 And yet already he could see a potential polarisation between the disciples of the Gascon and the Genevan. In 1964 this appeared to be mainly a matter of divided versus popular sovereignty. By 1983 it would develop into the theme of an entire book: Will (Rousseau) versus Circumstance (Montesquieu).16 Five other books, and even more essays and articles, would appear before that distilled insight. The first, and possibly the most influential of all Norman's books, was his volume on The Enlightenment (1968) in the Pelican History of European Thought. The last product of his Manchester years (although by the time it appeared he had moved to the chair of Modern History at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne), it was a lucid and masterly survey of the broad sweep of eighteenth-century intellectual history, written without jargon but with a sharp eye for ambiguity and paradox. It was offered with modesty as simply a 'personal pattern' imposed on 'the rich anarchy of the evidence' - a disclaimer that would
recur in other books. I? The stated intention was to incite readers to sample the 'banquet' of Enlightenment writings for themselves. Unlike other surveys of the Enlightenment, this one placed intellectual developments firmly in a political and social context that only brought out their significance more clearly, but it got the book into trouble with some readers in the sixties when Marxism was in its Indian summer. The social historian of the Revolution was now refusing to concede that the eighteenth century saw the rise of a middle class challenging aristocratic values: he was clearly absorbing and incorporating the arguments of the 'Revisionists' who were beginning to challenge hitherto consensual accounts of the origins of the Revolution. 18 Nor did the philosophes seek or expect revolutionary change: 'It was disinterested intellectual speculation rather than possible political action which really excited these people' .19 But when educated men who had grown up in, and absorbed, the intellectual atmosphere of the Enlightenment were confronted with the opportunity of reorganising and improving the land of their birth, naturally they seized it to bring in 'principles of secularism, rationality, uniformity and election'?O But, 'as was to be expected with such men in control, the social consequences of the Revolution were somewhat limited.' Nor could Norman find it in his heart to condemn what was achieved, or the intellectual sources from which it was derived. He had little but scorn for those like de Maistre, Bonald and Chateaubriand who rejected both Enlightenment and Revolution as inseparable sources of evil in the modern world. He was more receptive to Burke, 'the Montesquieu of a stable society' ,21 who after all had been primarily concerned to defend a form of representative government and a particular series of liberties. But he really warmed to Rousseau, whatever his baleful influence on the Revolution's
Ibid., p. 397. [bid., p. 399. 14 Ibid., p. 400. 15 [bid., p. 401. 16 N. Hampson, Will and circumstance. Montesquieu, Rousseau and the French Revolution, London, 1983. 12
13
17 For example, N. Hampson, The French Revolution. A concise history, London, 1975, p. 6, and idem, Prelude to Terror. The Constituent Assembly and the failure of consensus, 17891791, Oxford, 1988, pp. xi-xii. 18 Indeed, in The first European Revolution, 1776-1815, London, 1969, a lavishly illustrated essay reputedly written in six weeks flat, he took the opportunity 'to pay particular tribute to the late Professor A. Cobban, for the fresh air which he brought to the somewhat musty orthodoxy of French Revolutionary studies. 1 have not adopted Cobban's own views ... but without the impetus which he provided 1 should not have been able to think things out for myself.' (pp. 7-8). Norman had been one of the invited guests at Cobban's Wiles Lectures in Belfast in 1962, which were later published as The social interpretation of the French Revolution, Cambridge, 1964. 19 N. Hampson, The Enlightenment, p. 253. 20 [bid., p. 257. 21 [bid., p. 274.
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more extreme ideologues. He was impressed by how Jean-Jacques' appeal to the inner voice carried people away: 'the reader who does not feel the point can never understand it'. 22 It was quite logical, therefore, that Norman's next subject should be Rousseau's most famous, or notorious, disciple. There have been many books about Robespierre, but never one like The life and opinions. 'Having been baffled and exasperated by Robespierre for many years I yielded to the illusion that the only way to make up my mind about him was to write his biography. I should, of course, have known better. Greater familiarity with the evidence merely provided new support for the conflicting opinions that I had hoped it would reconcile,.23 It was the rich anarchy of the evidence again, sometimes compounded this time as much by its scarcity as by its abundance. Often Norman did not know what to think, or rather which of his own opinions to opt for. He decided to opt for them all. The result was not a straightforward biography, but a conversation between four characters - a narrator, a civil servant, a communist and a clergyman. Each interprets Robespierre's life and opinions in contrasting and sometimes quite irreconcilable ways, but their attitudes are all Norman's own. To write history, he declares in the preface, is above all a process of self-discovery. It is less a quest for objectivity than a struggle with subjectivity. Bound by the evidence, a historian still has 'more freedom of interpretation than he would always like,.24 And, as a self-professed 'historical agnostic', Norman finds no solace in acts of preconceived faith about what history means or where it is going. He feels obliged to confront the evidence, in all its abundance or paucity, as he goes along; and he reserves the right to come to no final conclusion, aware that even if he did it would never be accepted for long, if at all. The result was, as Richard Cobb noted in a long and careful review,25 a 'formidable achievement' to be 'read not only by those fascinated by Robespierre, but by all who are concerned with the nature of historical evidence'. Few professional historians would be prepared to risk their reputations by writing anything so eccentric; but the eccentric in Cobb recognised its qualities - just as Norman, a man ostensibly as far removed as could be imagined from the chaotic and self-obsessed Cobb, was always fascinated and charmed by his antics.
No attempt was made to deal with Robespierre' s later reputation, a subject in itself but one likely to confuse the basic search for reliable evidence dating from when he was alive. But even then how much irrefutably contemporary material was reliable? Even at the time people found it hard to be sure what was going on - including Robespierre himself. The most spectacular example of obscurity and confusion was the notorious 'foreign plot' revealed to him by Fran~ois Chabot in November 1793 and which kept resurfacing in his mind until his overthrow. It was also to preoccupy Norman throughout several subsequent books, whether his biographies of Danton (1978), Saint-Just (1991) or most recently his exploration of French revolutionary perceptions of England, The perfidy of Albion (1998).26 Having repeatedly gone over the evidence, he is even less sure of what lay behind it than he was at the beginning. 'One thing at least seems clear', he wrote in 1975, 'Chabot did expose something, even if he did not know what it was, and his "revelations" played an important part in the mysterious policies of the Terror, even if not quite in the way that he intended'. 27 Sixteen years later Norman was still noting that 'the two governing committees, whatever their initial scepticism, eventually came to believe in the existence of the ... plot, or at least to behave as though they did. They may have been wrong but they were not merely paranoid ... There is, of course, plenty of evidence about who denounced whom, but very little to show whether or not the accusations were true, or were believed by those who made them' .28 Robespierre is undoubtedly Norman's masterpiece; but despite an enthusiastic reception from serious historians at the time, as noted earlier it tends to leave seekers after certainty and conviction confused. They want a point of view, not several: differences of opinion should be acknowledged only in pious chapters of historiography. So it is not often cited even in the latter, and although translated into French it has made no impression across the Channel. Its most widespread influence might well prove to be indirect and literary, in the impact it had on the novelist Hilary Mantel. As she was writing A place of greater safety (1992) she had a number of tutorials with Norman. From them she imbibed a mistrust, in which she clearly revels, of scanty and contradictory evidence. And her portrait of Robespierre N. Hampson, Danton, London, 1978, pp. 140-1; idem, Saint-Just, Oxford, 1991, pp. 1635; idem, The perfidy of Albion. French perceptions of England during the French Revolution, Basingstoke, 1998, pp.134-6, 140-3. See also his 'Fran<;ois Chabot and his plot', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5 th Series, 26, 1976, pp. 1-14. 27 Hampson, 'Fran<;ois Chabot', p. 14. 28 Hampson, Saint-Just, pp. 164-5.
26
22
Ibid., p. 189.
23 24
N. Hampson, The life and opinions of Maximilien Robespierre, London, 1974, p. x.
25
Ibid. New Statesman, 13 Sept. 1974, p. 351.
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confused, hesitant, often quite amiable until overwhelmed by the dangerous uncertainties of the spring of 1794 - is reminiscent of the view of Henry, the indulgent clerical voice in The life and opinions. Through her, the scholarly ambiguities which Norman was trying to convey may well reach a wider audience than his own book, too experimental even for most scholars to feel at home with, could ever hope to affect directly. This book was the main product of Norman's Newcastle years (196873). Among the duties he took on while professor at Newcastle was external examining in the relatively new University of York. Founded in 1963 by his old Manchester colleague and fellow naval man Gerald Aylmer, the York history department was young, lively and collegial. It had none of the redbrick professorial authoritarianism which had finally driven him, and Aylmer too, out of Manchester. It also contrasted vividly with the then insular somnolence of Newcastle. Rising up the academic hierarchy, Norman clearly feared that being a professor might make him what he had hated most in the Royal Navy - 'pusser'. An arcane term from the lower deck, pusser meant a mixture of hierarchical, bureaucratic, formalistic and hidebound. Small ships had less 'pusserdom' than large, and the Free French Naval Forces, made up mainly of small ships, had practically none. Norman had joined them to escape from a pusser captain, and exulted in the contrast. And so, 'once you had absorbed antipusserdom it was with you for life. Looking back on forty years as a university teacher, it sometimes seems to me that, for better or worse, it has been my constant guide ... for identifying those who lose track of the ends in their obsessional preoccupation with the propriety of the means'. 29 Whatever else it might have been, York was not pusser. So that when in 1973 a chair of history fell vacant there, and in exactly the period of Norman's specialisation (the role of chance again?), the temptation was irresistible. If not quite the comradely world of La Moqueuse, the York department was tolerant, co-operative and good-humoured. Most of its members enjoyed each other's company, and they socialised a lot. They were pleased to recruit Norman, too, and made him and Jacqueline feel welcome. He never regretted joining them, and ten years on, in 1983, he dedicated Will and circumstance to the department of which he was now head, and where he would contentedly stay for the rest of his career. It was no mean compliment from a Lancastrian. Norman's first York book was an elegant and well-illustrated survey, entitled The French Revolution. A concise history (1975). His second, three
years later, was a biography of Danton. It was an obvious enough sequel to Robespierre, since the two had usually been regarded as the epitome of revolutionary opposites. In its different way, Danton's historical reputation was as equivocal as Robespierre's; but since he was out of office during the Revolution's most extreme phase, came to oppose its continued use of terror, and eventually fell victim to the logic of revolutionary government, successive historians had been prepared to make allowances for his vivid and virile human qualities and weaknesses. In the twentieth century, however, he had finally been demonised by Mathiez as corrupt, unvirtuous and perhaps a traitor, justifying all the suspicion of him which finally crystallised in Robespierre's mind. There was less scope in such a subject for the unconventional treatment that Norman had accorded Robespierre. And so, after a standard historiographical introductory chapter, Danton's life was followed as he lived it. But reliable evidence about Danton was even scarcer than about Robespierre, and, whereas the latter's ambiguities were mostly unconscious, Norman found that Danton was deliberate in obscuring his own tracks every step of the way. He committed as little as possible to paper, improvised his speeches, and said hardly anything that had only one plain and obvious meaning. Most of what had been written about him, Norman concluded, was pure speculation - including his own book. 'It will never be possible to say with confidence what Danton stood for,.30 Yet this verdict alone made it one of the wisest books written about him; and the early chapters, covering the period before Danton became the patriotic spokesman to whom statues were later raised, contained important new insights. How had this streetwise adventurer, so often romanticised by posterity, risen to the point where what he said and did mattered? During the Revolution's early years he had built up a political machine in the leftbank Cordeliers district. This suggestion, first explored at a joint conference of historians from Bordeaux and York in 1976,31 and developed at an international symposium in Germany in 1979,32 owed a good deal to Robert Darnton's identification of a world of pre-revolutionary 'grub street' hacks who were given unexpected opportunities in Paris after
29
Hampson, Not "eally, p. 16.
30 Hampson, Danton, p. 68. 31 N. Hampson, 'Les bourgeois declasses de la Revolution
fran~aise' in P. Butel ed., Societes et groupes sociaux en Aquitaine et en Angleterre, Bordeaux, 1979, pp. 233-8. 32 N. Hampson, 'Les professionnels de la Revolution fran~aise' in E. Schmitt and R. Reichardt eds, Die Franzosische Revolution - zufalliges oder notwendiges Ereignis?, MtinchenIWien, 1983, pp. 23-38.
Enlightenment and Revolution
Life and Opinions
1789. 33 Danton, professionally successful before the Revolution, was not one of them, but he gave such people an organisation which in tum he was able to dominate and direct opportunistically. If only the Revolution had not developed into a clash of moral absolutes, he might have proved a manipulator of brilliance, all things to all men, a facilitator rather than an ideologue. It worked at district level, but Danton was a wheeler-dealer too far ahead of his time to operate for long in this way on a national stage where inflexibility and conformity to an infallible, unanimous general will were the accepted benchmarks of public conduct. This portrait of Danton is convincing; but what it depicts is as far from the 'fiery-real' titan promoted by Carlyle or BUchner as Hampson's Robespierre is from the clinical 'seagreen incorruptible' who ruthlessly cut down a mighty life-force. One suspects that in the end, despite an admiration for his practical human qualities, Norman did not find Danton very interesting. There was too little evidence, whereas Norman preferred too much. And Danton, unlike his biographer, had no real interest in ideas. Robespierre on the other hand, the agonised intellectual in politics, continued to fascinate him, and was to be a central figure in his second York book, Will and circumstance (1983). It was built around the theme that had first struck him as he had explored the John Rylands pamphlets twenty years earlier - the influence of Montesquieu and Rousseau on the revolutionaries. 'Political theories', he mused, 'must bear some relation to the society in which they were born', but '... any meaningful search for such connections must involve the detailed examination of a short period' .34 That period was to be the lifetime of some of the men who figured most prominently in the course of the Revolution, and the project was to trace how their prerevolutionary engagement with the thought of Montesquieu and Rousseau affected their conduct during the great upheaval itself. In formulating this approach, Norman admitted once more to the influence of Robert Darnton; but he was also well-established enough by now (elected to the British Academy in 1980), to acknowledge other debts, to figures that no younger historian would risk his respectability by citing: Claude Manceron, the hugely successful popular chronicler in the 1970s of Les hommes de la liberti, and J.L. Talmon, whose Origins of totalitarian democracy (1952) had tended to be demonised by mid-century leftward-leaning historians of the Revolution as little more than a Cold War tract. The problem was to
find revolutionary activists whose pre- and post-I789 lives and opinions were known. Norman settled on Brissot, Marat, Mercier, Robespierre and Saint-Just: only the last had no recorded pre-revolutionary career to speak of. The writings, ambitions, disappointments and frustrations of these men under the old order were first surveyed; then their revolutionary careers, and how they rationalised what they were doing out of the intellectual stock they had grown up with. The instinctive human sympathies of the now-experienced biographer enlivened these succinct sketches - except in the case of Marat, who emerged as an irredeemably bloodthirsty charlatan, and Saint-Just, an inhuman dreamer. Norman was to return to Saint-Just a dozen years later, but felt that no more need be said about Marat, whom he convincingly showed to be a fantasist, a liar and a forger, whose solution to every problem was slaughter. But perhaps Norman's most important insight about Marat was that when he claimed (as he constantly did) that nobody listened to him, he was right. Historians had taken him far more seriously than his contemporaries, largely for the vehemence which he himself told Robespierre was the key to his style. 'There are times', Norman concluded, 'when one wonders whether Marat knew or cared what he was writing' .35 That could not be said of either Brissot or Robespierre, but in the course of the very careful and comprehensive reading which he had given to the works of both, Norman was increasingly struck by how little they differed on matters of basic principle. In a remarkable appendix, he juxtaposed their pronouncements on a number of key revolutionary issues to show how closely their views coincided. Where did that leave the clash between Girondins and Montagnards, for which Brissot and Robespierre had long been taken as the quintessentially opposed spokesmen? A shared ideology did not exclude factional or personal antagonisms in the pursuit of power, but 'the point was that men brought up to think in Rousseauist terms were obsessed with the idea that the general will must be as unanimous as it was infallible. They naturally saw themselves and their policies as its embodiment and anything that opposed them as factious and evil' .36 In fact, 'I hope I have demonstrated that both sides shared the same basic principles and responded to the pressure of circumstances in similar ways' .37 Once again, as when he published a social history of the Revolution in 1963, Norman had caught if not anticipated the tide of his fellow
R. Damton, 'The High Enlightenment and the low life of literature in pre-revolutionary France', Past and Present, 51,1971,81-115. 34 Hampson, Will and circumstance, p. vii.
36
12
33
35
37
Ibid., p. 212. Ibid., p. 226. Ibid., p. ix.
13
15
Enlightenment and Revolution
Life and Opinions
historians' interests. By 1983 most of them were turning away from the quarrels over social history between classicists and revisionists to seek explanations for the Revolution in intellectual and cultural trends. Some, especially in France in the wake of Fran<;ois Furet, were depicting the revolutionaries as trapped by their own discourse and its assumptions. And yet Norman was never recruited into the largely Franco-American circles of what would come to be known as post-revisionism. He participated in their second great benchmarking conference at Oxford in 1987,38 but his direct style, sceptical irony and homespun range of British metaphors (cricket, gardening, the sea) left them puzzled and suspicious. Could anyone so clearly lacking in intellectual pretentiousness be entirely serious? Yet how serious he was, was demonstrated in his last book before retirement, Prelude to Terror (1988). He had always recognised that to trace the influence of Montesquieu and Rousseau through the careers of exemplary revolutionaries was not the only possible way. 'A possible line of approach would have been to look at political issues, especially those relating to the transformation of almost all French institutions between 1789 and 1791, to see on what basis, and in terms of what principles, these changes were discussed. This still tempts me.,39 Invited in 1986 to deliver a series of celebrity lectures in Wales, he succumbed to the temptation, producing a commentary, which became Prelude to Terror, on the failure of consensus in the Constituent Assembly. It distilled what was now forty years of reading and reflection. Why did the bright hopes of 1789, which engendered 'most of the constructive work of the revolution',4O lead to civil war, terror, and Europe-wide destruction? The answer lay in the failure of the deputies elected in 1789 to compromise the differences that emerged during their proceedings. This was not to say that terror was inevitable, even by 1791. War and terror still lay in 'an avoidable future', 41 and Norman vigorously rejected any deterministic interpretation as something that nobody would ever apply to their own lives or times. If 'all that I have to offer is the confused spectacle of a crowd of intelligent but bewildered men bumping into each other in a fog as they try to persuade everyone else to go in their particular direction ... it has at least the merit of respecting their individuality and not reducing
them to performers in someone else's puppet theatre.,42 Nevertheless these men, as they confronted the accidents and misunderstandings of quite unprecedented circumstances, groped for principles among the intellectual mentors of their earlier years, and when they did this 'Rousseau was never far from their minds.' 43 Nor did this just mean the left: Malouet and Cazalt~s were just as capable of invoking the citizen of Geneva as Petion or Robespierre. 'In their different ways, both [left and right] were dedicated to the achievement of something like an ideal society. This was their glory and one of the main reasons for the ferocity of their hatred for each other.,44 The Constituents, in fact, were trapped in the same mindset as the Girondins and Montagnards who came after them and that some of them were to become - an inability to recognise the legitimacy of opposition. Nobody epitomised that mindset in its most extreme form better than the most terrifying of all French revolutionaries, Saint-Just. It was to him that Norman devoted the first book of a highly productive retirement in 1991. 'Devoted', however, is perhaps an unfortunate word, since Norman clearly regarded his subject as totally repellent. When I remarked on this in a review, he wrote to me to explain that 'even in the far off days when we all swore by Mathiez and Lefebvre, I was never a fan of Saint-Just, who seemed to me to be all steel and lacking even the potential humanity of Robespierre, but when I started work on the biography I was ready expecting - to find attenuating circumstances. It was Saint-Just himself who turned me into such a savage critic. I got more hostile as his career developed' .45 Meticulous as ever, he read everything that Saint-Just wrote or said - an appalling task in itself. And as with Danton, he offered some striking insights, such as Saint-Just's indifference to the social significance of his Laws of Vent6se, and the very real choice he had not to perish with Robespierre in Thermidor. But Norman could not feel sorry that he did, even admitting a fleeting admiration for the classical dignity of his final hours. 'If the sin of Lucifer was spiritual pride, which led him, almost incidentally, to the use of evil as the necessary means to a transcendental end, Saint-Just was Lucifer,.46 After that, Norman returned to the sea. Ten years on, he produced his war memoirs. One of the most shocking, or at least potentially shocking episodes described in them came when the British destroyer to which he
14
N. Hampson, 'La patrie' in C. Lucas ed., The French Revolution and the creation of modern political culture. Vol. 2. The political culture of the French Revolution, Oxford, 1989, pp. 125-37. 39 Hampson, Will and circumstance, p. viii. 40 Hampson, Prelude to Terror, p. xiv. 41 [bid. 38
Ibid., p. 164. Ibid., p. 165. 44 Ibid., p. 106. 45 Private letter, 24 July 1992. 46 Hampson, Saint-Just, p. 236. 42 43
16
17
Enlightenment and Revolution
Life and Opinions
was initially posted in the Mediterranean took part in the sinking of an Italian submarine. The captain proposed leaving the surrendering enemy sailors to drown, and was only overridden by a superior on another ship.47 This potential war crime left Norman with a particular revulsion for the infamous order of the National Convention of 29 May 1794 that no British or Hanoverian prisoners should be taken. It was actually implemented by one French naval captain in the Mediterranean. First discussed in A social history of the French Revolution, this decree reappeared in several of the 48 later works. In fact, the historian of the fleet which confronted the British on 1 June 1794, not to mention the former shipmate of Free French sailors, had always been particularly interested in how the revolutionary French perceived the British. From a lifetime of collecting material on this emerged, in 1998, The perfidy of Albion, which chronicled the revolutionary phase of a long-standing love-hate relationship. A lifetime of Norman's private passion also produced in this book one of his most sustained metaphors about what historians do. 49 'The jungle of evidence to which the historian brings his own preconceptions and his limited knowledge, is ... like the creation of a landscape garden. Those who made the initial decisions were influenced by their experience of other gardens and by their personal likes and dislikes. To some extent, their choices were circumscribed by the site and the nature of the soil. Their intentions are one thing; what happens in a particular season is another. Eccentricities of climate produce their own successes and failures. The rampaging growth of some species deprives others of light and moisture. Mistaken plantings lead to welcome or unfortunate surprises. To explain how the garden came to be what it is, one has to take account both of the intentions of the gardeners and the factors over which they have only limited control. Gardens, however, are very simple things. Major social revolutions are rather more complicated' . It has been a story of strongly held opinions, but no polemics and no political antagonisms. Norman has always enjoyed the company of those prepared to argue and disagree with him and, as we have seen, he has approached even the most rebarbative of historical characters in the expectation of finding redeeming features. What has always appalled him and the French Revolution offered a remarkable range of cases to brood
upon - is the sacrifice of humanity to abstractions, and the suspense of critical judgement in the name of what the eighteenth century called 'systems'. This has made him unsympathetic in turn to the Marxists and fellow-travellers who dominated his field when he was young, and the students of discourse and symbolism who invaded it in his later years. But his disagreements are invariably gently, and often ironically, expressed. 'I am not so naive as to be unaware how quaint this approach to the past must appear', he wrote in 1991, 'to anyone brought up on a modern diet of symbolism and semiotics. To suggest that, on the whole, the revolutionary orators said what they meant and that their audience generally understood what they said in the sense in which they meant it, is to confess oneself a very dull dog indeed'. But, 'to treat symbols as causes and to imagine that the course of the French Revolution can be explained in terms of an interlocking sequence of symbols is to subscribe to a form of determinism and to assume that its development was inherent in its beginnings. This is not how we interpret the events of our own times'. It 'risks taking the mind ' ,50 out 0 fh IStOry. It also risks alienating the public from the subject, and 'if historians cannot reach that audience there is not a great deal of significance in what they say to each other. History only matters when it matters to nonhistorians' .51 Norman's writing has always been lucid and jargon-free, and there can be little doubt that as a result his influence, particularly among newcomers to the subjects he writes about, has been very extensive. A social history of the French Revolution has probably been the most popular serious introduction to the Revolution in English of the later twentieth century. The Enlightenment has done the same service for the intellectual context from which the Revolution emerged. At the same time no specialist in the history of eighteenth-eentury France can afford to ignore the range and penetration of his writings on less general topics. He is that rare thing, a historian with no enemies. Not the least of the testimonies to this was his unanimous election, in 1987, as founding president of the Society for the Study of French History. None of this means that he has never been misunderstood. Some have found (and characteristically he has sometimes mused that they were right) 52 his fascination with the supposed plots of the Year II and the shadowy
Hampson, Not really, p. 49. Hampson, A social history, p. 225; idem, The life and opinions of Maximilien Robespierre, p. 275; idem, Saint-Just, p. 213. 49 Hampson, The oerfidy ofAlbion, pp. xi-xii.
Hampson, Saint-Just, preface. N. Hampson, 'The "lessons" of the French Revolution', in H.T. Mason and W. Doyle eds, The impact of the French Revolution on European consciousness, Gloucester, 1989, p. 188. 52 Hampson, The perfidy ofAlbion, p. 173.
47
50
48
5!
18
Enlightenment and Revolution
activities of the Baron de Batz, a puzzle without hope of solution, as obsessive as Robespierre's. Others have rushed to see in Prelude to Terror a counter-revolutionary tract, largely on the grounds that on the very first page the author calls his subject a tragedy. But in so doing they once again expose their ignorance of literature and its conventions. Tragedy, Norman knows, is not so much about disaster as waste. Just as he was impressed by the energy which rebuilt the Atlantic Fleet in 1793-4, he remains moved by the enthusiasm and altruism of the men of 1789 as they united, however briefly, in a determination to build a new and better world. 'From the bleak and cynical viewpoint of our own times, it may be difficult to take these professions at their face value, but those who dismiss them as insincere will never begin to understand the French Revolution' .53 If revolutions, he wrote elsewhere,54 when asked to distil some lessons from the subject, 'dehumanise some by a peculiarly repulsive compound of cruelty and hypocrisy ... they ennoble others by inspiring them with the challenge of heroic goals.' If this seems an attitude lacking in consistency, 'I can only plead that consistency in a historian is a dangerous virtue. When he makes all his evidence point in the same direction one can be sure that he is, if not inventing it, then at least manipulating it for his own purposes.' Inconsistency also attracts few disciples, and Norman has never sought any. But the breadth, humanity and unfailing fair-mindedness of all he writes has won him innumerable friends and admirers in fields far beyond his own. Only the economics of publishing have forced the editors to limit the number of them contributing to the pages that follow.
The Writings of Norman Hampson
Books and Separate Publications La marine de l'an II. Mobilisation de la flotte de l'Ocean, 1793-4, Paris,
1959. A social history of the French Revolution, London, 1963. The Enlightenment, London, 1968. History as an art, Inaugural Lecture, Newcastle, 1968. Thefirst European Revolution, 1776-1815, London, 1969. The life and opinions of Maximilien Robespierre, London, 1974. The French Revolution. A concise history, London, 1975. Danton, London, 1978. The Terror in the French Revolution, Historical Association Pamphlet,
London, 1981. The French Revolution and Democracy, The Stenton Lecture, 1982,
Reading, 1983. Will and circumstance. Montesquieu, Rousseau and the French Revolution,
London, 1983. Prelude to Terror. The Constituent Assembly and the failure of consensus,
1789-91, Oxford, 1988. Saint-Just, Oxford, 1991. The perfidy of Albion. French perceptions of England during the French Revolution, Basingstoke, 1998. Not really what you'd call a war, Caithness, 2001.
Articles, Chapters, Essays
53 54
Hampson, Prelude to Terror, p. ix. Hampson, 'The "lessons" of the French Revolution', p. 198.
'Dne mutinerie anti-belliciste aux Indes en 1792', Annales historiques de la Revolutionfram;aise, 22, 1950, 156-9. 'The "Comite de Marine" of the Constituent Assembly', Historical Journal, 2, 1959, 130-48. 'Les ouvriers des arsenaux de la marine au cours de la Revolution fran<;aise, 1789-1794', Revue d'histoire economique et sociale, 39, 1961, 287-329,442-73. 'The Recueil des pieces interessantes pour servir it l'histoire de la revolution en France and the origins of the French Revolution', Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 46, 1964,385-410.
20
Enlightenment and Revolution
'The French Revolution and the nationalization of honour', in M.R.D. Foot, ed., War and society. Historical essays in honour of the memory of J.R. Western, 1928-1971, London, 1973, pp. 199-212. 'Fran~ois Chabot and his plot', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, 26,1976,1-14. 'The Enlightenment and the language of the French nobility in 1789: the case of Arras', in D.J. Mossop, G.E. Rodmell and D.B. Wilson, eds, Studies in the French eighteenth century presented to John Lough, Durham, 1978, pp.81-9. 'Les bourgeois declasses de la Revolution fran~aise', in P. Bute!, ed., Societes et groupes sociaux en Aquitaine et en Angleterre, Bordeaux, 1979, pp.233-8. 'The Enlightenment in France', in R. Porter and M. Teich, eds, The Enlightenment in national context, Cambridge, 1981, pp. 41-53. 'Les professionels de la Revolution fran~aise', in E. Schmitt and R. Reichardt, eds, Die Franzosische Revolution - zufiilliges oder notwendiges Ereignis? MUnchenlWien, 1983, pp. 23-38. 'From regeneration to Terror: the ideology of the French Revolution', in N. O'Sullivan, ed., Terrorism, ideology and revolution, Brighton, 1986, pp. 49-66. Introduction to Alexis de Tocqueville, The ancien regime, London, 1988, pp. v-xix. 'The French Revolution and its historians', in G. Best, ed., The permanent revolution. The French Revolution and its legacy, 1789-1989, London, 1988, pp. 211-34. 'What difference did the French Revolution make?', History, 74, 1989, 232-42. 'La patrie', in C. Lucas, ed., The French Revolution and the creation of modern political culture. Vol. 2. The political culture of the French Revolution, Oxford, 1989, pp. 125-37. 'The "lessons" of the French Revolution', in H.T. Mason and W. Doyle, eds, The impact of the French Revolution on European consciousness, Gloucester, 1989, pp. 188-98. 'The idea of the nation in revolutionary France', in A. Forrest and P. Jones, eds, Reshaping France. Town, country and region during the French Revolution, Manchester, 1991, pp. 13-25. 'The heavenly city of the French revolutionaries', in C. Lucas, ed., Rewriting the French Revolution, Oxford, 1991, pp. 46-68. 'The origins of the French Revolution: the long and short of it', in D. Williams, ed., 1789: the long and short of it, Sheffield, 1991, pp. 15-32.
The Writings of Norman Hampson
21
"'Ie veux suivre ta trace veneree". Robespierre as a reincarnation of Rousseau', in A.R.M. Jourdan, ed., Robespierre - figure-reputation. Yearbook of European Studies, 9, 1996, 19-36. 'Robespierre and the Terror', in C. Haydon and W. Doyle, eds, Robespierre, Cambridge, 1999, pp. 155-73. 'Mably and the Montagnards', French History, 16,2002,402-15.
Voltaire and Hume
Chapter 1
V oltaire and Hume Haydn Mason
Voltaire, Rousseau, Bolingbroke and Hume: according to William Leechman, Principal of Glasgow University, in 1764, these were 'the most celebrated men in some species of writing that are perhaps in Europe at present'. 1· While Voltaire's relationships with two of these, Rousseau and Bolingbroke, have been studied extensively (in Rousseau's case, perhaps excessively so), the links between Voltaire and Hume have largely escaped such concentrated attention. This is perhaps surprising, the more so as, by the 1760s, Hume's reputation stood as high in France with the philosophes as did his notoriety with Leechman. Grimm, for example, compared him favourably to Diderot (for Grimm, there could be hardly any higher praise)? He was welcomed with open arms during his stay in Paris (1763-1766) at the British Embassy and Horace Walpole, arriving in the French capital in 1765, remarked with characteristic sourness that the 'only Trinity now in fashion here' was whist, Richardson and Hume. 3 Similarly, Voltaire's prestige in England at that time is a matter of record, now that it has been definitively established in Andre-Marie Rousseau's magisterial study.4 It might therefore be worthwhile to consider this reciprocal relationship in some detail. How well did Voltaire and Hume know one another? Did Voltaire exercise any influence upon Hume (who was his junior by seventeen years)? Conversely, did Hume have some effect upon the Frenchphilosophe? Furthermore, what significance might this comparison hold for our understanding of the Enlightenment in general? 1 E.c. Mossner, The life of David Hume, 2nd ed., Oxford, 1980, p. 149. Leechrnan was delivering a sermon to his students, in which he warned against the nefarious influence of these four wri ters. 2 L. Bongie, 'Hume, philosophe and philosopher in eighteenth-century France', French Studies, 15, 1961, p. 213. 3 Mossner, The life of David Hume, p. 445. 4 A.M. Rousseau, L'Angleterre et Voltaire, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century (hereafter SVEC), 145-7, 1976. This work is also one of the few places where the relationship between Hume and Voltaire has been discussed at any length.
23
When one looks at the voluminous correspondence of Voltaire, which includes many British addressees, one may at first be surprised to discover that only a single letter to Hume exists (and only one other letter, no longer extant, is ever referred to).5 Part of the reason for this is easily explained. Voltaire's correspondence with contemporaries outre-Manche generally occurred after he had made personal contact with them, usually (though not always) during his years in England (1726-1728). This was particularly true of his friendship with Sir Everard Fawkener. 6 But that did not happen with Hume, still only a schoolboy in Edinburgh at the time of Voltaire's visit. By the time he came to live in Paris Voltaire had long since settled at Ferney, which Hume was never to see. The motivating factor of face-to-face acquaintanceship is not, therefore, pertinent here. Another important consideration in this respect is timing. Voltaire was probably unaware of Hume's writings until 1754, when tl1e French translation of the Political discourses appeared; and his first direct reference to his Scottish counterpart did not occur before 1757.7 It came at a period when Voltaire's immediate links with England were diminishing, more or less coincident with the outbreak of the Seven Years War in 1756. 8 (Voltaire's only regular correspondent in Britain in the 1760s was George Keate).9 While never ceasing to applaud the contributions which English culture had made to the world, like the Newtonian theory of gravitation or the practice of inoculation, Voltaire no longer felt as closely akin to a land which was to triumph so devastatingly over France in that war and, in particular, do serious damage to his commercial interests through the predatory actions of the British Navy. The one letter from Voltaire to Hume which survives is a lengthy one (D13623). Written on 24 October 1766, it is concerned more with Rousseau than with Hume. For Voltaire is intent on defending himself against accusations by the Genevan philosopher, arising out of the latter's quarrel with Hume (who had invited Rousseau to England and lived to regret it). The letter reads as if it were 'ostensible', though Voltaire states that it was genuine and written personally to Hume (D13808). Hume, for his part, claimed not to have received it, but to have discovered it only later by chance T. Besterman ed., Voltaire: Correspondence, Geneva, 1968-77, D13623 (the format for all further references to these letters); the other mention of a letter to Hume appears in D 11496, 12 Nov. 1763. 6 Cf. H. Mason, 'Voltaire and Sir Everard Fawkener', British Journal of Eighteenth-Century Studies, 23, 2000,1-11. 7 D7362. 8 Cf. Rousseau, L'Angleterre et Voltaire, p. 214. 9 Cf. H. Mason, 'Voltaire et George Keate', in Melanges Raymond Trousson, Brussels, 2001.
5
24
Enlightenment and Revolution
in a bookshop (D 14691; the story appears rather specious, and there are some grounds for suspecting its veracity.lO) Whatever the truth of the matter, the tone of the letter is that of a public utterance; a point confirmed by the fact that Voltaire sent it to other acquaintances, including several copies to Damilaville in Paris for distribution in the capital (D 13669). Yet it would be quite wrong to infer from all this a lack of curiosity, let alone of admiration, on the part of Voltaire concerning Hume' s work. During the decade from the first reference in the correspondence in 1757, Hume's name appears well over thirty times. More than half of these, it is true, centre on the Rousseau quarrel in 1766, where Voltaire is motivated at least as much by anger concerning 'that wretched charlatan Jean Jacques Rousseau' (D13644) as by sympathy for 'the generous Hume' (D13639). But this by no means constitutes the only locus of Voltaire's comments on Hume. From the very beginning, the latter is placed amongst that admired band of 'apostles of reason', past and present, whom Voltaire cites repeatedly in his letters. In 1757, Hume figures among those who work for religious tolerance and cultivate 'the vine of truth', alongside such as d' Alembert, Diderot and Bolingbroke (D7499). Indeed, he is second only to John Locke as a 'reasonable metaphysician' (D7887), and much superior to Bolingbroke (D8533) as being more 'methodical' (D8022). Voltaire appreciates the boldness which Hume dares to show in his writings, a typical example in his view of the outspokenness of English writers. Hume is citizen of a country where controversial truths may be published, unlike what passes in France: 'It is not yet allow'd in France to print English truths ... The English are the first to have driven out monks and prejudices, it is a pity that our teachers are beating us ...' .11 By his audacity, Hume has outdistanced both Bayle and Warburton (Dl0078). He has, indeed, gone further than Helvetius who, 'in his book de l'esprit has not said a twentieth part of the wise, useful and bold things for which we are grateful to rnr Humes [sic] and to twenty English authors'. Yet it is Helvetius whose work was publicly banned and who was himself 'persecuted among the Welches'. The depressing conclusion to be drawn is evident: 'All this proves that the English are men, and the French are children' (D 11939). Hume emerges, in Voltaire's eyes, as foremost among his living compatriots: 'M. d' Alembert and rnr Hume [...] are in the ranks of the first writers of France and England' (Dl3808). Voltaire's deep respect for Hume cannot be doubted. But when one tries precisely to identify what inspires his
Voltaire and Hume
admiration, the problem is not easy. Although Hume is 'a true philosopher [who] sees in things only what nature has put there' (D8881), which places him firmly in the empirical camp, it is not possible to say for certain which aspects of his philosophy have led to that observation. In his commentary on this letter, Theodore Besterman believes that Voltaire is referring to Hume's Four dissertations (London 1757), a work which is to be found in Voltaire's library at St Petersburg, and which includes The natural history of religion. The philosophe would have been deeply sympathetic to the argument in the latter that 'the religious principles, which have, in fact, prevailed in the world' are nothing more than 'sick men's dreams' or 'the playsome whimsies of monkies in human shape', rather than 'the serious, positive, dogmatical asseverations of a being, who dignifies himself with the name of rational' . 12 Remarks of this nature are probably what Voltaire had in mind when he praised English writers for their audacity. Voltaire has applied bookmarks in a few places in the Natural history, notably where references to the Inquisition and to the doctrine of transubstantiation appear. But there does not seem to be any indication in his own work of direct borrowing on these topics. In the article from the Dictionnaire philosophique on Transubstantiation a parallel occurs with Hume's allusion to Catholic votaries who 'eat, after having created, their deity,.13 But Voltaire scarcely needed to acquire this hackneyed irony from Hume; and besides, he far surpasses the Scottish philosopher in scurrility, referring to Catholic priests and monks 'who ... will make gods by the hundred; eat and drink their god; shit and piss their god'. 14 Voltaire also picks up on the same theme in Hume's History of the Tudors, when he appends a marginal note: logically, he writes, the doctrine must imply that 'Jesus took his body into his hands and ate himself .15 But in the event this notion does not find its way into the relevant Dictionnaire article. Similarly, Voltaire would have responded warmly to Hume's essay 'Of Miracles', which forms a section of An enquiry concerning human understanding (another work possessed by Voltaire), and to the uncompromising claim that a miracle 'is a violation of the laws of nature' 16 and can never be rationally demonstrated. '7 Voltaire has marked this essay
12 13
Rousseau, L'Angleterre et Voltaire, p. 256. D8881, 28 Apr. 1760. It is perhaps prudent to mention at this point that for Voltaire les Anglais usually embraced the Scots as well. 10
R. Wollheim ed., Hume on religion, 2nd ed., London, 1966, pp. 97-8.
Ibid., p. 72.
a1~ eds, Dictionnaire philosophique in The complete works of Voltaire, ed. T. Bestennan et al., Geneva and [later) Oxford, 1968- [hereafter CW], 36, 1994,576-7. 15 Corpus des notes marginales de Voltaire [hereafter Corpus), Berlin, 1988, iv. 566. 16 Wollheim ed, Hume on religion, p. 210. l7 Ibid., p. 222. 14
II
25
C. Mervaud et
Voltaire and Hume
Enlightenment and Revolution
26
with a ribbon and bookmarks. 18 His own article Miracles in the Dictionnaire philosophique takes an identical line, in comparable language: 'A miracle is the violation of mathematical, divine, immutable and eternal laws' .19 But here again the similarity is banal, requiring no particular assistance from Hume. Furthermore, the development of the argument is quite different from that in Hume's essay, with Voltaire taking as his main source of inspiration Conyers Middleton's A free inquiry into the miraculous powers, which are supposed to have subsisted in the Christian Church (1749), while also drawing upon a number of other sources?O But what of Hume's more original philosophical works? The Treatise of human nature had not been a success in England, was not translated into French, and does not figure in Voltaire's library. Hume recast it, with some radical revisions, in the Enquiry concerning human understanding which, as we have noted, had drawn Voltaire's attention. But he seems largely to have ignored Hume's elaborately argued views on freedom, necessity and causation. His own attitude to human liberty moved from an early belief in free will, based on Samuel Clarke, to an acceptance of determinism, where 21 Anthony Collins plays a part, as he grew 01der. There is no development of Hume's more rigorous position that everything in the world is necessarily determined, so that what we consider to be 'chance' events are only those where a causal connection is hidden. 22 Nor was he especially impressed by Hume's totally sceptical contention that we can never penetrate the mystery of causal links, and that all we can do is to 'fix some general rules', such as contiguity in space and time, or 'constant union betwixt the cause and effect' ?3 To be sure, Voltaire was preoccupied by the inconsequentiality of things, as Candide admirably illustrates. He had expressed his thoughts on it long before: 'The more one sees of this world, the more one sees it full of contradictions and inconsistencies'?4 But nevertheless underlying it was the sense of an ultimate design to the universe, about which there could be no doubt. What then would have been his reaction to the utter demolition of the Argument from Design in Hume's Dialogues concerning natural religion,
27
had they appeared in his lifetime? It is hard to believe that the work would have shattered a credo so firmly based upon Newton's discovery of a universal cosmic law. Quite probably, he would have reacted with the impatience that was later displayed by Naigeon at reading Hume's work,25 and the same sort of irritation as Voltaire displayed at Bayle's similar disposition towards scepticism. 26 As he had once written to Diderot, one needs only 'to think of the infinite relations of all things' to guess at 'an infinitely skilful workman' (D3940, [? 10 June 1749]). Alternatively, he might have taken at face value the sceptic Philo's statement in the final Dialogue that, in spite of every assault which the latter has made on the Argument from Design, 'the cause or causes of order in the universe probably bear some remote analogy to human intelligence'?7 But it would have meant ignoring the extremely strict constraints which Philo attached to that concession. Finally, Voltaire would have been perplexed, had he known of it, by Hume's pronouncement that 'Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions' .28 By this Hume meant that reason alone 'can never be a motive to any action of the will'.29 That did not obviate the necessity of reason for the discovery of truth and falsehood or for directing our desires to proper goals. But the essential springs of action come through our affective self. Such an avowal, if stated in its full context, might have appealed to a Voltaire who also recognised the importance of the emotions: 'passions are the wheels which drive all these machines [sc., of nature]'.30 But Hume's bold formulation would doubtless have been unacceptable. A similar statement by Pascal may serve as a guide. When Pascal had written that 'The whole of our reasoning comes down to yielding to our feelings', Voltaire replied: 'Our reasoning comes down to yielding to our feelings, in matters of taste, not in matters of knowledge'. 31 One may readily imagine that his reply to Hume would have followed similar lines. In these respects Voltaire's attitude fits in well with that of the Encyclopedists in general. While the philosophes greeted Hume as an ally in Bongie, 'Hume, philosophe', p. 223. Cf. H. Mason, 'Voltaire devant Bayle' in A. McKenna and G. Paganini eds, Pierre Bayle, religion, critique, philosophie, Paris, forthcoming. Hume was commonly known in France as 'Ie Bayle de I'Angleterre,. 27 Wollheim ed., Hume on religion, p. 203. 28 Selby-Bigge ed., Hume: a treatise ofhuman nature, p. 415. 25
18 \9
Corpus, iv. 545. CW, 36, 374.
Ibid., p. 373n. R. Pomeau, La religion de Voltaire, 2nd ed., Paris, 1969, pp. 227-8, 246; E.D. James, 'Voltaire on freewill', SVEC, 249,1987,1-18. 22 L.A. Selby-Bigge ed., Hume: enquiries concerning the human understanding and concerning the principles ofmorals, 2nd ed., Paris, 1902, pp. 95-6. 23 L.A. Selby-Bigge ed., Hume: a treatise of human nature,_2nd ed., Oxford, 1978, p. 173. 24 L. Moland ed., Oeuvres completes, Paris, 1877-85 (hereafter Mol.), xviii. 251.
20
21
26
Ibid., p. 413. W.H. Barber ed., Traite de metaphysique, CW, 14, 1989,472. 3\ 'Remarques sur Pascal', in G. Lanson ed, Lettres philosophiques, 2 vols., rev. ed., Paris, 1964, ii. 220. Cf. Bongie, 'Hume, philosophe', p. 219. 29
30
28
EnLightenment and RevoLution
his secular and anti-clerical opinions, they found the more esoteric 32 discussions on causality to be irrelevant or, like Grimm, prolix. His ontological doubts seemed unhelpful. Why waste time in theorising on the possible existence or otherwise of physical objects, as Hume had done in the Enquiry,33 when Locke and Newton had made such positive advances in human knowledge? These various strands of Hume's thought may help to show why Voltaire's praise, though warm, is unspecific. However, a clear exception must be made for one aspect of Hume's work: his historical writings. It is often forgotten nowadays that the History of England, which has been the least enduring part of his output, was a best-seller in England during Hume's lifetime, became popular in France when the translation was published (1760-64), and remained the canonical study on the subject until Macaulay's History began to appear in 1848. Voltaire's enthusiasm for Hume's History is unconditional. Hume 'has manag'd to write like a philosopher'. 34 This placed him ahead of his contemporary William Robertson because, as he told his visitor John Morgan, Hume 'wrote more like a Philosoph'r' (D12089; Voltaire's own English). This admiration is expressed at length in a review of it for the Gazette litteraire in 1764?5 In Voltaire's view, 'this History' is 'perhaps the best to be written in any language', and a clear demonstration that 'philosophers alone should write history'. Hume shows the full horror of English public life under the Tudors, before the progress of rationality had led to a civilised way of life, the growth of commerce, and the appearance of philosophic heroes like Locke and Newton. Voltaire also includes references to some of the barbaric acts recounted by Hume: Henry vm judicially murdering his wives, or priests and peers without number; the Duke of Somerset beheading Admiral Seymour, his own brother, and soon to be executed himself by Northumberland; the fanatical Cromwell, mouthing mad prophecies. All this Hume handles with a masterly touch, 'a mind superior to his subject, who speaks of weaknesses, of errors, of barbarities, as a doctor speaks of epidemic maladies'. Voltaire's own copy is scattered with numerous markers of one sort or another; the marginalia run to over thirty pages (pp. 545-77) in the Corpus des notes marginales; all but four of these concentrate on the Tudors and Bongie, 'Hume, philosophe' , p. 215. Selby-Bigge ed, Hume: enquiries, pp. 149-65. 34 Mol., xiv. 120. 35 ibid., xxv. 169-73. The translated passages from Hume which follow here are based on the French version, not on Hume's original work, since that is the text which Voltaire actually read.
32 33
VoLtaire and Hume
29
Stuarts. Voltaire alights upon such unsavoury details as the 'transports and ... ecstasies' of Cromwell's army (p. 556); or the fanatical anti-Catholicism underlying the Test Act (1673), about which a noble Peer had opined: 'I would not have ... in the debates on this Bill, a single Papist man or woman to remain here; not a Papist dog or bitch; not a Papist cat to leap or mew around the King'. Hume continues dryly: 'and what must appear yet more extraordinary, this language was received with applause' (p. 561). So too does Voltaire highlight the Parliamentary Speaker's grovelling comparison of Henry vm with Solomon, Samson and Absalom (pp. 569-70), and the horrific death by the executioner's axe of the aged Countess of Salisbury (p. 571). Little of this, however, finds its way into Voltaire's histories, if only because both the Siecle de Louis XIV and the Essai sur les moeurs were already published before their author had made the acquaintance of Hume the historian. On rare occasions one may discern a direct borrowing, as in the execution of Montrose (pp. 557-8), where Voltaire has copied a number of details into the Essai sur les moeurs. 36 But such instances could occur only in later additions to the original text. Even so, Voltaire cared sufficiently for Hume's opinion to send him via d'Argental his Remarques pour servir de supplement a l'Essai sur les moeurs when the work appeared in 1763 (D11496). Here the author justifies his approach to history, whose object was 'the history of the human mind ... the history of opinion': We see in history thus conceiv'd a succession of errors and prejudices driving out truth and reason ... At last men glimpse the light a little through the picture of their woes and foolishness ... men learn to think. Thus less care has been given to bringing together an enormous multitude of facts all effacing one another, than to collecting the main and best attested ones which might guide the reader and let him judge for himself the extinction, rebirth and progress of the human mind, and to let him know peoples by the very ways of these peoples. 37
R. Pomeau cd., Essai sur les moeurs, 2 vols., Paris, 1963, ii. 677. Hume: 'pendu 11 un gibet, haut de trente pies [... ] ses jambes et ses bras [...] distribues et attaches dans les quatre principales Villes [... ] Les Ministres Presbyteriens [ ] commencerent par insulter au renversement de sa fortune. Ils prononcerent sa damnation [ ] je souhaiterois d'avoir assez de membres pour etre disperses dans toutes les Villes Chretiennes [... ] it mit en vcrs ce genereux sentiment'. Voltaire: 'pendu 11 une potence haute de trente pieds [... ] ses membres 11 etre attaches aux portes des quatre principales villes [...] il n'dait Tache que de n'avoir pas assez de membres pour etre attaches 11 toutes les portes des viBes de I'Europe [... ] II mit meme cette pensee en assez beaux vers'. 37 ibid., ii. 904-5. 36
30
Enlightenment and Revolution
He goes on to pay tribute to Hume: This method, the only one suitable, it seems to me, for a general history, has been at once adopted by the philosopher who writes the history of England in particular. 38 This search for a basic dynamism and structure underlying human societies is at the heart of what both Voltaire and Hume would describe as 'philosophical history'. Hume had professed the same principles. The historian was no simple antiquarian but one who wished to 'consider the language, manners, and customs of [his] ancestors' ,39 or to 'see the policy of government, and the civility of conversation refining by degrees': 40 in short, a study of civilisation. So similar are Hume's ideas on history to Voltaire's that he was commonly assumed to be the latter's disciple. Horace Walpole, for instance, took it for granted that Hume's 'manner' was 'imitated from Voltaire' .41 Hume himself was well aware of this supposed connexion: 'In this Countrey, they call me his Pupil, and think that my History is an Imitation of his Siecle de Louis XIV'. But he goes on to deny any such link: 'This Opinion flatters very much my Vanity; but the Truth is, that my History was plan'd, and in a great manner compos'd, before the Appearance of that agreeable Work' .42 Although Hume was keen to obtain Voltaire's Essai sur les moeurs from 43 Lord Minto, his own historical writing was independently conceived. Besides, Hume shared with Gibbon a deep distrust of Voltaire on matters of detail. While interested in reading the Essai sur les moeurs, he makes clear that Voltaire 'cannot be depended on with regard to Facts' though he goes on to add, somewhat patronisingly, that 'his general Views are sometimes sound, & always entertaining'.44 One such instance had occurred a few years previously. In his Histoire de la guerre de 1741 Voltaire had written a slighting account of an English Ibid., ii. 905-6. Hume, The history of England, 8 vols., Edinburgh, 1805, i. 2. 40 'Of the study of history' in E.F. Miller ed, Essays moral, political, alld literary, Indianapolis, 1987, pp. 565-6. 41 Letter to Richard Bentley, 27 Mar. 1755, in W.S. Lewis ed., Horace Walpole's correspondence, New Haven, 1973, xxxv. 214. Johnson, too, described Hume's History as 'an echo of Voltaire' (Rousseau, L 'Angleterre et Voltaire, p. 756). 42 J.Y.T. Greig ed., The letters of David Hume, 2 vols., Oxford, 1932 (hereafter Greig plus letter no.) 113, to the abbe Le Blanc, 5 Nov. 1755. 43 Rousseau, L'Angleterre et Voltaire, p. 763, makes ajudicious distinction: 'Hume ecrivait une histoire politique, qui ne se concevait pas sans les moeurs, Voltaire une histoire des moeurs, OU la politique devrait avoir sa place'. 44 Greig, 175, to Lord Minto, I May 1760. 38 39
Voltaire and Hume
31
raid on the Breton coast which had ended, he claimed, in confusion and 45 ridicule. When the work was translated into English Hume, who had actually taken part in the raid, professed indignation at the falsity of Voltaire's report: A certain foreign writer, more anxious to tell his stories in an entertammg manner than to assure himself of their reality, has endeavoured to put this expedition in a ridiculous light; but as there is not one circumstance of his narration, which has truth in it, or even the least appearance of truth, it would be needless to lose time in refuting it,46
However, he subsequently changed his mind, possibly under pressure from Sir Harry Erskine (who had served with him): and the following account appeared anonymously in the Monthly Review for April 1756: With what facility are we misled by great writers? how readily do we imbibe their notions without examination? Most readers believed that Mr. Voltaire's history was composed from undoubted facts; but we find, that in his relations he is more singular than authentic, more credulous than well informed, and that he cannot quite lose the poet in the historian; we admire his talents, but we should not overlook his errors, which are many and notorious. His column at the battle of Fontenoy is a chimera, tho' a chimera generally received as a reality among his countrymen. - But of all the misrepresentations, with which his history is filled, there are none so gross, so ridiculous, or so injurious to the English nation, as those which are contained in his account on the descent on the coast of Brittany: He is unacquainted with the destination of the expedition, the number of the troops, the manner of the descent, the causes of the want of success, the reasons for the retreat, and the conduct observed in it,47 Gibbon himself could hardly have been more severe in his strictures upon 48 Voltaire's tendentious negligence. This acerbity may come as a surprise to those who think of Hume, in Adam Smith's terms, 'as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise J. Maurens ed., Histoire de la guerre de 1741, Paris, 1971, pp. 240-1. Hume. Descent on the coast of Brittany, cited by Mossner, Life, p. 200; cf. also Greig, 115, to Sir Harry Erskine, 20 Jan. 1756. 47 Mossner, The life of David Hume, p. 201. 48 In the event, Voltaire chose not to include the account in his Precis du siecle de Louis XV, which contained a revised version of the Guerre de 1741. If, as is likely, he learned of the Monthly Review critique, that may have played a part. But he must surely have had no idea of the author's identity (which has become established only in recent times). It is hard to believe that he would otherwise have remained so consistently benevolent towards Hume. 45
46
32
and virtuous man, as perhaps the nature of human frailty will permit' .49 But Hume's attitude to Voltaire generally contains little of the warmth which is evidenced in the opposite direction. References to the patriarch outside the Correspondence are rare and unimportant, apart from the instance noted above. 50 In his letters, Hume shows a polite deference to Voltaire's invitations to visit Ferney. But he is not prepared to make the journey: When I arrived here [Paris], all M. Voltaire's friends told me of the regard he always expressed for me; and ... that some advances on my part were due to his age, and would be well taken. I accordingly wrote him a letter, in which I expressed the esteem which are [sic] undoubtedly due to his talents; and among other things I said, that if I were not confined to Paris by public business, I should have a great ambition to pay him a visit ... but I am absolutely confined to Paris and the Court, and cannot on any account leave them so much as for three days.51
The adjective 'sprightly' recurs in Hume's limited number of allusions to Voltaire. The latter is described as 'that sprightly, agreeable libertine Wit' in a letter to the abbe Le Blanc, on the first occasion of Voltaire's appearance in Hume's correspondence.52 Later, Candide is considered to be 'full of Sprightliness & Impiety' .53 Subsequently, Hume would view Voltaire and Rousseau as 'two gladiators ... very well matched' , in which the 'sprightliness and grace, and irony and pleasantry of the one, will be a good contrast to the force and vehemence of the other' .54 Would one be wrong to detect here a certain element of amused condescension? Be that as it may, Hume's references to Voltaire imply a - broadly cautious approach. In 1754 a rumour reaches him that the philosophe had taken refuge in a convent and was recanting all his 'heresies' and transgressions. (The germ of truth in this canard was probably the notoriety which Voltaire had acquired for taking Communion in the Capucmn convent at Colmar, in an attempt to rescue himself from the continuing hostility of the Jesuits during a vulnerable period after his tribulations with Frederick II).55 Mossner, The life of David Hume, p. 605. Two verses from La Henriade are quoted in an essay 'Of the liberty of the Press', Essays, ed., Miller, p. 11; and Voltaire is mentioned approvingly, along with Corneille, Racine and Boileau as one of the great poets of France, in 'Of the middle station in life', pp. 550-1. 5! Greig, 228, to Colonel James Edmonstoune, 9 Jan. 1764. 52 Ibid., 10 I, 24 Oct. 1754. 53 R. Klibansky and E.C. Mossner, New letters of David Hume, Oxford, 1954, no. 29, to Adam Smith, 12 April 1759. 54 Greig, 322, to the Comtesse de Boufflers, 16 May 1766. 55 Pomeau comments: '... communion de pure politique, qui ne trompa personne', La religion 49
50
Voltaire and Hume
Enlightenment and Revolution
33
Though understandably sceptical about this news, Hume expresses regret that thjs might mean the end of Voltaire's literary productions, or even a diminution in 'the Boldness & Freedom of ms Reasonings, or more properly speaking, of his Decisions', adding that the latter possesses 'the Art of coucmng his Determinations in such lively Terms, that they often carry Conviction, as much as if they were supported by the strongest Arguments' .56 Here again one sees him voicing suspicions about Voltaire's plausibility as a writer. In 1764 Voltaire reviewed Lord Kames's Elements of criticism for the Gazette litteraire. Kames had provocatively attacked Corneille and Racine, while praising Shakespeare. Voltaire's review is shot through with mordant irony and ridicule, such as his professed wonderment that the human race has now to look to Scotland for its rules of taste in all the arts. 57 Hume had ironically intervened, in an attempt to prevent this review from appearing, but in vain: 'the Authors of that Gazette told me, that they durst neither suppress nor alter any thing that came from Voltaire'. Hume's shock at this instance of unofficial censorsmp is evident. Nor is he unaware of Voltaire's propensity for feuding, since the philosophe 'never forgives, & never thinks any Enemy below his Notice' .58 The fact that Hume shared in some degree Voltaire's reservations about Shakespeare did not preclude his desire to 59 avoid such overtly polemical attitudes. Even so, Hume held Voltaire in sufficient respect to transmit to him via the abbe Le Blanc the first volume of his History.60 Furthermore, he approved of the Commentaires sur Comeille ('many fine things'),61 was keen to acquire the Traite sur la tolerance 62 and, as we have seen, sought to obtain the Essai sur les moeurs. He commented on Candide as early as April 1759, just a few months after its publication, and promised Adam Smith a more detailed account of it. 63 His description of the conte as a 'Satyre upon Providence' suggests that he must have read it with particular interest as one de Voltaire, p. 286. Greig, 101, to the abbe Le Blanc, 24 Oct. 1754. 57 Mol., xxv. 159-63. 58 Greig, 237, to the Reverend Hugh Blair, 26 Apr. 1764. 59 Voltaire has marked a passage in Hume's Histoire de la maison de Stuart, where Hume had granted that while Shakespeare might be seen as a prodigy in relation to the primitive time when he lived, one could not accord him the same praise as a writer appealing 10 a more refined audience (Corpus, p. 553). Voltaire is equally willing to recognise Shakespeare's genius, provided that the latter is set in an age 'ou Ie goOt n'etait point du tout forme' Commentaires sur Corneille, ed. D. Williams, CW, 54, 1975, 231. 60 Greig, 113,5 Nov. 1755. 61 Ibid., 237, to the Reverend Hugh Blair, 26 Apr. 1764. 62 Ibid., 231, to William Strachan, 20 Mar. 1764. 63 Cf. supra, n. 53. This fuller review does not appear ever to have been written. 56
34
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who had himself penned an essay entitled 'Of a particular Providence'. But unfortunately, he did not take the point any further. Must one therefore conclude that no trace of Voltaire's direct influence can be found in Hume's work? Such an enquiry might well prove unprofitable. Even though the final volumes of the History of England were not published until 1762, well after their author had received at least some of Voltaire's writings in the same field, there is little reason to doubt Hume's sincerity in denying any debt to his French counterpart. If any link at all is to be discovered, that may be in the tenth of the Dialogues concerning natural religion, where one finds echoes of Candide. In this Dialogue Hume gives expression to his most pessimistic utterances about the human condition, through respectively Demea and Philo:
This observation could well have sprung from the portrait of the wealthy Pococurante in Candide, 'disgusted with all he possesses'. 68 (3)
[Philo]: 'Man is the greatest enemy of man. Oppression, injustice, contempt, contumely, violence, sedition, war, calumny, treachery, fraud; by these they mutually torment each other'.65
Candide: [Martin:] 'en jetant la vue sur ce globe [... ] je pense que Dieu I'a abandonne a quelqu'etre malfaisaint [... ] je n'ai guere vu de ville qui ne desiriit la ruine de la ville voisine, point de famille qui ne voulfit exterminer quelqu'autre famille. Partout les faibles ont en execration les puissants devant lesquels ils rampent, et les puissants les traitent comme des troupeaux dont on vend la laine et la chair,.66 [in surveying this globe... I think that God has given it up to some malignant being ... I have scarce seen a town which did not seek the ruin of its neighbour, no family not wishing to exterminate some other family. Everywhere the weak pour execration on the mighty before whom they crawl, and the mighty treat them like flocks to be sold, wool and flesh.]
(2)
Dialogues: [Demea]: 'those few privileged persons, who enjoy ease and opulence, never reach contentment or true felicity. All the goods of life united would not make a very happy man,.67
[a hundred times I have wished to kill myself, yet I still loved life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our most fateful inclinations; for is anything more foolish than wishing to bear a continuous burden that one always wants to lay down? To hold one's whole being in horror, yet to cling to it?]
Manifestly, these comparisons are of a general nature. Hume would probably have also had in mind, inter alia, Hamlet's 'To be or not to be' soliloquy and Johnson's The vanity of human wishes. Even so, the manifold tribulations illustrated in Candide would have furnished a useful huntingground for the starker aspects of human existence. In addition, it would seem, Voltaire and Hume are the only eighteenth-century thinkers to admit the possibility that the Manichean philosophy of evil might be true and that the physical world might be totally bad. Disappointed though Voltaire must have been at his failure to attract Hume to Ferney, he does not betray it in his letters. The Scotsman remains 'frere Hume' .71 His only hesitation is to express fear that the quarrel between Hume and Rousseau may do harm to the philosophic cause of les Lumieres. It is his own tum now to regret a publication - by Hume himself, which he feels should have been better left unpublished: 'I think that the publicity of this quarrel could only do harm to philosophy,.72 Nevertheless, Voltaire maintained his view that Rousseau had woefully abused Hume's generous hospitality; and he continued to admire the latter's historical work. As late as 1770 he gratuitously included a compliment to Hume when writing to his 68
66
R. Pomeau ed., Candide, CW, 48, 1980, 202.
67 Wollheim ed., Hume on religion, p. 169.
Pomeau ed., Candide, p. 237.
69 £bid., p. 170. £bid., p. 162. D13345, Voltaire to d' Alembert, 13 June 1766. 72 D13608, Voltaire to Damilaville, 15 Oct. 1766. The work by Hume in question, A concise and genuine account of the dispute between Mr Hume and Mr Rousseau, 1766, was translated as Expose succinct de la contestation qui s'est elevee entre M. Hume et M. Rousseau. 70
64 Wollheim ed., Hume on religion, p.167. 65 £bid., p. 168.
Dialogues: [Philo]: 'But if [all men] were really as unhappy as they pretend, says my antagonist, why do they remain in life? This is the secret chain, say I, that holds us. We are terrified, not bribed to the continuance of our existence. ,69 Candide: [La VieiIle): 'je voulus cent fois me tuer, mais j'aimais encore la vie. Cette faiblesse ridicule est peut-etre un de nos penchants les plus funestes; car y a-til rien de plus sot que de vouloir porter continuellement un fardeau qu'on veut toujours jeter par terre? D'avoit son etre en horreur, et de tenir a son etre?' 70
(1) Dialogues: [Demea]:
'The whole earth, believe me, Philo, is cursed and polluted. A perpetual war is kindled amongst all living creatures. Necessity, hunger, want, stimulate the strong and courageous: Fear, anxiety, terror, agitate the weak and infirm,.64
35
71
36
fellow-historian William Robertson: 'You and Mr Hume are the ones to . h'tstory.,73 wnte One may surmise that, had Hume been more responsive to Voltaire, a more fertile relationship might have developed. The philosophe gives every indication that for his part he would have been glad to promote it. E.c. Mossner justly observes: 'it is posterity's loss ... that the two never came together' .74 When one thinks of Voltaire's spectacular encounters in 1778 with that other great Anglophile man of the Enlightenment, Benjamin Franklin, one cannot but regret the lost opportunity.75 But, that said, it would be a mistake to see the relationship of Voltaire and Hume solely in terms of their personal links. William Leechman was correct in discerning the importance of each, on either side of the Channel. For all the differences of temperament and philosophical outlook, they broadly confirm each other's position.\ For both, a universal human nature, basically disposed towards sympathy for one's fellow-creatures, underlay their thinking. 76 At the same time, both insisted on a utilitarian outlook, 'virtue' and 'vice' being defined in terms relative to the general welfare. 77 Epistemological investigation is the key to our understanding of the world. Only hard evidence, susceptible of rational analysis, constituted true knowledge. Religious thinking was, by definition, useless, except if relegated to the domain of faith, which was an irrelevance to both men. Above all, philosophical enquiry must be related to morality, or otherwise it was a vain pursuit. 78\ Unlike Voltaire, however, Hume did not wish to be enlisted in moral crusades, preferring a more private way of life. Indeed, his profound scepticism ran the risk, if not seen in its full context, of serving the cause of anti-rationalism, particularly in Gerrnany.79 But this is yet one more example 73
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of a philosophy being distorted by later commentators. Hume's truer position is summed up in the Introduction to the Treatise of human nature: 'here experiments are judiciously collected and compared, we may hope to establish on them a science, which will not be inferior in certainty, and will be much superior in utility to any other of human comprehension' .80 Voltaire could have nodded a vigorous assent to that proposition.
016183, 26 Feb. 1770.
74 Mossner, The life of David Hume, p. 488. 75 R. Pomeau, 'On a voulu l'enterrer', in Voltaire en son temps, Oxford, 1994, v. 267-8; H. Mason, Voltaire, London, 1981, p. 141.
76 'L'homme ... a ... pour son esp(:ce une bienveillance naturelle', CW, 14, p. 469; 'Would any man, who is walking along, tread as willingly on another's gouty toes, whom he has no quarrel with, as on the hard flint and pavement?', Enquiries, p. 226. 77 'General language ... must affix the epithets of praise or blame, in conformity to sentiments, which arise from the general interests of the community', Enquiries, p. 228; 'La vertu et Ie vice, Ie bien et Ie mal moral est ... en tout pays ce qui est utile ou nuisible it la societe', CW, 14, p.475. 78 D1376, 'Ie ramene toujours, autant que je peux, rna metaphysique it la morale'; 'Moral philosophy ... may contribute to the entertainment, instruction and reformation of mankind' Enquiry, ed. cit., p. 5. 79 1. Berlin, The roots ofRomanticism, Princeton, 1999, pp. 32-4.
37
80
Selby-Bigge ed., Hume: a treatise ofhuman nature, p. xix.
~
Enlightenment, Science and Army Reform
Chapter 2
Enlightenment, Science and Army Reform in Eighteenth-Century France Alan Forrest
As sons of the Enlightenment, most revolutionaries thought of themselves as rationalists brought up in the tradition of the Scientific Revolution; they were proud to identify with the natural sciences and to associate scientists with the new political order. Science, after all, represented to the lateeighteenth-century world a spirit of progress, a promise of human perfectibility which accorded well with the political aspirations of the age. If, wrote Condorcet in 1791, 'this limitless perfectibility of humanity is, as I believe, a general law of nature, then man no longer needs to see himself as a being restricted to a fleeting and isolated existence'. 1 Science and the Enlightenment seemed as one, natural co-guarantors of a common cause. It was for this reason that the political elite of the 1790s repeatedly turned to men of science, to doctors and chemists, physicists and astronomers, whom they welcomed into their political clubs and rewarded with government office. They were keen to use science both as legitimation for the revolutionary project, and, more immediately, for the defence of the . 2 revo 1utlOnary state. In this they were following a well-trodden path. As Charles Gillispie has shown, there was a long tradition under the ancien regime of employing scientists to solve economic and agrarian problems. 3 Turgot, who remained a committed Physiocrat as Controller-General under Louis XVI, is a good instance of a high state servant whose whole approach to government was based on improving scientific understanding. As a young man he had written a number of philosophical works that reflected his concern for science, most notably his Recherches sur Les causes de progres et de La decadence des sciences et des arts, which he published before
reaching the age of twenty-five. 4 And in government he continually returned to humanism to support his work. As an intendant in Limoges during the 1760s, for instance, he entrusted to the Society of Agriculture research into the damage spread by the charam;on, an insect which was devastating grain crops in the region; he studied the work of the chemist Reaumur on the evolution of insects, and he publicised the conclusions of Duhamel and Tillet, two members of the Academy of Sciences who had been called in by his predecessor to suggest solutions to the scourge. Science and government, he believed, must work hand in hand to resolve the problems of agriculture and to help avert widespread misery and disorder. 5 Yet, as Norman Hampson himself has emphasised, the relationship between ideas and politics, between Enlightenment and Revolution, could never be an easy one. For just as the Enlightenment was not primarily a political movement, so the Revolution, at least in its genesis, was political rather than ideological. The two were not well matched, however much individual revolutionaries might seek legitimation for their policies in the philosophy of Montesquieu or Rousseau. 6 Nor were the revolutionary years especially noted for intellectual innovation, preferring to build on existing traditions and to divert intellectual energy into the forum of politics. Indeed, relations between the Revolution and the scientific professions would always be somewhat strained, from the moment when the Academy of Sciences was abolished in August 1793 as a privileged corporation within the state. 7 Just as the abolition of the Academie Royale transformed the relationship between the government and its artists, 8 so the closure of the Academy of Sciences forced the Jacobins to rethink the status of science in the new republic. Destroying the privileged position of the Academy was not, of course, undertaken to constrain scientists, but with the aim of throwing open scientific experimentation to all men of talent, of democratising science and making it more accessible to the people. To the Jacobins it was a symptom of the new role that scientists might be expected to play in the affairs of the nation. But how far did this actually happen? It is true that the revolutionaries showed touching faith in education as a means of dispelling superstition and ignorance, particularly through the agency of the Committee of Public D. Dakin, Turgot and the ancien regime in France, New York, 1939, pp. 282-4. Ibid., pp. 84-5. 6 N. Hampson, The Enlightenment, London, 1968, p. 253. 7 M. Crosland, Science under control: the French Academy of Sciences, 1795-1914, Cambridge, 1992, p. 19. 8 J.-F. Heim, C. Beraud and P. Heim, Les salons de peinture de la Revolution fram;aise, 1789-1799, Paris, 1989, pp. 15-16. 4
5
N. Dhombres, Les savants en Revolution, 1789-1799, Paris, 1988, p. 34. G. Bouchard, Un organisateur de la victoire: Prieur de la Cote-d'Or, membre du Comite de Salut Public, Paris, 1946, p. 294. 3 C. Gillispie, Science and polity in France at the end of the old regime, Princeton, 1980. 1
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Instruction. 9 They invested heavily in new elite schools, like the Ecole Normale Superieure and the Polytechnique, which, from their foundation in 1795, gave higher status to teaching and research and attracted the most distinguished scholars to Paris. In the same way, when the former Jardin du Roi was reorganised in 1793 as the Museum d'Histoire Naturelle, it was given an important teaching function to stand alongside its collections of plants and its established reputation for botanical research. 1O The emphasis placed on teaching is proof, if proof be needed, that the Revolution continued to believe in the possibility of human improvement, and insisted on the need for public enlightenment, conducted in a secular, scientific register. To revolutionary philosophes like Destutt de Tracy, writing in 1798, this was part of a wider process of improving the human mind and constructing public morality, one for which only the state could be responsible. 'Law-makers and governments are the true preceptors for the mass of the human race', he observed, 'and the only ones whose lessons are effective'. 11 It followed that the natural sciences, like other forms of knowledge, must be placed at their disposal. Scientific research was valued as a key to social progress and to the achievement of a more rational society, and hence research, too, was given new status in the eyes of government. This could apply to any area of human knowledge; it is well illustrated by the revolutionaries' promotion of astronomy - first through the Paris Observatory, where they encountered political opposition from its director, Cassini - then from 1795, through the newly-established Bureau des Longitudes. 12 Both provided key data for decimalisation and for the structuring of the Revolutionary calendar; and they were funded for their research, not for any major teaching function. 13 But to justify public funding, science had to be useful. If the Revolution took seriously its role as a patron of science, offering high office to mathematicians and chemists and honouring scientists to a degree unparalleled under previous regimes, it was less concerned with great scientific discoveries than with the practical application of scientific
research. 14 It was also a time when the young and innovative were given greater freedom to improvise, since the importance attached to tradition and seniority was significantly reduced. And so a new generation of scientists rose to prominence, men more likely to work in teams in their laboratories than had the solitary scholars of the past. IS Increasingly, they were directed to those areas where they could best serve the immediate needs of the state, and that, above all, meant the application of science to the needs of the army and of war. Again, the revolutionaries were building on the experience of their predecessors, though they benefited from being shorn of many of the social assumptions that came with the ancien regime. Throughout the eighteenth century there had been a growing awareness of the value of a mathematical and scientific approach to military effectiveness. Armies and navies were increasingly dependent on the design and capacity of their weaponry, from field guns and light artillery pieces to fast, manoeuvrable warships. New technologies played an important role in determining the outcome of war, a fact that may have escaped the attention of some cavalry and infantry officers, but which was critical to the artillery. Artillery officers were increasingly well schooled in mathematics and the physical sciences, to the point where able scholars like Lazare Carnot could combine a career in the artillery with publishing philosophy and mathematics, while at the Ecole du Genie at Mezieres the geometrician Gaspard Monge actively encouraged his young charges to dabble in scientific research and created links with the Academy of Sciences in pariS. 16 He did not do so unopposed: those seeking reform often found themselves hampered by the social attitudes of the time, while innovators struggled to make themselves heard, claiming that they were crushed by convention and politically outmanoeuvred by conservative forces at court. But it is significant that there was such a struggle, and that some at least during the ancien regime - army officers, engineers and even ministers - did favour reform and tried to push through much-needed technological change. Prominent among them was Guibert, who frequented the salon of Mademoiselle de Lespinasse where he mingled with the philosophes of his day; he wrote philosophical treatises, and he read his Eloge du Chancelier de ['Hospital to literary audiences in the salons of the 1770s.1 7 And we know that Carnot read and found inspiration in the
J. Guillaume ed., Proces-verbaux du Comilli d'/nstruction Publique de la Convention Nationale, Paris, 1891-1907. 10 Crosland, Science under control, pp. 39-40. J 1 Destutt de Tracy, Quels sont les moyens de fonder la morale d'un peuple?, Paris, An VI, cited in R.R. Palmer, The improvement of humanity: education and the French Revolution, Princeton, I985, p. 4. 12 M.G. Bigourdan, 'Le Bureau des Longitudes: son histoire et ses travaux, de I'origine (1795) a ce jour', Annuaire du Bureau des Longitudes, 1928, pp. 1-72. 13 M.J. Shaw, 'Time and the French Revolution, 1789-an XIV', unpublished D. Phil. Thesis, University of York, 2000, pp. 64-9.
9
14 The same interest in scientific patronage would continue under Napoleon. See M. Crosland, The Society of Arcueil: a view of French science at the time of Napoleon l, London, 1967. 15 Dhombres, Les savants en Revolution, p. 19. 16 J. and N. Dhombres, Lazare Carnot, Paris, 1997, p. 82. 17 D. Goodman, The Republic of Letters: a cultural history of the French Enlightenment, Ithaca, 1994, pp. 79, 147.
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Encyclopedie, abetted by his friendship with d' Alembert. 18 Often, however, those seeking reform found themselves blocked by a deeply conservative hat-major and by a lack of political will in the war ministry. Typical was the long campaign, starting in the 1740s, to replace the heavy field pieces issued to the French artillery with lighter, more manoeuvrable guns that would enable the army to adapt its tactics on the battlefield. This campaign failed through the resistance of the dean of artillery, de Valliere, who remained loyal to the heavier traditional four-pounder, a clumsy weapon which could only be moved by using horses. Here the French had the technological knowledge, in the form of the lighter artillery pieces developed by Gribeauval which were to be so deadly during the Revolutionary Wars. What they lacked in mid-century was the ability to discard old habits, with the consequence that during the Seven Years' War both the Austrians and the Prussians boasted lighter three-pound guns, whereas the French artillery found themselves disadvantaged in the field by their failure to innovate. 19 It was not only the artillery that suffered. The infantry, too, were left for much of the century with heavy, cumbersome muskets which were largely handmade; while the fact that they had no interchangeable parts meant that all repairs had to be sent back from the front to skilled armourers, a traditional artisanal approach that greatly impeded rapid replacement. Though the army understood what was needed to improve the efficiency of muskets - the introduction of simple, standardised musket locks - experiments to develop these had been abandoned as too costly when it was found that manufacturing them took more than double the time it took to make ordinary ones. 20 And so for much of the century the infantry had to make do with clumsy and obsolete arms. The same sluggishness hampered the supply of powder to the armies. The production of saltpetre, or potassium nitrate - the essential component of gunpowder - had been farmed out to private contractors, who continued to collect natural deposits from barns and outhouses in the traditional manner, a very slow and inefficient process, at a time when other European states had already built factories to produce it artificially. It was not until Turgot's appointment as Controller-General on the eve of the American War that France reacted to the problem by founding a national Regie des Poudres et Salpetres, which was entrusted to Lavoisier and installed in the Paris Arsenal. In establishing it, Turgot not only modernised the chemical production of saltpetre but also created a laboratory and a meeting-place for
the leading chemists of his day.21 Some of the most significant technological advances of the last years of the ancien regime were in the field of military engineering, with the production of more adaptable weapons and the technology of interchangeable parts, which had become possible as a result of France's as yet very imperfect industrial revolution. By 1785 the necessary technology was available, largely through the work of an inventor and military gunsmith, Honore Blanc, who used steel dies to forge pieces of identical dimensions and thus produce a revolutionary new flintlock mechanism. Blanc held out the prospect of cheaper, faster manufacture with less scope for human error. In this he was encouraged by the French artillery service at Vincennes, and especially by Gribeauval, ever eager to reorganise musket production throughout the kingdom. 22 But to progress Gribeauval needed political patronage and support from the War Ministry, and it was this political will that was often lacking. Indeed, army reform always risked being undermined from within by ministerial hesitancy and by the factional squabbles of Louis XVI's court. Reforms to the navy enjoyed better fortune, especially since the naval minister, de Castries, showed a real enthusiasm for the application of scientific knowledge. He constructed an artificial harbour at Cherbourg; imposed standard designs for ship construction across the fleet; and funded experiments on such disparate matters as shipboard ventilation, the nutritional requirements of seamen, and ways of preserving food during long voyages at sea. 23 He also took steps, through the Code de Castries, to overhaul the officer corps and reform the conditions of service on board ship.24 But economic constraints undermined naval reforms, too, until under de Castries' successor, La Luzerne, new orders for warships were suspended and the dream of building an effective navy of some eighty-one ships of the line and the same number of frigates was effectively abandoned. 25 As Ken Alder has recently argued, this was more than an argument about military modernisation or the design of guns. Rather, he suggests, it must be seen against a wider philosophical canvas, an effort to make things identical and interchangeable and, as such, part of 'a larger Enlightenment project to replace the corporate order with a more innovative technological
Dhombres, Les savants en Revolution, p. 18. K. Alder, Engineering the Revolution: arms and Enlightenment in France, 1763-1815, Princeton, 1997, pp. 1-4. 23 J. Black, From Louis XIV to Napoleon: the fate of a great power, London, 1999, p. 141. 24 W.S. Cormack, Revolution and political conflict in the French Navy, 1789-1794, Cambridge, 1995, pp. 41-7. 25 N. Hampson, La marine de ['an 11,1793-94, Paris, 1959, pp. 17-18. 21
22
J. and N. Dhombres, Lazare Carnot, p. 65. L. Kennett, The French armies in the Seven Years' War, Durham, NC, 1967, pp. 117-18. 20 M. Meyer, Manuel historique de la technologie des armes ii feu, Paris, 1838, cited in Kennett, The French armies, p. 115. 18
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regime'?6 In this process Gribeauval and his engineers played a crucial role, since they aimed not just to improve military engineering but, more generally, to change the whole approach to fighting battles. They advocated new, slicker military tactics that would transform the ways guns were used in battle, maximising speed and manoeuvrability. Achieving this would dramatically change the roles of the men who handled them, which led the reformers to embrace an enthusiasm for promotion on merit that ran counter to ancien regime notions of privilege. This had immediate repercussions on the eighteenth-century elite, since it constituted an attack on an officer corps 'full of court nobles angling for promotion, many unprepared for the technical exigencies of war, ... so riven with personal animosities that drawing up a battle order was a process of near infinite diplomacy' .27 Military engineering implied social and political reform; within the army, it was little short of a cultural revolution. The military, indeed, was a favoured battlefield for reformers in the years following the Peace of Paris when the ineffectiveness of the old guard had become apparent to all. The issue was often one of effective deployment, and much of the pamphlet literature was addressed at artillery officers themselves. In one of the most influential technical works of the period, De l'usage de l' artillerie nouvelle, published in 1778, Jean du Teil urged the use of a massed, mobile artillery that could keep abreast of the infantry and move across the battlefield as the battle developed. His approach was that of a practical artilleryman who stressed the benefits which such manoeuvrability could bring to the French army and who dealt with the day-to-day problems faced by artillery units in battle - how best to use artillery pieces on soft land, for instance, how to take advantage of their firepower in mountainous terrain, or how to unite practical advice with theoretical training to derive the greatest tactical advantage. He was not aiming to supplant the existing officer corps, nor, he stressed, to reduce the value of patriotism. Rather, by looking back over thirty years of service, he aimed to help them to 'put into use a new military practice from which they could hope to derive the greatest benefits,?8 Not surprisingly Du Teil's work found wide favour amongst artillery officers, to the extent that De l'usage de l'artillerie nouvelle had by the time of the Revolution become a standard text for students at the Ecole du Genie. Significantly, the focus of eighteenth-century reformers extended well beyond matters of tactics and equipment to cover broader social questions about the recruitment and discipline of the troops and the relations that
should pertain between the military and civil society. These were issues that had long been the subject of discussion in military treatises, characteristically produced in modest print-runs for essentially military audiences, like those of Puysegur or the Chevalier de Folard, especially influential in the first half of the century, or of Turenne, de Feuquieres and Santa-Cruz, which had been cited with such obvious approval in the pages of the Encyclopedie. 29 Often the reformers were prominent officers reaching the end of their careers and offering advice on the basis of their own experience; among the most notable texts were the memoirs of SaintGermain, Guibert's Traite de laforce publique, or the seductively-entitled Reveries of the Marechal de Saxe. They felt they had valid reasons to criticise the structure and management of the Bourbon army, which many of them saw as too expensive, too cumbersome, and insufficiently professional to compete with the most effective forces in Europe, in particular with the highly disciplined Prussian army. In their different ways they all reflected back on their years of command, dissecting the lessons they had learned from the battlefield and those they had taken from military history, most notably, perhaps, from the example of Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, which even contemporaries recognised as something of a military revolution. 30 Their reforming ideas were presented as a warning to others, given weight and authority by the accumulated wisdom of long years of command. And though they wrote at different moments across the century and cannot be seen as forming a single faction or movement, they all in their different ways suggested reforms which would later be passed and which were often adopted by revolutionaries eager to break with the legacy of the past. Criticism centred on the size of the army, the methods of recruitment, the drudgery of much of the training, and the supposed ineptitude of the officer class, all themes which would be taken up again during the 1790s and would lie at the heart of the Revolution's programme of reform. Size was a major point of friction throughout the eighteenth century. How many men did France need to maintain under arms? During Louis XIV's reign around one man in six could expect to be called upon to bear arms at least once during his lifetime, though that would not necessarily involve actual fighting. 3l Since then the army had been kept at exceptionally high
44
Alder, Engineering the Revolution, p. 6. Ibid., p. 47. 28 J. du TeiJ, De l'usage de l'artillerie nouvelle, Metz, 1778, pp. 127-8.
26 27
J.-P. Bois, Maurice de Saxe, Paris, 1992, pp. 186-7. M. de Saxe, Mes reveries, new ed., Paris, 1895, p. 23. The place of Gustavus Adolphus within the supposed 'military revolution' of the seventeenth-century is discussed in the chapter on 'The military revolution, 1560-1660', in M. Roberts, Essays in Swedish history, London, 1967; also G. Parker, The military revolution: military innovation and the rise of the West, 1500-1800, Cambridge, 1988. 31 A. Corvisier, Armies and societies in Europe, 1494-1789 (Bloomington, 1979), p. 8. 29
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manning levels, on the assumption that in any conflict France should be able to field twice as many soldiers as her opponents, but this was a ruinously costly policy which required an unrealistically large standing 32 army in peacetime. It might have been justifiable if it had produced welltrained professional armies, but the consensus among reformers was that it did not. It merely sucked large numbers of young men out of agriculture, where they were needed, into a military that was poorly trained, ill motivated and undisciplined. To get over the problem of numbers, and the fact that the generals had nothing for them to do between wars, militia service was finally reinstituted in 1726. But, argued Saint-Germain, that did not really address the underlying issue, the 'astonishing consumption of men by the French armies'; it merely added to the problem by creating a second, parallel army without gaining any proportionate benefits for national defence. Besides, in the event of military action, the militia were largely ineffective. Sending militiamen into the army to compensate for the losses it had sustained could, he believed, only increase the levels of loss and strike a fatal blow at the country's population figures; and it would wreak that damage without offering any effective help to the military.33 They made poor soldiers, he claimed, with neither the skill nor the willpower to fight in a gruelling campaign. They often deserted, and when they did so they found support in the sympathy and compassion of ordinary Frenchmen. 34 As a military strategy it was seriously flawed, unproductive and wasteful of human life. What it produced was a large and under-trained army in which men were used extravagantly and where life was in consequence cheap, something which outraged the humanist values of the Enlightenment. It was not acceptable, thought de Saxe, that officers had so little accountability for the lives of the men under their command, or that in the Empire between one-half and three-quarters of the soldiers died during their years of military service. As a solution he proposed that army captains be asked to pay an agreed sum for each man they recruited, so that a kind of insurance scheme, an epargne militaire, could be established. 35 More generally, the reformers believed that lives were being squandered because of another major blemish in the eighteenth-century army, the ill-considered and injudicious promotion of too many unprofessional, dilettante aristocrats into positions of authority for which they had sadly little talent. Often they
were promoted simply because of who they were, as a favour from court or in response to family pressure, when they had neither training nor experience to commend them. They were incapable of providing effective command, and their promotion was a disincentive to others, with the result that army morale suffered. De Saxe explains how
32 J. Servan, Le soldat citoyen, ou vues patriotiques sur la maniere la plus avantageuse de pourvoir a la defense du Royaume, Paris, 1780, p. 453. 33 C.-L. de Saint-Germain, Memoires, Paris, 1779, p. 169. 34 G. Girard, Le service militaire en France a la fin du regne de Louis XIV: racolage et milice, 1701-15, Paris, 1921, p. 318. 35 Bois, Maurice de Saxe, p. 193.
In France a young man of good birth sees it as a direct insult from court if he does not get his own regiment at the age of eighteen or twenty. That kills any spirit of emulation among the other officers and amongst all the poor nobles of the kingdom who see that they are almost certainly condemned never to command a regiment, and hence denied those high offices which might have provided them with enough glory to offset the pains and sufferings of hardworking lives, hardships they would gladly endure for the promise of a comfortable future and a good name. 36
The irresponsibility of army officers in a world where rapid promotion and uncurtailed ambition risked undermining loyalty is a theme to which reforming tracts repeatedly return, and one which would provide justification for royal intervention in the Segur Ordinance of 1781. 37 Segur's aim in demanding that army officers should boast four quarterings of nobility has been frequently misunderstood. His main purpose was to ensure that only those nobles with a strong family tradition of military service could expect to be promoted. The measure stemmed from a genuine zeal for professionalism in the military, and Guibert was among those who applauded its implementation. 38 Reformers were critical of the poor quality of officer training in the eighteenth century, which led to too many officers enjoying a pampered social life while they abandoned their men to their own devices. Without proper supervision, it was argued, they could not develop into good soldiers, since 'the soldier who is unsupervised gives himself over to pillage and debauchery, commits a thousand excesses, then becomes worn out and dies' .39 They would remain as eighteenth-century writers and caricaturists so often represented them, drunken, undisciplined, and violent, a constant threat to decent society. 'Soldiers everywhere are inhuman, quick-tempered and barbarous', wrote Voltaire in his Panegyrique de Saint-Louis; and in Candide he denigrated the armies of Europe as a million men 'carrying out murder and banditry under military discipline in Saxe, Mes reveries, p. 25. D. Bien, 'La reaction aristocratique avant 1789: l'exemple de l'armee', Annales: ESC, 29, 1974, p. 37. 38 Idem, 'The Army in the French Enlightenment', Past and Present, 85, 1979, pp. 94-5. 39 Saint-Germain, Memoires, pp. 169-70.
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order to make a living because they did not have a more honest trade'.4O La Bruyere was even more bitter in his satirical view of military life and of the values which soldiers espoused. Throughout the centuries, he wrote, men had robbed, burned and killed to grab additional strips of land; that was only natural. With the passage of time they had merely perfected the operation of plunder and killing; and 'to do it more ingeniously and with greater assurance they invented the fine set of rules which are referred to as the art of war' .41 Eighteenth-century Europe, it appeared, was incapable of discussing its armies without resorting to cynicism and despair. The reason lay not just in the poor discipline or incompetence of individual officers; it was, believed many of the reformers, the whole system that was flawed, and the values that underpinned it. In what was perhaps the most rounded critique of the ancien regime army, Guibert's Essai general de tactique of 1772, the author pointed out that the wars between nations which were to come would demand very different armies from those of Bourbon France. He criticised the army for being too slow and cumbersome, with its organisation in deep columns leaving it vulnerable to enemy attack. To counter this he proposed short attack columns of only three or four men, who would be less exposed to enemy 42 fire and would be able to move quickly from column to line formation. He then reformed army organisation by the creation of the division, grouping together infantry, artillery and cavalry units on the battlefield, and he stressed the need to improve supply and provisioning. But he believed that wider issues had to be addressed. He dedicated his essay to his country, his patrie, 'to the king who is its father, to the ministers who administer it, to all the orders of the state who compose its membership, to all Frenchmen who are its children'. Only when all unite and rally to the nation, he believes, will its power be assured, only when all, the master and the subjects, the great and the small, are honoured to call themselves citizens' .43 He goes on to argue for a change in the morals and principles of the nation as a whole. For worthwhile military reforms could not be achieved without changes in the values that guided society. 'Our troops are not constituted militarily. Our values are not military values. That is even more true of our soldiers and officers, who have neither the habit of frugality, nor the patience, nor the physical strength which are the primary constituent qualities of warriors. These qualities are not honoured in our
century; rather they are undermined and ridiculed by the dominant spirit of luxury'.44 France, he concluded, had become sybaritic, and a nation of sybarites could not hope to produce effective soldiers. To improve the status of the soldier and the calibre of the French army required root-and-branch changes to military training and to methods of recruitment, changes which already hinted at the reforms to come during the 1790s. Pay was a constant source of complaint, and it was recognised that if the army were to recruit volunteers from sections of society other than the very poorest, then they would have to reward soldiers for their sacrifice. The problem, as ever, lay in the overstretched military budget, which relied on low pay and harsh discipline to keep a large army in the field. More sensible, perhaps, would be a change in military thinking so that a much smaller army could be properly trained, equipped and remunerated. For, noted de Saxe, 'it is not the large armies which win battles, it is the good ones' .45 All seemed agreed that maintaining the status quo was neither desirable nor affordable. Drill and military exercise were poorly-planned and unscientific, and they were seen by most of the troops as little more than tedious drudgery. In a smaller, better-paid army this sort of drill would be unnecessary, since the soldiers would be well motivated and capable of studying warfare as a science. Repetitive exercises could then be restricted to the purpose for which they were best suited, to develop the strength of the legs and not the arms. 46 With changes to the training regime went the need to reform the disciplinary code, which was currently little more than an incoherent bricolage of rules and ordinances, some of them outdated, others contradictory. Corporal punishments were often excessive, modelled on a Prussian tradition which many in the military saw as ill-suited to the French temperament, and their continued use was bitterly contested by the troops; this would be one of the most cited causes of mutiny, at Nancy and elsewhere, in 1790.47 Too often, argued Joseph Servan in 1780, beatings were arbitrary, harsh penalties being doled out where guilt had not been established or at the caprice of officers and NCOs. They were inconsistently applied, and impossible to defend in the eyes of the troops, since at times they were regarded as dishonourable, while at others they were used to punish minor breaches of military regulations. But underlying this argument was also a question of principle, of the status of the soldiers
E.-G. Leonard, L 'armee et ses problemes au dix-huitihne siecle, Paris, 1958, pp. 229-30. La Bruyere, Caracteres, ch. 10, quoted ibid., p. 49. 42 J.-P. Bertaud, 'The soldier', in M. Vovelle ed., Enlightenment portraits, Chicago, 1997, p.95. 43 J.-A.-H. de Guibert, Essai general de tactique, Paris, 1772, reprinted in idem, Ecrits militaires, 1772-1790, with preface by General Menard, Paris, 1977, p. 51.
Ibid., p. 238. Saxe, Mes reveries, p. 24. 46 Ibid., p. 26. 47 S.F. Scott, The response of the Royal Army to the French Revolution: the role and development of the line army, 1787-93, Oxford, 1978, pp. 93-5.
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themselves. It was, Servan insisted, utterly inappropriate to apply humiliating punishments to an army of free men who had accepted to defend their fellow-citizens. 48 Here he was speaking with the voice of the Enlightenment, with a concern for human dignity which would sweep through the armies after 1789. A printed letter to the National Assembly from some of its soldiers took up the case and made it forcibly. For citizens, they argued, the soldier's calling was an honourable one, and they appealed against the use of punishments that were excessive, degrading and brutalising, and which reduced soldiers to the status of 'the most miserable slaves', if not 'the most abject animals' .49 But the most powerful hint of the revolution to come is to be found in proposals to reform the recruitment of the armies so as to provide soldiers with some respect and dignity. The reformers accepted that the existing system, with its over-dependence on racolage and forced enlistment, was incapable of producing a modem, professional army, and so they looked to more respectable alternatives. Interestingly, they were unanimous in denouncing the abuses of a voluntary system, agreeing that in the social context of ancien regime France, that would continue to produce an army of the poor and disinherited. But what could they reasonably replace it with? Though they toyed with various alternative ideas, they were increasingly attracted by the notion of soldiering as an obligation which should fall upon the young, and advocated some form of conscription. For de Saxe, for instance, the argument seemed clear-cut. 'Would it not be better to establish by law that every man, whatever his social background, should be obliged to serve his prince and his country for a period of five years?' He saw a number of advantages in this. On the one hand it would appeal to a sense of natural justice; besides, the idea brought material benefits, since 'by choosing them from among young men in their twenties, no practical problems would result. These are years of dissolute habits, when young men go in search of their fortune, travel far from home and provide little solace to their parents' .50 Servan went further, insisting that the soldier must be a citizen first and foremost, a man of peace before he was a man of war, who would carry out useful agricultural tasks in the community when he was not required to undergo military training or set off on campaign. 'Winter calls the troops back to their hamlets; then every soldier reverts to being an artisan or a farmer, and, while still attached to his duties and to the motherland, he comes to cultivate lands which he is
called upon to defend' .51 If the idea of the citizen-soldier had to wait until the Revolution, the soldier-citizen was an invention of the ancien regime. The most dramatic change after 1789 lay less in the fundamental ideas of reform than in the reception they received both within the army and from the political leadership. The new order was less concerned with traditional notions of hierarchy and discipline, more ready to encourage innovation and meritocracy, and to apply science to the art of warfare. These changes provided an atmosphere in which the ideas of the reformers could flourish, and where the natural conservatism of the court no longer blocked innovation or sheltered behind arguments of precedence. In the months before the Estates General met, reformers had engaged in a vigorous pamphlet war about human rights and civic equality, and even some of the pamphlets which supported the ministerial interest had advocated greater legal equality amongst the citizenry, urging such reform measures as the doubling of the Third's representation and, for the military, the revocation of the Segur Ordinance. 52 The same themes are to be found in the cahiers de doleances, many of which urged that military service should be an aspect of citizenship and denounced the ease with which the rich could extract their sons from the militia. This was seen not only as an affront to equality and as the cause of suffering amongst farmers and artisans; it also undermined the efficacy of the armies, since the strong and able-bodied were often those who sought exemption. 'Only despotism', declared the cahier of Duclair in the bailliage of Rouen, 'can take pleasure in the sight of our armies composed of mercenaries or of the very poor, vagrants with neither property nor patrie' .53 Reform was necessary for the effective defence of the realm. After 1789, of course, such views were no longer marginalised, as the distrust of privilege which characterised the revolutionaries' approach to virtually every issue ensured that the ideas of the military reformers were sought out and listened to. Many of the senior officers of the line army, who had taken their oath of loyalty to the King, chose to resign their commissions and emigrate rather than serve the new regime; and those who remained in their posts were treated with suspicion. In this way opportunities for rapid advancement were opened up, to be seized by the young and able, those whose unprivileged status had held them back under the ancien regime. The revolutionaries declared their commitment to Servan, Le soLdat citoyen, p. 457. D. Van Kley, 'From the lessons of French history to truths for all times and all people', in idem, ed., The French idea of freedom: the oLd regime and the Declaration of Rights of 1789, Stanford, 1994, pp. 85-6. 53 P. Goubert and M. Denis eds, 1789: Les Fralll;ais ont La paroLe, Paris, 1964, p. 209. 51
Servan, Le soLdat citoyen, pp. 412-13. 49 Lettre des soldats composant les troupes fralll;aises, adressee Paris, 1789. 50 Cited in Bois, Maurice de Saxe, p. 192.
52
48
a I'Assembtee Nationale,
52
53
Enlightenment and Revolution
Enlightenment, Science and Army Reform
promotion on merit. The principle of election, which had been practised in a limited way within the officer corps since 1760, was now extended so that men in the ranks could be involved in the selection of their immediate 54 superiors. Non-commissioned officers won new admiration for their battle experience, for their qualities in inspiring and guiding the men under their command. And, for the first time, they were encouraged to express their ideas about tactics and discipline, to petition on military matters, and even to criticise the judgements of their officers. 55 Other reforms followed, many of them taken directly from the reform pamphlets of the 1770s and 1780s. Recruitment of citizen-soldiers depended first on finding volunteers, later on levies and conscription that emphasised the duty of the young to serve the state. Military discipline was reformed so as to rid the army of 'base and demeaning' corporal punishments; honour, argued Bouthillier in a report to the National Assembly, was a better motivator of men than public humiliation. 56 Drill and training were reformed by the introduction of gymnastic exercise and physical education, and by an enlightened approach to the needs of the human body, espoused, among others, by Saint-Just. 57 Gribeauval's ideas for lighter guns and Guibert's reflections on tactics now commanded new levels of respect (such was the passion which his work had initially aroused that in 1773 Guibert, with the protection of the Duc de Broglie, had been forced into exile).58 As for Joseph Servan, who had been berated by much of the military establishment during the 1780s, he now became a central figure of the revolutionary war effort, being twice appointed to the War Ministry by the Girondins in 1792, before seeing active service as commander of the Armee des Pyrenees-Orientales. 59 The ideas of the reformers had finally been integrated into mainstream military thinking. The respect of the Revolution for the natural sciences was harnessed to the war effort as the country faced a huge military threat after 1792. This was particularly evident during the Jacobin republic, when mathematicians and scientists were to be found at the very heart of the administration, and three - Guyton de Morveau, Prieur de la Marne and Lazare Carnot - were
full members of the Committee of Public Safety. Carnot it was who, with overall responsibility for the war effort, took radical measures to restructure the armies and to create new levels of morale. 1SO But scientists' influence on policy-making did not stop with the Committee itself, since the Jacobins relied heavily on specialist commissions to tackle the crises faced by the military, especially the problem of manufacturing sufficient weapons and gunpowder. These involved many of the leading physicists and chemists of the day. For example, Monge, Berthollet and Vandermonde were charged with improving steel production; Guyton de Morveau was named commissaire-adjoint to the new Manufacture of Arms in Paris; and Chaptal was given responsibility for powder manufacture in the South and Southwest. 61 Nothing was sacrosanct, as traditional methods and working practices were reviewed and overturned. Just as the plans of the military reformers encouraged a rethinking of French army organisation and tactics in the field, so scientists helped overhaul systems of supply and provisioning. This, too, proved a master-stroke. By 1795 France had thirty foundries providing weapons for the army, compared to only four in 1789; and the amounts of saltpetre collected for powder-manufacture increased twelve-fold in the three years after 1792. 62 But in all this, it should be emphasised, there was little new science. Most of the techniques were already known during the ancien regime. What was new in the Revolutionary period was the political will to break with tradition and apply scientific knowledge to the needs of the military on a scale that would have been difficult to imagine in the France of Louis XVI.
R. Blaufarb, 'Democratie et professionalisme: l'avancement par I'election dans l'armee 1760-1815', Annales historiques de la Revolutionfranc;aise, 310, 1997, pp. 601-5. 55 Archives Nationales (hereafter AN), D$I-16, Petitions de militaires et denonciations d' officiers inciviques. 56 AN ADVI-47, Rapport de Bouthillier, depute du Cher, preface Lo law of 15 Sept. 1790 on military discipline. 57 J.-P. Bertaud, Guerre et societe en France de Louis XIV a Napoleon ler, Paris, 1998, 196. 8 Guibert, Ecrits militaires, 1772-90, p. 42. 59 C. Jones, The Longman companion to the French Revolution, London, 1988, p. 391. 54
fran~aise,
E'
60
61 62
M. Reinhard, Le grand Carnot, 2 vols., Paris, 1950-2, ii. 102-17. Dhombres, Les savants en Revolution, 1789-99, pp. 56-7. Ibid., p. 60.
Louis XVI and the Public Sphere
Chapter 3
Louis XVI and the Public Sphere Tim Blanning
When Louis XVI succeeded to the throne on 27 April 1774 at the age of nineteen, he enjoyed numerous assets. He was reasonably intelligent, reasonably well-educated, reasonably good-looking, reasonably goodnatured and reasonably well-balanced. In short, he seemed to be just the monarch to rule a satiated country with a vested interest in the juste milieu. But perhaps his most powerful asset was negative: he was not his grandfather. During the latter's long reign of fifty-nine years, the Bourbon monarchy had been reduced to dire straits, destabilised at home by wrangles between king and Parlements, humiliated abroad by the British and Prussians. By overturning the traditional politico-judicial order in the 'Maupeou revol ution' of 1771, Louis XV had attracted charges of despotism. By overturning France's traditional foreign policy in the 'diplomatic revolution' of 1756, Louis XV had attracted charges of treason. Binding these two master-indictments was the glutinous adhesive provided by sleaze. Unable to subordinate his voracious sexual appetite to either the dictates of his religion or the interests of his state, he sank without resistance in a self-indulgent quicksand. Kings of France had frequently, if not invariably, engaged in extramarital sexual activity. Indeed it could be argued that taking a mistress was a necessary attribute of baroque kingship. As Olivier Chaline has suggested: 'Did this constitute a particular feminine variant on the concept of royal service? If nothing else, it demonstrated the king's virility, an 1 essential attribute of kingship'. Unfortunately for the priapic Louis XV, times were changing. What earned admiration under Louis XIV, attracted only opprobrium under his successor. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the expansion of the public sphere had allowed a sterner code of personal morality to set the tone. This might be termed 'bourgeois', were it
10. Chaline, 'The Valois and Bourbon courts c. 1515-1750', in J. Adamson, ed., The princely courts of Eurupe. Ritual, politics and culture under the Ancien Regime 1500-1750, London, 1999,p.76
55
not for the complex ideological freight which necessarily encumbers that apparently simple adjective; it could certainly be termed 'Jansenist'. It was Jansenist publicists who were to the fore in denouncing royal immorality, as in: 'Unclean monarch, your days are numbered I You will perish beneath your sceptre and both you and your courtesan Vlill be struck down with tragic death!' .2 The lady in question here was perhaps the most celebrated of all European mistresses, the Marquise de Pompadour. Her rapid ascent to be maftresse en titre, with a large suite of rooms at the centre of the Palace of Versailles, caused outrage even to the most debauched aristocrat, for she had been born simple 'Jeanne Poisson'. Her combination of humble birth with astronomic pretensions, which included interfering in affairs of state, brought a sea-change in the way in which royal peccadilloes were now viewed by the public. From the 1740s, the King and his mistress were attacked, not just for adultery, but also for extravagance and corruption. Among others rounded up by the police was a volunteer in the cavalry and four women, imprisoned for having said that 'the king was an imbecile and a tyrant... who allowed himself to be governed by his whore,.3 Obscene publications and engravings were sold all over Paris, in cafes, on the streets and especially wherever prostitutes gathered. Norwas the court spared. An inspection in 1749 showed that erotic books were even available at Versailles. In the same year, an intrepid kitchen-boy, Jean Lacasse, was sent to the Bastille for having placed a copy of the pornographic classic 1£ portier des Chartreux in the royal chapeL 4 With an ever-growing number of clandestine periodicals and pamphlets ready and willing to satisfy an ever-growing desire for news about the misdeeds of the court, discretion was becoming a correspondingly essential royal attribute. A century later, Walter Bagehot wrote of the British monarchy: 'secrecy is ... essential to the utility of English royalty as it now is. Above all things, our royalty is to be reverenced, and if you begin to poke about it, you cannot reverence it ... Its mystery is its life. We must not let in daylight upon magic,.5 Alas, there Vias precious little magic attaching to Louis XV's royalty, once the pamphleteers had done their work. He certainly made their work easy: as he grew older, his girls became A. Farge and J. Revel, The vanishing children of Paris. Rumor and politics before the French Revolution, Cambridge, Mass., 1991, p. 124. 3 M.e. Jacob, 'The materialist world of pornography', in L. Hunt, ed., The invention of pornography. Obscenity and the origins of modernity, 15(j)-1800, New York, 1993, pp. 187-8. 4 J.M. Goulemot, Forbidden texts. Erotic literature and its readers in eighteenth century France, Cambridge, 1994, pp. 17-18. th 5 W. Bagehot, The English constitution, 4 edn., London, 1867, p. 59. 2
Enlightenment and Revolution
Louis XVI and the Public Sphere
younger and more disreputable. Even after his fickle eye had moved on from Madame de Pompadour, she continued to live in her splendid Versailles apartment, continued to see the king on a regular basis, and - so it was rumoured - continued to have sex with him vicariously by procuring her successors. Stories began to spread of a private brothel at Versailles called the 'Pare aux Cerfs' ('deer-park'), where the King sought to reinvigorate his flagging potency with ever younger girls and ever more bizarre stimulants, including bathing in the blood of virgins. The Duc de Croy recorded in his journal that the King had had sexual relations with ninety different women there. 6 It need hardly be added that these stories were much exaggerated. The Pare aux Ceifs did indeed exist, but it was not a single establishment, rather the name of a district of Versailles where the king kept a number of his 'petites maftresses' under the supervision of his valet Lebel, who was in contact with the Paris brothels.? Nevertheless, the public claimed to know all about the comings and goings there and took a prurient interest in every reported detail. The worst came last. In 1769 Louis XV took what proved to be his last maftresse en titre in the alluring shape of Jeanne Becu, or 'Madame du Barry' as she became known once an elderly aristocrat had been induced to marry her. As it was well known that she had been working as a prostitute in Paris before she caught the eye of a royal procurer, the sensation caused by her appearance at court can be easily imagined. Madame de Genlis recorded that on Madame du Barry's first appearance there, all the women got up and moved away from her: 'nothing so scandalous had ever been seen there, not even under la Pompadour. It was simply disgraceful to present with so much pomp a street-walker to the royal family'.s It was equally well-known that the king lavished huge sums on his new favourite: according to Werner Sombart, during her five years at court (1769-74) Madame du Barry got through 12,481,803 livres. 9 The closing years of the old king's reign were besmirched by a torrent of hostile pornography. Louis XV was depicted as a feeble decadent, so wasted by a life of debauchery that only a professional could tease an erection from him. 10 In the preface to what purported to be a collection of letters from Madame du Barry to her associates, he was described as weak, cretinous, idle, irresolute, devoted to the vilest debauchery, dishonoured in
the eyes of his people and foreigners, despised and hated. I I In The shade of Louis XV before Minos, published shortly after his death, he finds himself in Hell and being interrogated about his conduct towards his army of mistresses, all of whom are also present. They complain that they experienced very little pleasure but a great deal of pain at his hands, although they concede that they were paid royally for their exertions. 'But not me!', complains a little village-girl covered in pustules, for she was already suffering from small-pox when raped by the king as his last victim and inadvertent killer. Minos tells Louis:
56
M. Antoine, Louis XV, Paris, 1989, pp. 503-6. 7 G.P. Gooch, Louis Xv. The monarchy in decline, London, 1956, p. 157. 8 Mme de Gen1is, Memoires inedits de Madame La Comtesse de CenLis, sur Le dix-huitieme siecle etLa RevoLution franr;aise, depuis 1756 it nos jours, 2 vols., Paris, 1825, ii. 109-10. 9 W. Sombart, Luxury and capitaLism, Ann Arbor, 1967, p. 74. 10 R. Damton, The forbidden best-sellers of pre-revoLutionary France, London, 1996, pp.212-13 6
57
All this lust, infamy and prostitution would have mattered less, if at least you had concealed your filthy habits with the veil of secrecy and if you had shown respect for morality by not making public your criminal examples of incest, adultery, kidnap and rape, and if you had not caused maximum outrage by choosing a mistress [Madame du Barry] from the mire of debauchery, if you had not deluged her with the resources of the state so that she could wallow in luxury fit for a queen, if you had not multiplied taxes to indulge her crazy fancies and sacrificed your subjects' future to the whims of this madness.
But Louis is quite unabashed, replying: 'But I found her amusing, I needed her to keep me going - I would have died of boredom without her. It's absolutely necessary for my people to make sacrifices for me' .12 As for the lady herself, she was depicted as an unprincipled whore of the lowest kind, who had sold her 'virginity' repeatedly to clergy and aristocrats, and who revelled in seeing princes of the blood grovel before her in the hope of securing favours from the king. 13 No one could have presented a greater contrast than Louis XV's grandson and successor. Anchored to the marriage-bed by the combination of a weak libido and a beautiful and strong-willed wife, Louis XVI was probably the only Bourbon monarch never to commit adultery. This was one area in which he could present himself before the bar of public opinion with complete confidence. It was just as well, for it was just around this time that 'public opinion' was acquiring its modem meaning as the most authoritative legitimator of cultural and - increasingly - political value. In
II [M.F. Pidansat de Mairobert], Leltres originales de Madame la comtesse du Barry; avec celles des Princes, Seigneurs, Ministres & autres, qui Lui ant ecrit, & qu 'on a pu recueillir, 'London', 1779, unpaginated preface. 12 [Pidansat de Mairobert], Cespion AngLois, au correspondance secrete entre Milord All 'eye et MiLord Alle'ar [sic}, 10 vols., 'a Londres', 1779. Vol. II, letter 18, is a review of Cambre de Louis XV devant Minos, but with extensive quotations. 13 [Pidansat de Mairobert], Anecdotes sur M. La comtesse du Barri, 'a Londres', 1775, pp. 22-3.
58
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Louis XVI and the Public Sphere
1750 Jean-Jacques Rousseau was still referring to it as immutable collective prejudice, as in 'neither reason nor virtue nor the laws will subjugate public opinion, so long as one has not discovered the art of changing it' .14 By 1776, two years after the accession of Louis XVI, he could add: 'Among the singularities which mark out the age we live in from all others, is the methodical and sustained spirit which has guided public opinions over the last twenty years. Until now these opinions wandered aimless and unregulated at the whim of men's passions, and the endless interplay of these passions made the public float from one to another without any constant direction' .15 In the previous year, Malesherbes had used his maiden address to the Academie fran~aise to proclaim the coming-of-age of public opinion: 'A tribunal has arisen independent of all powers and that all powers respect, that appreciates all talents, that pronounces on all people of merit. And in an enlightened century, in a century in which each citizen can speak to the entire nation by way of print, those who have a talent for instructing men and a gift for moving them - in a word, men of letters - are, amidst the public dispersed, what the orators of Rome and Athens were in the middle of the public assembled' .16 In 1782 LouisSebastien Mercier claimed: 'During the past thirty years a great and significant revolution has occurred in the way we think. Today public opinion enjoys a power in Europe which is preponderant and irresistible ... It is men of letters who deserve the credit, for in the recent past it is they who have formed public opinion in a number of very important crises. Thanks to their efforts, public opinion has exercised a decisive influence on the course of events. And it also seems that they are creating a national spirit' .17 Unfortunately, marital fidelity was no longer enough to satisfy public opinion. As part of its development, leadership had passed from Versailles to Paris, from the court to the capital. This transfer was due to the cumulative effect of numerous cultural, political and socio-economic forces l8 and could not have been arrested, let alone reversed, by a single individual. But it could have been controlled, managed, even exploited. Perhaps Louis XVI's most serious self-inflicted handicap was geographical isolation. The new king was no more enthusiastic about Paris than his predecessors; indeed given his passion for hunting (the only activity to quicken his slow pulse-rate) he
showed even greater preference for country retreats than had his predecessor. In an article entitled 'The king at Paris' of 1787, Mercier lodged the following complaints: the Louvre remained empty and would never be finished; Louis XVI had shown what he thought of his capital by never spending more then twenty-four hours there; the first Bourbon, Henry IV, had also been the last of his dynasty to make Paris his residence; and his successors had been the only monarchs in Europe to cut themselves off from their subjects. Mercier invited his readers to compare the King of France with his British counterpart. On the rare occasions the former left Versailles, he did so surrounded by a swarm of courtiers, and with an escort of Household Cavalry and French and Swiss Guards to clear the way. But George III went out on the streets of London in a sedan-ehair and with no more than three escorts - yet this was a man who could send 150 ships of the line to sea and commanded a world empire. 19 Perhaps the contrast was a little stark, but Mercier had a point. Louis XVI was even more sluggish than his grandfather when it came to showing himself to his people. He left the chateaux and hunting-lodges of the Versailles region on only three occasions: in 1775, when he went to be crowned at Reims; in 1786, when he went to inspect new fortifications at Cherbourg; and in 1791, when he tried to run away from the Revolution. The first of those expeditions hoisted an early warning that the new king had learned nothing from the problems of his predecessor. With a keen eye for the importance of gesture politics, his new controller-general of finance, Turgot, had wanted the ceremony to be simplified, modernised and moved to Paris. He pointed out that a royal example of economy would be very popular, would be good for the tourist trade and help to reconcile court and capita1. 2o He also wanted a new coronation oath, considering that the traditional wording promised too much to the clergy but too little to the nation?1 His new version stressed the king's secular obligations and in particular omitted the pledge 'to exterminate, in all lands subjected to my rule, the heretics declared to be so by the Church' .22 Louis XVI, however, insisted that his coronation be conducted at Reims in the traditional fashion and he had his way, of course. In June 1775 the royal retinue moved to 23 Reims for six days of ceremonies costing an estimated 7,000,000 livres. Mercier, Tableau de Paris, x. 122-5. H. Weber, 'Das Sacre Ludwigs XVI vom II. Juni 1775 und die Krise des Ancien Regime', in E. Hinrichs, E. Schmitt and R. Vierhaus, eds, Vom Ancien Regime zur Franzosischen Revolution. Forschungen und Ergebnisse, Gottingen, 1978, p. 541; D. Dakin, Turgot and the ancien regime in France, London, 1939, pp. 216-18. 21 [Condorcet] Vie de Monsieur Turgot, Berne, 1787, pp. 115-16. 22 J. McManners, Church and society in eighteenth century France, vol. I: The clerical establishment and its social ramifications, Oxford, 1998, p. 15. 23 Weber, 'Das Sacre Ludwigs XVI', p. 540. 19
Cited i'1 K.M. Baker, 'Public opinion as political invention', in idem, Inventing the French Revolution, Cambridge, 1990, p. 186. 15 Cited in W. Doyle, The Oxford History ofthe French Revolution, Oxford, 1989, p. 56. 16 Cited in R. Chartier, The cultural origins of the French Revolution, Durham, N.C., and London,199I,pp.30-1. 17 L.-S. Mercier, Tableau de Paris, new ed., 12 vols., Amsterdam, 1783-8, iv. 272. 18 I have discussed this process in greater detail in The culture of power and the power of culture. Old regime Europe 1660-1789, Oxford, 2002, pt. II. 14
20
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The actual coronation ceremony included anointing with the oil originally brought from Heaven by the Holy Ghost at the behest of Saint Remy when he baptised Clovis, the Merovingian King of the Franks, as a Christian in c. A.D. 493. (Aerial assistance in transporting the oil had been needed on that occasion because the crush of people prevented it being carried into the Church by more conventional means)?4 As if to emphasise the traditional nature of the proceedings, Louis XVI also insisted on carrying out the ceremony of touching for the King's Evil. Newly equipped with thaumaturgical powers, he laid hands on 2,400 scrofula-sufferers. Unimpressed, Voltaire wrote to Frederick the Great that he had lost confidence in the King of France's miraculous power on learning that one of Louis XIV's mistresses had died of scrofula, despite being very well touched by the king. 25 However, in one important respect the ceremony was new in 1775, although the change did not point in the right direction. In the past, the bishops of Laon and Beauvais had asked the congregation whether they accepted the king, whereupon the Archbishop of Reims had intoned 'quia populus acclamavit te, te sacro regem' [as the people have acclaimed you, I consecrate you king], but on this occasion the whole episode was omitted. Whether this was due to an oversight or to a wish to stress the sacral nature of Louis' kingship is not clear, but it is certain that it was much criticised. 26 A pamphlet published later that year, entitled The royal coronation, or the rights of the French nation recognised and confirmed by this ceremony, argued that a 'party of reaction' had conspired to change the ceremony to elevate the clerical interest. The anonymous author, together with others who wrote on the same theme, took the opportunity to argue that royal legitimacy rested not on divine right but on a social contract with the nation as a whole. 27 The splendour of Louis XVI's coronation was matched only by those of Napoleon I and Charles X, both of whom also lost their thrones (although not their heads), so perhaps Turgot was right. His own tenure of office as controller-general was to be brief, as he was dismissed in May, 1776. With him went his reform programme, designed to reform the fiscal system and to broaden the basis of monarchical support by means of a network of provincial assemblies. By that time he had alienated conservative opinion both inside the government, especially Maurepas and
Vergennes, and outside, especially in the Parlements. As involvement in the War of American Independence loomed (and Turgot had advocated staying out), the chances for fundamental domestic res(ructuring diminished. Perhaps more important, a golden opportunity to give the new reign a modernising image had been lost. During the next decade and a half, Louis XVI and his ministers did indeed introduce many enlightened and even sensible reforms, but they could not alter the way in which they were viewed by public opinion. The two most distinguished modem histories of France on the period both see the fall of Turgot as a watershed, whatever the rights or wrongs of the small print of his proposed reforms: 'thus, after the downfall of the triumvirate's [Maupeou, Terray, d' Aiguillon] neo-absolutist attempt, came the failure of the philosophical and reforming monarchy. In six years, the two paths of state arbitration had been explored in vain. At the end of this double shipwreck, there remained an ever more anti-absolutist public opinion and a monarchy which was falling apart' [Franc;ois Furet] and 'Turgot's disgrace marked the failure of the alliance of philosophy with absolutism, the defeat of enlightened despotism in France, and the impossibility of overcoming entrenched privilege' [Daniel Roche].28 Ominous both substantively and in terms of perception was the role alleged to have been played in Turgot's fall by the Queen?9 It was not to be the last time that she interfered with matters that should not have concerned her. So much has been written about Marie-Antoinette that any analysis of her role in the unravelling of the French monarchy can be concise. In a single sentence it can be said that, for public opinion and its minders, she assumed the role vacated by Louis XV. Three main groups of charges were laid against her. Firstly, she was accused of wild extravagance. There was some substance to this, for she did spend large sums on clothes, horseracing, and gambling. Most conspicuous was her expenditure on buildings after 1783, despite the monarchy's financial straits in the aftermath of the American War. The hamlet of twelve houses constructed on the banks of the Great Pond of the Trianon at Versailles appeared to be particularly selfindulgent, although her apologists have justified it as an exercise in progressive agriculture. 3D Her most damaging architectural project was the purchase of the Palace of Saint-Cloud from the Duc d'Orieans in 1784,
A. Haueter, Die Kronungen der franzosischen Konige im Zeitalter des Absolutismus und in der Restauration, ZUrich, 1975, p. 104. 25 fbid., p. 257. 26 Weber, 'Das Sacre', p. 558, favours the latter interpretation, McManners prefers the former in his Church and society in eighteenth century France, i. 14. 27 Ibid. 24
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28 F. Furet, Revolutionary France 1770-1880, Oxford and Cambridge, Mass., 1992, pp. 267; D. Roche, France in the Enlightenment, Cambridge, Mass., 1998, p. 475. 29 M. Price, Preserving the monarchy: the comte de Vergennes, 1774-1787, Cambridge, 1995, pp. 50-I. J. Hardman, in French politics 1774-1789. From the accession of Louis XVI to the fall of the Bastille, London, 1995, p. 206, argues that in reality it was the king not the queen who brought down Turgot. 30 V. Cronin, Louis and Antoinelle, London, 1974, p. 194. Despite the overblown style and excessively exculpatory tone, this is a well-researched and informative study.
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Louis XVI and the PubLic Sphere
which attracted a great deal of hostile publicity. It was unprecedented for a queen to buy a chateau on her own account, even more so to staff it with servants wearing her own special livery, and even more so still to issue orders signed 'de par la reine'. Madame Campan recalled:
a virtue into a vice by acquiring the reputation of impotence. Although there remains some uncertainty about the exact nature of his sexual relations, seven years passed before he was able to consummate his marriage. According to many accounts, the problem was mainly physiological, namely a 'phimosis', that is to say a contracture of the foreskin which makes sexual intercourse very painful or even impossible. It was only when Louis' brother-in-law, Joseph II, persuaded him to have the painful but necessary operation that consummation could be achieved. However, Derek Beales' careful examination of all the evidence has established that there was almost certainly no operation and that the problem was simple ignorance, cured when Joseph gave Louis some basic lessons in sexual technique. 35 The happy couple now made up for lost time. Marie-Antoinette produced a daughter in 1778, a son in 1781, another son in 1785 and a second daughter in 1785. This fecundity was too late to save the reputation of either king or queen. Indeed it was when it became known that the queen was pregnant for the fIrst time that the real flood of pornographic libelles began. When the Dauphin was born, many names were canvassed as the possible sire, but all the pamphleteers agreed that it could not have been the king:
This livery of the queen at the gates of a palace where one only expected that of the king: those words de par La reine at the head of notices posted on the railings caused a sensation and had a very bad effect, not only among the common people but among their social superiors; all this was seen as undermining the customs of the monarchy, and customs are closely linked to laws. 31
Also unpopular were the huge sums believed to be squandered on Marie-Antoinette's entourage. Although the stories grew with the telling, many millions of livres did indeed fInd their way into the pockets of friends such as the Princesse de Lamballe, who drew 170,000 livres as superintendent of the queen's household and many hundreds of thousands more in gifts and loans. The most rapacious was the impoverished Polignac clan, which won a ducal title and pensions totalling 700,000 livres a year, thanks to the friendship of the queen with Gabrielle de Polignac. 32 The gossips at court - and the pamphleteers in the capital - alleged that Marie Antoinette's intense friendships with her female friends were consummated physically. This was the second kind of charge levelled against her, namely that she was promiscuously and rampantly bi-sexual. Although this was almost certainly not true, it is not diffIcult to see why it might have been believed. In his reply to Voltaire's mocking letter about the coronation, Frederick the Great sneered that Louis XVI had never committed a mortal sin in his life, adding that this must be a great comfort to patients touched by him. 33 Certainly it seems likely that Louis was never guilty of sins of the flesh. In 1771 another monarch, George III of England, was told that Louis XV had said of his grandson 'the Dauphin is well made and perfectly well formed yet has hitherto shown no desire for women, nay rather seems to loathe them' .34 Although the future Louis XVI was in fact neither a eunuch nor a misogynist, he was as muted in his sexual activity as his predecessor had been priapic. As the example of George III of England demonstrated, marital fIdelity was a desirable, if not an essential qualifIcation for a monarch wishing to endear himself to public opinion in the second half of the eighteenth century. Unfortunately, Louis XVI turned
All Paris is delighted With the birth of a Dauphin; But his sudden appearance Bewilders Heaven: 'Who the Devil has produced it?' Says the Word angrily; 'It must be some trick by the Holy Spirit For no one claims That the King is the father' 'Excuse me, 0 Master' Cries the dove, 'It was not I who breathed life Into this dear little newborn babe, From what one can tell, He clearly takes after the Queen, While Coigny, burning with love, Didn't spare his candle When lighting the flame. ,36 D. Beales, Joseph II, vol. 1: In the shadow of Maria Theresa 1741 -1780, Cambridge, 1987, pp. 371-5. J. Hardman, Louis XVI, p. 24 states firmly that 'Louis needed a minor 0feration' but does not cite Beales' book in his bibliography. 3 Cronin, Louis and Antoinette, p. 198. With the assistance of Dr R. Tombs and Dr 1. Tombs, 1 have altered the translation given by Cronin. 35
Quoted in Price, Preserving the monarchy, pp. 147-8. 32 Furet, Revolutionary France, p. 33. 33 Haueter, Die Kronungen der franzosischen Konige, p. 257. 34 Cronin, Louis and Antoinette, p. 407. 31
Enlightenment and Revolution
Louis XVI and the Public Sphere
Rumours of Marie-Antoinette's immorality had been circulating long before that. As early as 1774, the abbe Baudeau recorded in his diary: 'The Queen is said to sleep with the Duc de Chartres and M. de Lamballe: with the former after putting up stiff resistance, with the latter willingly; also with Madame de Lamballe, Madame de Pecquigny, etc. etc. The underhand cabal of the Chancellor [Maupeou] and the old bigoted aunts spread these stories, to try to ruin this poor princess, and retain sole control of the Court' .37 It was also in 1774 that Louis XV authorised the expenditure of large sums to buy up copies of a pamphlet circulating in London and Amsterdam which cast aspersions on the Dauphin's potency.38 The psychopathology of the torrent of filth which now poured over the public reputation of the hapless queen and her spouse lies beyond the scope of this study and the understanding of its author, but certain characteristics are obtrusive and important. Firstly, there was a clear link with the pornographic libelles of the previous reign, with Marie-Antoinette often equated to Madame du Barry. Indeed, she was even cast as a female version of Louis XV with her own version of the Pare aux Ceifs in which she prostituted herself to the leading clergymen and nobles of 39 the kingdom. Secondly, there was an obsessive interest in unorthodox forms of sexual behaviour, especially in incest, lesbianism and sodomy: MarieAntoinette is said to have lost her virginity to her brother, Joseph II; in almost every pamphlet she is depicted consorting with women; and her male lovers often spend as much time copulating with each other as with her. 40 This was part of a wider scenario presented by the libellistes, who directed 'a barrage of anti-social smut', as Robert Darnton has put it, against every aspect of the commanding heights of the old regime - courtiers, nobles, clergy, academicians, as well as king and queen. The aristocratic elites appear as impotent or deviant, leaving their wives to be serviced by their more virile 41 servants. Thirdly, the sexual voracity of the queen was contrasted with the
impotence of the king, invariably presented as a dim, lazy, complacent, drunken sot. In L'Autrichienne en goguettes [The Austrian bitch on a spree], for example, Marie-Antoinette uses his recumbent form as a mattress on 42 which to fornicate with his younger brother, the Comte d' Artois. All these sleazy threads came together in 1785 in the 'Diamond Necklace Affair', the greatest cause celebre of the old regime. The CardinalArchbishop of Strasbourg, Louis de Rohan, was induced to buy a diamond necklace worth 1,600,000 livres, believing that he was acting on behalf of Marie-Antoinette and hoping thus to ingratiate himself with her. In reality, she knew nothing about it, the whole scheme was a swindle organised by a gang of confidence tricksters. When the scandal finally broke, Louis XVI behaved with amazing ineptitude, choosing to have the na"ive and foolish but essentially innocent Rohan prosecuted and thus allowing the affair to gain maximum publicity. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong: Rohan was acquitted but the name of the Queen was well and truly dragged through the mire. A flood of libelles followed, alleging among many other things that for all her feigned indignation, the queen had been the Cardinal's lover, had contracted venereal disease from him and had proceeded to infect the whole court. 43 Public interest in the affair was colossal, with even the legal documents in the case being devoured avidly. The briefs written for Rohan 44 by his barrister, for example, reached a print-run of 20,000 copies. Against all likelihood and against what evidence there was, the public chose to 45 believe that the affair had shown the king being cuckolded by a cardina1. In the view of John Hardman, 'if anyone incident may be said to have begun the "unravelling" of the ancien regime', it was the Diamond Necklace Affair' .46 It was the scandal of the century, reverberating far beyond the French frontier. Goethe recorded in his Annals: 'The story of the Diamond Necklace had made an indelible impression on me. Out of the bottomless abyss here disclosed of immorality in city, Court and State, there emerged, spectre-like, the most horrible apparitions' .47 It also inspired one of Goethe's rare but penetrating political insights: recalling his play based on the affair The Grand Cophta - he observed much later that it had been a good subject because in one sense it had been the cause of the French Revolution. By being exposed to public ridicule, he explained, the royal family had lost
64
Quoted in ibid., p. 402. S. Maza, 'The diamond necklace affair revisited, 1785-1786: the case of the missing queen', in L. Hunt, ed., Eroticism aruJ. the body politic, Baltimore and London, 1991, p. 116. 39 L. Hunt, 'Obscenity and the origins of modernity', in idem ed., The invention ofpornography, p. 40. 40 See for example, Vie de Marie Antoinette d 'Autriche, reine de France, femme de Louis XVI, roi des Fram;ais; L'Autrichienne en goguettes ou l'orgie royale. Opera proverbe. Compose par un Garde-du-Corps et publie depuis la Liberte de la Presse et mis en musique par la Reine; Le Godmiche royal; and Bordel royal. Suivi d'un entretien secret entre la Reine et Ie Cardinal de Rohan apres son entre aux Etats-generaux, all reprinted in C. Thomas, La reine seeterate. Marie-Antoinette dans les pamphlets, Paris, 1989. 41 R. Damton, 'The high enlightenment and the low-life of literature in pre-revolutionary France', Past and Present, 51, 1971, pp. 105-6. For some particularly unpleasant examples of this genre, see A. de Baecque, 'Pamphlets: libel and political mythology', in R. Damton, ed., Revolution in print. The press in France 1775-1800, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1989, pp. 167-72. 37
38
65
Thomas, La reine seelerate, p. 118. Hardman, Louis XV1, p. 84. This chapter contains the best detailed account of the affair. 44 S. Maza, Private lives and public affairs. The causes celebres of pre-Revolutionary France, Berkeley and London, 1993, pp. 193-4. 45 R. Damton, The forbidden best-sellers ofpre-revolutionary France, London, 1996, p. 226. 461. Hardman, French politics 1774-1789, p. 209. 47 Quoted in G.P. Gooch, Germany and the French Revolution, London, 1920; reprinted 1965, p. 175.
42
43
66
Enlightenment and Revolution
Louis XVI and the Public Sphere
public respect, and that proved fatal, for 'hate injures no one; it is contempt that drags men down' .48 It was a view shared by William Eden, the British diplomat, who after 1789 wrote a memoir on the effects of the affair, which he had observed at ftrst hand when negotiating the Anglo-French commercial treaty which bears his name. He absolved Marie-Antoinette of any fraudulent conduct (although even he believed that she had seen the necklace and had wished to have it) 'but the calumnies of the Parisians were directed against her with much malignity, and were circulated in printed libels and letters through the provinces, and became a symptom, and in some degree a cause, of the catastrophe that was preparing' .49 As the title of L'Autrichienne en goguettes indicated, the attacks on Marie-Antoinette arraigned her as a foreigner, an enemy to France. This was the third set of charges laid against her. Indeed the ftrst hostile pamphlet - Antoinette ou La nouvelle Pandore - was not obscene at all, but concentrated on her Austrian origins. 50 Particularly frequent was the accusation that she had diverted millions of Livres in gold from the French treasury to her Austrian brother, an indictment which reached a climax at her trial in 1793, when the public prosecutor, Fouquier-Tinville, used sexual imagery to describe her relations with foreign powers. 51 Although Marie-Antoinette was in no position to arrange for financial subsidies to Austria, there was real substance to the charge that she viewed herself as an Austrian agent ftrst and Queen of France second. The Austrian ambassador, Count Mercy, saw her on a regular basis, received what intelligence she had been able to muster and gave her instructions about what to do next. If she failed to exercise a decisive influence on the conduct of French policy, it was not through want of trying. In October, 1784, for example, she lectured Vergennes on the importance of the Austrian alliance and the need to maintain it by supporting her brother Joseph in his dispute with the 52 Dutch. In the event, Louis did not do as he was told; indeed he told his brother-in-law that, if forced to choose between his existing ally (Austria) and his prospective ally (the Dutch), he would opt for the latter. However, he did eventually broker a settlement, but only by agreeing to pay the 10,000,000 gulden Joseph was demanding as compensation.53 This
represented a very good deal for France, but the fact that money had changed from French to Austrian hands only served to alienate public opinion further. 54 When taken together with the failure to prevent the partition of Poland and the annexation of the Crimea, this latest inglorious episode suggested that Louis XVI had abdicated France's great-power status. The Comte de Segur recorded the prevailing mood as follows:
Ibid., p. 180. William, Lord Auckland, Journal and correspondence, 4 vols., London, 1861-2, i. 131-2. 50 Cronin, Louis and Antoinette, p. 402. 51 L. Hunt, 'The many bodies of Marie Antoinette: political pornography and the problem of the feminine in the French Revolution', in idem ed., Eroticism and the body politic, p. 110. 52 A. Ritter von Arneth and 1. Flamrnermont, eds, Correspondance secrete du comte de Mercy-Argenteau avec I' empereur Joseph II et Ie prince de Kaunitz, 2 vols., Paris, 1889-91, i. 318 note 1. These two volumes teem with similar examples. 53 There is a brief account of the episode in TC.W. Blanning, Joseph II, London, 1994, pp. 138-42. 48
67
What would become of our old hegemony, our dignity, the balance of power in Europe and our own security if we ceased to be regarded as the protector of the weaker states against the three predators [Austria, Prussia, Russia]? Had a decision been taken to step down from the rank to which we had been raised by Henry IV, Louis XIII, Cardinal Richelieu, the celebrated Treaty of Westphalia and the glory of Louis XIV? - Those were the comments made everywhere, in all classes of the population, from the galleries of Versailles to the cafes of the Palais Royal, that new political rendezvous. The Parlementaires and the philosophes, motivated by their spirit of opposition, spoke out against the negligence of the ministers; and young people passionately embraced the cause of the Dutch, that is to say in favour of war. 55
One final feature of the attacks on Marie-Antoinette needs to be noted. As the abbe Baudeau indicated in the diary entry quoted above,56 they originated inside the establishment, where her enemies were rife. One of the most powerful was the Duc d'Orleans (styled Duc de Chartres until the death of his father in 1785), head of the junior Bourbon branch descended from Louis XIV's brother. Blaming MarieAntoinette for the humiliating end to his naval career in 1779, Orleans took revenge by financing attacks on her. His headquarters in Paris, the Palais Royal, became a centre of opposition journalism, a space where the scum of the court and the dregs of the capital could meet in conspiratorial synergy.57 Pace Robert Darnton, the Libellistes were not all or even mainly embittered outsiders but were the paid hacks of court factions: 'rather than representing a counter-culture with revolutionary aspirations, the milieu of the Parisian pamphleteers in the 1770s and 1780s represented the diversity of elements within France's elites willing to appeal to the growing force of public opinion to settle their disputes' .58
49
Louis-Philippe, Comte de Segur, Memoires ou sOI~venirs et anecdotes, vots. 1-3 of Oeuvres completes, Paris, 1824-6, ii. 94. 55 Ibid., ii. 85. 56 See above, p. 64. 57 E.S. Scudder, Prince of the Blood, London, 1937, pp. 76-80. 58 Popkin, 'Pamphlet journalism at the end of the old regime', p. 363. Damton's thesis was first advanced in two articles published in 1971 - 'The high enlightenment and low life of 54
68
Enlightenment and Revolution
When the terminal crisis of the old regime began in 1786, with the realisation of Calonne that bankruptcy was imminent, public opinion had established itself as the sovereign source of political legitimacy. This was recognised by the King himself, when he decided on 5 July 1788 to consult public opinion on how the Estates General should conduct its business when it eventually met. As de Tocqueville observed, this was tantamount to setting the French constitution as the topic for a national prize-essay competition. Such was the authority of this new source of legitimacy that it had eroded the confidence of the very heart of the old regime. As Keith Baker has written: "'public opinion" had become the articulating concept of a new political space with a legitimacy and authority apart from that of the crown: a public space in which the nation could reclaim its rights against the crown. Within this space, the French Revolution became thinkable,.59 Louis XVI had understood neither the opportunities nor the dangers presented by the public sphere, and now, perhaps with a sigh of relief, he left everything to Necker: 'I was forced to recall Necker; I didn't want to, but they'll soon regret it. I'll do everything he tells me and we'll see what happens'.6O But Necker saw himself as simply a receiver in bankruptcy, keeping the ruined firm going until a purchaser could be found and a new management team installed in the board room. The initiative now passed completely to the public sphere, which was enjoying an explosive process of politicisation following the effective abolition of censorship. Louis XVI's inactivity during 1788-9 contrasts both sharply and unfavourably with George Ill's very different response to his own existential crisis of 1782-4 or the more contemporary predicament weathered by Joseph II of Austria. Of course, those two had stronger hands to play, but they did so with skill, energy and determination. 61 Their French colleague simply folded every hand, even when dealt a royal straight flush. It was not to be long before even the images of kings and queens were to be banned from French playing cards.
literature' and 'Reading, writing and publishing in eighteenth century France: a case-study in the sociology of literature', Daedalus, 100, 1971. He has repeated it at regular intervals since, most recently in The forbidden best-sellers of pre-revolutionary France. For critiques of Damton's work, see the articles by J. Popkin, E. Eisenstein and D. Gordon in H.T. Mason, ed., The Damton debate. Books and revolution in the eighteenth century, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 359, 1998. 59 Baker, 'Public opinion as political invention', p. 199. 60 Quoted in Hardman, Louis XVI, p. 136. 61 1have explored this comparison in The culture ofpower and the power of culture, pp. 338-54, 428-41.
Chapter 4
Henri-Leonard Bertin and the Fate of the Bourbon Monarchy: the 'Chinese Connection' Gwynne Lewis
During the crisis precipitated by the English defeat of France in the Seven Years' War (1756-63), Louis XV asked his one of his favourite ministers, Henri-Leonard Bertin, how respect for the monarchy might be improved. Bertin replied: 'Sire, we must inoculate the French with L'esprit chinois,.l Bertin was serious. He was to pursue his fascination with China until the day he died, on 16 September 1792. Henri Bertin was not alone in this pursuit: La chinoiserie, from porcelain and silks to politics and philosophy, was very much in vogue in mideighteenth-century France. The notion that political and social systems could be improved by imitating the Chinese was shared by renowned European philosophes from Leibnitz to Voltaire? They believed that China might help ruling elites to solve the most perplexing political puzzle of the century - how to introduce Enlightenment ideas without disturbing the political and social foundations of absolutist regimes. After all, if one wanted to find the very model of a modem 'Enlightened Despot' one only had to tum to the Celestial Emperor, Kien-long (1735-1799), the greatest ruler of the Manchu Qing imperial dynasty. Little matter that China was on the opposite side of the globe: distance had long lent enchantment to the minds of French philosophes. 3 I L. Dermigny, La Chine et l'Occident: Ie commerce a Canton au XVllle siecle, 3 vols., Paris, 1964, i. 22. 2 In his Essai sur les moeurs, p. 38, Voltaire describes the Chinese Emperor, Kien-Iong, as 'Ie premier des lettres'. For Leibnitz and China, see J. Baruzzi, Leibnitz et I 'organisation de La terre, Paris, 1909. 3 Rowbotham states that Sinophilism in mid-eighteenth century France 'became the most important element in the larger movement of cosmopolitanism, relativism and universalism'. A. Rowbotham, Missionary and mandarin: the Jesuits at the court of China, Berkeley, 1942, p. 280. The best supporting evidence for this, of course, is to be found in Montesquieu's Esprit des lois, bks. 8 and 9.
70
Enlightenment and Revolution
The 'Chinese Connection'
Henri Bertin thought of himself - with some justification - as a savant as well as a politician. Born on 24 March 1720, his family was typical of the wealthy, provincial noblesse de robe. His father had secured a prominent place among the social elite of the Perigord by becoming a conseiller du roi, then a maitre de requetes. The purchase of office and land had translated him into the baron and count of Bourdeille, and the seigneur of Brantome. 4 By the 1740s, the Bertins had become too big for their provincial boots, and it was Henri-Leonard who was to move them into the international arena. A protege of Madame de Pompadour, Bertin had climbed the first rungs of the ministerial ladder during his career as an Intendant in Roussillon (1750-4) and Lyon (1754-7). In 1757 he was appointed lieutenant-general de police de Paris. Three years later, Louis XV persuaded Bertin to accept the top post of contraleur general: it was a position that he had neither sought, nor one in which he was to prove very successful, but unqualified success was something few, if any, eighteenthcentury contraleurs generaux experienced. 5 A card-carrying member of the devot faction at Versailles, Bertin came from a very Catholic family and was taught by the Jesuits. Converting the Chinese to Christianity would be almost as important to him as converting the French into loyal and submissive subjects, a la chinoise, of an enlightened Louis XV. During the early period of Bertin's political career, a far more obscure figure, Joseph-Marie Amiot, the son of a Toulon notary, was studying theology and classics in his local Jesuit college. He had taken permanent vows as a Jesuit priest in 1739 when he was just twenty-one. Endowed with considerable intellectual ability, as well as a natural aptitude for oriental languages, Amiot was a prime candidate for missionary work in the Far East, hence it was no surprise that the Jesuit Order decided to send him to China. He arrived in the Imperial City of Peking on 20 October 1752. He would die there forty years later, without ever having returned to his native land. His biographer, Camille de Rochemonteix, divides Amiot's career into two distinct periods: the first, from 1750 to 1766, the priest, preacher, and linguist, the second, 1766-1783, the European savant. It is a useful division, one that reveals the duality of his career - not untypical of Jesuits - as a conscientious, missionary priest, and as a minor figure in the later eighteenth-century phase of the Enlightenment. 6 Although they never met,
Henri Bertin and Joseph Amiot, two deeply religious human beings, were destined to forge a friendship that would impact upon the political and religious culture of pre-Revolutionary France. French Jesuits had not been the first to establish a European presence in China. European Jesuits, led by the Portuguese and the Italians, had established 151 churches and 38 mission houses by the 1660s. The first Jesuits to arrive in Peking in the 1590s, Michele Ruggieri and Matthew Ricci, were Italians. In 1601, Ricci was introduced at the Chinese Court where he received the distinction of becoming a mandarin. Henceforth, most Jesuits based in Peking would be obliged to live a schizophrenic existence - as 'missionaries' and 'mandarins'. Ricci's Map of the World and his True Meaning of the Doctrine of the Master of Heaven, a polemical work on Chinese and Buddhist beliefs, had confirmed the value of Jesuit scholarship to Chinese and European civilisation. The latter work also set the agenda for the Jesuit accommodation between Christian and Chinese religious and philosophical beliefs, something that was to remain central to the work of Henri Bertin and Joseph Amiot 150 years later. 7 These two men were intelligent representatives of a western, catholic, universalist culture threatened by the rising forces of materialism, secularisation, and capitalism. The first French Jesuit presence in Peking had been organised by the Jesuit Order and the French government. On 7 February 1688, pere Bouvet, accompanied by a handful of fellow Jesuits, had arrived in Peking. Within three years, they had built a church in the Imperial city as well as a mission house, the Residence de Saint-Sauveur. The fundamental purpose of their mission had been established by Louis XIV's great minister, Colbert: 'to preach the gospel ... and to provide information on the development of the sciences and the arts, [code words for the Chinese economy]'. 8 Henri Bertin's predecessor as contraleur general, Etienne de Silhouette (also educated by the Jesuits) had followed Colbert's example, seeking to tap China's commercial potential as well as promoting Kien-long as a splendid advertisement for absolute monarchy. In 1729, Silhouette had published a work that appears to have exercised a profound influence upon Bertin, L'idee generale du gouvemement et de la morale des Chinois. 'Government' and 'morality', were two interrelated concepts that lay at the heart of Bertin's 'grand design' for the reconstruction of the Bourbon monarchy following the disasters of the Seven Years' War.
4
71
H. de Montegut, Histoire d'un vieux logis en Angoumois: Ie chiiteau des Ombres, Ruffec,
1922, pp. 71-4.
M. Antoine, Louis XV, Paris, 1989, p. 792. See also J. Swann, 'Politics: Louis XV', in W. Doyle ed., Old Regime France 1648-1788, Oxford, 2001, pp. 214-17. 6 C. de Rochemcnteix, Joseph Amiot et les derniers survivants de la mission frunr;aise de Pekin, 1750-1795, Paris, 1915.
5
For a general account of the European Jesuit presence in Peking, see Rowbotham, Missionary and mandarin, ch.17. 8 Rochemonteix, Joseph Amiot, pp. xxxii-xli.
7
Enlightenment and Revolution
The 'Chinese Connection'
To achieve his goal, Bertin needed intelligent and loyal partners. In China, he would discover pere Amiot; in France, he would make an equally remarkable partner and life-long friend of Jacob-Nicolas Moreau. Moreau was one of those rare breeds, a Jansenist-trained critic of the parlements. In 1760, having been recruited to Versailles as a pamphleteer and propagandist, Moreau had produced a memorandum that Keith Baker describes as 'a powerful blueprint for ideological action in defence of the absolute monarchy'. The previous year, Silhouette had asked Moreau to start thinking about the creation of a government archive that could be used to defend the Crown against its increasingly vocal critics, led by the parlements. By 1763, Moreau's labours had produced a depOt consisting of 1,500 volumes and cartons of judicial, administrative and legal documents that were finally housed in the Bibliotheque du roi. For the rest of his life, Moreau would devote himself to the creation of a massive, official, archive, employed to 'assert the foundations of true political authority in France'. It would be a labour of scholarly love, one that required 'a constant search for historical documents; an interminable process of argument, criticism, and response; and an obsessive historiographical effort that never ended,.9 Bertin's enforced resignation as Controleur general in December 1762 did not mark the end of his influence at Court. As a former lieutenant general de police de Paris, and 'keeper of the king's boudoir'lO, he could not easily be shunted aside. Instead, a unique Secretaryship of State was created for him, a patchwork quilt of ministerial responsibilities that covered key aspects of finance, commerce, agriculture, mining, transport, lotteries and urban postal services, as well as stewardship of the royal Sevres porcelain factory. Michel Antoine's gentle sarcasm is employed to good effect when he writes that 'as was the case with other ancien regime institutions, the allocation of precise responsibilities that we are accustomed to find in modern governments is missing' .11 Administrative inefficiency was ever the homage that ancien regime governments paid to favouritism and corruption. Bertin's 'petit ministere' has received only
qualified praise from historians. Experts in particular fields, however, have 12 painted a rather different picture. What is missing from the overall appraisal of Bertin's career is a detailed assessment and evaluation of his 'Chinese connection', or what Bertin referred to as his Correspondance litteraire. The expression was used to describe the hundreds of letters exchanged between Bertin and the 13 Jesuits of the French mission in Peking between 1765 and 1792. The term litteraire was, in fact, a mask to cover the political and ideological sub-text of the correspondence that would certainly have alarmed the government's critics in the Parlement of Paris. It would also be employed for the same purpose by Jacob Moreau when referring to the monks of the Benedictine order of Saint-Maur, his 'literary correspondents', who laboured long and hard to unearth, translate, and copy thousands of the historical documents that would constitute Moreau's royal archive. 14 It is a fascinating thought that while in England religious scholars were working for Moreau to produce an archival arsenal to be employed in the defence of the monarchy, thousands of miles away in Peking a group of Jesuit scholars were performing a similar function for Bertin by providing information on Kienlong's political and administrative systems. Little of this aspect of the Correspondance litteraire would be published by Bertin in the fifteen volumes of Memoires concernant l'histoire, les sciences, les arts, les moeurs, et les usages des chinois (1776-91). This collection was fundamentally concerned with scientific and cultural aspects of the 'Chinese connection'. It provides compelling evidence for those who reject the notion that the Enlightenment was 'French', 'British' or 'Continental' .15 Both Bertin and Moreau were children of a 'Global Enlightenment'. They both appreciated the significance of, and tried to react positively to, currents of etatisme and secularisation sweeping Europe, not least by transforming regular clerics, in France and in China, into eighteenthcentury 'scholar-mandarins'.
72
K.M. Baker, 'Controlling French history: the ideological arsenal of Jacob-Nicolas Moreau' in idem, Inventing the French Revolution, Cambridge, 1990, pp. 59 and 85. 10 Bertin was in charge of 'la principaute de la Dhombes', a source of revenue - possibly amounting to 250,000 livres - that was never included in government accounts. It was yet another one of Louis XV's 'secrets du roi', helping to finance his extra-mural, royal duties in the Parc aux Cerfs. See G.S. de Sacy, Bertin dans le sWage de Chine, 1720-92, Paris, 1920, ch.12. 11 M. Antoine, Le secretariat d'Etat de Bertin, Paris, 1948, pp. 12-13.
9
73
12 See, for example, the detailed and authoritative study of A. Bourde, Agronomie et agronomes en France au XVllIe siecle, 3 vols., Paris, 1967, ii. 1107-92, iii. 1193-1289. 13 Bibliotheque de l'Institut de France, mss. 1515-26. Correspondance des RR. PP. Jesuites missionnaires en Chine avec H.L.J. Bertin, 1744-1798, ed. H. Cordier, 12 vols. (hereafter c.L.). The author is grateful to the Leverhulme Foundation for its financial assistance in researching this voluminous correpondence. 14 Baker, 'Controlling French history', pp. 72-3. 15 This is not written to devalue the importance of recent works such as J. Israel, Radical Enlightenment: philosophy and the making of modernity, 1650-1750, Oxford, 2001, or R. Porter, Enlightenment: Britain and the creation of the modem world, London, 2001. De Sacy states that 'if cultivated circles in France today interest themselves in serious studies of [eighteenth-century) China, they owe it to Bertin', Bertin dans le sWage, p. 169.
EnLightenment and RevoLution
The 'Chinese Connection'
It was this concern for the ideological renovation of the Bourbon monarchy that explains why Bertin - a pragmatic devot - did not view the final suppression of the Jesuit Order in France in 1764 as a disaster, but rather an opportunity to realise his 'grand design' for the renovation of the French Catholic and Absolute Monarchy. Bertin was a very experienced statesman, one who realised that he was living in a period of profound political, social, and cultural change. He was also less than enamoured with the arcane, political and religious policies of the Vatican. What if Joseph Amiot and his fellow missionaries in Peking might now be encouraged to work just as hard for his Correspondance as they had done for the Pope and the Chinese Emperor? Bertin would encourage his friend and collaborator, Jacob Moreau, to adopt a similar approach in France. The reformation of the Benedictine order in 1766, and the recruitment of its Saint-Maur scholars for Moreau's massive archival operations, were both part of a 'modernisation' of medieval monasticism. The state was the master now, not the Papacy.16 The real victims of all this upheaval, of course, were the Jesuits in Peking. In September 1766, Joseph Amiot told Bertin: 'We flatter ourselves that the misfortune that has befallen our [Jesuit] Society in France will not prevent you from looking favourably upon us here,.17 This was precisely what Bertin wanted to hear. Henceforth, the fate of the French mission in China would become inextricably linked with his own mission to reform absolute monarchy in France. The foundation for Bertin's Correspondance was laid with the despatch of two intermediaries to Pekin, specially chosen and trained for the task ahead. They were the young Chinese, Louis Ko and Etienne Yang, who had been converted to Christianity in China before being sent to France to be trained as priests. 18 They had studied theology and French in the Jesuit seminary of La Fleche in Brittany during the late 1750s. In 1762, Bertin, assisted by Jacques Turgot, Intendant of the Limousin and future Controleur general, assumed responsibility for their training as government emissaries. Economic considerations were to be an important aspect of what was now referred to as the 'Correspondance'. The association with Turgot reminds us that he and Bertin were to share a critical interest in Physiocratic theory. Future disagreements between the two ministers would be tactical rather than ideological. Ko and Yang's training included lessons in physics and natural history, followed by an extended, educational tour of
manufacturing sites in France. Turgot then prepared a list of fifty-two questions, relating to Chinese agriculture, trade and industry, government, public law, and the arts and the sciences, that Ko and Yang were instructed to use as guidelines for their investigations in China. Accompanying these guidelines were a number of explanatory notes that Turgot would employ as the basis of one of his seminal works, the Reflexions sur la formation et la distribution des richesses. Without realising it, Ko and Yang were participating in the formulation of French economic theory at a crucial stage of its development. 19 At the end of January 1765, Ko and Yang, burdened with expensive gifts for themselves and the Chinese Emperor, finally set out on their voyage to Peking. Ko wrote a farewell letter to Bertin in which he assured him, 'in the face of Heaven and earth, that your Highness will remain an immortal memory in my heart' .20 The journey to China would take almost ten months, no ship being available at Macao to take them on to Canton. Voyages between China and France were long and perilous, timetables being dictated by the monsoon winds. Delays of up to a year in the receipt of information between the two countries would pose major problems for Bertin and for the missionaries in Peking who were, in effect, prisoners in an often xenophobic, always suspicious, and rigidly compartmentalised society. Relatively minor problems could assume major significance in the absence of advice and support from Versailles. The administrative procedures for the despatch and receipt of letters and packages had to be organised efficiently and placed in reliable hands?1 The realities of space and time imposed certain constraints but, for Ko and Yang, it was the problems associated with Chinese social and cultural behaviour that really made life difficult. The Emperor and mandarins in Peking might turn a blind eye to the activities of European missionaries in return for their knowledge, skill, and expensive gifts despatched from Europe, but the ordinary Chinese were not so accommodating. As early as September 1766, Ko explained to Bertin that 'We were too young when we left China to appreciate all the customs of our own country. Individuals here cannot interfere in matters that do not directly concern them ... affairs are so ordered that one cannot go beyond one's etat without somebody
74
Baker, 'Controlling French history', p. 72. c.L., I, 23 Sept. 1766. 18 This was by no means the first time that the Jesuits in China had sent converts to France. See J. Spence, The question of Hu, New York, 1989, a tragi-comic account of personal and cultural incompatibility. 16
17
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19 See the most recent biography of Turgot by J.-P. Poirier, Turgot: laissez-faire et progres social, Paris, 1999, pp. 102-14. 20 C.L., VI, 25 Jan. 1765. 2\ Bertin made it very clear to Ko and Yang that all correspondence should go through the Jesuit procureur-genl!ral in Canton, pere Lefebvre. Canton was the base for all European commerce; foreigners were not welcome in Peking. Ko and Yang were also instructed to keep registers and numbered copies of all their correspondence. Ibid., Yang to Bertin, VI. 29 Dec. 1767.
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The 'Chinese Connection'
wanting to know why,.22 These major difficulties were compounded by periodic bouts of Imperial censorship and persecution. Life was especially dangerous for the singularly brave missionaries in the field, who periodically faced imprisonment and sometimes martyrdom. On one occasion, Yang asked Bertin not to publish the Chinese official Gazette he had sent him since this might have dangerous consequences for him and his fellow missionaries. 23 Given the many obstacles placed in their path, and the fact that they were 'first and foremost' Christian missionaries, as they gently reminded Bertin,24 one is surprised by the huge volume of information and materials that were actually despatched to Versailles. Part of the answer is that Bertin was a kind man but a hard taskmaster. On 20 January 1767, he thanked Ko and Yang for all their efforts, but suggested that more could be done: 'Everything that helps us to forge better links between the French and the Chinese should be of interest to you, and I urge you to exploit every opportunity that arises'. In October 1768, Yang reported that he had just returned from a visit to Kang-si province where he had collected information on canal and road building, as well as 'the machines used by the Chinese for irrigating rice-fields' .25 For the next twenty years, Ko and Yang would continue to repay their debt to Bertin, although their labours, particularly those of Ko, would become more sporadic as bouts of religious persecution impeded their efforts, and other French missionaries were drawn into Bertin's clutch of 'correspondants,?6 By the late 1760s, Bertin had recruited the most remarkable of all the gifted missionaries in the French mission house of Saint-Sauveur, Joseph Amiot. After eight years in Peking, Amiot had mastered the Chinese and Tartar languages; he had also become an expert in Chinese history and philosophy, as well as a student of some of the written texts of China's tributary nations. Kien-Iong had recognised Amiot's intellectual gifts by making him a mandarin and a Court interpreter and translator. Other Jesuit priests in the French mission would join Amiot over the years as doctors, mathematicians, astronomers, botanists, hydrologists (designing the Imperial fountains !), painters, decorators and designers. Amiot's predecessor, Father Gaubil, had been 'one of those men who knew
everything and could do anything ... knowledgeable in the fields of theology, physics, astronomy, geography, and history, sacred and profane' .27 For over twenty years, these missionaries would fill the crates that would eventually be loaded onto French merchant ships bound for Lorient with everything from extracts on Chinese public law and military planning to demographic and economic data; from mechanical and musical instruments to memoirs and commentaries on Chinese literature and philosophy; from beautifully decorated and lacquered furniture to silks and silkworms; from ancient statues and objects to flowers and medicinal herbs. In other words, they despatched a remarkable and priceless representation of the government, arts, sciences and culture of Imperial China. This was Bertin's 'private archive', a reservoir he could tap for his, and Moreau's, 'grand design' to reconstruct the monarchy. The missionaries - pere Amiot in particular - were great suppliers of Chinese art and designs. They helped to feed the early and mid-eighteenthcentury craze for all things Chinese, wittily captured in James Cawthorne's quatrain:
C.L., VI, 29 Sept. 1766. Ibid., Bertin to Yang, II, 23 Dec. 1771. 24 Ibid., VII, Bertin to Ko and Yang, 8 Dec. 1767, Bertin replied that he fully understood the problem, but then asked them for more information! 25 Ibid., Bertin to Ko and Yang, VII, 20 Jan. 1767; Yang to Bertin, 29 Dec. 1767, VI, 28 Oct. 1768. 26 See the letter from Yang to Bertin referring to three articles that Yang had recently sent to France. Ibid., VI 18 Oct. 1790. Poirier is, therefore, quite wrong to state that Yang died soon after his return to China: Turgor, p. 113. 22
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On every shelf a joss divinely stares Nymphs laid on chintzes sprawl upon our chairs While over our cabinets Confucius nods Mid porcelain elephants and china gods. (On Taste, 1756)28
The great sinologist, Henri Cordier, credited the founder of the French mission in Peking, pere Bouvet, with starting 'cet engouement pour la chinoiserie' by publishing a collection of plates in 1697, entitled Bonzes ou pretres des ldoles en costume ordinaire. Amiot and his fellow missionaries continued this tradition by sending hundreds of drawings of Chinese figures 29 to Bertin. By the 1730s, Chinese satin fabrics had become fashionable in France, and by the 1750s, there were dozens of marchands d'objets chinois plying their wares in Paris. Chinese designs influenced the work of tapestry designers, as well as the paintings of Watteau and Boucher. 30 Shipments of porcelain (the only Chinese import to make an appreciable impact upon the French economy, apart from silks) reached Bertin, adding to the massive stock of porcelain goods brought to Europe by the Compagnie des lndes. Porcelain manufacture and design was of particular interest to Bertin as the
23
Rowbotham, Missionary and mandarin, p. 76. Ibid., p. 278. 29 See, for example, drawings and paintings sent to Bertin of 'Ies personnages les plus fameux dans I'histoire de la Chine', c.L., I, 5 Oct. 1771, and the 'estampes et desseins' despatched as late as 1788, ibid., III, I Oct. 1788. 30 H. Cordier, La Chine en France au XV/lle siecle, Paris, 1910, pp. 35-40; 109-12. 27 28
Enlightenment and Revolution
The 'Chinese Connection'
minister in charge of the famous Sevres porcelain factory. On 18 January 1774 he thanked Ko and Yang for sending the information he had requested relating to Chinese designs, adding that he had personally helped to make two copies of Chinese vases at Sevres which were 'very much in demand at the Court. The king has given one of the vases to his grandson' .31 Although Sylvestre de Sacy argues that Bertin was not venal, his Correspondance makes it perfectly clear that some of the finest objects, including vases, furniture, and musical instruments, went into his private collection of chinoiserie, one of the best in Europe. The garden of his brand-new chateau on the banks of the Seine, La Chatou, was actually designed, complete with pagoda, by Amiot. 32 However, the exchange of 'scientific information', as Bertin described it, was more precious to Bertin than the finest porcelain vases. The missionaries sent him many treatises on Chinese medical practice, together with packages of plants and herbs that allegedly possessed curative powers. In exchange, Bertin passed on the best medical advice available to him, including the 'traites de M. Tissot' .33 During an exchange of information on inoculation, Bertin asked Ko and Yang to inform the Chinese 'about M Sutton's methods of dealing with the smallpox virus', a discovery that would prove 'infinitely precious to humanity'. In reply, Ko and Yang explained that inoculation was not unknown in China, but that it had not been very successful 'due to a kind of fatalism which leads to the rejection of all precautions when people think that death was inevitable'. However, Pierre Pluchon is convinced that information received by Bertin concerning the Chinese method of inoculating against smallpox - inhaled like snuff was of considerable medical importance. Voltaire devotes the eleventh of his Lettres philosophiques to the debate. 34 During the 1780s, Bertin and Amiot wrote to each at length on the subject of 'animal magnetism'. Public opinion in France, of course, had been 'shaken and stirred' by mesmerism during the stay in Paris of its Austrian founder, Franz-Anton Mesmer, between 1778 and 1782. 35 Bertin does not seem to have become a victim of the craze that swept the capital;
Amiot, on the other hand, was a keen advocate of what he described as 'magnetisme a la chinoise'. According to Amiot, this Chinese version of mesmerism had been practised in China for centuries and was both beneficial and democratic. 'Magnetiseurs' were apparently to be found all over the country: 'Their consulting rooms are the streets and town squares'. This may not have been Mesmer's physique, Amiot concludes, but 'c'est la physique des chinois' and what was more, Amiot felt a new man after each treatment! It was typical of Bertin that he should have linked their correspondence on this subject with current research into electricity, pressing Amiot for more information on the physical properties 'of electric and magnetic fluides' .36 Bertin had been elected as an honorary member of the Academie des sciences, an honour which he took very seriously. As for the Emperor Kien-Iong, he was the fount of all wisdom, a philosopher, litterateur, artist and scientist. Rowbotham tells us, however, that 'it was astronomy, mechanics and hydraulics which provided the essential link between the monarch and the foreign scholar'. In the seventeenth century, pere Verbiest, a mandarin sixieme classe, had written an extremely influential work, Theory, use and construction of astronomical and mechanical instruments, and many of Amiot's colleagues would continue the tradition of acting as tool-makers and mechanics. 3? Some sat alongside Chinese scholars on the many Imperial Tribunals such as the Tribunal for Astronomy and Mathematics. Pere Martial Cibot had worked in the Imperial palace for five years 'as a fontanier and machiniste' before being promoted to a 'jardinier and fleuriste'. Pere Jean-Mathieu Ventavon' s first appointment at the Imperial palace was as a repairer of clocks and watches for Imperial dignitaries. 38 In the field of theoretical science, Bertin exhibited a real interest and no little knowledge. In November 1777, he sent Cibot the French translation of a work he had read by 'an Englishman, M. Priestley, who has become celebrated through his discovery of different kinds of air' .39 This exchange of information reveals very different cultural attitudes concerning the value attached to eighteenth-century science. Manchu culture was generally antagonistic towards western science and technology. One Chinese scholar, Xu Dashou, thought that 'one should despise useless
78
c.L., VIII, 18 Jan. 1774. Ibid., Amiot's letters to Bertin, 111,28 Sept. 1777 and 10 Oct. 1789, for example. See also Cordier, La Chine en France, p. 59. 33 c.L., Bertin to Bourgeois, IV, 15 Dec. 1779. 34 Ibid., Bertin to Ko and Yang, VII, 13 Dec. 1772. See also a letter to Amiot commenting on the researches of M. Lescure that involved use of 'the matiere expelled from an umbilical cord just before it was tied'. IX, 15 Dec. 1779. P.P. Pluchon, Histoire de la colonisation franr;aise, 2 vols., Paris, i. 553-4. 35 L. Brockliss and C. Jones, The medical world of early modern France, Oxford, 1997, pp. 783-802. 31
32
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C.L., Amiot to Bertin, X, 21 Dec. 1785. Amiot was still singing hymns of praise to 'animal magnetism' five years later, ending his reply to Bertin's queries on electricity, 'Iouanges soient donnes au magnetisme!', 24 Sept. 1790. 37 Rowbotham, Missionaries and mandarins, p. 96. 38 Rochemonteix, Joseph Amiot, pp. 81-119. 39 c.L., VIII, 30 Nov. 1777. 36
Enlightenment and Revolution
The 'Chinese Connection'
inventions, since, however great the skill may be, it is of no profit to the human person or to the spirit'.4O In December 1780, Bertin wrote that he was astonished to learn that the Chinese did not ask for more instruments like the French 'machine electrique' which Ko and Yang had taken with them to Peking, adding that he would be surprised 'if all our inventions did not elicit some response from the Tribunal' .41 Botany was a very different matter: the missionaries expended a great deal of their time and energy on the collection of botanical specimens. One letter from Amiot promising to send Bertin 'the onions and beautiful flowers' he had requested, as well as 'the flowers and plants along with their botanical analysis', is typical of many.42 Finally, it is hardly surprising that language, literature and philosophy should have figured prominently in Bertin's Correspondance litteraire. Most of the books, articles, memoires, together with translations of Chinese and Manchu classic works, were destined for the Bibliotheque du roi; some went to enhance Bertin's personal collection. Although not regarded as a particularly original thinker, Amiot's erudition and personal contribution is impressive. Laying aside the scores of articles, translations and extracts prepared specifically for Bertin, many of which were published in the fifteen volumes of the Memoires ... des chinois, Amiot's major works include La vie de Confucius, memoire sur la musique chinoise, Histoire de l' emigration des Tartares Tourgouths, as well as a Tartar-Manchu grammar. Copies of these works, along with thousands of classic Chinese and Manchu publications, were transported to Paris, the cultural cargoes of the Compagnie des Indes. There was nothing new in this massive transfer of knowledge between east and west. In the 1720s, pere Foucquet had 43 transported thousands of Chinese books to the Bibliotheque du roi. However, Amiot and his colleagues happened to be working in Peking during one of the most exciting periods for bibliophiles in the entire history of China. In the early 1770s, the Emperor had launched a major debate on China's literary heritage. One of the country's foremost scholars, Zhu Yan, was chosen to organise a vast project - the collection of copies of all editions of all the Chinese classics, these works to be selected and edited for publication with supporting critical notes. According to Frederick Motte, what became known as The complete library of the four treasuries (classics, history, philosophy, and belles lettres) would represent 'the largest corpus of traditional learning and literary expression in Chinese
history ever assembled in one uniform editing'. The first manuscript copy presented to the Emperor filled 36,000 large folio volumes. 44 Bertin was fully aware of the value of this historic undertaking, telling the procureurgeneral of the Jesuit mission in Peking that there was 'une vraie magnificence dans Ie projet' .45 There can be no question, then, that Bertin's Correspondance made a signal contribution to the late-eighteenth-century European Enlightenment. For Bertin, however, it proved to be a double-edged sword, many philosophes and physiocrates seeking to exploit it in their more radical attack on the religious and moral foundations of the 'unreformed' absolute monarchy. To complicate matters further, on 21 July 1773 Pope Clement XIV abolished the Jesuit Order world-wide. The reaction of the French missionaries in Peking was 'la stupeur', followed by 'a profound sadness,.46 The shock of being abandoned, first by France in 1764 then by the Papacy a decade later, tore the French mission apart. Some of the now defrocked Jesuits, led by Amiot, sought to defend the interests of France in China; others, not as involved in Bertin's Correspondance as Ko, Yang, and Amiot, preferred to retain their allegiance to Rome and join the Papal, and Portuguese-dominated, organisation for foreign missions, la Propagande. The French mission house in Peking became a tiny microcosm of a macrocosmic struggle between international and national institutions. The bitter personal battle between the two camps, the 'nationalists' and the 'ultramontanes', was not finally resolved until 1783, when the French Lazarists performed the last rites and ceremonies over the former Jesuit mission in Peking. By this time, three of the fathers in the residence de Saint-Sauveur had died, their lives shortened by the strain of a decade of religious and personal conflict. 47 Bertin's reaction to the crisis was consistent with the policy he had adopted in 1762: the Correspondance and the salvation of the Gallican absolute monarchy came first, the Jesuits a poor second. It is true that he had been associated with the devot party at Court since his days as a protege of Madame de Pompadour, but Bertin, as we have noted, was a complex character, one who rarely allowed his personal beliefs to interfere with his political obligations to the monarchy. One must also recall that the period from 1770 to 1774 covers Maupeou's 'counter-revolution' against
80
F. W. Motte, Imperial China, 900-1800, Harvard, 1999, pp. 922-5. c.L., IX, 15 Dec. 1779. 46 Ibid., Amiot to Bertin, I, I Oct. 1774. Rochemonteix, Joseph Amiot, pp. 139-43. 47 Two French missionaries died at the peak of the crisis in 1780, pere Cibot and pere D'Ollieres. In October 1780, Father Collas sent a letter to Bertin pleading for his support, explaining that 'we are being attacked by our compatriots'. A few months later, he too had passed on. C. L., VI, 2 Oct. 1780. 44 45
40 41
42
43
J. Gernet, China and the Christian impact: a conflict of cultures, Cambridge, 1985, p. 63. c.L., Bertin to Collas, IX, 31 Dec. 1780. Ibid., 1,20 Sept. 1774. Spence, The question of Hu, pp. 11-16.
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the parlements. For the royalist historian, Pierre Gaxotte, the last chance to save absolute monarchy in France came in 1770 with Maupeou and the abbe Terray, not in 1774 with Turgot and Louis XVI. 48 Whatever the merits of this argument, Bertin was a key supporter of Maupeou; indeed, Bertin and Moreau provided much of the ideological underpinning of the attack on the parlements' claim to 'represent' the French nation. The evidence for this is to be found not only in the Collection Moreau but also in the Collection Perigord, both housed in the manuscript section of the Bibliotheque nationafe. For example, volume 68 of the latter collection contains an article, over 300 pages long, written in the early 1770s and co-signed by Bertin and Moreau. Entitled Memoire sur fa constitution politique de fa ville et cite de Perigueux, it traces the 'bourgeois' defence of Perigueux (Bertin's home town) against foreign invaders and feudal lords since the Middle Ages. Its heroes are the propertied bourgeoisie; its villains 'anarchic' feudal seigneurs. It dismisses the 'representative', destabilising claims of intermediary bodies like the parlements in favour of the sovereign uniting his people in accordance with the historic laws of the kingdom. 'Where does the unity of France lie? It is not in possessions, but in the action of the power that protects them; because this power is a unitary one and its actions must always be guided by justice. Justice that tells us that the Government is not a destructive but a tutelary force. Liberty and Property, these are the rights of subjects; Protection and Direction, these are the rights of the Prince'. 49 The tone of this article is post-Montesquieu and pre-Sieyes and, in its dismissal of the historic claims of the parlements, even 'despotic' as Maupeou's critics described his policies. It has to be remembered that throughout the period of Maupeou's 'despotism', Henri Bertin was a close confidant of the king and a senior member of the King's inner council, the Conseil du roi, as well as a member of the Conseil des finances. Lucien Laugier points out that even the abbe Terray did not dare to challenge Bertin directly.50 He was also, as we have seen, extremely interested in discovering what instructive lessons rnight be drawn from the example of China, a far greater demographic, agricultural and rnilitary power than France. This is not to adopt the simplistic argument that Bertin's knowledge of Chinese government and society dictated the policies of the Triumvirate of Maupeou, Terray and
d' Aiguillon: Bertin was too intelligent to believe that the adrninistrative and political organs of Chinese government could be simply transplanted to France. It would be remarkable, however, if the support he gave Maupeou was not influenced by his 'Chinese connection' . From the 1760s to the Revolution, even after his disrnissal as Secretary of State in 1780, Henri Bertin would fight tenaciously to save his Correspondance litteraire. Apart from the mass of information referred to above, which continued to take up the lion's share of the time the missionaries devoted to the Correspondance, three issues assume greater importance in the 1770s - foreign pol icy, econornic affairs, and the association between religion, morality and social order. They also raise the profile of the Correspondance as an undertaking of international significance. The pre-erninence of these issues during the 1770s and 1780s was not fortuitous; the monarchy's failure to resolve anyone of them helps to explain its collapse in 1789. Bertin, Moreau, and Arniot would prioritise religion and the moral law. In 1772, Russia's participation in the dissection of the corpse of the Polish State represented 'a major blow for French assumptions in Eastern Europe, because the French had sought a strong Poland and a strong Turkey as a barrier to Russian expansion' .51 During the rnid-I770s, Bertin would use Ko and Yang as agents of the French crown in an attempt to shore up Chinese opposition to Russia, and to effect an unofficial alliance between the two 'civilised' powers, France and China. Under Kien-Iong's reign China would annex vast swathes of Mongol and Turkic Muslim territory, as well as creating tributary states out of Burma and Annam. If the Ming dynasty (which had collapsed in 1644) had made ethnic China great, the Manchu dynasty had made Greater China. 52 Arniot was profoundly impressed by Kien-Iong's achievements. 'One is driven to believe', he explained to Bertin, 'that there are two Louis in the world, or two Kienlongs, one in France and the other in China' .53 However, Bertin, together with Louis XVI and Vergennes (foreign rninister from 1774-1787), were concerned that Kien-Iong did not fully appreciate either the expansionist designs of Russia or her military strength. In 1774, Bertin sent Ko and Yang a letter that was remarkable both for its frankness and its assessment of China's place in the new Imperialist age. He explained that closer ties between the Courts of Versailles and Peking
48 See his preface to L. Laugier, Un ministere niformateur sous Louis XV: Ie Triumvirat (1770-1774), Paris, 1975, p. 5. 49 Bibliotheque nationale, Collection Perigord, mss. Vol. 68, Memoire sur la constitution politique de la ville et cite de Perigord, p. 310. 50 Laugier, Un ministere, p. 318.
J. Black, From Louis XIV to Napoleon; the fate of a great power, London, 1999, p. 121; M. Price, 'Politics: Louis XV]', in Doyle ed., The Old Regime, pp. 233-7. 52 See Motte, Imperial China, p. 936 and M. I. Sladkovskii, History of economic relations between Russia and China, Jerusalem, 1966, pp. 36-40. 53 c.L., Amiot to Bertin, 111, 1 Sept. 1788. 51
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were now vital, since 'the two powers share a common interest in preventing a third power [Russia], whose military potential increases at the same rate as its ambition, from destroying the balance of power between the world's sovereigns'. Bertin then added, conscious no doubt that he was writing to two priests who were amateurs in the diplomatic game, that he preferred not to be too explicit at this stage since 'great political speculations ... demand wisdom and reflection on everyone's part'. It might be difficult to sign formal treaties, but 'une correspondance reguliere' between Versailles and Peking might lead the Emperor to look more favourably on the French. Meanwhile, an exchange of military information would be useful, with Ko and Yang acting as intermediaries. It was important, for example, to warn the Emperor of the potential threat from Russia, and to provide him with details of recent improvements in French weaponry and military tactics. To this end, he asked Ko and Yang to see that the Emperor was given translations of two memoires, written by the camte de Guibert and the marquis de Puysegur, as well as Saint-Remy's three-volume Traite de l'artillerie. 54 It is most unlikely that Bertin's correspondence with Ko and Yang was not sanctioned by the Conseil du roi. The other major threat weighing on the minds of French statesmen was, of course, that posed by the English. During the late 1760s, the French had strengthened their presence in the Indian Ocean, not only in the five bases France still controlled in India itself, but also in the strategic islands of Mauritius and Reunion. 55 The unequal battle for supremacy in the Far East had begun. From its northern Indian base, the English East India Company would push forward into Tibet and Burma, and, from the south, its ships would increasingly be seen in the China Sea, making for Canton. The Manchu dynasty, complacent within its massive landed empire and its cultural rejection of western capitalist ethics, was being undermined on land and sea. 56 Bertin, with his neo-Physiocratic belief in land as the ultimate source of all wealth and his fascination for Chinese culture, was not blind to the parallel that could be drawn with France. It was the expansion of the world economy that was propelling Britain, Russia, and France towards the Far East. The Ming dynasty had established China as an important participant before its collapse in the mid-seventeenth century. The Manchu dynasty, however, chose not to build on the achievements of its predecessor. As Motte explains, during the eighteenth century,
The 'Chinese Connection'
There was hardly an economic policy at all. Chinese rulers and statesmen did not see their country as being in competition with other nations for the profits of trade ... China's government responded to the presence of the West in East Asia by clinging to the established attitudes, to stable patterns of its increasingly Sinocentred world order. 57
French trade through Canton, mainly porcelain, raw and manufactured silk, tea, furniture, and wallpaper, had made only reasonable profits during the first half of the century; during the second half, it would collapse. From the 1770s, English tea traders began to push the French out of their warehouses in Canton. Calonne's revival of the privileges of the old Compagnie des Indes (which had been abolished in 1769), on 14 April 1785, was a case of 'far too little, far too late,.58 On 2 February 1787, the great French explorer, La Perouse, wrote to the naval minister from Macao: 'I cannot hide from you the fact that there is not a single individual representing the French nation here who gives me the confidence to put this little depot back on its feet'. A month later, the chevalier d'Entrecastaux, despatched by the government to assess the situation in Canton, wrote that 'one can only experience a sense of bitterness when one compares the present position of the French nation in China today with that which it enjoyed in the days of the old trading compagnies' .59 Bertin's primary reaction to all this was to save what he could out of the wreck for his Correspondance litteraire, but it is clear that Confucius, not commerce, ranked uppermost in his erudite mind. Many of the missionaries who had served him had died, and Amiot, a firm admirer of Confucius, was now his only regular correspondent. The conflict between culture and commerce - a permanent thread in the historic fabric of French history - is personified in the career of Louis-Joseph de Guines, whose father, a member of the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, provided the academic inspiration for Bertin's obsession with supposed analogies between the Chinese alphabet and Egyptian hieroglyphics. In 1785, Bertin secured a post for Louis-Joseph in Canton 'where he might playa commercial role while continuing his education in the Chinese arts which may be useful to us if we are to expand out trade.' These were sound, traditional, Colbertian principles. However, expectations that de Guinesfils would follow them were quickly dashed.
Motte, ImperiaL China, pp. 953-4. See also Sladkovskii, History of economic reLations, pp.41-2. 58 H. Cordier, 'Le Consulat de France a Canton au XVlIle siecle', T'oung-pao, sene II, vol. 9, 1908, pp. 3-5. See also Dermigny, La Chine et L'Occident, i. 70-80. 59 Cordier, 'Le Consulat', pp. 18-20 and 32. 57
Ibid., VIII, I Jan. 1774. Black, From Louis XIV to NapoLeon, pp. 126-7. 56 See Motte, ImperiaL China, p. 962, and Sladkovskii, History of economic reLations, p. 58. 54
55
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The 'Chinese Connection'
Despite Bertin's repeated requests for information concerning Chinese culture and science, de Guines spent most of his time trying to salvage something from the remains of French trade in Canton. On 10 January 1788, he reported that while an increasing number of English ships were arriving each year, the French had recently lost control of the warehouse that had belonged to the old Compagnie des Indes. Calonne's new company now had nowhere to store their tea for export. Effectively, the French flag had been lowered in Canton. At the end of the year, de Guines explained that 'this country is not really interested in our science: we are blocked at every tum, and it is only with great difficulty that I manage to find anything to send to the Academie des Sciences'. During the 1790s, de Guines, 'the last French consul in Canton', would be left to sort out matters with the occasional Bordeaux merchant, and with precious little support, or salary, from successive Revolutionary regimes. His final comments on China would explode the myth that had sustained Bertin's Correspondance for thirty years: 'China is a wonderful country if we confine our knowledge of it to books, but rather different if you live there'. There were useful things to learn in China, de Guines admitted, but 'it would be a good thing if ... Europe never imitated any Chinese custom, above all, those that relate to government' .60 De Guines' last comment was the unkindest cut of all, since the relationship between government, religion, morality, and social order had been fundamental to Bertin's conception of a renovated Bourbon monarchy. For Bertin, Moreau, and Amiot, religion formed the moral foundation of the entire architecture of politics, civil and criminal law, as well as social policy. Remove religion and you deprived the ancien regime of its inner core. Bertin's universe was predicated upon the existence of a divine and benevolent Deity. In both France and China, rulers were endowed with heavenly powers, 'lieutenants on earth' and 'sons of heaven' respectively. In France, the Gallican Church provided the essential foundation of moral law and social order; in China, it was the Confucian tradition. For almost two centuries, the Jesuits in Peking had tried to adjust Chinese theological and philosophical beliefs to fit western models. Early missionaries had developed the hypothesis that before the biblical Flood, the Chinese had worshipped 'the true God'. After the Flood, with the dispersal of the world's population, the Chinese had been colonised by the Egyptians, who had introduced ancestor worship and idolatry.61 What attracted Bertin to this quite outlandish belief was not simply the expectation that the most populous country on earth might once again be
reconciled to 'the true faith', but the legitimation it brought to his 'Chinese connection'. A 'purified' China would have provided a model for strong government, civic morality, and social order. In two quite extraordinary letters to Ko and Yang, prepared on the eve of their departure for Peking, Bertin had lectured the young missionaries on the historical accuracy of the Bible, referring to Moses as 'our first historian' and the Ten Commandments as the first social contract with God. This was Bossuet as interpreted by Moreau! Bertin went on to cite a number of 'profane' classical and Egyptian historians who, allegedly, confirmed the historical accuracy of the Old Testament, including the 'facts' that Asia was the cradle of modem civilisation and that Adam and Eve may have settled somewhere around the Persian Gulf! All this led Bertin to his ultimate goal - the identification of Egyptian deities with the descendants of Noah's children. For example, one of the seven gods worshipped during Egypt's first dynasty, Vulcan, was probably the 'Tubulcan' who represented the last generation of the house of Cain. Cain and his tribe had, allegedly, settled in Egypt 1,200 years after the flood. Bertin concedes that all this does not exactly tally with Egyptian chronology, but Egyptian historians, he argued, were notoriously weak on dates!62 Having established - to his own satisfaction at least - the link between biblical truth and l'histoire profane (representing the application of Enlightenment 'science' to traditional belief), Bertin then introduced the now somewhat hoary Jesuit myth that China had become a colony of Egypt after the Flood. The 'scientific' evidence employed in this case came from his friend and respected member of the Academie des Inscriptions et BellesLettres in Paris, de Guines pere. Bertin explained to Ko and Yang that de Guines and fellow scientists had discovered significant similarities between the characters of the Chinese alphabet and Egyptian hieroglyphics, the purpose being, of course, to identify linguistic and cultural similarities between Chinese and Egyptian civilisations. For the next twenty years or so, despite Amiot's scholarly dismissal of this superannuated hypothesis, Bertin instructed his correspondents in Peking to unearth - sometimes literally - anything that might provide de Guines and his dwindling band of believers with 'proof that only the Flood, and the Egyptian colonisers, had turned China away from Christianity.63
60 61
Derrnigny, Lu Chine et I'Occident, p. 42. c.L., II, 2 Dec. 1764.
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Ibid. For example, a letter to the procureur-general of the French mission, pere Bourgeois, suggesting that he might try to prove that the 'venerated Chinese figure Fo-lu' might have been the patriarch Noah, 'given that Chinese notions of the divine are not all that far from the truth'. c.L., VIll, 30 Nov. 1777.
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The 'Chinese Connection'
If Amiot and Bertin could not agree on the 'Chinese-Egyptian connection', they were united in their admiration for Confucius. Confucian philosophy, bathed in the transforming waters of Jesuit theology, could supply the moral and social foundations for the reformed Bourbon monarchy. Voltaire, and several other French philosophes, thought of Confucius as 'the Chinese Socrates', someone who might cut the umbilical cord binding morality to Roman Catholicism. 64 This was a bridge too far for Bertin and Amiot, for whom the desacralisation of the social order was anathema. They were prepared to pay homage to the 'scientific' achievements of the philosophe movement, but persistently denounced its 'materialist' and moral dangers. Amiot, who completed his Vie de Confucius between 1778 and 1784, drew a contrast for Bertin between Chinese philosophes, who 'tried to attain [personal] perfection; to do good to one's fellow man, and to make people better and happier', and their French counterparts who exhibited only 'pride and arrogance'. Furthermore - and this was the point that really settled the argument for Bertin Confucius not only advocated simplicity, candour, moderation, and respect for old age and wisdom, but 'submission to legitimate authority' (my italics).65 In China, the Emperor could still impose submission to his will by acting as 'Heaven's lieutenant on earth'. On several occasions, Amiot reported that when climatic disasters occurred, the Emperor would announce that they were evidence of Heaven's displeasure with the Chinese people, instructing them to examine their consciences, 'repent', and sin no more. A 'Heaven-sent' system of social control!66 Finally, Bertin and Amiot both agreed that an agrarian society provided the best guarantee of social stability. Bertin had read Pierre Poivre's Voyage d'un philosophe with its fulsome praise for China, 'this great agricultural nation' whose freedoms and property rights were based upon 'such a flourishing system of agriculture'. He agreed with the physiocrat theorist, Quesnay, that the Chinese Emperor was simply the 'chef des cultivateurs', a kind of Rousseauesque 'Legislator' in muddy boots !67 From the outset, questions concerning agriculture featured prominently in the Correspondance. In 1765, Yang was asked to provide information on 'methods used to reclaim land; how crops are grown; what fertiliser is used, and how it is sown' .68 In 1776, Bertin wrote that everyone knew that 'in Europe we just scratch the surface of the soil, that we are
ignorant of the procedures adopted in China that produce two or three harvests a year, that feed an entire family on just one arpent of land' .69 For Bertin, as for the physiocrats, the answer to France's problems still lay in the soil, not on the sea, surprising only to those who forget that peasant communities, bound together by the Catholic faith, represent a vital component of the history and culture, not just of France, but of western civilisation as a whole. On 20 September 1792, shortly before he died, Joseph Amiot explained to his brother in Toulon how he shuddered when he thought of the decadence of France, 'how one of the most flourishing states and greatest kingdoms in the world could collapse almost overnight into the status of a small and obscure republic' .70 As an emigre in Spa, Henri Bertin was thinking along similar lines, but for him, as for William Doyle, 'the old nobility's bankruptcy was as much intellectual and imaginative as financial' .71 Certainly economic factors cannot be dismissed, in any balanced analysis of the collapse of the ancien regime, particularly when assessed within the framework of the rise of world capitalism. Louis Dermigny has argued that the attraction of 'the Chinese connection' faded as the ethics and exigencies of commercial capitalism began to make a real impact during the second half of the eighteenth century. Imitating China had made some sense during the age of Louis XIV's confessional absolutism, but it was of decreasing value in the age of Louis XVI, when the 'rights of merchants' were increasingly being identified with the 'Rights of Man', and when French absolutism was being undermined by the rise of 'public opinion,.72 It cannot be said, however, that Bertin, Moreau and Amiot were blind to the need for an 'intellectual and imaginative' approach to the problems confronting the Bourbon monarchy. They were all convinced that religious practices and institutions had to change; that religion had to be reviewed in the light of Reason if the 'onward march of the human spirit' was to continue. In his search for scapegoats to explain the failure of his 'grand design', Bertin even accused the Papacy of peddling unintelligent and ridiculous policies, particularly with regard to foreign missions like the Propagande. He predicted not only that Christianity would fail to make progress in China, but that it would be increasingly despised: 'It is the intelligence of Europeans in Peking that impresses the Emperor, not our religion. Our Correspondance litteraire is more useful to religion than all
88
Pluchon, Histoire de la colonisation, i. 564. c.L., Amiot to Bertin, II, 15 Nov. 1784. 66 Ibid., II, 14 Sept. 1786. 67 Pluchon, Histoire de la colonisation, p. 560. 68 c.L., Yang to Bertin, VI, 21 Feb. 1765. 64 65
69 70 71
72
Ibid., Bertin to Ko and Yang, VIII, 28 Feb. 1776. Ibid., Ill, 20 Sept. 1792. Doyle ed., The Old Regime, p. 252. Dermigny, La Chine, p. 55.
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the correspondence of the Propagande'. 73 In essence, the collapse of the ancien regime for Bertin was not a matter of mistakes in foreign policy, bad harvests, or the personal weakness of Louis XVI; it was explicable only in terms of 'the decline and fall' of civilisations. France had lost its moral base; 'it has created its own evil. It crumbles like the Roman Empire under the last emperors, under its own weight, its own faults, and its own corruption', Bertin's historic 'Liaisons dangereuses' .74 What was required was the curriculum of the humanist, Catholic, Counter-Enlightenment that his friend, Jacob Moreau, had taught the young Louis XVI, 'a mixture of religion, morality, and the humanities' .75 Bertin died on 16 September 1792. Six days later, the National Convention would decree the abolition of the monarchy. Louis XVI's last will and testament would be written, ironically, on 'un bureau vernis de Chine,.76
Chapter 5
The 'Political Reveries' of Alexander Jardine (17397-1799) Jane Rendall
The nation that shall first introduce women to their councils, their senates, and seminaries of learning, will probably accelerate most the advances of human 1 nature in wisdom and happiness.
In the 'political reverie' which formed an early chapter of his Letters from Barbary, France, Spain, Portugal &c, the artillery officer Alexander Jardine imagined himself a legislator for a 'rude nation' of shepherds and hunters, who were according to contemporary stadial theory still in the two earliest stages of society, the nomadic and the pastoral. Writing from Morocco (Barbary) in 1772, in the spirit of the Enlightenment, he imagined introducing such a nation to the principles of political, social and economic improvement as understood among the most civilised of western peoples. Yet he also warned it against the errors of existing civilisations, 'for neither reason nor women have yet had their full and proper influence in the world'. Over twenty years later in 1793, by then a close friend of William Godwin, Jardine dreamt in a utopian and far more radical essay of a society in which education and enlightenment would bring about 'the free operation of the general will', and the institutions of private property and organised religion would finally cease to corrupt
c.L., Bertin to Amiot, X, 21 Oct. 1768. Ibid., X, 29 Jan. 1790. 75 J. Hardman, Louis XVI, London, 2000, pp. 35-6. 76 Cordier, 'La Chine en France', pp. 51-2.
73
74
I In what follows 1 am greatly indebted to two pioneering works on Alexander Jardine, to Jose Francisco Perez Berenguel's fine critical edition, Alexander Jardine, Cartas de Espana, Alicante, 200 I, especially his 'Biografia de Alexander Jardine', pp. 29-82, and his identification of Jardine's probable date of birth, and to James Dybikowski, 'Society Restored and its authors', Enlightenment and Dissent, 11, 1992, 107-14.1 am particularly grateful to Jose Francisco Perez Berenguel for his generous correspondence and sharing of research, and to Eulalia Simal-Iglesias for translations from Spanish. My thanks to Lord Abinger for his permission, given through the Bodleian Library, to quote from the Abinger papers. [A. Jardine], Lettersfrom Barbary, France, Spain, Portugal &c., by an English officer, 2 vots., London, 1788, i. 145.
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humanity? Though his political views by then had changed significantly, he used the same epigraph for both works, from his favourite author, Montesquieu: 'It's a matter of getting people to think, not to read [11 s' agit de faire penser, et non de faire lire]' .3 Recent interpretations of the Enlightenment in Britain have emphasised its polite and commercial nature, its conservative 4 Whiggishness, and its pragmatic commitment to improvement. An examination of the career of the obscure Alexander Jardine challenges some of these assumptions, though it also increases our understanding of the diversity of the Enlightenment in Britain, its close European connections and its utopian and radical strands. Nothing is known of the circumstances of Jardine's upbringing and education. He was probably born in September 1739, the natural son of Sir Alexander Jardine of Applegirth, Dumfriesshire, the fourth baronet, and of a local woman, Janet Bell, of whom we know little but who in 1784 was still illiterate. 5 Sometime before 1765, Sir Alexander had converted to Catholicism, and in 1766 made his estate over to his brother, William, who had already agreed, in May 1764, to pay a pension of £10 to Janet Bell. Sir Alexander spent most of his life abroad, and became a Knight of the Order of Malta. 6 As a modernising artillery officer, the younger Alexander Jardine expressed a degree of admiration for the enlightened absolutism of some European monarchs and their advisers. He participated in military and political networks in Britain which were strongly committed to technical and scientific
progress, yet at the same time was highly critical of British policy towards the American colonies. Married to a Spanish wife, speaking fluent Spanish, and some Italian and French, he was a consistent advocate of travel and the active life as a means to broaden cultural contacts and understanding, and had links in particular with leading figures of the Spanish Enlightenment. In all his travels he paid detailed attention to the relations between the sexes, and the extent to which the influence of women moderated the harshness of masculine governments. By the 1790s he was committed to an internationalist revolutionary politics, although his last years were spent as consul at Corunna in northern Spain in the uneasy service of the British government. Jardine's best-known work, the Lettersfrom Barbary, though published only in 1788, drew on letters written between 1771 and 1787. They were sent to a number of different correspondents and in form cut across several genres. They are partly political musings on the countries he visited, their potential for enlightenment and improvement, and the comparisons and policies they suggested in relation to Britain. As such they may be compared to many similar travel writings, including Arthur Young's Travels [in France J (1792), and Joseph Townsend's Journey through Spain (1791).7 Young might have had Jardine's Letters in mind when he wrote of those 'whose political reveries are spun by their firesides, or caught flying as they are whirled through Europe in post chaises', though he also, as a friend of Jardine, referred explicitly to his 'agreeable book of travels'. 8 Jardine shared many of Young's principles in his unflinching condemnation of the monopolies and privileges of ancien regime Europe, and looked forward to the publication of Young's Travels, preferably in an inexpensive and abridged form. 9 But his own comments on agricultural practice and manufacturing industry in France and Spain are brief and general by comparison. Unlike them, he was more interested in the theory than the practice of economic and political life. lo As reviewers recognised, his perspective was that of the 'philosophical' observer of society and manners, prepared, with a classificatory eye, to range over European peasantries as well as over the shepherds and nomads of Morocco, but ultimately directed towards 'the great art of government, on which depends so much of the progress, civilisation and happiness of mankind' . 11
92
2 [A. Borghesi] An essay on civil government, or society restored, by means of I. A preface of peace, II. A reform in mataphysics [sic], and III. A political code and constitution adapted to the true nature ofman, translated from the Italian ms of A.D.R.S., with notes by the editors [A. Jardine]. For the identification of A.D.R.S. as the French composer Antonio DR Borghesi, and of the editor as Jardine, see Dybikowski, 'Society Restored'. 3 I have been unable to identify this quotation. The second part of the sentence was left out in 1793. 4 See, for instance, P. Langford, A polite and commercial people: England 1727-1783, Oxford, 1989; J.G.A. Pocock, Barbarism and religion, vol. I, The Enlightenments of Edward Gibbon 1763-4, Cambridge, 1999, pp. 294-9, and 'Clergy and commerce: the conservative Enlightenment in England' in L.G. Crocker et al. eds, L'Eta dei Lumi: studi storici sui settecento europeo in onore di Franco Venturi, 2 vols., Naples, 1985, ii. 523-68; Roy Porter, Enlightenment. Britain and the creation of the modern world, London, 2000, pp. 14-23 and passim. 5 J. W. Reed and F.A. Pottle eds, Boswell, laird ofAuchinleck 1778-1782, New York, 1977, p. 352; Berenguel, Cartas, p. 29,for Jardine's age at death; the birth of a child, of the right age, to Alexander Jardine was recorded, without the mother's name, in Dryfesdale, Dumfriesshire, on 14 Sept. 1739, General Register Office of Scotland; National Archives of Scotland (hereafter NAS) Jardine of App1egirth MSS, GD 472/104, 'Regr. and Assignation of Janet Bell to Major Jardine, C.H. 1784', a document which Janet Bell was unable to sign. 6 Ibid.; also GD 472/40, '1766, December 6. Disposition by Sir Alexander Jardine of Applegirth Bt to William Jardine, his brother... '; F. Brady and F.A. Pottle eds, Boswell on the Grand Tour. Italy, Corsica and France 1765-66, London, 1955, pp. 83-4.
A. Young, Travels during the years 1787, 1788, and 1789 ... with a view of ascertaining the cultivation, wealth, resources and national prosperity ofthe kingdom of France, Bury St Edmunds, 1792; 1. Townsend, Ajoumey through Spain in the years 1786 and 1787 ... ,3 vol.s.. , London 1791. 8 Young, Travels, i. iii and 79. 9 Jardine, Letters, i. 226. 10 Ibid., i. 192. II Ibid., i. vi; Monthly Review (hereafter MR), 81, Sept. 1789,221-30; Critical Review, 67, 1789,499-504.
7
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The Letters were also prescriptive letters of advice, directed towards the educational advantages and, especially, the political education, which travel could offer a young man. Some were sent to Jardine's employer and friend Anthony Chamier, London man of letters, civil servant and MP, while they shared the fantasy of acting as mentors in the education of a young and princely Telemachus. 12 One was addressed to 'My Lord', likely to be Lord Weymouth, secretary of state to the southern department, 1768-1770 and 1775-9, about his son. Others went to the young Mr A.J., to whom Jardine suggested: 'as you may be a senator as well as a soldier, the two first characters in the state, and which, I think, should be oftener united, I wish you to be a civilian by times, and to take the most enlarged views of mankind' .13 He counselled him rather in the manner of Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his son (1774), though to different ends. It is possible that Mr A.J. could have been his cousin, Alexander Jardine, or even his own eldest son; there is another short letter to a MrC.J. Jardine suggested the importance of a thorough knowledge of one's own country before travel, the company of wives or female relations for a different kind of acquaintance of the world, and a period of residence in a different country before more extensive travel. 14 His advice was not directed to the aristocratic tourist, but towards a more domesticated immersion in the language and daily life of different European countries, as well as to the practice of enlightened and informed sociability. His correspondents on these subjects included a Mrs P., who was either Sarah Proby, wife to Commissioner Proby of Chatham Dockyard, or an unidentified Mrs Pilcher, to whose influence he attributed his unusual opinions on the importance of improving women's position in society. 15 It was to Mrs P. that he wrote letters not only on the status of women and the education of both sexes, but on language, and, at length, on music. Most directly of all, the Letters were shaped by the immediate and different occasions of their writing, directed by Jardine's employment by the state as soldier, diplomat and spy. He was enlisted in the Royal Artillery as a private matross (gunner's assistant) on 10 March 1755, by Lieutenant Forbes
Macbean while on a recruiting trip to Scotland, transferring to the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, as a cadet on 9 June 1757 and graduating from there on 8 February 1758 as a lieutenant-fireworker. 16 There is no recent historical study of the Royal Military Academy or of the Royal Artillery in this period. The Academy was founded in 1741, as were similar artillery and engineering schools elsewhere in Europe, in the Netherlands in 1735 and in M6zieres in France in 1749. Although most European states had established more general training schools for field officers by the 1770s, only in 1799 did the Duke of York establish the Royal Military College for this purpose in Britain. In the second half of the eighteenth century the Academy was the only British establishment which existed for the professional and technical training of officers, at a time when the scientific study of ballistics and advances in metallurgy were transforming the utility of heavy artillery.17 The education offered at Woolwich included all forms of mathematics, together with scientific and practical aspects of artillery, fortification and mining; it also included French and fencing. 18 The staff at the Academy and a number of serving officers in the Royal Artillery had impressive records of scientific and technical achievement. John Muller, professor of fortification and artillery, and chief master there from 1741, was the author of a series of authoritative publications on his field. 19 Charles Hutton, the self-educated Newcastle mathematician, and Professor of Mathematics at the Academy from 1773 was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1774. Among Jardine's fellow officers were at least three Fellows of the Royal Society: Lt.-Gen. Thomas Desaguliers, colonel commandant from 1762, admitted to the Royal Society in 1763; Forbes Macbean, after a period of service seconded to the army of the King of Portugal, admitted in 1786; and James Glenie, Scottish mathematician, artillery officer and later engineer,
12 Jardine, Letters, ii. 360; Berenguel, Cartas, pp. 42,102-3; for Chamier's career, see Sir L. Namier and J. Brooke, The history oj Parliament. The House oj Commons, 1754-90, 3 vols., London, 1964, ii. pp. 207-8, and compare his correspondence with Robert Murray Keith on similar themes in Memoirs and correspondence, official and Jamiliar oj Sir Robert Murray Keith K.B ... ed. Mrs G. Smyth, 2 vols., London, 1849, ii. 13 Jardine, Letters, i. 144. 14 Ibid., ii. p. 504. 15 Ibid., i. 308-9; on Sarah Proby, see J. Woods, The commissioner's daughter. The story oj Elizabeth Proby & Admiral Chichagov, Witney, 2000, pp. 1-15.
16 Public Record Office (hereafter PRO), War Office (hereafter WO) 10/49, James Cockburn to Principal Officers of His Majesty's Ordnance, 29 Apr 1755; all further details of Jardine's military career are taken from: Berenguel, Cartas, pp. 29-34; J. Kane, List oj officers oj the Royal Regiment ojArtillery, as they stood in the year 1763, with a continuation to the present time, Greenwich, 1815; M.E.S. Laws, Battery records oj the Royal Artillery 1716-1859, Woolwich, 1952. 17 Unfortunately J.A. Houlding, Fit Jor service. The training oj the British Army, 1715-1795, Oxford, 1981, does not include the Royal Artillery; this paragraph relies on C. Duffy, The military experience in the Age oj Reason, London, 1987, pp. 47-8; J.R. Western, 'Armies', in A. Goodwin ed., The New Cambridge Modern History, vol. V1IJ, The American and French Revolutions, Cambridge, 1965, pp. 190-4; Sir J. Smyth, Sandhurst. The history oJ the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, the Royal Military College Sandhurst, and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst 1741-1961, London, 1961, pp. 27-38. 18 W.O. Jones, Records oJthe Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, 1851, pp. 7-9. 19 For Muller, see Houlding, Fitfor service, pp. 252-3.
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admitted in 1779 at the age of twenty-nine. 20 The world in which Jardine had enlisted was professional, scientifically oriented and included those who shared the reforming outlook, and sometimes the closeness to enlightened circles, of E uropean ml'1'ltary re f ormers. 21 Jardine saw active service throughout the Seven Years War. Between 1757 and 1758 he participated in the landings on the French coast at Rochefort and St Malo, and St Cast in Brittany. Later, in 1759, he was sent to Martinique and Guadaloupe where he participated in the heavy artillery onslaught on those fortified islands, finally conquered only in 1762. In that year he was sent to Gibraltar to participate in its defence, in the light of concerns for its safety after the outbreak of war between France and Spain; on 11 September 1762 he was promoted to second lieutenant. He was apparently employed directly by Lt.Col. William Phillips of the Royal Artillery, in his own words, 'in planning & conducting the necessary service & experiments of that Garrison which met with the particular & flattering approbation of General Conway' .22 Probably at this point in his life he met his wife, Juana, of whom little is known though she is described by her son-in-law, the lawyer Robert Dallas, as 'a Spanish lady, native of Gibraltar' .23 Promoted to first lieutenant on 28 May 1766, Jardine seems to have attracted favourable attention from several of his commanding officers, including Henry Seymour Conway, one of the commanders of the expedition to Rochefort, MP from 1741 to 1761, secretary of state in the Rockingham and Chatham administrations of 1765-6 and 1766-8, and Lieutenant-General of Ordnance from 1767 to 1772. General John Irwin, also an MP between 1762 and 1783, was the governor of Gibraltar from 1766 to 1768, a correspondent of Lord Chesterfield and a frequenter of Parisian salons, including that ofMme du Deffand. In February 1766 Irwin wrote that 'I have sent an intelligent officer into Spain and to the frontiers, under a pretence of amusing himself, to pick up more certain intelligence', to be forwarded to General Conway.24 When in that month Gibraltar was struck by a disastrous storm which left the garrison and its defences vulnerable, there were fears that the Duc de Crillon, commander of the Spanish forces, would take advantage of its temporary weakness, and this
.Political Reveries'
intelligence assumed far greater importance,zs Jardine, the officer concerned, apparently sent 'very satisfactory accounts' of the weakened condition of the Spanish forces and their inability to mount an assault for the next few years, accounts confirmed through diplomatic contacts,z6 It was his first experience of acting as an independent intelligence officer. His subsequent travels were to form the basis for the Letters. By 1771, relations between the Governor-General of Gibraltar, Edward Cornwalli~, and the Emperor of Morocco were at a low level, as was not unusual during the long rivalry between Britain and Spain for influence there. In November 1770 Spain offered the Emperor a substantial bribe to close his ports to British ships and deny provisions to Gibraltar. 27 At the same time, in these years Morocco had accumulated a considerable amount of ordnance, without the capacity to maintain or make use of it. In 1769 a request had come from the Emperor Sidi Mohamed to the British for assistance in gunnery and tuition in military arts to the young prince. The British sent a bombardier, John Turner, with two private matrosses, a mission for which he proved to be unqualified both technically and diplomatically, and was soon dismissed. When British gifts, two brass field-pieces, promised with the new consul appointed to Tetuan in 1770, failed to arrive, British stock sank even lower. When the Emperor suggested that once the field-pieces had arrived, a visit from the skilled artillery officer Lieutenant Jardine would be most welcome, it was rapidly acceded to, especially in the knowledge that a British crew with their captain, Captain Hays, recently captured and enslaved in Morocco, still needed ransoming. Jardine remained there from November 1771 until March 1772, achieving modest diplomatic success, though he did not have the funds to secure the release of the British captives. His published letters from Morocco were probably directed to one of Cornwallis's senior officers in Gibraltar, possibly Robert Boyd. 28 In 1772 Jardine returned for a period to Woolwich where he took the lead, with a fellow officer, Captain Edward Williams, in founding a Military Society, on the grounds that 'we have in this country all kinds of societies except a S. Conn, Gibraltar in British diplomacy in the eighteenth century, New Haven, 1942, pp. 174-6; PRO, Colonial Office (hereafter CO) 91/15, Irwin to Conway, 3, 4 and 10 Feb. 1766. 26 CO 91/15, Irwin to Conway, 6 Apr. 1766; SP 78/ 269, Conway to Lord George Lennox, I Apr. 1766. 27 M.S. Anderson, 'Great Britain and the Barbary States in the eighteenth century', Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 29, 1956, 87-107, here p. 91; idem, 'British diplomatic relations with the Mediterranean, 1763-78', University of Edinburgh PhD, 1952, ch. XII. 28 F. Duncan, History ofthe Royal Regiment ofArtillery, compiledfrom the original records, 2 vols., London, 1873, i. 244-50; there is extensive relevant correspondence in CO 91/18 and SP 71120-1. On Boyd, Lieutenant-Governor of Gibraltar from 1768, see the correspondence in SP 71121, and DNB. 25
20 On these men, see Sir L. Stephen and S. Lee eds, Dictionary ofNational Biography (hereafter DNB), 63 vols., London 1885-1901, and, for Glenie, Dictionary of Canadian Biography, 14 vols., Toronto, 1966-98, v. 347-59. 21 Western, 'Armies', pp. 203-8. 22 PRO, Foreign Office (hereafter FO) 72/1, f. 61, 'Memoranda ofCaptn Jardine's Case given to Lord Weymouth, Lord Hillsborough, Lord Shelburne'. 23 FO 72/33, ff. 172-77, Robert Dallas to Lord Grenville, II May 1794. 24 PRO, State Papers (hereafter SP) 89/62, Gen. Irwin to Edward Hay, I Feb. 1766; Jardine can be identified through FO 72/1 f. 61, 'Memoranda of Captn Jardine's Case'.
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military one'. It was to be run 'on liberal principles viz. for improvement and amusement', and for the investigation of military, mathematical and philosophical information, through the reading of essays and performing of experiments in an atmosphere of 'unrestrained and easy freedom'. Only those well-read in such fields were to be admitted. The reading list - historical and political as well as military - suggested for potential members included Montesquieu and Helvetius, Catherine Macaulay and Adam Ferguson as well as Locke, Bolingbroke and Hume. Jardine initially judged only nine officers qualified to participate, including General Conway, who with General Desaguliers had expressed interest and support; but others were later involved, including Charles Hutton. In his first paper for the society, 'Some experiments and observations in Gunnery, Gibraltar 1771', Jardine identified the need for much further research in experimental ballistics and for the more formal teaching of mechanics and gunnery in the Artillery Corps, so that 'theory and practice should be brought acquainted in proportions as they seem to fly from each other' . He criticised the education of soldiers and laid down a plan for the general instruction of the regiment, though the final part of the tract was judged by an editor of 1858 to be taken up by 'visionary details and proposals, admirable in themselves: but too little consistent with the realities of the service for realization'. He made four further contributions, from a total of thirty mainly technical papers. The society appears to have been active only until 1775, no doubt ended by the pressures of the American revolutionary war. 29 Jardine retained an appreciation of such societies, not previously identified within a British military context, as a focus for enlightened and sociable discussion throughout his life. In 1776 Jardine was sent by Lord Weymouth and Anthony Chamier, his under-secretary, to Spain, recommended by Lord George Germaine and Sir John Irwin as the British officer best acquainted with that country and its language, on 'a very delicate and dangerous business', with a brief to act as consul until he should be called to act as quartermaster of an expedition against Spain. Partly to disguise his purpose, he went on to half-pay on the invalid register (though he also at some unknown point in his service lost an arm).30 He appears to have made initial observations in Spain, and to have returned with them to Flanders, on the way to England, in 1777. His first letter and
subsequent letters on France were written on this journey. On his return to Spain, he was sent on Chamier' s orders to Lisbon, Gibraltar, Madrid, Corunna and elsewhere, in journeys which he claimed totalled around 7,000 miles. 31 Sections and abridgements of his reports remain in the Foreign Office archives, including his 'Military Memoranda of Spain & c... ' and 'Some Memoranda for Treating with Spain'. Both overlap closely with the published letters from Spain and Portugal, although the 'Military Memoranda' also includes detailed military assessments of the fortifications of a number of Spanish towns, recommendations for an initial point of invasion and a pessimistic assessment of the vulnerability of the fort of Gibraltar. 32 Other letters went to friends like Mr F., identified by Berenguel as Alexander Mackenzie Fraser, lieutenant of artillery at Gibraltar from 1778, later to become an MP and lieutenant-general, and an unidentified Mr T. 33 On Jardine's return to England, having fled from Spain through the mountains with his large family to Portugal, he found Chamier dying, a new secretary of state in post, and no recompense for his travelling expenses or the loss of his army career. His large family were now reduced to 'most distressful circumstances' and threatened with imprisonment for debt. He made his case in 1782 to Lords Weymouth, Hillsborough and Shelburne, on the basis of his long career and his recent services to the state, including 'his contributing so essentially to the preparation & saving of Gibt, shewing the certainty of a Bourbon war early in 1777' .34 Given his promotion to Major on 9 March 1783, some part of his petition must have been granted. The final, very brief section of his published Letters was sent in 1787 to Mr A.J., from Jersey, which provided an opportunity for Jardine to muse on the desirability of greater unity among 'the whole cluster of isles that form the British empire'. 35 He was there as a guest of the governor, General Conway, whose improvements, and especially the introduction of the militia, he greatly praised. The Letters were first published under the pseudonym of 'An English Officer'; Jardine uses 'English' rather than 'British' almost throughout, a usage followed here in discussing his work. Both national identity and profession clearly shaped his preoccupations, yet at the same time he was also constructing a European identity, both through the 'philosophical' approach FO 72/1, 'The petition of Capt Alexr Jardine Royal Artillery'. Ibid., 'Some memoranda for treating with Spain'; SP 94/254, ff. 287-304, 'Military memoranda of Spain &c intended for Mr Chamier'. 33 Berenguel, Cartas, p. 103. 34 FO 72/1, 'Memoranda ofCaptn Jardine's Case ... '; Jardine, Letters, ii. 402; Jardine had had an active interest in the fortifications of Gibraltar which withstood a major siege between 1779 and 1783. 35 Jardine, Letters, ii. 505. 3\
'Abstract of Papers respecting the Military Society, Established at Woolwich, 1772-3-4-5', Minutes of the Proceedings of the Royal Artillery Institution, vol. I, 1858, pp. xvii-xxxii. 30 FO 72/1, Jardine to Lord Grantham 12 November 1782, and 'The Petition ofCaptn Alexr Jardine Royal Artillery', 'Memoranda of Captn Jardine's Case ... '; Reed and Pottle eds, Boswell, Laird ofAuchinleck 1778-1782, p. 352; G.M. de Jovellanos, Obras completas,. Torno VI. Diario: I 0 (Cuadernos I a V, hasta 30 de agosto de 1794), eds. J.M. Caso Gonzalez and J.G. Santos, Oviedo, 1994, p. 478. 29
99
32
101
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which he took to the understanding of national character and government across Europe, and in the contrasts he drew between European and North African settings. His shaping of a national position in response to other cultures did not exclude admiration for some elements of different European cultures, and at times he distanced himself from an English viewpoint, by writing to his correspondents of 'your' national experiences, or 'you English'. His work was inspired by a philosophy of progress and improvement, but he was also aware, not always consistently, of the possibilities of stagnation and ultimate degeneration. Across Europe he saw it as the task of reforming monarchs to counter that degeneration. In Morocco he found, as a European, a 'total difference' in manners and customs, most evidence of stagnation and the least potential for improvement from princely initiatives. He suggested that there was 'in travelling south from Dover to Morocco, a curious line of the gradual progression of despotism'. 36 His portrayal of the Moroccan kingdom represents it as unchanging, with ancient ways of working unaltered since the days of Abraham, and no proper division of labour, a world which had degenerated from the days of the great Moorish princes of Spain, and had all the stereotyped characteristics of orientalism, 'Eastern manners, without going to the East' , manners founded in 37 the principles of despotism. Though later observations qualified such downright condemnation in a few respects - the relative humanity of the current Emperor, and the remarkable ingenuity of simple contrivances - these do not alter his fundamental conclusion, that 'these poor Africans' would be better conquered by 'a civilized and generous nation', perhaps France. 38 In other European countries he was predictably hostile to the remnants of feudalism and the 'footsteps of despotism' that he could identify.39 He followed the conventional contemporary narrative of the European past as one of the emergence from the Germanic tribes of a feudal system ultimately softened by the institutions of chivalry and the growth of commerce and the arts. The absolute monarchy of France, having overpowered all opposition, had behaved with moderation, though that would not always continue. In Spain, on the other hand, where the national character required a government of greater freedom, its recent history was one of degeneration and corruption. In both France and Spain only a reforming prince might counter such systems, and Jardine dreamt of such a prince: 'chusing and preparing a set of proper and
enlightened men for his future ministers, secretaries, professors, bishops, &c. and determined to make use of all the virtue and knowledge in his dominions, of whatever class and party, and to bring in more from abroad'. 40 And he reviewed the work of such 'enlightened men', like Campomanes in Spain and Pombal, with all his failings, in Portugal.41 The only chance of reforming European states, constitutions and peoples lay in the education of princes towards rational and improving principles, whether in the expansion of trade and commerce and the introduction of religous toleration, or in recognition of the potential powers of education and the influence of women, or through military modernisation. The Letters strongly advocated the principles of Adam Smith, urging a public vision based on a free commerce and an international trade shaped by each nation, able when not oppressed by government intervention to build on 42 its own advantages in country and climate. Jardine wrote at several points in visionary style of a future of free and prospering commerce between nations, unhindered by the territorial ambitions of governments. He lost no opportunity of denouncing 'the barbarous and monopolising mode of exclusive companies' whether colonial trading companies, or the Spanish wool monopoly, the Mesta. 43 Montesquieu's question as to whether the importation of colonial bullion could ever be beneficial could now be answered clearly in the negative from Spanish experience. The history of monopolies and prohibitions there demonstrated the justice of Adam Smith's doctrines. 44 The examples of Spain and Portugal should be a lesson to his own country, engaged in extravagant and oppressive attempts to subdue its American colonies and the greedy expansion of possessions and territories in the East. 45 Writing from Morocco of both Islam and the Catholic Church, Jardine identified the power of religion as characteristic especially of early periods in social development, 'a necessary supplement' in the maintenance of law and order. But as government improved, then the need for such powerful religious forces grew less and the authority of the Church should be strictly controlled, as was not yet the case in Spain. 46 He wrote as a man of the Enlightenment against the power of the religious orders across Catholic Europe, calling for their complete exclusion by the English government. The English failed to understand that power: 'you fancy that all are become, like yourselves, more
100
40
Ibid., i. 12, 188. 37 Ibid., i. 14-15; in this respect Ann Thomson's comments on the work are justified, Barbary and Enlightenment. European attitudes towards the Maghreb in the J8'h century, Leiden, 1987, pp. 2, 47, 54-7, 88. 38 Jardine, LettErs, i. 103. 39 Ibid., i. 271-2. 36
4\
42 43 44
45 46
Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid.,
i. 453, ii. 87, 354-8. i. 78, ii. 418-9, 464-5. i. 260, 489. ii. 131-2,211. ii. 129,318. ii. 230-3, 260, 502. i. 178-81.
102
103
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moderate, rational, tolerant: nothing like it: toleration is still, with all the bigoted Roman Catholics, who are yet numerous, a reprobate, heretical, detested doctrine. The bloody inquisitorial spirit only pretends to sleep, and lies ready watching .... ' .47 Jardine's language clearly drew upon the anti-Catholic rhetoric common among British travellers in Catholic Europe, though his frequently repeated case against celibacy was possibly the stronger for his father's membership of a celibate order. 48 Yet his arguments were also those of David Hume, in the distinction he drew between superstition and enthusiasm, in his acceptance of the social utility of religious sentiment, and in his comments on 'the spirit of fanaticism' of the Gordon riots in London, and the 'philosophic apathy' of 'liberal and learned' Protestants. Unlike Hume, perhaps in a deist spirit, he suggested that the intentions of the' Author of nature' were for a variety of religious opinions; and he attached to his writing on this subject a letter from a clerical friend clearly in the spirit of the latitudinarian and antisubscription movement of the Church of England of the 1770s. 49 His imaginary nation would, every seventh day, have celebrated 'the Great Spirit and Governor of the Universe' .50 In his travels through Europe Jardine celebrated the work of the philosophers and men of letters of the Enlightenment, and the way in which societies and informal circles brought together the well informed and interested in conversation and debate: 'it requires the frequent collision of society, the freedom of conversation, and the kind offices of friendship, to purge and refine our speculations, and render them fit for use'. In Paris, he advised Mr A.J., such societies, of both sexes, offered much pleasure and improvement. In Spain he wrote of the academy founded by the Count ofPenaflorida in Vergara in the Basque region, which held regular annual meetings in the face of hostility from the government and Inquisition, and ofPenaflorida' s diffusion of 'a spirit of active industry and emulation' .51 Yet Jardine also wrote of Pari s that the presence of 'a few philosophers in the capital' could never be enough to effect substantial reform. For to him there was too great a distance between their 'temperate and philosophic dreams' and the situation of the majority of mankind, just as there was a considerable difference between plebeian religion and the religion of gentlemen. 52 What was
needed for all nations was sufficient provision for day-schools for all, for 'real and useful knowledge'. In a rare recognition of Scottish distinctiveness, he commented that the Scots were the better qualified by their education, giving ordinary people there a superior moral character to the English. 53 His advice to his English correspondent was to encourage evening, Sunday and day schools, popular lectures by 'itinerant philosophers, with their cartloads of machinery', and local literary societies. 54 On all these subjects, Jardine drew upon familiar arguments for the Enlightenment in Britain. He approved of Mr A.J.' s reading of Montesquieu, Ferguson, Smith, Hume and Blackstone, and these texts were all important points of reference in the Letters. 55 However, in two particular respects - his strong advocacy of the education and advancement of women, and his informed and professional case for military modernisation - he went far beyond such texts. He drew on the work of writers of the Scottish Enlightenment, perhaps on Adam Ferguson, perhaps on John Millar, in the importance attributed to women in the process of civilisation and improvement. Of Morocco he noted that: 'Where women are thus considered only as domestic slaves, and marriage as a kind of purchase, they can have no weight or influence in society, which therefore can hardly be polished or improved' .56 In his instructions to the leaders of his imaginary nation, he suggested that they should allow the greatest possible freedom in the institution of marriage, though 'supporting the weaker sex in those ideas of a natural equality in rights with us, which you have now generously admitted'. The authority of husbands and 'the selfish tyranny of man' was to be countered. Women in such a society should have their equal share of influence, and share in labour and exercise, learning to be above trivial weaknesses, neither beasts of burden nor creatures of great delicacy and refinement. 'A free and manly education' for women would most facilitate the advance of human happiness, and allow them to be introduced to full political participation. 57 Everywhere he observed the manners of women and the relations of the sexes, observing for instance the contributions of French women to the societies of Paris and to the popularisation of the works of the Enlightenment.
Ibid., i. 340; ii. 428. Ibid., ii. 75. 55 Ibid., ii. 483. 56 Ibid., i. 109; for discussion of the works of Ferguson and Millar, see J. Rendall, 'Tacitus engendered: Gothic feminism and British histories 1750-1800', in G. Cubitt ed., Imagining nations, Manchester, 1998; idem, 'Clio, Mars and Minerva: the Scottish Enlightenment and the writing of women's history', in T.M. Devine and J.R. Young eds, Eighteenth-century Scotland. New perspectives, East Linton, 1998. 57 Jardine, Letters, i. 139-46. 53
Ibid., i. 472-5; ii. 429-33. 48 For other British travellers' reactions, see 1. Black, The British and the Grand Tour, London, 1985, ch. 9. 49 Jardine, Letters, ii. 429-5l. 50 Ibid., i. 147. 51 Ibid., i. 293-4; ii. 22-3, 70; on Pefiaflorida, see R. Herr, The eighteenth-century revolution in Spain, Princeton, 1958, pp. 228-9. 52 Jardine, Letters, i. 452, 475-6. 47
54
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In Spain he commented on the beauty and gaiety of Spanish women of different classes, already gaining a more active way of life, and influence in their own society.58 His Letters, however, went beyond observation and imagination towards advocating more radical intervention, especially in his letters to Mrs P. The history of Sparta had suggested that a wise government, by modelling women's character and education, might direct it towards the public good, countering the harmful effects of civilisation. The subordination of women and their separation from men, as in Asia, tended towards tyranny in all spheres of life. The differences between men and women were far more the effect of art than of nature, since, he wrote, following Poulain de la Barre 'the mind is of no sex'. More rational dress - including the much mocked suggestion of shorter skirts and the wearing of drawers - was more important than commonly believed, and would eliminate 'this violent and ridiculous difference of appearance between the sexes, as if they were animals of a different species'. Children of both sexes should be educated together as far as possible, and men and women should work together in far more employments and professions, including the learned ones, than they did at present.59 A wise government would seek 'the most perfect equality that is practicable between the sexes, in the enjoyment of personal rights, eminence, education; and the approaches to that equality may serve as indications of perfection in society and government' .60 At the same time Jardine's view of rational progress was rooted in his understanding of the importance of military reform and of participation in war. Writing of France, he condemned the ruinous necessity of keeping up standing armies, so destructive of good government. They needed to be checked through a gradual reversion to militias from which a smaller and more expert army might be drawn. He watched the bitter controversies within the French army, and the opposition to Saint-Germain's reforms as well as the conflicts within the ordnance there. French military schools were, he suggested, far better in their planning than in their execution. English military education remained very defective, and inability to promote those with talent hindered English armies. The leadership in these fields now lay with Germany, whose example 61 should be followed. To Jardine there was no reason why England should not become a military nation, though on rather different principles than those of Prussia. There would be great advantages in military service and education becoming the normal
custom for young men. They could follow Henry Lloyd into the Russian armies, learn from the armies of Prussia and Austria and 'the scientific principles of fortification and artillery' wherever they were to be found. Like Adam Ferguson, Jardine defended the importance of conflict within human societies. Those who preached perpetual peace, however well-meaning and benevolent, misunderstood the needs of the human spirit: 'let us hope the martial spirit will spread and take root among us, and that a general circulating militia, in which all serve in their turn, will at length be established, so as to supply a small but well-disciplined army, and render the people more military and orderly' .62 The reforms of General Conway when Master-General of the Ordnance, embodying 'integrity joined to science, in a liberal and amiable character' had inspired all members of that department, and demonstrated what was needed to put Britain on a footing with other military nations. Civil and military institutions should be more closely identified, building upon small units 'squads, messes, tythings, as wisely done of old by Alfred, and lately by the best officers'. Conway's establishment of a militia in Jersey was a model of what mjght be achieved. 63 In the Letters, as in a series of reviews for the Monthly Review in 1782, Jardine demonstrated his consistent interest in a form of military modernisation, in theory and practice, which allowed the co-existence of a militia and a small professional standing army. General Conway had advocated a more effective militia ever since his plan was introduced into the Commons in 1757. 64 Jardine's interest in the militia signals his commitment to a 'republican' politics. Between January and April 1782, he reviewed for the Monthly Review Lieutenant Douglas' translation of the Comte de Guibert' sA general essay on tactics ... (1781), Michael Dorset's An essay on defensive war and a constitutional militia ... (1782), and Henry Lloyd's Continuation ofthe
104
Ibid., ii. 151-7, 284; on Henry Lloyd's career, see 1. F.e. Fuller, 'Henry Lloyd, adventurer and military philosopher', Army Quarterly, 12, 1926,300-14; on Ferguson, see his Essay on the history of civil society, 1767, ed. D. Forbes, Edinburgh, 1966, pp. 20-5. 63 Jardine, Letters, ii. 356, 390, 525. 64 J.R .Western, The English militia in the eighteenth century. The story of a political issue, 1660-1802, London, 1965, p. 135. 62
58 59
60 61
Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid.,
i. 450; ii. 10-11,161-2,172,310. i. 307-25. ii. Ill. i. 460, 465; ii. 150.
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history of the war in Germany (1782).65 In the reviews he demonstrates his sympathies with Guibert's denunciation of contemporary governments and commitment to a citizen army, and with Henry Lloyd's acknowledgement of the power of republican armies, as well as his political speculations and technical commentary. But Jardine was especially enthusiastic about the politics of the little-known Essay on defensive war, by Dorset, a former artillery officer, which argued that once established, and especially if organised in small sections such as tythings, an army of citizens could transform a government. No doubt Jardine relished Dorset's comments on the potential contribution of women to home defence, and his emphasis on the importance of training in artillery and fortification for the militia. 66 The politics of the militia was here linked to the association movement for political reform in England, with which Charles James Fox and the Duke of Richmond, Master-General of the Ordnance, were connected in the years between 1780 and 1782. To Jardine, the link was clear: 'We had better be tenacious of the few rights and possessions we have yet left, which, if once lost, are probably irrecoverable; and in order to make the most of them, take our Author's advice, and set about forming the whole nation into a constitutional militia and armed associations; especially as it is perhaps the only method by which our inestimable Constitution can be restored and improved' .67 Conway and Richmond had already placed themselves clearly in opposition to Lord North's policy on America, as had Jardine in the Letters. From France in 1777 he had written of the potential humiliation for Britain in the eyes of Europe and later, in 1779, had suggested that defeat might lead to a desirable tempering of extravagant views of national power, and to the wiser pursuit of more moderate goals. 68 The radicalism of his politics is evident also in his review in 1782 of the radical deist David Williams' Letters on political liberty (1782). He found in Williams perhaps the most outstanding contributor to political science since Montesquieu. Williams drew a clear distinction
between civil liberty, which should function for citizens in their daily lives, and political liberty, in matters of state, and argued that while the former had been improving, the latter was almost destroyed, and that priority should be given to its recovery.69 Jardine found Williams' 'liberal anathemas against the timid or designing dread of innovation' and his emphasis on small-scale associations, especially the tythings and hundreds, appealing but for him the means of recovery seemed distant: 'we must perhaps be content to arrive at it by such slow degrees and irregular associations as America or Ireland, &c and it seems to require some great or critical occasion' .70 The publication of the Letters in 1788 must have helped to bring Jardine to the notice of a wider group of radicals and reformers. 71 The book was dedicated jointly to the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York, as treating' of subjects of the highest importance to princes'. In so doing he identified himself with the political grouping of the Foxite Whigs, and perhaps also with the Duke of York's interests in military reform. Ralph Griffiths in the Monthly Review greeted with enthusiasm 'the boldest censures of those defective establishments, narrow politics, and national prejudices, to which mankind are attached and enslaved' and Jardine's 'benevolence, and public spirit'.72 Mary Wollstonecraft, in the Analytical Review, commented on the way in which 'a fondness for systems sometimes led him into reveries', but nevertheless judged it 'a valuable publication'. She selected for publication the passage which identified female weaknesses as signs of inferiority which soothed masculine pride, and called for 'wise and manly women' to 'bring us back to sense and nature', since 'mind is of no sex'. Jardine and Wollstonecraft struggled similarly with the inability of the language of republican citizenship to represent positive female attributes. 73 Jardine's movements in the 1780s are not entirely clear, but, still living in and around Woolwich, he clearly participated in lively radical and international circles in London. He had possibly first met the Venezuelan general Francisco de Miranda in Gibraltar in 1776 and renewed his acquaintance in London in 74 1785. It was a friendship based on common political and military interests.
106
MR, 66, Jan. 1782, pp. 39-43; Mar. 1782, pp. 219-26; Apr. 1782, pp. 275-85, identified as by Jardine in B.C. Nangle, The Monthly Review, first series, 1749-1789: indexes ofcontributors and articles, Oxford, 1934; on these works see Western, 'Armies'; Fuller, 'Henry Lloyd'; and Houlding, Fit for service, pp. 224 and 267. 66 An essay on defensive war, and a constitutional militia. By an officer [M. Dorset], London, 1782, pp. 112, 136ff; the British Library copy identifies Michael Dorset as the author. For his artillery career, see Kane, List of officers. 67 MR, 66, Mar. 1782, pp. 219-26; on the association movement and its connection with the reform of the militia, see E.C. Black, The Association. British extra-parliamentary political organization 1769-1793, Cambridge, Mass., 1963, chs 2-3; Western, English militia, pp. 21019; A.G. Olson, The radical duke. Career and correspondence of Charles Lennox, third Duke of Richmond, Gxford 1961, ch 4. 68 Jardine, Letters, i. 482-4; ii. 237. 65
107
David Williams, Letters on political liberty, London, 1782; MR, 66, Appendix, 551-6; on Williams see W.R.D. Jones, David Williams. The anvil and the hammer, Tuscaloosa, 1986, pp. 75-87. 70 MR, 66, Appendix, 551-6. 71 It subsequently went through two further editions, in 1793 and 1808. 72 MR, 81, Sept. 1789,221-30. 73 Jardine, Letters, i. 324; Analytical Review, 4, June 1789, 136-7, Aug. 1789, pp. 524-6, reprinted in The works of Mary Wollstonecraft, eds. J. Todd and M. Butler, 7 vols., London, 1989, vii. 106-7, 154-6. 74 On Miranda, see W.S. Robertson, The life of Miranda, 2 vols., Chapel Hill, 1929; Archivo del General Miranda, 25 vols., Caracas, Venezuela, 1925-, v. 291. fB
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John Adams was US minister in London from 1785 to 1788; his son-in-law Colonel William Stephens Smith, had already met Miranda in the United States, and came to be a friend of Jardine's also. 75 Jardine sent Adams a copy of the Letters, to which he replied cautiously, expressing his doubts of the chances of a peaceful revolution in France. 76 In 1790 Jardine finally received the news of the long hoped-for consulship of Corunna, with an income of £300 a year; on the death of his father in Brussels in that year, he could also expect to receive a sum of £1,500. 77 But his departure was delayed, and he suffered a very considerable personal blow with the deaths of three adult children, his eldest son and two daughters, in the autumn of 1792. Another daughter was a governess in the household of Count Vorontsov, the Russian ambassador, with whom Jardine frequently stayed. 78 By then the French Revolution had helped to radicalise Jardine's political opinions, shared with Miranda and with the circle of British radicals around William Godwin. He continued to cherish increasingly visionary hopes for the reformation of governments across Europe. When Miranda became a General in the French army under Dumouriez, Jardine wrote to him as 'almost the only man here who approves of your conduct & promotion & remains still your friend' . He hoped to see Miranda in France and visit the French artillery school at Douai, where he had many friends, on his way to Spain. 79 He congratulated him on the superiority of French artillery. By November 1792 he was recommending to Miranda the works of Henry Lloyd and recommending young Englishmen to him for service in the French army. He also suggested that six radical works, by Godwin, Joel Barlow, David Williams, Thomas Holcroft and William Ogilvie, with Borghesi' s Essay on civil government, or society restored, be translated into French for the use of members of the Convention. He retained his visions: 'of trying to Save this Country & of bringing it to join point with France & America, & then perhaps liberating new Spain, & then making old Spain do as we please & then by means of Russia, la Cara Italia, &c purging, colonising the Mediterranean shores, & pushing rational liberation, wisdom & truth round ye globe eastward - to meet the American wisdom, westward' .80 At the same time, Jardine drew ever closer to the circle around William
Godwin. As Dybikowski has suggested, 'during 1792 and the first two-thirds of 1793, there was scarcely anyone Godwin saw more frequently than Jardine' .81 From February 1792 in the diaries in which he recorded his visitors, reading, and writing, Godwin mentioned Jardine's presence very regularly, frequently with Thomas Holcroft and Walking Stuart, but also with Home Tooke, Joel Barlow, David Williams, Mary Wollstonecraft and Thomas Wedgwood. A typical entry was: 'Sept 22. Write 6 pages. Jardine calls. Tea at Barlow's, with Jardine, Stuart, Wolstencraft, & Holcroft, talk of self-love, sympathy & perfectibility individual & general. Sup at Holcroft's. Jockey Club ,8 1 62 pages. Godwin rewrote a review which Jardine had written for the European Review, possibly that of Arthur Young's Travels. 83 Jardine brought other friends, like James Glenie, the mathematician and by then New Brunswick radical, to their circle, and drew up a list of potential members for a 'Select Club', a sociable academy for radical circles. It included outstanding medical men, like the Hunters, some young lawyers and some of the outstanding artists and musicians of the period. The list of mathematicians included not only Dr Charles Hutton but Jardine's old friend and co-founder of the Military Society at Woolwich, Edward Williams. Joseph Priestley, Fox, Sheridan and James Mackintosh as well as the immediate friends of Godwin and Jardine were among the 'philosophic minds in search of truth'. Among international correspondents would come Glenie and the veterans Benjamin Rush and Alexander Hamilton from North America, from France Joel Barlow, then resident in Paris, and the exiled Spanish ex-intendant, Olavide, of whom he had written in the Letters. The radical Bishop of Antwerp, abbe Nelis, would come from Flanders, with Gijsbert van Hogendorp from the Netherlands, Campomanes from Spain, and Paoli, Beccaria and others from Italy. The club took shape only after Jardine had left for Spain as the Philomathian Society, in which Godwin's friends met regularly for a period. 84 As Godwin was writing, revising and proof-reading Political justice, he shared his reading - including William Ogilvie's Essay on the right ofproperty
On Smith, see L.H. Butterfield ed., Diary and autobiography ofJohn Adams, 4 vols., Cambridge Mass, 1961, iii. 183-4; Library Company of Philadelphia on deposit with the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Benjamin Rush MSS, vol. 8, f. 44, Jardine to Smith, 12 Mar. 1794. 76 John Adams to Jardine, I June 1790, Archivo del General Miranda, vi. 53-4. 77 NAS OD/472/119, 'Discharge Robert Dallas Esq. as attorney of Major Alexr Jardine To Sir William Jardine Bart 1794'. In practice Alexander Jardine was to receive only £ 1,200, payable over six years from 1794. 78 Archivo del General Miranda, vi. 95, 196,220. 79 Jardine to Miranda, 7 Sept. 1792. Archivo del General Miranda, vi. 199-200. 80 Jardine to Miranda, 19 November 1792; ibid., vi. 216-8.
Dybikowski, 'Society restored', p. 107. See also M. Philp, Godwin's Political Justice, London, 1986, 26-44. 82 Bodleian Library, [Abinger papers] Dep.e.196, entry of 22 Sept. 1792. 83 Ibid., entry of 20 Mar. 1793; the most likely review for Jardine for these months is that of Young's Travels, European Magazine and London Review, 23, Apr.-June 1793,188-91,2724, 358-60,442-5. 84 Bodleian Library [Abinger papers] Dep.e.196, entry of Sept. 24 1793, 'List of people who ought to see one another frequently, & from wh[om] might be formed a Select Club', and Dep. c. 532/4; Jardine, Letters, ii. 183; see also W. St Clair, The Godwins and the Shelleys. The biography of a family, London, 1989, pp. 91-3.
108
75
81
109
110
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.Political Reveries'
in land (1782) - and ideas with Jardine. James Dybikowski has authoritatively identified Jardine's responsibility for the lengthy, rambling essay, longer than the original, attached to the Essay on civil government by the Italian musician, Antonio Borghesi. Originally to be published by Joseph Johnson, it now exists only in proof copies, though one was sent to William Stephens Smith and Benjamin Rush in the United States. 85 In it Jardine drew extensively on David Williams' Letters on political liberty but also on the commitment to system and the radical political and social attitudes which had pervaded the Letters from Barbary. Beyond that, in his radical utopianism and emphasis on the importance of smaller units of social and political organisation, he was clearly exploring similar territory to Godwin, though much less systematically. Where Borghesi's plan had been for an authoritarian utopia, in which liberty gave place in a group of planned cities to justice and equality, Jardine defended forms of personal liberty in the exercise of private judgement, in the liberty of the press, and in public education, since 'the public wisdom may surely improve with the private'. 86 But at the same time he denounced 'the deceitful source of real evils, liberty and property' and looked forward to a community of property, in a progressive future, in which education, improvement and science would flourish with the expansion of the art of printing, 'the grand machine which has provided the materials for future innovation' .87 As in the Letters, his thinking was on an international scale. Before larger nations dissolved into smaller, and more governable societies, they might perhaps agree on the desirability of colon ising Asia and Africa, freeing Latin America, and pushing forward the principles of rational government: 'tis thus European wisdom might shew her superiority, true philosophy attain her place of guide, and wars and despotism be banished or buried together' .88 Yet in the future reorganisation of society, the lead was to come from North America, the source of political wisdom. 89 The British population might yet be organised through small parishes, to elect to a convention, and into clubs of ten to twenty men and women, for instruction and deliberation, for: 'from the great corruption and deficiency of the upper classes of Europe, reform must probably come from below, as in America. Justice and equality will probably
soon be seen and considered as the chief object of man and society ... ' .90 In an imaginary dialogue between the French and English governments, both Tory and Whig, the English Whigs called for reform at a slower pace, a gentler advance towards equality and a greater tolerance by the French of internal opposition and emigration. 91 As in the Letters, Jardine noted that reform and improvement should begin 'by bringing up the other sex nearer equality to us in physical, moral and intellectual powers, - in every thing practicable and useful', though it does not appear that women would qualify for the vote, to be reserved for married men. 92 In this work, however, unlike the Letters, he looked forward towards a utopian future of peace and reason rather than the active and military life, in a remodelled Europe of smaller states. 93 At some point during their friendship, probably in 1793, Jardine had attempted to persuade Godwin to forward to Charles James Fox his appeal to advance the principles of reform. Godwin did so though very unwillingly, while commenting on Jardine's own admission that he 'cannot long serve God & Mammon' .94 In the years after 1793 Jardine continued to serve the Mammon of the British government as consul at Corunna, though in a way which was not viewed with overwhelming satisfaction by the Foreign Secretary, Lord Grenville or the ambassador in Madrid, Lord Bute. There were surely few British consuls who in the difficult circumstances of 1796, just before the outbreak of war with Spain, would have written to Grenville of 'how to lead John Bull into the road of learning still more valuable political lessons & sciences & at a cheaper rate; for even his neighbours will soon want him to keep up with them, & their folly will be no excuse for his' .95 The circumstances of his arrival were unfortunate. Having embarked with his whole family, he was unlucky enough to be captured first by a French frigate, whose officers he found congenial, and was then taken by a less appealing Jersey privateer, whom he had to pay to take him to Spain, where he was landed at Gij6n, some 300 miles from his destination of Corunna. Jardine was subsequently accused by the captain of the latter ship of over-fondness for French principles, and of negotiating with the French prisoners to be led to France; his son-in-law Robert Dallas wrote a particularly convincing letter to
Ibid., pp. 109-112, 122. Ibid., pp. 132-3. 92 Ibid., pp. 175, 185. 93 Ibid., pp. 109, 119, 126. 94 Bodleian Library [Abinger papers] Dep.b 227/2, Godwin to Jardine, n.d. and draft letter Godwin to Fox, n.d; see St Clair, The Godwins and the Shelleys, pp. 104-5. 95 FO 72/44, Jardine to Grenville, 4 Sept. 1796; for the disapproval of his superiors, see also FO 72/36 f. 271, Grenville to Jardine, Mar. 1795; FO 72/39, Bute to Grenville, 25 Oct. 1795; FO 72/44, Bute to Grenville, Madrid, 28 Sept. 1796. 90
91
85 Edinburgh University Library, La II 423/158, Jardine to Joseph Johnson 6June 1792; Library Company of Philadelphia on deposit with the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Rush MSS, vol. 8, f. 44, Jardine to Smith, 12 Mar. 1794. 86Essay on civil government, pp. 80-1. 87 Ibid., pp. 72, 117. 88 Ibid., pp. 98-9. 89 Ibid., p. 112.
111
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'Political Reveries'
Grenville in his defence. 96 In subsequent years Jardine campaigned strongly against British privateers, as also against the over-zealous local collector of customs duties. Much correspondence concerned the Falmouth-Corunna packets, and the role of the post office in maintaining this service against all difficulties. Many routine duties fell to his vice-consul, Patrick Morrogh, though it was Jardine who informed Grenville of the embargo placed on English shipping in August 1796 and of the declaration of war in October. 97 In these years Jardine retained his cultural interests, writing in March 1794 that 'without books and music I must confess I am unable to live anywhere, particularly in Spain' .98 He encouraged the performance of Italian opera in Corunna and suggested that the authorities there might found a Royal Institute in Galicia, on the same pattern as that begun by the enlightened Spanish statesman Jovellanos in Asturias. Jardine had met Jovellanos on 11 November 1793, when he gave him copies of the Letters, and of Godwin's Political justice; the two men corresponded regularly for the next three years, although they increasingly realised that their views of politics, and especially of the appropriate means to achieve their goals, were very different. Jardine sent his correspondent works by Rousseau, Paine, Condorcet, and Ogilvie. But Jovellanos, though sympathetic to Jardine's earlier ideas, disliked his support of French revolutionary principles, and complained that Jardine constantly sent him books he had not requested. Once war had broken out between England and Spain, Jardine cast himself as mediator, writing to the Spanish minister Godoy of the possibility of universal peace, with himself as 'consul of humanity' . He asked also for a permit to remain in Spain because of his health. Paralysed down one side, he was given a permit, and retreated to a local spa though asked again to return to Corunna. Threatened with imprisonment at the beginning of 1799 by the local military governor, his appeals failed, and he was apparently forced to travel with great difficulty to Portugal, and died in Valenc;a do Minho on 8 Apri1. 99 Jardine's adventurous career holds much interest in its own right. Its recovery suggests further conclusions. The Letters from Barbary deserve
recognition not only as travel literature, but as a work of radical speculation. Jardine had indicated how the gendered narrative of philosophical history could be turned towards a political purpose. Reading the Letters must have helped to stimulate Mary Wollstonecraft in her continuing critical engagement with philosophical history; it may also have offered a contribution to the construction of the complex, republican, rational and progressive vision which was the Vindication of the Rights of Woman. And Jardine's continuing presence in the Godwin circle after 1791 indicates the diversity, the internationalism and the sociability of these radical circles in the period of the writing and publication of Political justice. Jardine brought to such circles not only his own enthusiasm for works such as William Ogilvie's Essay on the right of property in land, but the kind of utopianism already apparent in the Letters, and further inspired by events in France. His life suggests also questions, which remain to be explored, about the potential associations between military reform in Britain, and enlightened, even sometimes radical, perspectives. Edward Gibbon's experience of the Hampshire militia was not unique. 100 Though the radicalism of Jardine's political visions was unusual, his commitment to both political and military reform was shared, in different degrees, by, for instance, the Duke of Richmond, General Conway, and fellow artillery officers James Glenie and Michael Dorset. Jardine deserves a place among the minor figures of the London Enlightenment of the 1780s and 1790s, for the radicalism of his ideas, for the range of his international interests and connections, and for the ideal of enlightened sociability which he put into continuous practice.
112
FO 72/28 f. 253 Jardine to Grenville 5 Nov. 1793; FO 72/33, ff. 172-77, Dallas to Grenville, 11 May 1794. 97 See correspondence throughout FO 72/36, 38-9,41-4; FO 72/43, Jardine to Grenville, 30 Aug. 1796 and FO 72/44, Jardine to Grenville, 18 Oct. 1796. 98 FO 353/51, Jardine to Francis Jackson, 12 Mar. 1794. 99 This paragraph relies on Berenguel, Cartas, pp. 57-93; see also on Jovellanos, Herr, The eighteenth-century revolution in Spain, passim, especially 376-80, and on his relations with Jardine, E. Sarrailh, L'Espagne eclainie de la seconde moitie du XVlfle siecle, Paris, 1964, esp. pp. 317-9; E.F. Helman, 'Some consequences ofthe publication of the lnforme de Leyagraria by Jovellanos', in Estudios Hispanicos. Homenaje a Archer M. Huntington, Wellesley, 1952.
96
!OO On Gibbon, see Pocock, 'The Hampshire militia and the politics of modernity,' in Barbarism and religion, vol. I.
Partners in Revolution
Chapter 6
Partners in Revolution: Louise de Keralio and Fran~ois Robert, Editors of the
Mercure National, 1789-1791 Leigh Whaley
Recent scholarship on the French Revolution has devoted a good deal of attention to the role of women during the decade of upheaval. There is now a rather substantial literature that falls under the category of Women and Revolution. Aspects of female involvement which have been studied include the radical activities of Parisian women, the participation of working class urban women, women's roles in clubs and presses, biographical studies, and the experiences of counter-revolutionary women.' No consensus seems to have emerged among scholars with respect to women and the French Revolution, but the revolutionary years
I See D. Levy and H.B. Applewhite eds, Women and politics in the age of democratic revolution, Ann Arbor, 1990; idem, Women in revolutionary Paris, 1789-1795, Urbana, 1979; G. Kates, The Cercle Social, the Girondins, and the French Revolution, Princeton, 1985. Kates also has an article in the Levy/Applewhite collection of articles. For counterrevolutionary women, see O. Hufton, Women and the limits of citizenship in the French Revolutior., Toronto, 1992, and more recently, idem, The prospect before her: a history of women in Western Europe, New York, 1996, pp. 481-5. D. Godineau, Citoyennes tricoteuses: les femmes du peuple a Paris pendant la Revolution fram;aise, Aix-enProvence, 1988, trans. Berkeley, 1998, focuses on the working women of Paris. One of the most recent contributions to the debate on women and the French Revolution, S.E. Roessler's Out of the shadows: women and politics in the French Revolution, 1789-95, New York, 1998, focuses on major uprisings or joumees to which women contributed, from the October Days to the storming of the Convention in 1795.
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have frequently been portrayed as a negative experience for women? One of the most often cited publications in this genre is Joan Landes' Women in the public sphere in the age of the French Revolution, first published in 1988, and reprinted three times since then. Landes has posited that the revolution was not a liberating experience for women, particularly during the republican phase when there was a deliberate attempt to remove women from the public sphere. This chapter will take a different approach to women in the French Revolution. By presenting a micro-history of one woman, Louise de Keralio, and her activities as journalist and activist during the first two years of the French Revolution, it will attempt to demonstrate that rather than being excluded from the revolution, with the aid of men women could participate in a meaningful way. Louise-Felicite Guinement de Keralio Robert, to employ her full name, is a relatively forgotten figure in studies about women and revolution, yet an examination of her attitudes towards the French Revolution, like her role in it, should help historians understand the contribution women made and how the revolution affected their lives. Although women were legally excluded from formal political power in the sense that they could not sit as deputies in the various revolutionary assemblies, hold office, or even vote, this does not mean that they automatically assumed a passive role, merely witnessing revolution from the sidelines. The example of de Keralio's years as an active participant should demonstrate otherwise. De Keralio's career was intimately connected to that of her husband, Franc;ois Robert, a radical journalist, Cordelier club member and, in 1792, a Parisian deputy to the National Convention. The case of Louise de Keralio and Franc;ois Robert illustrates how a couple were able to work together as colleagues in the promotion of liberal and democratic revolutionary causes. Thus, in many cases, it is impossible to discuss Louise without reference to her husband. Louise de Keralio is not as widely known as many of the other women of the French Revolution. Historians know Olympe de Gouges from her famous Declaration of the Rights of Women (1791), and the sans-culotte women Pauline Leon and Claire Lacombe from their revolutionary activities during the Terror. Perhaps it is not so surprising that for the most
C. Proctor, Women, equality, and the French Revolution, New York, 1990, focuses primarily on the revolutionaries' failure to grant women full citizenship and equality. l.W. Scott in Only paradoxes to offer: French feminists and the Rights of Man, Cambridge, Mass., 1996, posits that when feminists have attempted to demonstrate that women were individuals, according to the principles of their particular times, they have failed in the sense that only men were considered to be individuals and thus citizens. 2
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Partners in Revolution
part, Louise de Keralio's name has been left off the historical record. She did not leave a cache of personal papers and, unlike her more famous contemporary, Madame Roland, she did not write copious letters and personal memoirs. Revolutionary histories are often based on public documents: speeches by deputies in the various assemblies and at the Jacobin club, pamphlets and proceedings found in collections such as the Moniteur, the Archives Parlementaires, the Histoire Parlementaire, or proceedings of the Jacobin club. In the case of Louise de Keralio, we do not even have these public sources to rely upon because she was neither a deputy nor a Jacobin. What we do have are her printed works in the form of literary and historical writings from the pre- and post-revolutionary eras, revolutionary pamphlets and her newspaper. De Keralio was not a 'feminist' in the manner of some of her contemporaries like Olympe de Gouges and Etta Palm d' Aelders, or the sans-culotte women of 1793 who were linked with the enrages. Her concerns were not women's rights per se, but the advancement of broader revolutionary goals. She was a revolutionary democrat. One could argue that her feminism differed from that of other, better-known revolutionary women. Louise de Keralio's principal role during the revolution was that of editing a leading revolutionary journal, the Mercure National, between the years 1789-1791, in conjunction with husband Fran90is Robert and her 3 father. Robert was her chief collaborator during the years of the Constituent Assembly, a period when much of the constructive work of the French Revolution was accomplished. In addition to the newspaper, she authored political pamphlets, assisted in the establishment of popular societies and was active in petitioning on the Champ de Mars. Perhaps she could be called an 'inadvertent feminist' as well as a democratic republican. While she sought the involvement of all people in the revolution, she did not specifically advocate female enfranchisement. Women would take part in the revolution through participation in popular societies, the revolutionary successor to the Enlightenment salon, and through journalism or pamphleteering. Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century historians of the French Revolution spoke positively of Louise de Keralio and her role in the French Revolution. Jules Michelet characterised her as 'the little Breton lady', who
was 'lively, spirited and ambitious'. He treated her as a serious revolutionary politician, although she was barred from formal political office because of her sex. Michelet credited Louise with preparing the republican petition presented at the Champ de Mars in the wake of the Varennes crisis. He wrote that Louise, who spent the entire night of 17 July 1791 at the altar of the fatherland, drafted the 'famous petition', finalised by Robert. For Michelet, she was the principal woman of letters during the Revolution. 4 Aulard referred to her as 'the most eminent and capable of the revolutionary women journalists,.5 Kuscinski, in his entry on Fran90is Robert in the Dictionnaire des Conventionnels, described her as 'the daughter of a member of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres, a woman author older than her husband, whom she surpassed in talent and knowledge'.6 Robert was born in 1763, five years after Louise. After Kuscinski's brief reference to her, she seems to have been largely forgotten until the recent surge of interest in women's role in the French Revolution. In the 1970s, an historical survey of French feminism singled out Louise de Keralio as the founder of the Journal de l'Etat et du 7 Citoyen, and as a 'pioneer in political journalism'. Yet though the celebrations surrounding the bicentenary of the French Revolution in 1989 spawned hundreds of publications and a similar number of conferences, including a colloque at Toulouse dedicated to women and the Revolution, Louise de Keralio was ignored. 8 In only one publication from this memorable year, the Chronicle of the French Revolution, did she receive any coverage, first and foremost for her contributions to literature: 'She followed the family tradition and wrote her first novel, Adelaide, at the age of eighteen. She translated many English and Italian authors and worked with difficulty for ten years on the History of Elizabeth of England,.9 During the past decade Louise de Keralio has finally come to the attention of historians of female revolutionaries, but there is still no comprehensive study in print of her life and role in the French Revolution.
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3 The Mercure National (hereafter MN) was published under various titles. Between 13 Aug. and 27 Dec. 1789, it was called the Journal d'Etat et du Citoyen; from 31 Dec. 1789 to 30 Aug. 1790, its name changed to Mercure National ou Journal d'Etat et du Citoyen; from 14 Sept. 1790 to 29 Mar. 1791, it was known as Revolutions de I'Europe et Mercure National Reunis; finally, [fOm 16 Apr. to 5 July 1791, it was known as Mercure National et Etranger ou Journal Politique de I'Europe.
41. Michelet, Histoire de la Revolution franr;aise, ed. G. Walter, 2 vols., Paris, 1952, i. 7006. 5 A. Aulard, The French Revolution. A political history, trans., 2 vols., London, 1910, i. 530. 6 A. Kuscinski, Dictonnaire des Conventionnels, Paris, 1916, p. 530. 7 M. Albistur and D. Armogathe, eds, Histoire du jeminisme franr;ais du moyen iige a nos jours, 2 vols., Paris, 1977, i. 336. 8 Les femmes et la Revolution franr;aise: colloque international, 12-13-14 avril 1989, Toulouse, 1990. Women in general did not receive much attention during the bicentenary. See K. Offen, 'The new sexual politics of French revolutionary historiography', French Historical Studies, 16, 1990,909-27. 9 J. Favier, A. Blaise, S. Cosseron, and J. Legrand eds, Chronicle of the French Revolution 1789-1799, London, 1989, p. 27.
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Partners in Revolution
Carla Hesse has dealt with Louise's achievements as historienne, treating her work as a novelist and historian. 'o Indeed, Hesse calls de Keralio 'the greatest historian of women of the era' .II She was also the subject of a short entry in a Chronology of women worldwide, a general reference work where she appears as a 'leading French revolutionary journalist' .12 The fullest available study of de Keralio is a rather brief, unpublished doctoral dissertation, 'At the center of the movement towards Enlightenment: Louise de Keralio and the French Revolution', by Kathleen Aileen Dahl. This is a study of Louise de Keralio's life and achievements as 'scholar, historian, translator, novelist, journalist, editor, publisher, and critic', which discusses her influence and ideas as 'a political theorist and Revolutionary activist' .13 De Keralio was the only child of Felix Guinement de Keralio, a Breton chevalier, professor of military tactics at the Ecole Militaire, and man of letters. He was a regular contributor to the prestigious Journal des Savants and he wrote military history, including a textbook entitled Des recherches sur les principes generaux de la tactique (1769). He was a royal censor before the Revolution, but once the Revolution began, he praised the liberty of the press in two pamphlets which appeared in 1790. 14 Her mother, Marie-Franc;oise Abeille, was an author and translator who published Les soirees d'un fat in 1762, and Les visites in 1792, following a French translation of Gray's Fables in 1759. Both Louise's parents were imbued with Enlightenment ideals, which they imparted to their daughter. 15 They had made certain that she was educated, a privilege denied to most of her contemporaries and one of the demands made by revolutionary female activists such as Olympe de Gouges.
Before the Revolution, Louise had demonstrated the depth and variety of her education through her translation of a number of works, including four volumes of a history of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany under the Medicis from the Italian, which appeared between 1783 and 1786. The conventionnel Choudieu affirmed that she had learned the classical languages of Latin and Greek, speaking a very good Latin. 16 In 1764, at the age of seventeen, she had translated the Scottish doctor John Gregory's treatise, A Comparative view of the state and faculties of man with those of the animal world, into French as Essai sur les moyens de rendre les facultes de l'homme plus utile a son bonheur. It is concerned with the extent to which the perfectibility of man contributes to his happiness. She had even written a history of the Queen Elizabeth of England in five volumes, between 1785 and 1788, to mark the centenary of the English Revolution. Though a history, this work foreshadowed some of the radical views which she would develop during the revolutionary years. Like many of her male counterparts, such as Billaud-Varenne, she criticised the corruption of the clergy both in terms of their morality and their abuse of the rights of the people. 17 Louise de Keralio's other edited works included fourteen volumes, published between 1786 and 1789, which formed the beginning of a Collection des meilleurs ouvrages franr;ais composes par des femmes. She intended it to reach forty volumes, but work on it was interrupted by the outbreak of revolution. These literary endeavours were recognised at the time. She was admitted as an honorary member to the literary Academy of Arras on 3 February 1787, a rare achievement for a woman in the eighteenth century since females were not admitted as regular members at that time. The current president of the Academy was none other than the 'sea-green' Incorruptible, Maximilien Robespierre. Although he was mysteriously absent from her induction ceremony, she always admired him for his acceptance of women into literary societies. 18 In addition to her rather voluminous literary output, Louise was also involved in the world of publishing before the revolution. She had been the 'silent partner' (as a woman the law forbade Louise to be the owner of a publishing house) in a business owned by a publisher named Jean Lagrange. Apparently, they maintained a wide network of contacts throughout Europe. 19
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10 C. Hesse, 'Revolutionary histories: the literary politics of Louise de Keralio (1758-1822)', in B.B. Diefendorf and C. Hesse eds, Culture and identity in early modern Europe 15001800, Ann Arbor, 1993, pp. 236-59. II Hesse argues that de Keralio was France's 'first and only historienne on the eve of the French Revolution', in The other Enlightenment. How French women became modern, Princeton, 2001, p. 83. 12 L. Brakeman ed., Chronology of women worldwide, New York, 1997, p. 143. 13 K.A. Dahl, 'At the center of the movement towards enlightenment: Louise Keralio Robert and the French Revolution', University of Minnesota, unpublished PhD thesis, 1996, p. 6. 14 See De la Liberte de la presse and De la liberte d'enoncer, d'ecrire et d'imprimer la pensee, Paris, 1790. . 15 See Aulard, The French Revolution, i. 172; Hesse, 'Revolutionary histories', p. 238; 'Louis-Felix-Guinement de Keralio' and 'Louise Felicite Guinement de Keralio' in L. Michaud ed., Biographie universelle ancienne et moderne, Paris, 1854, xxi. 535-6. The fullest biograp:1ical details of Louise's parents may be found in Dal1l, 'At the center', pp.9-23.
119
R. Choudieu, Mbnoires et notes, Paris, 1897, p. 478. See a review of the book in the Journal Encyclopedique, Dec. 1787, p. 440. 18 W. Stevens, Women of the French Revolution, London, 1929, p. 173; Biographie universelle, xxi. 535-6; Dahl, At the center, pp. 37-8. Dahl argues that Robespierre was absent from the ceremony because he did not want to be viewed as a 'feminist'. 19 See C. Hesse, Publishing and cultural politics in revolutionary Paris, 1789-1810, Berkeley, 1991, pp. 30-1. 16 17
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Louise's husband and collaborator, Fran<;ois Robert, originated from Gimnee in the Austrian Netherlands, from a very different background to her own. It is doubtful that they would have come together had there not been a revolution, for the Revolution and its principles were what they shared in common. Robert was the son of good bourgeois stock rather than the learned aristocracy. His father Jean-Fran<;ois owned four farms, was an innkeeper, kept a grocery store, and from time to time acted as a local municipal official. Following family tradition Jean-Fran<;ois also served as a local magistrate at the Court of Justice in Gimnee between 1757 and 1762.20 Before he qualified for the law, Robert had studied at the local Oratorian college, the Confrerie des Grands Pardons ou de Notre Dame du Mont Carmel. After obtaining his qualification from the University of Douai, he went on to practise law in the French border-town of Givet, not far from Gimnee. In common with other provincial lawyers who would become revolutionaries, he led a very conventional and settled life before 1789. Yet, like many others, Robert was soon attracted by the revolutionary fervour. He was chosen commander of the National Guard of Givet, and in August of that year he travelled to Paris to represent the interests of the people of Givet against the municipal officers who were allegedly profiteering from the grain trade. Although he lost the case, Robert decided to remain in the capital, and it was there that he met his future wife and many other radical journalists. 21 In fact, Robert met Louise through her father, Louis Guinement de Keralio, whom he also knew through the Jacobin c1ub?2 He soon found lodgings in the same building as Louise and her parents on 17 rue de Grammont, before the couple were married on 14 May 1790. 23 Louise de Keralio and Fran<;ois Robert formed part of a network of radical journalists during the first two years of the French Revolution, at a time before they became deputies and national politicians. De Keralio and Robert joined others, such as Desmoulins, Garran de Coulon, BillaudVarenne, Brissot, Danton, Marat, Carra, and Mercier, who were already For a brief synopsis of Robert's early years, see L. Antheunis, Le conventionnel beige Franr;ois Robert, 1763-1826, et sa Jemme Louise de Keralio, 1758-1822, Wetteren. 1955, 6 - 10 . 1 Ibid., p. 10; L. Whaley, Radicals: politics and republicanism in the French Revolution, Stroud, 2000, p. 6. 22 G. Mazel, 'Louise de Keralio et Pierre-Fran~ois Robert: precurseurs de J'idee republicaine', Bulletin de la Societe de I'Histoire de Paris et de l'lle-de-France (1990),182; A. Aulard ed., La societe des Jacobins, 6 vols., Paris, 1889-97, i. xxxvi. 23 Archives nationales (hereafter AN) MC X/786. Louise started signing her name on articles in the Mercure as 'Madame Robert' in June 1790. 20
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resident in Paris. They all welcomed the Revolution with open arms. The revolutionary changes, which included the abolition of censorship, opened up the possibility of new careers for these men, many of whom had not fared so well under the old regime, and stirred an interest in politics for those who had already been successful. Given their ambitious nature, it is not surprising that they were enthusiastic about the changes which 1789 brought about. Many threw themselves into the new careers of journalism, pamphleteering, and popular activism. Those who turned to journalism recognised themselves as a band of writers. Carra, editor of Les Annales Patriotiques et Litteraires with LouisSebastien Mercier, was also a writer for the Mercure National?4 Carra proposed a 'Federative Pact of writers and patriotic journalists', to protect journalists from their enemies because he felt the papers of Desmoulins, editor of the Revolutions de France et de Brabant, and Martel, co-author with Freron of the journal L'Orateur du Peuple, were coming under attack. He proclaimed that they all wrote useful articles on the progress of reason and enlightenment, and the maintenance of the Rights of Man. In addition, they uncovered aristocratic plots. Therefore, they should all unite to protect their common interests. 25 In his study of the radical Parisian press during the early years of the Revolution, historian Jack Censer included Louise de Keralio's newspaper as one of the six most significant titles. He judged these papers on the basis of their dedication to popular sovereignty, in essence their commitment to 'Ie peuple'. His selection of radical journals was almost completely identical to those chosen by Carra and all of them were connected to the Cordeliers club: Desmoulins' Revolutions de France et de Brabant; Audouin's Journal Universel; Prudhomme's Revolutions de Paris; Marat's Ami du Peuple; and Freron's Orateur du Peuple. 26 These radical journalists not only agreed on specific issues, but also worked together in a Parisian network of newspapers, societies, and clubs. This was true in terms of their attitudes towards the political issues which they supported in the Constituent Assembly and the causes which they espoused. In an attempt to further their aspirations, they also formed societies, such as the Cordeliers, the Cercle Social, the Societe Fraternelle des Deux Sexes, and the Society for the Abolition of Primogeniture.
W
Carra knew Louis Keralio from the Parisian district of Filles-Saint-Thomas where they were both deputies. For details on Carra's chequered past, see Whaley, Radicals, p. 13. 25 Les Annales Patriotiques et Litteraires de la France (hereafter APL), 3 July 1790. 26 J. Censer, Prelude to power: the Parisian radical press, 1789-1791, Baltimore, 1976, 24
pp.4, 13-14.
De Keralio's journal had considerable influence on the progress of the Revolution. Many types of issues were covered and commented upon in the Mercure National. For the most part, they were overwhelmingly political and they sought to popularise radical ideas. One issue was the king's veto, and related to this question, his general role in the constitution. As editor of the Mercure, and in common with agitators like Brissot and Desmoulins, Louise opposed the king having any sort of veto, either absolute or suspensive. Like them she was in favour of a very limited role for the executive branch and a very wide one for the legislature. The king was considered to be no more than the 'first citizen of the land'. He did not represent the nation; he was the 'officer and agent of it; consequently, only the national assembly can exercise this portion of the sovereignty'. What, then, was the role attributed to the king? His function was to 'watch over the external security of the empire, to uphold its laws and its possessions' .27 On 15 March 1791, Louise published an article entitled 'An examination of one of the most important questions concerning the Constitution': who was to have the right to choose ministers, the king or the nation? Naturally, her paper sided with the nation, or the assembly?8 A further issue under consideration in the Mercure was the Constituent Assembly's decree on war and peace. The major concern for the deputies was determining which power should possess the right to declare war and peace. The more conservative elements favoured the executive, while the more radical contingent reserved this decision for the assembly or legislative power. The Mercure's bias lay with those deputies who had voted in favour of the 'nation', and Louise stated unambiguously that 'the right to declare war and peace belongs to the nation'. Journalists tended to define the 'nation' as the country's representatives in the Assembly. According to this line of reasoning, if the king was given the right of declaring war or peace, then 'we [meaning the citizens of France] will be slaves'. Robespierre delivered several speeches on this matter, 29 many of which were summarised and praised in the Mercure. As always, the role of the king was played down. Indeed, Louise de Keralio's pamphlet, Observations sur quelques articles du projet de constitution de M. Mounier, published shortly before her marriage, was written while deputies were debating the king's authority. She maintained that the king was a mere citizen and simply the guardian of all citizens belonging to the nation. This was the first article of the social contract. Her pamphlet was written specifically to protest against some of the penalties which 27 28 29
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MN, 6 June 1790. Ibid., IS Mar. 1791. Ibid., 20 May 1790.
123
conservative deputies such as Mounier were proposing when someone insulted the king. 3o The Mercure National was used as a vehicle to wage war against the more conservative extra-parliamentary organizations, such as the Club Monarchique and the Societe de 1789. True to its name, the Club Monarchique advocated a particularly powerful role for the king, while those revolutionaries who advocated a constitutional monarchy with a greater role for the king than Louise and her group would allow frequented the Societe de 1789. The latter group, formed in 1790, was given the most coverage in the Mercure, which claimed that royalist decrees were prepared there, while popular bills were conceived at the Jacobins. In many ways, the Societe was a gentlemen's club, complete with sumptuous dinners. Fran~ois Robert contrasted the setting of the two clubs' meetings: while the Jacobins modestly sat on wooden benches, with only the benefit of a faint glimmer from three damp wicks, the 'Messeigneurs' of the 1789 club sat 'proudly on velvet, surrounded by golden panelling, and light from 1,001 candles' .31 Louise was very concerned that revolutionaries employed the 'tu', or familiar form of address. To promote this, she published an article entitled 'On the influence of words, the power of custom'. She argued that the 'tu' as opposed to the 'vous' form should be systematically employed, because the 'vous' form originated from the feudal era and was the form of address used by the lord and his vassals. The expression then gained use by all who owned property. She called it an 'insidious leftover from feudal times'. De Keralio was attacking privilege through discourse. Even language should be democratic. Aulard credited her as the 'first person who urged the French to treat each other as true equals through the reciprocal use of the 'tu' form. 32 De Keralio also denounced the use of the terms 'monsieur' and 'madame' as undemocratic. She preferred 'citoyen' or 'citoyenne' and referred to herself as 'la soeur Louise' .33 Louise de Keralio and her husband Robert also defended Brissot and his democratic causes. When Brissot came into conflict with a group of moderate deputies, consisting of Antoine Barnave, Adrien Duport and Alexandre Lameth, collectively known as the 'triumvirate', the Roberts came to his assistance. Firstly, they provided support for Brissot in his
Ibid., 24 Apr. 1791; APL, 25 Apr. 1791. 'Quelques retlexions sur Ie club des Jacobins el sur Ie club de 1789', MN, IS Oct. 1789; 'Mes justes craintes a propos de la propagande du Club Monarchique', ibid., 31 Dec. 1790. 32 A. Aulard, 'Le tutoiement pendant la Revolution', RevolUlion franr;aise, 33-4, 1897-8, 482-4. 33 MN, 14 Dec. 1790. Antheunis, Le conventionnel beige, p. 18. 30
31
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crusade against the slave trade, which the 'triumvirate' supported. Louise called Brissot an 'ardent friend of the disadvantaged blacks', and 'a friend of liberty and of humanity'. The abolition of the slave trade was indeed an important concern of the editor of the Mercure National. Evidence of this may be found in several issues of the journal in which de Keralio confirmed her support for the Societe des Amis des Noirs, a society founded in 1788 by Brissot, whose goal was the abolition of the slave trade. She praised this society when reviewing a pamphlet written by Brissot entitled Memoire sur les noirs.34 She provided the same positive press for Petion's Discours sur la traite des noirs. 35 Brissot's other clash with the moderate deputies concerned a disagreement about two rival clubs that had been established at Lons-Ie-Saunier. One of the 'triumvirs', Lameth, had defended the more 36 conservative club, which Brissot claimed was too exclusive. Brissot supported the more radical society, likewise championed by the Roberts because they felt it was the true Jacobin club. Unable to sit as a deputy in the Constituent Assembly, Louise de Keralio provided support for deputies of the left who held similar principles to her own. She singled out Petion for special attention. Her journal was overflowing with praise for him. Everything he wrote from speeches to books, was reviewed in glowing terms. When Petion's Avis aux Fram;ais sur le salut de la patrie, initially published in 1788, was re-issued in 1789, the Mercure proclaimed: 'M. Petion de Villeneuve has constructed in the most brilliant manner the Rights of Man, that sacred equality which, above everything, is going to make France a great family where the right of primogeniture is unknown'. This is almost the same language employed by Carra: 'There are few writers who are this eloquent and who write with as much originality and precision as he does' .37 Reviewing Petion's speech on the abolition of the slave trade, de Keralio described him as 'one of the supporters of French liberties, one of the unshakeable bulwarks of the constitution ... '. The speech, she continued, 'is one of the first monuments of wisdom in favour of individual liberty for everyone who inhabits our globe ... Let us give a just tribute of eulogies to M. Petion, to all those like him who predate happy centuries where only one mankind will reign over the entire world' .38
As stated above, Louise de Keralio became devoted to Robespierre before the revolution, when he made her a member of the Academy of Arras. She heaped glowing praise on him: 'That Maximilien Robespierre receives the tribute of my esteem and my friendship. Since the beginning of the National Assembly I have not stopped following the conduct and opinions of the deputies and he is at the forefront of those who are always faithful to their principles' .39 Both Louise and Franc;ois were especially interested in the creation and propagation of popular societies and they used their paper as a way of promoting this goal. Louise praised the 'club fraternel des Jacobins' in February 1790, expressing the desire that 'similar societies would be founded in various sections of the capital and that all would correspond with the first society'. The aim of these new societies would be to 'deliver the last blow to despotism' by educating people in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and other revolutionary ideas. Both husband and wife became members of the Fraternal Society of the Two Sexes, one of the few revolutionary clubs to which women were admitted. De Keralio lavished praise on this society and other popular societies in her paper on a number of occasions. It was here that women and others excluded from political life, the so-called 'passive citizens' who were unable to vote, could engage in meaningful political discourse. 40 Louise encouraged the political participation of women from the lower ranks of society by persuading them to join this society, in order 'to raise them by fraternity, to the dignity of man' .41 Meanwhile, the Cordelier club, of which Franc;ois Robert was a member from the start, began to admit women in June 1791, when its statutes were amended, and he was elected president of this society on 19 July 1791, just two days after the presentation of the republican petition on 42 the Champ de Mars. Already well known as a result of her journalism, de Keralio took a prominent public role in these societies. She often led the meetings, which were held in the same building as the Jacobins. She was not, however, always too welcoming of new members from her own sex. When Etta Palm d' Aedlers applied for admission to the Societe Fraternelle, de Keralio was opposed on the grounds that she had been working as a spy for the Prussian government! There was no evidence for this, and it probably represents a
MN, 31 Jan. 1790. 35 Ibid., 18 Sept. 1790. 36 PF, 4 April, 17 May, 18 June 1790; 2, 5, 12,20,25 Feb.; 6, 7, 13, 15 Mar.; 7, 25 Apr. 1791; MN, 22 Mar. 1791. 37 APL, 4 Nov. 1789. 38 MN, 21 Mar. and 18 Apr. 1790.
Ibid., 10 May 1791. Ibid., 22 Apr. 1791. 41 Mazel, 'Louise de Keralio', 197. 42 MN, IO May 1791. Unfortunately, the minutes of the society no longer exist. For a useful discussion of popular societies, see I. Bourdin, Les socieres populaires a Paris pendant la Revolution, Paris, 1937.
34
39
40
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reluctance on Louise's part to accept the presence of some female competition. This incident suggests that for de Keralio, political activism did not always demand solidarity with other women. It may also suggest that Louise was as capable of the same antagonism towards potential rivals as her male colleagues. Etta was equally well renowned in Parisian clubs such as the Cercle Social as an orator and activist in her own right, and she had the written support of radicals like Carra and Brissot. Despite de Keralio's protests, Etta was admitted to the society and in her maiden speech on 12 June 1791 she reminded members of her services to patriotism, stressing that she had been born in a republic - she was from Holland - and that the principles of 'liberty and equality' were anchored in her heart. Finally, she vowed to 'die for liberty and to dedicate her efforts to the usefulness and prosperity of all' .43 How did the role of other women, such as Madame Roland or Madame Desmoulins, who were both linked with prominent male revolutionaries, compare with that of Louise de Keralio? These women offer an interesting comparison, because they were all in the same circle of friends and part of the same radical milieu, and because we possess some historical documentation on all of them. Madame Roland left many letters and memoirs, while Madame Desmoulins wrote a diary on the night of 10 August. All three were acquainted with one another, held revolutionary salons in their homes, and also supported their husbands' revolutionary careers and activities. Madame Roland was a ghost writer for Brissot's Patriote Fram;ais. She did not sign any of the articles that Brissot published in his paper, but we know from her memoirs that he often included her work. 'My fiery letters so pleased Brissot that he often used them in writing pieces for his journal, where I would discover them with surprise and pleasure', she declared. 44 Neither Madame Roland, nor Madame Desmoulins, owned and edited a paper, as Louise de Keralio did, but Roland held a political salon in her apartment on the rue Guenegaud, in the Latin quarter, four times a week in 1791. The group which met there included many of the leading radical politicians of the day: Petion, Buzot and Robespierre represented the 'left of the left' in the Constituent Assembly, while Brissot and other radical journalists formed the contingent outside the chamber. Yet Madame Roland did not playa leading role in it. As one of her biographers wrote, 'she did not crave to be at the center of attention at all
times', for Roland understood that a woman's place was in the background. 45 There is no evidence that she participated in the political discussions. In fact, she was very frank about her role as the host of a political salon. She went so far as to remove herself physically from the men - they sat in a circle, while she remained aloof in the comer sewing, observing and writing. As she put it: 'I knew what was appropriate behaviour for my sex and I never strayed from it' .46 As Etienne Dumont, who sometimes attended the meetings, recounted: 'I have seen in her home several committees of ministers and the principal Girondins. A woman seemed somewhat out of place at these gatherings, but she did not take part in the discussions; during most of them she remained at her desk and wrote letters, and ordinarily appeared occupied with something else, although she did not miss a word' .47 Lucile DesmouJins was the wife of one of the leading radical journalists of the French Revolution, Camille Desmoulins, who was editor of the Revolutions de France et de Brabant. Historian Jean-Paul Bertaud regards the Desmoulins as the representative revolutionary couple and, in this sense, they should be compared with the Roberts as a husband and wife team. 48 Whether or not Lucile aided Camille with his journal is unclear, but we are certain that she was responsible for one piece of writing, namely her journal, or 'portefeuille' of events on the night of 9-10 August 1792 when the monarchy was overthrown by violent insurrection. She, too, held a salon, at the Desmoulins' apartment on the rue de I' Odeon, though not a great deal is known about it, apart from the fact that primarily left-wing deputies of the Convention and their wives attended it, Louise de Keralio among them. Lucile's salon resembled social gatherings which involved dinners rather than politics. She recalled that many people came, but she paid little attention to who they were and forgot them as soon as she saw them. None the less, she mentioned the names of Danton, Thuriot, Freron and Madame Robert. 49 Louise de Keralio's salon was rather different to that of Lucile Desmoulins, but perhaps more similar to Manon Roland's. However, since Louise was the editor of a paper and her salon primarily involved meetings of journalists, she most likely played a much greater role than Madame Roland. She first held a salon while she was still living with her parents in
126
G. May, Madame Roland and the age of revolution, New York, 1970, p. 184. P. de Roux ed., Memoires de Madame Roland, Paris, 1966, pp. 62-3. 47 E. Dumont, Souvenirs sur Mirabeau, cited in C.-A. Dauban, Etude sur Madame Roland, Paris, 1864, p. cxxxv. 48 J.-P. Bertaud, Camille et Lucile Desmoulins, Paris, 1986. 49 See L. Desmoulins, 'Portefeuille', Bibliotheque historique de la Ville de Paris, Manuscrits 986 (Res. 25) fo!. 181 et seq.; Aulard, The French Revolution, i. 173. 45
46
Discours de reception, prononce a la Societe fraternelle par Etta Palm, nee d'Aelders, Ie 12 juin 1791, et justification sur la denonciation de Louise Robert. 44 M.-J. Roland, The memoirs of Madame Roland: a heroine of the French Revolution, trans. and ed. E. Shuckberg, New York, 1910, p. 12.
43
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1789, but as her political views became increasingly radical and diverged from those of her father, with whom she quarrelled, this salon came to an end. 50 When de Keralio married Robert, and went to live on the rue des Marais in the Cordelier section of Theatre-Franc;ais, she resumed her salon, which sounds like a meeting place for both Cordelier journalists and politicians. Twice a week, Danton, Chabot, Desmoulins, Antoine and others met at the Roberts' apartment. 5I What is important from the feminine perspective is the prominent public role that Louise played in the debates about the Revolution, in full partnership with her husband. It is true that Desmoulins referred to Louise's husband as 'Robert the democrat' and included him in his list of 'fiery patriots', yet he made no mention of Robert's wife. 52 Here one can contrast Desmoulins with Brissot. Many journalists from this group sought the latter's advice and endorsement when they launched their own newspapers, and Louise de Keralio was no exception when she was starting up her radical newspaper, the Mercure National. On 11 August 1789, she wrote to Brissot requesting an announcement for her new title and thanking him for the copy of his newspaper, which he had given her. She had sent him a copy of her own paper and added: 'I have done my part by announcing your work in my number 2. I have tried to express as eloquently as possible the good which you have done and that which you have foreseen' .53 Brissot did not disappoint her. On 21 August 1789, in reply to her request, he wrote: 'Mlle. Keralio has just published the first issue of her paper. It breathes the purest patriotism and reinforces the healthiest and most rigid political principles' .54 Brissot continued to support her newspaper throughout this period, praising it in lavish terms - 'The best principles are developed in this democratic Journal' - and by printing various extracts from it in the Patriote Franrais.55 For instance, on 2 February 1790, he reproduced an extract from her article on the liberty of the press. In addition, he recognised Louise's pre-revolutionary scholarly writings, remarking that she was 'distinguished by her profound knowledge of history' .56 Brissot went further than providing collegial support for the
Roberts' journal; he lent the couple money on a number of occasions. When Louise asked if Robert could borrow another 200 livres from Brissot, she called herself his 'good sister' and 'fellow citizen' .57 De Keralio and Robert were not simply prominent in revolutionary circles. They were also active in promoting the radicalisation of the revolutionary network. The fraternal societies, which met in small groups, publicised in the popular press, constituted a focal point where commissioners ran 'correspondence and communication centres'. They would assemble every two weeks to 'diffuse instruction and brotherhood' among the people. 58 On 7 May 1791, a central committee of the fraternal societies, of which Franc;ois Robert was the head and Louise the secretary, became a focal point for the political activity directed against proposed decrees banning group petitioning and promoting the silver mark (a qualification which restricted the membership of the National Assembly to the wealthiest members of French society).59 It was composed of four delegates from each of the clubs, except for the Jacobins, which refused to send any. At this stage of the Revolution the Jacobins remained a fairly elitist club, composed primarily of deputies and requiring higher membership dues than the more popular societies. Women were never admitted as members of the Jacobins, although some women, such as Louise, did address them from time to time. It was only after the Varennes crisis and the presentation of the republican petition at the Champ de Mars that the Jacobin club became more radical. Brissot and Robert were the only revolutionaries who openly recommended a republic before the king's flight to Varennes and they had been criticised by Laclos, editor of the Jacobin newspaper Journal des Amis de la Constitution for doing SO.60 Robert had published a pamphlet, Le republicanisme adapte a la France, around December 1790, in which he argued in favour of the establishment of a republic, even though he knew most people were opposed to it. At the time, this was indeed a radical position for, even after the king's flight, some revolutionaries were reluctant to proclaim themselves openly in favour of a republic: Robespierre, for example, persisted in declaring that 'a nation can be free
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Dahl, 'At the center', p. 114. I. Bourdin, Les socieres populaires, p. 142; A. Aulard, 'Robert Rhum', La Revue de Paris, 4, 1909, p. 524. 52 Revolutions de France et de Brabant, 13 Dec. 1790 and 24 Jan. 1791. 53 Keralio Robert's unpublished correspondence with Brissot is found in AN Archives privees (hereafter AP) 446, Papiers Brissot, Carton 7, Keralio Robert to Brissot, 11 Aug. 1789. 54 PF, 21 Aug. 1789. 55 Ibid., 21 Aug. 1789; 2 Feb., 20 Mar., 16 June, 13 Sept. and 19 Dec. 1790. 56 Ibid., 21 Aug. 1789.
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50 51
AN AP 446, Papiers Brissot, Carton 7, Keralio Robert to Brissot, 29 Aug. 1789. Kates, The Cercle Social, p. 146. 59 Roland to Lanthenas, 22 Jan. 1790, in Papiers Roland, Bibliotheque nationale, Nouvelles acquisitions fran,
58
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with a monarch' .61 However, in the wake of the Varennes incident many radicals did begin clamouring for a republic. The more radical Cordelier and Cercle Social groups decided to draw up a republican petition, but the Jacobins' resolution, drafted on 15 July, included the phrase that their intention was to replace the king 'by constitutional means'. This was unacceptable to the committed republicans at the Cercle Social and Cordeliers, because it suggested the replacement of Louis XVI by the Duke of Orleans as regent, and they refused to endorse it. A new petition, which replaced the phrase 'by constitutional means' with 'nor any other' [king], in other words a republic, was presented by Robert and Bonneville, one of the 62 founders of the Cercle Social. Though this republican petition was signed by Fran~ois Robert, it was probably drafted by Louise: the direct and emphatic style resembled her writing more than that of her husband. In addition, it is written in the same terminology she had employed for a piece in her newspaper: 'The republican party does not want the current king or any other ... it believes that monarchy is a form of government which, by its nature, is pernicious ... '. She concluded her article by demanding a republican constitution and criticised the Jacobins for not having advocated 63 one. It was this petition that was read to the gathering at the Champ de Mars on 17 July 1791. Louise de Keralio figured prominently among the petitioners together with her husband. According to Michelet, they stayed the entire day persuading people to sign, while Madame Roland just appeared in the 64 morning. Indeed, husband and wife narrowly escaped death in the repression that followed the 'massacre' on the Champ de Mars. Madame Roland wrote that 'an arrest warrant is out for the brave Robert; persecution has been initiated against the vigorous patriots ... ,.65 At de Keralio's request, Roland hid the couple in her apartment on the evening of 17 July, but two years later she painted a less flattering portrait of her self-invited guests. For a pair who were hiding from the police, she recalled, they acted very oddly. They made themselves into public spectacles, standing on the balcony shouting at every passerby.66 The Champ de Mars crisis brought the end of the Mercure National, though the major reason for its demise was apparently financial, since the paper had been making a loss for some
time. De Keralio herself continued to participate in revolutionary debates through speeches she made at the Fraternal Society of the Two Sexes, but she was a far less active participant in the later years of the Revolution than she had been between 1789 and 1791. Her absence might be explained by the birth of a daughter in 1791, which brought the responsibilities and demands of motherhood. This brief excursion into the world of the wife and husband team of Louise de Keralio and Fran~ois Robert during the formative years of the French Revolution provides historians with a model of professional cooperation between women and men. The radical views and various revolutionary activities discussed above demonstrate that women could have a role in revolutionary politics without going through the formal political process. Rather than being mere observers, women could participate in a meaningful way through the use of the pen and informal activism in clubs and societies. Journalism and pamphleteering provided a medium through which de Keralio and Robert could disseminate their progressive views to the Parisian populace. Issues such as the royal veto, the relative powers of executive and legislature, the sovereignty of the people, and the campaign to abolish the slave trade were all analysed in the Mercure National. De Keralio always came out in favour of the most radical position. Her support of the radical politicians of the early Revolution also offers a testament to her understanding of the politics going on around her and her commitment to 'the left'. Unlike some of the other revolutionary women, de Keralio was not a 'feminist', for she did not work to further the rights of women in the same way as Olympe de Gouges, for instance. Yet through the medium of the Mercure National she wrote to encourage the progress of the democratic revolution, which required the drafting of a new constitution and the creation of a republic. Louise de Keralio Robert provides us with the example of a woman who was doing a man's job for her times, and who was accepted by the men of her radical circle as an equal.
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61
Revolutions de Paris, 6-13 Aug. 1791.
For a summary of the radicals' behaviour and their petitions at the time of the Varennes crisis, see L. Whaley, 'The Varennes crisis and the divisions amongst the radicals during the French Revolution', Modern and Contemporary France, 38, 1989,34-5. 63 MN, 3 July 1791. 64 Michelet, Histoire, i. 706. 65 Madame Roland to Champagneux, 14 August 1791, in Lettres de Madame Roland, ii. 358. 66 See Memoires de Madame Roland, pp. 116-17. 62
Reason, Revolution and Religion
Chapter 7
Reason, Revolution and Religion: Gregoire and the Search for Reconciliation James McMillan
In May 1831 an old priest lay dying in Paris. He was no ordinary priest, but the abbe Henri Gregoire, one of the most remarkable figures of the French Revolution and one time Bishop of Blois in the Constitutional Church, a cleric who, at the height of the Terror, dared to appear at the Convention still wearing his episcopal purple. In the aftermath of the July Revolution of 1830, the Archbishop of Paris, Mgr de Quelen, a staunch supporter of the late Bourbon dynasty, denied permission for the dying clergyman to receive the last rites of the Catholic Church unless he retracted his oath of loyalty to the former Constitutional Church. But, in his final agony, aged almost eighty-one, Gregoire was not prepared to renege on the convictions of a lifetime. For a fortnight, an exchange of letters was conducted between the archdiocese of Paris and Gregoire and his friends in an effort to make the archbishop change his mind, but even government pressure could not move Quelen. In the end, Gregoire was given the last sacraments by his friend the abbe Guillon de Montleon, confessor to the queen, who paid for his disobedience by forfeiting the see of Beauvais to which he had recently been nominated. From the Church, Gregoire received only the simplest of funeral services, conducted by another friend, the abbe Barradere. Yet in what was one of the earliest mass protests against the government of Louis Philippe, outside of the church of l' Abbaye aux-Bois in the rue de Sevres, a crowd of some 20,000 workers and students was waiting to accompany the mortal remains of Gregoire to the cemetery of Montpamasse for burial. 1 In death, as in life, Gregoire remained a figure of controversy, admired by some but loathed by many more. 2 Memoires de Gregoire, ed. J.-M. Leniaud, Paris, 1989, pp. 11-12. The best introduction in English is now the collection of essays edited by J.D. Popkin and R.H. Popkin, The abbe Gregoire and his world, Dordrecht, 2000. Also valuable is B. Plongeron's short L'abbe Gregoire (1750-1831), ou l 'Arche de la fraternite, Paris, 1989, 1
2
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In 1831, the intransigence of Mgr de Quelen vis-a-vis Gregoire was a striking illustration of the chasm which separated the nineteenth-century French Catholic Church from the French revolutionary tradition. For the Church, the Revolution was both a rupture, a break with the country's monarchical and religious past, and a disaster which had culminated in the dechristianisation policies of the Jacobin Republic. Already in the first half of the nineteenth century, it was clear that there were 'two Frances', one which identified with the revolutionary idea of the secular nation state, and another which opposed it in the name of religion and of a Christian and traditional conception of the social order. While a minority of liberal Catholics believed that religion and liberty could and should be reconciled, the public face of the post-Revolutionary Church came to be represented mainly by a new, uncompromising, ultramontane Catholicism personified by the militant and polemical journalist, Louis Veuillot, editor of the newspaper L' Univers, which campaigned stridently for the restoration of a Christian social order. By the end of the nineteenth century the Catholic Church and the republican state - after 1870 incarnated by the Third Republic - were once again at war, as under the Revolution, in a Kulturkampf which extremists on both sides understood as a war to the death. 3 Yet, at the outset of the French Revolution, this was a far cry from how Gregoire and many other patriotic clergymen expected things to tum out. As much as Lamennais, Montalembert and Lacordaire after him, 4 Gregoire believed that God and liberty were on the same side. He and his confreres greeted the events of 1789 with huge enthusiasm, anticipating beneficial reforms in the Church as well as the state. The world was to be remade anew, and in the new society French Catholic Christianity would flourish as never before, thanks to the development of a new institutional base in the form of the Constitutional Church. The history of the latter has been unduly neglected, particularly in a context where virtually all other aspects of the Revolutionary experience
with an excellent critical bibliography. The indispensable monograph is now R. HermonBelot, L'abbe Gregoire: la politique et la verite, Paris, 2000. 3 On the French culture war, see J.F. McMillan, 'Priest hits girl: the front line of the "War of the two Frances"', in European culture wars, eds C. Clark and W. Kaiser, Cambridge, forthcoming. 4 On these figures, P.N. Steams, Priest and revolutionary. Lamennais and the dilemma of French Catholicism, New York, 1967; B. Reardon, Liberalism and tradition. Aspects of Catholic thought in nineteenth-century France, Cambridge, 1975; and J. Gadille ed., Charles de Montalembert: catholicisme et liberte, Paris, 1970.
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have been subjected to minute examination. s The point of the present essay, however, is not so much to recall the history of a fascinating religious experiment that failed as to explore Gregoire's own vision of Christianity reconciled with Revolution. What were the religious impulses behind his revolutionary politics? What, in particular, was appropriate political conduct for a Catholic priest in the revolutionary situation? Was it possible to fashion a new kind of political Catholicism to replace the old alliance of throne and altar? And why, crucially, despite the Revolution's descent into anti-Christian persecution, did Gregoire refuse to repudiate it, as so many nineteenth-century Catholics - such as Mgr de Quelen and Louis Veuillot would do? To begin to answer these questions, it is necessary to emphasise the extent to which Gregoire should be seen as a man of the Enlightenment which, one does well to remember, had a religious as well as an antireligious dimension and exercised a profound influence not only on sceptical lay intellectuals but also on many clergymen. In most countries of Europe, indeed, the vast intellectual and cultural transformations which we know as the Enlightenment were driven by a zeal for religious reform rather than by any antipathy to orthodox religious belief. 6 France, where the Enlightenment was nothing if not diverse, was exceptional in that enlightened thought was for the most part hostile to organised religion. Philosophes like Voltaire and Diderot identified the Catholic Church as the main barrier to the progress and perfection of mankind, while the writings of Rousseau encouraged a fashionable vogue for deist belief not in the God of Christianity but in the God of Nature dear to the vicar of Savoy.? Nevertheless, even France, like Austria, Spain and Italy, experienced a Catholic Enlightenment which shaped the minds and outlook of many pre1789 clergymen who would become the clerge patriote of 1789 - men like the abbe Fauchet and Adrien Lamourette, Gregoire's teacher at the seminary of Metz, a distinguished Catholic apologist who, under the
On the Constitutional Church, see N. Aston, Religion and Revolution in France, 17801804, Basingstoke, 2000, pp. 196-219. Still important is older work by A. Gazier, including Etudes sur l'histoire religieuse de la Revolutionfram;aise d'apres des documents originaux et inedits, Paris, 1887; 'Henri Gregoire, eveque constitutionnel de Loir-et-Cher, 1791-180 I', in Revue historique, 1878,280-296, and 1879, 334-121; 'Gregoire et I'eglise de France', Revue historique, 1881,34-82,283-332. 6 On the Catholic Enlightenment, B. Plongeron, 'Recherches sur "I' Aufklarung" catholique en Europe occidentale (1770-1830), Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, 16, 1969, 555-605. 7 Among many works, N. Hampson, The Enlightenment, London, 1968 and D. Outram, The Enlightenment, Cambridge, 1995. 5
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Revolution, became constitutional bishop of the Rh6ne-et-Loire (Lyon) and who ended his days a victim of the Terror on 11 January 1794. 8 Gregoire himself was a classic example of the enlightened and patriotic clergyman. Born in 1750 at Veho, a village in the duchy of Lorraine (which only became French in 1766), Henri-Baptiste Gregoire was of modest origins, the son of a tailor and his pious wife but, as a precociously bright school pupil, he was marked out as a potential recruit to the clergy by his local priest and, thanks to generous local patrons, given a good education at the hands of the Jesuits. Even before his ordination in 1776, he had become active in provincial intellectual life, joining local literary and philosophical societies and publishing a poem which received an award from the Academy of Nancy in 1773. He also travelled extensively in the Netherlands and Germany. As parish priest at Embermenil from 1782, he immediately established a parish library and continued to pursue various wide-ranging educational and philanthropic projects which included practical matters such as agricultural reform. 9 The question which increasingly absorbed Gregoire's attention, however, was the plight of the Jewish community in Alsace and Lorraine (which was one of only two regions in France to have a Jewish population of any significance, the other being the Bordeaux area where there was a concentration of Sephardic Jews). In Alsace and Lorraine, the Jews were principally Ashkenazim, followers of the German rite and generally obliged to live under harsher conditions than the southerners. In the 1780s, their status was an object of concern to reform-minded intellectuals like PierreLouis Roederer, a prominent figure in the Academy of Metz, and it was at Roederer's prompting that Gregoire submitted an essay to a competition organised by the Academy on the subject: 'What are the means to make the Jews happy and useful?'. After some revisions, Gregoire's Essai sur La regeneration physique, moraLe et politique des juifs was awarded a prize in 1788 and published in 1789. An English translation appeared soon afterwards. 10
On the derge patriote in general, see Hermon-Belot, L'abbe Gregoire, p. 63ff and B. Plongeron, Conscience religieuse en Revolution, Paris, 1969. See also N. Ravitch, 'The abbe Fauchet: romantic religion during the French Revolution', Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 13, 1974,247-62; L. Berthe, 'Gregoire, eleve de Lamourette', Revue du Nord, 44, 1962, 39-46; R. Damton, The kiss of Lamourette. Reflections on cultural history, New York, 1990. 9 On Gregoire's early life, see A. Sutter, Les annees de jeunesse de l'abbe Gregoire, Pierron, 1992. 10 Essai sur la regeneration physique, morale et politique des Juifs, ouvrage couronne par la Societe Royale des Sciences et des Arts de Metz, le 23 aout, 1788, par M. Gegoire, cure du diocese, actuellement de la meme societe, Metz, 1788. There are two recent editions, one 8
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The Essay argued in classic Enlightenment vein that any vices to be found in the Jewish people were a product not of nature but of circumstances. Any people, affirmed Gregoire, oppressed in the same manner as the Hebrews would have the same faults. It was impossible to demand virtues 'from those whom we have compelled to become victims. Let us reform their education to reform their hearts; it has long been observed that they are men as well as we, and they are so before they become Jews'. Gregoire was equally scathing about those who contended that the Jews were incapable of patriotic sentiments:
Hermon-Belot that he was a man of his times, who perforce saw Jews as a minority in a largely Catholic society. In so far as Gregoire wished for a conversion of the Jews, this was to be the work of God, not man. It was certainly not to be accomplished by persecution. 14 Another cause with which Gregoire identified wholeheartedly and which likewise reveals him as a man of the Enlightenment was that of black people and slaves. Over some forty years he spoke out in favour of the emancipation of mulattos and Negroes. A member of the Societe des Amis des Noirs, founded in 1787 to bring about the abolition of the slave trade, Gregoire came in effect to be the Society's spokesman in the National Assembly. He first addressed the Assembly on the subject of anti-slavery on 3 December 1789, and shortly afterwards published a Memoire en faveur des gens de couleur au sang-mele which denounced the racial system on which the slave trade was based as anti-Christian. According to Gregoire, slavery was a temporary institution, essentially at odds with the natural order of human existence, and he looked forward to 'a general universal insurrection' which would 'stifle tyranny, resurrect liberty, and place it along side of religion and morals'. He also put forward arguments based on expediency, denying, for instance, that free mulattos would combine with Negro slaves against whites but would be more likely to assist in the defence of the French West Indies against foreign invasion or domestic disorder. 15 Much more could be made of Gregoire as a man of the Enlightenment but enough perhaps has been said already to portray him as an entirely representative figure who, while remaining faithful to his religious calling, devoted himself to humanitarian causes and human rights issues. Gregoire was passionately attached to the idea of the essential unity of the human race and the brotherhood of man. For him, the values of the Enlightenment were universal ones: freedom was for all, and all peoples could achieve it, given the right education, opportunities and circumstances. As a man of his time, however, he took for granted the superiority of western civilisation and assumed that others aspired to the cultural level attained by the
Can the Jews ever become patriots? This is a question proposed by those who reproach them with not loving a country that drove them from its bosom; and with not cherishing people who exercised their fury against them - that is to say, who were their executioners ... You require that they should love their country - first give them one.
In Gregoire's view, there was no inherent reason why Jews were obliged to occupy only ignoble professions such as money-lending; they could engage in other trades, in the arts, and indeed pursue careers in the army. II Some twentieth-century historians have observed that much of Gregoire's concern for the 'reform' of the Jews sprang from a desire to convert them to Christianity, in line with his eschatological belief that the reign of Christ had to be preceded by the conversion of the Jews. 12 This may be true, but it in no way detracts from the fact that his sympathy for the Jewish people was real. In his own day he was recognised by Jewish leaders as a steadfast and ardent opponent of anti-Semitism and one who remained true to his principles throughout his life. As a deputy to the National Assembly in 1789, the cause of the Jews was the focus of much of his political activity and his Motion en faveur des juifs of October 1789 reproduced many of the arguments of the Essay.13 After 1814 he would champion the cause of Polish Jews who were the victims of Tsarist pogroms. Post-Holocaust readings of Gregoire's Essai, which dwell on his uncritical acceptance of Jewish stereotypes and his ultimately assimilationist ambitions to convert the Jews, miss the point made by Rita with a preface by R Hermon-Belot, Paris, 1988, and the other by R Badinter, Paris, 1988. I have used the English translation of 1789: An essay on the physical, moral and political reformation of the Jews, London, n.d. il An essay, quotation at pp. 136-7. 12 Cf RF. Necheles, The abbe Gregoire 1787-1831: the odyssey of an egalitarian, Westport, 1971. 13 Text reprodused in L'abbe Gregoire, eveque des Lumieres. Textes reunis et presentes par Frank Paul Bowman, Paris, 1988, pp. 19-43.
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14 The most recent discussion of the controversy over Gregoire's views on the Jews is R. Hermon-Belot, 'The abbe Gregoire's program for the Jews: social reform and spiritual project', in Popkin and Popkin eds, The abbe Gregoire and his world, pp. 13-26. 15 Memoire en faveur des gens de couleur ou sang-mete de Saint-Domingue et des autres iles franr;aises de l'Amerique, adresse a l'Assembtee Nationale, Paris, 1789, reproduced in L'aMe Gregoire, eveque des Lumieres, pp. 47-69 (translations mine). For Gregoire's later thoughts on race, see his De la noblesse de la peau ou du prejuge des blancs contre la couleur des Africains et celie de leurs descendants noirs et sang-meles, Paris, 1826, new edition with Preface by J. Prunair, Grenoble, 1996. On this issue, see also Necheles, The abbe Gregoire.
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European educated elite. His universalism, therefore, made him a proponent of cultural assimilation rather than cultural diversity, as was apparent in his advocacy of rights for Jews and black people and in his hostility to regional languages in France, which he wanted to replace with standard French. 16 Nor was Gregoire an advocate of gender equality. Like most men of the Enlightenment, Gregoire conceived of virtue as an essentially male quality and he did not accept that the rights of man implied equal rights for women. 17 In short, as a progressive figure, Gregoire had his limitations, which were those of the siecle des lumieres itself. What is not in doubt, however, is that, as much as a Robespierre, Gregoire believed in the possibilities of a humanity regenerated through the application of reason to human affairs. But, if all human activity was rightly subject to the scrutiny of reason, this in no way implied the sovereignty of human reason, for reason had to be informed by religion and the law of God. Come the Revolution, for Gregoire, there would be no contradiction between his religious belief and his commitment to radical reform of both state and church. On the contrary, as Rita Hermon-Belot has argued, for Gregoire and the rest of the patriotic clergy of 1789, Christianity - at least in its enlightened, Gallican variety - was the 18 mainspring not only of civilisation but also of modernity itself. What Gregoire looked for from the Revolution was nothing less than national regeneration. For Gregoire, as for the abbe Fauchet, whose book De la religion nationale was published in 1789 to coincide with the opening of the Estates General, the Revolution was a manifestation of divine providence, a timely intervention on the part of God in order to save the monarchy from dissolution and the state from ruin. 19 Reviewing the great work which had been accomplished in the space of just a few months in a patriotic sermon preached at the beginning of November 1789, Gregoire exulted at the death of despotism and extolled a Christianity which was recovering its splendour. A new political era had opened up, in
which France would be an inspiration to other countries, her new citizenmonarch a role model for the rest of European royalty to emulate. Agriculture and commerce would likewise thrive anew, and talent would flourish irrespective of wealth or background. The real beneficiaries of these transformations, however, would be the generations to come. Gregoire envisaged a future in which the first words that babies learned to utter were 'God, religion and country', with a consequent swelling in the number of citizens for whom the defence of religion and defence of the motherland became one and the same. 20 It was fired with this vision that Gregoire threw himself into the Revolution heart and soul, from the moment in May 1789 when he arrived at the Estates General as an elected representative of the clergy of Nancy. He was less a theorist of revolution than a revolutionary activist who lived and breathed the Revolution. He quickly established himself as a leading light of the Estates-General in the debates over representation, strongly opposing the idea that the three estates should continue to meet and vote separately as in the past and urging instead that they come together as a single National Assembly. Gregoire himself was one of the first of the clerical delegation to join in the deliberations of the third estate and he persuaded a number of his brethren to follow suit - an achievement commemorated in David's famous painting of the Tennis Court Oath in which Gregoire is the central figure?1 Appointed secretary to the Assembly, Gregoire found himself deputising for the president during the tense days of 12-14 July 1789 which culminated in the fall of the Bastille. Giving a clear lead to the deputies, Gregoire denounced the manoeuvres of the aristocratic counterrevolutionaries who had provoked the outbreak of popular violence by creating the impression that a military coup against the Revolution was imminent, and in the same stirring and patriotic speech he called on the Assembly to 'show this people surrounding us that fear was not made for us ... Yes, gentlemen, we will save the new-born liberty which they (the reactionaries) would strangle in its cradle, even if in doing so we have to be buried under the smoking debris of this building!' The aristocrats, he declared, 'can put off the Revolution, but certainly they cannot prevent it'. 22
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16 On the language question, see H. Gregoire, Rapport sur la necessite et les moyens d'aneantir les patois et d'universaliser I'usage de la langue franc;aise, Paris, 1794, reproduced in L'abbe Gregoire, eveque des Lumieres, pp. 129-48. The key secondary work is M. de Certeau, D. Julia and 1. Revel, Vne politique de la langue. La RevolutionfranC;aise et les patois: l'enquete de Gregoire, Paris, 1975. See also D.A. Bell, 'Tearing down the Tower of Babel: Gregoire and French multilingualism', in Popkin and Popkin eds, The abbe Gregoire and his world, pp. 109-28. 17 H. Gregoire, De I'influence du christianisme sur la condition des femmes, Paris, 1821. See in general D. Outram, 'Le langage male de la vertu: women and the discourse of the French Revolution', in P. Burke and R. Porter eds, The social history of language, Cambridge,
1987, pp. 120-35. Hermon-Belo:, L'abbe Gregoire, pp. 94-130. 19 C. Fauchet, De la religion nationale, Paris, 1789.
18
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Discours prononce Ie jour de la Toussaint 1789, en l'eglise de l'abbaye de SaintGermain-des-Pres, pour la benediction des quatres flammes de la milice nationale de ce district, par M. Gregoire, in Oeuvres de I'abbe Gregoire, 14 vols., Paris, 1977, i. 69-76. 21 Lord Ashboume, Gregoire and the French Revolution, London, n.d., pp. 2-4, with 20
extensive quotations in French, and in English translation. Ibid., p. 4, speech of 12 July 1789.
22
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Gregoire, it is clear, was among the first of the revolutionaries to link the 'aristocracy' with the perpetuation of 'despotism' .23 Until 1791, Gregoire continued in his prominent role in the National Assembly, taking part in most of its great debates (as on the night of 4 August), initiating his own motions in favour of Jews and black people, and helping to frame a new constitution. Alongside Robespierre, he opposed the Assembly's plan to restrict the franchise on the basis of wealth and was one of the very few deputies to argue for universal male suffrage as early as 1789. Also like Robespierre, he understood the importance of organisation as much as oratory in a revolutionary situation, and thus became an activist in what eventually came to be called the Jacobin Club. He did not always persuade the Assembly to share his point of view, however, as in the debates on the Declaration of the Rights of Man, where the Assembly rejected Gregoire's arguments in favour of including in the text a reference to duties as well as to rights. He would also have preferred a mention of the author of all rights - the God of Christianity - rather than a Rousseauist reference to the Supreme Being. 24 He had greater success in the matter of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy - the most contentious measure enacted by the National Assembly and the mainspring of the breach between the Revolution and the Church which produced the war of the two Frances. The measures which made up the Civil Constitution included the unilateral repudiation by France of the Concordat of 1516 with the Papacy, and an extensive reorganisation of the Gallican Church into a greatly reduced number of dioceses and parishes. Bishops and priests would be appointed to their posts only after an electoral process in which all citizens, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, could take part (though with the safeguard that electors attended mass before casting their votes). In return for the nationalisation of Church property and the abolition of 'useless' regular clergy and supernumerary canons and cathedral chapters, the parish clergy were to be salaried by the state and in effect turned into ecclesiastical civil servants?5 Because of his high profile as a revolutionary leader, Gregoire judged it best not to be seen as a prime mover in the elaboration of the Civil Constitution. Nevertheless, in a crucial intervention of 2 June 1790, while approving the Assembly's determination to reduce the authority of the Pope
to 'just limits', he pleaded at the same time for caution in order to avoid a schism in the Church. He therefore proposed that the Assembly explicitly repudiate any attempt to prejudice the authority of the sovereign pontiff. His amendment was carried and incorporated into the final text of the Civil Constitution (article 4).26 In January 1791 Gregoire was elected President of the Constituent Assembly, but just a month later, he was obliged to re-focus on the religious situation when he was chosen by the electors of the Loir-et-Cher and Sarthe departments to be their bishop. Opting for the former so as to be nearer Paris, he established his episcopal seat at Blois, and was consecrated by three Constitutional bishops in March. In conformity with tradition, he then wrote to Pope Pius VI to ask for his blessing. Informing the Pope that he had been regularly consecrated, he added:
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I profess with mind and heart the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman religion. I declare that I am and will always be (with God's help) united in faith and communion with you, who in your role as successor to Saint Peter, have primacy of honour and jurisdiction in the church of Jesus Christ. 27
For Gregoire, there was no contradiction in being a revolutionary and a devoted Catholic pastor who preached tirelessly to his flock and carried out visitations of his clergy. 28 In the midst of all his activism, Gregoire remained 'a priest right down to his finger-nails', as his fellow revolutionary Thibaudeau later described him. 29 As Bernard Plongeron has stressed, Gregoire at no time became a 'cure rouge', a demagogue who turned against the Church and rejoiced at the prospect of a new, dechristianised, social order. His theology, if tinged with Jansenism, remained both orthodox and traditiona1. 30Ultimately, to understand how, in Gregoire's mind, reform of the Church went hand in hand with reform of the state, it is necessary to explore the political implications of 'Gallican' history and ecclesiology. Old Regime France may have been a confessional state, but the alliance of throne and altar was never an easy one, not even under the pious Louis
Plongeron, L'abbe Gregoire, pp. 21-2. Lettre de M. l'eveque du departement de Loir-et-Cher a Pie VI, souverain pontife, Blois, 1791, in Oeuvres, iv. 103. 28 Cf Gazier, 'Henri Gregoire, eveque constitutionnel'. 29 Quoted by A. Soboul, Preface to Oeuvres, i. 30 Plongeron, Cabbe Gregoire, p. 20. On the wider context in which Gregoire's political theology should be situated, see B. Plongeron, Theologie et politique au siecle des Lumihes (1770-1820), Geneva, 1973. The question of Gregoire's debt to the Jansenist tradition is discussed further below. 26
27
D. Van Kley, 'The abbe Gregoire and the quest for a Catholic Republic', in Popkin and Popkin eds, The abbe Gregoire and his world, p. 83. 24 Ibid., pp. 83-4. Gregoire's case was set out in Opinion de M. l'abbe Gregoire, depute de Nancy, sur la necessite de parler des devoirs dans la Declaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen a la seance du 12 aout, Versailles, 1789, in Oeuvres, i. 43-4. 25 On the Civii Constitution, T. Tackett, Revolution and clerical culture in eighteenthcentury France: the ecclesiastical oath of 1791, Princeton, 1986. 23
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XVI, a monarch more deserving of the title of 'Most Christian King' than many of his predecessors. The very 'Gallicanism' of the Gallican Church was a source of division as much as a force for unity since Gallicanism meant different things to different people. For the predominantly aristocratic upper clergy, in the 1780s it meant 'Gallican Liberties' in the form of the preservation of long-standing privileges accorded to the National Church: the First Estate of the realm should continue to benefit from tax exemptions and be free to retain its vast landed wealth, rather than be subject to the depredations of reforming finance ministers, as in other Catholic countries like Austria or Spain. Among the lower clergy, however, as in the population at large, there was much resentment of ecclesiastical privilege and a growing discontent with episcopal 'despotism' which, as in the case of the cure of Embermenil, found their ideological expression in a much more egalitarian and reformist-minded Gallicanism. Ecclesiastical Gallicanism had its origins in the medieval conciliar movement, which affirmed that ultimate spiritual authority in the Church resided not with the Papacy but with an ecumenical council representing the entire body of the faithful. By the seventeenth century, however, the older tradition of ecclesiastical Gallicanism had largely come to be replaced by a royal Gallicanism articulated by theorists of absolute monarchy such as Bossuet, who defended the divine right of kings to rule over both state and church. 3l What complicated this situation in the eighteenth century was the protracted quarrels over 'Jansenism' generated by the publication of the papal bull Unigenitus in 1713. Jansenism, whatever its precise religious content, meant in effect principled resistance to absolutism, justified by the imperatives of the religious conscience when confronted by the intolerable abuse of power on the part of either the secular or religious authorities. 32 If royal Gallicanism was at first reinforced rather than undermined by the Unigenitus controversy, since the Papacy itself appreciated the need to make common cause with the Crown and the upper clergy in France against Jansenist 'heretics' who threatened to subvert both church and state, the disputes in time gave rise to yet another variant of Gallicanism in the form of 'parlementary' Gallicanism. The lawyers of the parlements, or royal courts, proved adept at formulating legal arguments both to defend the
persecuted Jansenists and to permit the state to regulate the place of the Church in civil society, if need be without the consent of the Papacy or of the Church hierarchy. Conciliarism, too, made a powerful comeback, since for Jansenists the appeal to a future council was adopted as the spiritual means by which to obtain redress of the colossal error against truth committed by the Papacy. In its secular version, the conciliar argument was easily extended, as it had been in the sixteenth century, to justify opposition to 'tyranny'. In his memoirs, Gregoire himself acknowledged his intellectual debt to two sixteenth-century texts written in this vein, namely Duplessis-Momay's Vindiciae contra tyrannos and Jean Boucher's De justa Henrici tertii abdicatione. Through Jansenism, the Gallicanism of the lower clergy developed into a language of contestation and constitutionalism. 33 Other intellectual currents were pulling in the same direction, most notably the pervasive influence of 'Richerism' on the parish clergy of the later eighteenth century. Taking their name from the rediscovery of doctrines taught at the Sorbonne in the early seventeenth century by the theologian Edmond Richer, Richerist ideas represented priests not as mere minions at the bottom of the ecclesiastical hierarchy but as the true successors of Christ's disciples and the bedrock of the Church. It was they rather than the worldly bishops who were destined to lead the Church back to the purity of primitive Christianity. In a context where discontent was already rife at the clerical grass roots, partly because of the vast disparities in wealth between the upper and lower clergy and partly because of the latter's inability to make its voice heard in a forum such as the General Assembly of the Church of France, Richerism's message of mission and empowerment served as a further stimulus to activism and organisation. 34 Gregoire's commitment to the reform of church and state thus derived from an ecclesiology that was rooted in the theology and historical experience of the Gallican Church and which, by the late eighteenth century, found expression in the radical Gallicanism of ordinary parish priests. Though never a Jansenist.in any formal or party sense, Gregoire was a life-long admirer of the spiritual traditions of Port-Royal and disdainful of what he deemed to be the excesses of baroque piety, as represented, for example, by the cult of the Sacred Heart, against which he penned a pamphlet. 35 His own predilections, rather, were for the study of
A.-G. Martimort, Le gallicanisme, Paris, 1973. The literature on Jansenism is immense. For an introduction, see C. Maire, 'Port-Royal. La fracture janseniste', in Les lieux de memoire, Paris 1992, vol. 111, Les France, i. 471-529. For fuller explorations of the impact of the Unigenitus quarrels, see C. Maire, De la cause de Dieu a la cause de la Nation. Le jansenisme au XVllle siecle, Paris, 1998 and D. Van Kley, Religious origins of the French Revolutioll. From Calvin to the Civil Constitution, 1560-1791, New Haven, 1996. Also M. Cottret, Jansenisme et Lumieres, pour un autre XVllle siecle, Paris, 1998. 31
32
33 Van Kley, 'The abbe Gregoire and the quest', esp. pp. 75-80. Also R. Taveneaux, 'L'abbe Gregoire et la democratic clericale', in Jansenisme et reforme catholique, Nancy, 1992. 34 Maire, De la cause de Dieu, esp. pp. 564ff. 35 H. Gregoire, Les ruines de Port-Royal des Champs, cd. R. Hermon-Belot, Paris, 1995, articulates Gregoire's admiration for the port-royaliste tradition. See also H. Gregoire,
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Scripture and for a vernacular liturgy, which, along with good schooling, would encourage the formation of a pious and educated laity.36 Despite cherishing a deep affection for his Jesuit schoolmasters in Nancy, Gregoire had no love of the Jesuit Order itself, and, far from regretting its suppression, was troubled by the prospect of its reviva1. 37 The fundamental Jansenist dilemma of how to reconcile the authority of the Church with the religious imperatives of the individual conscience was one which he confronted throughout his life, and never more so than after the failure of his project of christianising the Revolution had become apparent. 38 Reform, as we have seen, was very much on the agenda of the parish clergy by the 1780s, and Gregoire was only one of many parish priests whose expectations were raised by the summoning of the Estates-Genera1. 39 By this point, however, priests had been dismayed to see the parlements begin to desert their cause and to close ranks with the upper clergy in order to defend 'privilege' and 'property' against the assaults of a monarchy which knew that reform was essential if it were to escape from its crippling financial crisis. In 1789, therefore, to Gregoire and the clerge patriote, it seemed that the monarchy itself would be the instrument of the reforms they were seeking. On 14 July 1789 Gregoire spoke of 'a nation idolatrous of its monarch, and of a monarch who in the love of his people will find his strongest support'.4O The initial trajectory of the Revolution served only to confirm them in their view, and the establishment of the Constitutional Church in 1790, though Gregoire did not approve its every detail, appeared to him as the culmination of a long process out of which had emerged at last a church that was truly national in outlook and organisation - in short,
the realisation of the Gallican ideal and a reconciliation of reason, religion and Revolution through the creation of the citizen-priest. The Civil Constitution of the Clergy, therefore, had no more ardent defender than Gregoire. Mounting the tribune on 27 December 1790 to explain why he was ready to swear the oath of loyalty to it imposed by the Assembly, Gregoire insisted that the Constitution contained nothing contrary to Catholic doctrine:
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Histoire critique des devotions au Sacre-Coeur de Jesus et au Coeur de Marie, Rome and Paris, 1807. 36 On Jansenist spirituality, see especially R. Taveneaux, La vie quotidienne des jansenistes au XVlIe et XVIlIe siecles, Paris, 1985. 37 Memoires, p. 50. 38 According to Catherine Maire, following the failure of the Constitutional Church Gregoire came to identify with a millenarian, 'figurist' strain in the Jansenist tradition which was predicated on the final struggle between error and truth in the Church before the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. (Maire, De la cause de Dieu, pp. 595ff, based especially on H. Gregoire, Histoire des sectes religieuses, 2 vols., Paris, 1810). While accepting that the period after the Revolution saw an intensification of Gregoire's engagement with Jansenism, Rita Hermon-Belot more convincingly emphasises the element of continuity in Gregoire's devotion to Port-Royal: Hermon-Belot, L'abbe Gregoire, pp. 427ff. 39 A MM. les cures lorrains et autres ecclesiastiques seculiers du diocese de Metz, Nancy, 22 Jan. 1789, in Oeuvres, i. 1-4. 40 Motion de M. l'abbi Gregoire, cure d'Embermenil a la seance du 14 juillet 1789, in Oeuvres, i. 37-40, quotation at 39.
It would be an insult, a calumny, to suppose that there was any intention of laying hands on sacred things. In the face of France and the world it (the Assembly) has solemnly declared its profound respect for the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman religion. At no time has it wanted to deprive the faithful of any means of salvation; at no time has it wanted to do the least damage to dogma, to hierarchy, to the spiritual authority of the head of the church. It recognises that these objects are outside of its domain.
To swear the oath of loyalty to the Civil Constitution, therefore, was no more than a patriotic duty which would bring peace to the kingdom and cement the union between the pastor and his flock. 41 In the event, Gregoire could not have been more wrong about the consequences of the oath. It split the French Church in two, and amounted to an error on the part of the Assembly even more catastrophic than the decision to set up the Constitutional Church in the first place. Of Gregoire's own sincerity and passionate conviction, however, there can be no question. He was well aware, of course, that, like all those who wished to serve the Constitutional Church, he would be subject to misrepresentation by the enemies of the Revolution (including most of the former Church hierarchy). In presenting himself to the clergy of his new diocese in his first pastoral letter of 24 March 1791, he told them to expect denigration of both their faith and their patriotism, and even attempts to confuse them 'with the echoes of a rash and sacrilegious philosophy which would reconstruct the French empire on the debris of the sanctuary and the ruins of the antique and holy religion of our fathers'. He himself, he told his brethren, would try to bear such slurs on his principles and character with Christian patience and fortitude. 42 He was also at pains to point out that he had not become a bishop to fulfil any personal ambitions. Rather, in the midst of all his labours at the National Assembly, he had dreamed of returning to his beloved parish at
Ashboume, Gregoire and the French Revolution, pp. 11-12. Lettre pastorale de M. l'eveque du departement de Loir-et-Cher, Blois, 1791, in Oeuvres, iv.79-98.
41
42
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Embermenil. On the other hand, in response to a call to serve the needs of both religion and country he had no choice but to accept, for 'the citizen who rejects the confidence of the nation renders himself the accomplice of disturbances to order and peace'. Once again Gregoire reiterated that the Revolution was not the enemy of religion. According to him, no legislature could be so stupid as to imagine that it could make laws in the absence of religious principles and it was for this reason that the French National Assembly had taken steps to ensure that the foundations of public happiness rested on 'the eternal verities which Jesus Christ came to bring to men'. Under the new Constitution, priests who submitted to the law were neither changing any words of the Gospel nor teaching any new doctrines. Indeed, he asked, what better homage could the Catholic religion receive than to be linked constitutionally to the doctrines of an empire which by this means sought to consolidate its own very existence? 43 Returning to the theme of the oath, which he appreciated was a contentious issue for many clerics, Gregoire once again rehearsed the arguments which he had developed at greater length elsewhere to justify his 44 own decision to take it. Religion, he affirmed, was independent of earthly power and was entitled to the respect of legislators and potentates. Its morality and dogmas were as unchanging as God, from whom they emanated. But, with regard to the exterior relations of religion to the state, change was indeed possible without damage being done to the essential interests of religion. Thus, for example, the redrawing of diocesan boundaries was a sensible response to a demographic situation in which some dioceses had too many parishes, and others too few. The National Assembly, charged with the duty and expense of maintaining religious worship across the national territory, had the right to redistribute priests in accordance with need. To transfer a priest from one parish to another, however, was in no way to attack the essence of the sacerdotal character, which for Gregoire was immutable, but only to act for the public good. The nation had the right to ensure that its religious ministers did not threaten the laws to which they, like all citizens, were subject, and the oath was a reasonable guarantee of their loyalty. If any priest refused to swear it, he was obliged to renounce his rights as a citizen and public servant so as to be replaced by another who would perform his (very necessary) duties for the faithful. As Gregoire reminded the clergy of the Loir-et-Cher, the state replaced only non-juring or refractory priests, who would have difficulty demonstrating that they
possessed any divine right of immovability. To conclude, Gregoire exhorted his priests to accomplish their religious duties faithfully. An irreligious people, he told them, would always be a base people 'and the best Christian will always be the best citizen'. They were Catholic and French, and would never have finer titles. By their piety, they should show themselves to be faithful disciples of Jesus Christ and by their devotion to the patrie they should show themselves to be citizens, ready, if need be, to die for religion and liberty.45 Gregoire's vision of the citizen priest and of a regenerated Church in a regenerated state was one to which he remained steadfastly loyal, even in the Revolution's darkest days, and after. For him, the Constitutional Church was the logical outcome of the Gallican tradition and the embodiment of all that was best about it, in particular independence from unacceptable pressures from Rome, but also freedom from the fetters of royal and ecclesiastical despotism. In time, Gregoire hoped to see a return to a simpler, purified form of Catholic Christianity and to encourage the development of a modem, enlightened spirituality in which reason, religion and Revolution were reconciled. But it was not to be, and Gregoire had few doubts as to where the fault lay. From the outset of the Revolution, he had warned against the forces of reaction, the aristocracy in general, but in particular the King's aristocratic counsellors, men of ill will who had poisoned the monarch's mind with bad advice. The events of 1789 only dispersed, but never destroyed, these enemies of freedom, and they exploited the opportunity presented by the creation of the Constitutional Church to try to open up a breach between the patriotic clergy and the new revolutionary French state. These people, according to Gregoire, were inveterate fomenters of discord, forever sowing the seeds of sedition and calling for war in the hope of unleashing 46 disorder on a scale that would engulf the Revolution. They could never resign themselves to reforms which deprived them of their dominant status in society, since they viewed the patrie only in the light of the destruction of their own privileges and of the feudal abuses which they wished to perpetuate. In language that would have done justice to any Jacobin or sans-culotte, Gregoire denounced those aristocrats who were not ready to become simple citizens, and thereby 'the equals of a people whom they despise, as if a virtuous artisan, a virtuous labourer, were not infinitely preferable to a man laden with gold and laden with crimes' .47
Cbid. Cf Ligitimite du serment civique exige des fonctionnaires ecciesiastiques, par M. Gregoire, in Oeuvres, iv. 3-35. 43
45
44
46 47
Lettre pastorale, 1791. Discours prononce le jour de la Toussaint, 1789. Lettre pastorale, 1791.
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But if the former nobility opposed the Revolution, it was the King himself who betrayed it. In the early days, Gregoire had high hopes that the King, basking in the love and support of his people, would never succumb to the machinations of those in his entourage who wished to abort the 48 Revolution. The flight to Varennes in June 1791, however, came as a thunderbolt and produced in Gregoire a loathing for monarchy as visceral as that of the sans-culottes. In attempting to flee abroad, a King who had been proclaimed the restorer of French liberty and who, on the field of the Federation, had sworn to be faithful to the nation and the law, had shown himself guilty of both perfidy and perjury. With this premeditated crime, Louis had made his own choice, deliberately breaking the bonds which linked him to his people and opting to align himself with the enemies of liberty, 'vultures who, in former times, tore apart the entrails of their mother, the patrie' .49 Henceforward Gregoire was a partisan of the Republic. Clear in his conscience that he should continue to serve the Revolution in a secular as well as a religious capacity, but ineligible for the elections to the Legislative Assembly, Gregoire returned to the political arena as a deputy to the National Convention. In the course of its first debate on 21 September 1792, his was the decisive voice which put the case for the abolition of the monarchy. Nobody, he maintained, wished to preserve 'the fatal race of kings; we know too well that all the dynasties have ever been simply devouring races living on human flesh ... We must destroy this magical talisman, the strength of which would still be capable of stupefying many men'. Rejecting the need for restraint and caution, Gregoire declared: 'Kings are in the moral order as monsters in the order of nature. Courts are the workshop of crime and the den of tyrants. The history of kings is the martyrology of the nations' .50 Subsequently, in an emotional speech delivered to the Convention on 15 November 1792, Gregoire argued vehemently that the King should be put on trial as he was responsible for the deaths of those who had perished in the massacres of 10 August along with those who had been killed in battle fighting the foreign enemies of 51 France. Absent from the Convention as a representative on mission to the newly acquired territory of Savoy (renamed the department of Mont-Blanc) at the crucial moment when the King's fate was to be decided, Gregoire
conveyed back to Paris his vote in favour of 'the condemnation of Louis Capet without appeal to the people' .52 Contrary to what his monarchist enemies would assert later, however, Gregoire did not actually vote for the death of the King. As a priest, he refused to be party to the shedding of blood and as a humanitarian he regarded the death penalty as a 'relic of barbarism' .53 If, according to Gregoire, it was the combination of a perfidious monarch and unreconstructed aristocrats who perverted the course of the Revolution, their efforts were seconded by the non-juring clergy. Their resistance to the Civil Constitution, and more especially to the oath, was easily exploited by those who, opposed to the Revolution and all its works, could disguise their hatred of reform behind a hypocritical zeal for religion in the hope that the quarrel over the fate of the Church could be converted into a vehicle for counter-revolution. 54 At the same time, the failure of the refractory clergy to throw their weight behind the Revolution precipitated the publication of a deluge of abusive propaganda against 'fanaticism' and 'superstition' written by atheistical pamphleteers, the self-styled heirs and 55 disciples of the more radical and anticlerical philosophes. And, as Gregoire foresaw as early as 1791, when priests became the objects of vilification, it would soon be the tum of religion itself to be pilloried and persecuted. 56 In the latter regard, as Gregoire recalled in his memoirs, the 57 Convention committed the greatest of its many crimes. In a century supposedly marked by the advance of tolerance and philosophy, here was an assembly which numbered men who claimed to tolerate every kind of belief, except that of the Christian gospel. 58 Gregoire's bitterness was understandable, since his dream was to build a Republican citadel founded on Catholic principles - a new and democratic version of the alliance of throne and altar. For the more radical revolutionaries, however, religion was a private rather than a public matter, and no church had any claim to a special relationship with the state. Hence, as the gap between the Revolution and religion widened under the impact of the Terror and the
Motion, 14 July 1789. Lettre de M. Gregoire depute ii l'AssembLee Nationale, eveque du departement de Lair-etCher, ii ses diocesains sur Ie depart du roi, Paris, 1791, in Oeuvres, iv. pp. 107-12. 50 The debate is reproduced in Ashbourne, Gregoire, pp. 26-32, with the quotation at p. 32. 51 Ibid., pp. 35-6. For an earlier expression of this view, see his Discours prononce dans l'eglise de Blois au service celebre pour les citoyens morts ii Paris Ie 10 aout 1792, reproduced in L 'abbe Gregoire, eveque des Lwnieres, pp. 95-108. 48
49
Plongeron, L'abbe Gregoire, p. 26. On his repugnance for the death penalty, see Lettre sur Ie depart du roi. On the black legend of Gregoire as regicide, see Plongeron, L'abbe Gregoire, pp. 26-8. 54 Lettre pastorale, 1791. Cf Adresse aux deputes de la seconde Legislature, par M. Gregoire Paris,1791,p.6. 55 Observations sur les calomniateurs et les persecuteurs en matiere de religion, par Ie citoyen Gregoire, Paris, n.d., in Oeuvres, v. 1-27. 56 Lettre pastorale, 1791. 57 Memoires, p. 108. 58 Observations sur les calomniateurs.
52
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dechristianisation campaign, Gregoire, despite his unblemished record of personal commitment to the Revolution, saw himself become the object of scorn and derision in some quarters. On 17 Brumaire II (7 November 1793), he was threatened and taunted in the chamber by the most rabidly anticlerical of the conventionnels who wanted him to follow the example of Gobel, the Constitutional Bishop of Paris, by publicly renouncing his faith. In a speech which could have cost him his life, and during which he was constantly heckled, Gregoire rounded on the 'miserable blasphemers' who had called on him to repudiate what they called his 'religious charlatanism'. 'I was never a charlatan', he answered: 'attached to my religion, I have preached its truth; I will be faithful to it ... Catholic by conviction and by sentiment, a priest by choice, I have been called by the people to be a bishop; but it is neither from them nor from you that I hold my mission' .59 As Gregoire rightly understood, the Convention's assault on the Catholic religion was a blunder which blighted the entire Revolutionary enterprise. The fact that the very name of the Republic had become associated with a war against the Church was the proof which its enemies would long be able to cite about its essentially dystopian character. 60 Gregoire continued to give leadership to the beleaguered Constitutional Church, but he knew that his project of christianising the Revolution and of building a Catholic Republic had run into the sand. On 18 September 1794 the Convention, in affirmation of its neutrality in the matter of religion, suppressed the budget of the Constitutional Church. In a speech of 21 December 1794, Gregoire drew the logical conclusion of this de facto separation of church and state and requested that it be formalised, with the consequent restoration of complete freedom of worship.61 At that particular juncture, the anticlerical majority in the Convention still balked at any kind of toleration for the Catholic religion, but a few months later Gregoire's proposition furnished the basis of the law of 3 ventose (21 February 1795). Church and state were formally separated and the law recognised the right of individuals to worship in private, provided they made no public manifestation of their religious affiliation. The complete divorce between religion and the public sphere was not something Gregoire had wanted, but he was prepared to live with it. Having become in effect the head of the Constitutional clergy, he tried to make the best of what was still an extremely difficult situation, given the hostility towards religion which survived among the ruling circles of the Directory
and the intransigent attitude towards the Constitutional Church which prevailed in Rome. Though a member of the 'Council of the Five Hundred', Gregoire now devoted himself less to politics than to the work of ecclesiastical reconstruction, organising two national councils in 1797 and 1801. In arguments which anticipated those of Lamennais and the Avenir movement in 1830-31, Gregoire, increasingly drawing his inspiration from the example of Port-Royal and the embattled Jansenists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, sought to present the church's freedom from state control as a great opportunity for religious renewaI. 62 Yet here again his hopes were dashed, first by continuing antipathy towards religious activity on the part of the revolutionary state, and then, decisively, by the totally unexpected re-establishment of the bond between church and state in the Concordat of 1801 negotiated between Napoleon and the Papacy. Not only did the Concordat seal the fate of the Constitutional Church, vindicating Rome at the expense of the Gallican tradition and paving the way for the massive expansion of ultramontanism in the nineteenth century, but it also, in the words of Dale Van Kley, 'doomed ... the long-term survival of a politically republican Catholicism in France' .63 Religion and Revolution would long .remain unreconciled, and the memory of Gregoire, the prophet of a Gallican-insp'i.red 'politics of truth', reviled both by the apologists of the renewed alliance of throne and altar under the restored Bourbons and by the ultrarpontatle catholiques avant tout like Veuillot. The Concordat ended Gregoire's episcopal, but nor~ms political career. A member of the Corps legislatif after the coup of 18 Brumaire which brought Napoleon to power, he became a senator in December 1801 and voted against the establishment of the Empire in 1804. Though made a count by the imperial regime in 1808, he remained one of its critics until he retired at the Restoration. Yet controversy continued to dog him. In 1819 he was elected deputy by the department of the Isere but, following heated debates in the Chamber, he was refused the right to take his seat. Thereafter, he lived in seclusion. Interestingly, however, the controversy over his legacy has survived down to our own day. His memory is still disputed, as became apparent in 1989 during the bicentennial celebrations of the French Revolution. In what was intended by the President of the Fifth Republic, Fran<;ois Mitterrand, to be a ceremony of reconciliation to honour a man who had been both priest and revolutionary, Gregoire's remains were transferred to the Pantheon. His pantheonisation, however, far from uniting Catholics and apologists for the
150
Ashboume, Gregoire, pp. 62-3. Memoires, p. 108. 61 Discours su:- La Liberte des cuLtes par Gregoire, representant du peupLe, in L'abbe Gregoire, eveque des Lumieres, pp. 110-26. 59
60
62 63
On this phase of Gregoire's career, see the works by Gazier, cited above, note 5. Van Kley, 'The abbe Gregoire and the quest', p. 107.
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secular state, provoked fresh debates as to whether the Fifth Republic wanted in effect to reopen the war against the Church by commemorating a schismatic. Moreover, on the Left, there were many who entertained doubts about Gregoire's fitness to represent the pluralistic cultural values of the late twentieth century, given that, in championing the rights of Jews and black people, he had acted as a cultural imperialist who was driven by a desire to make all cultural and racial groups conform to the values and norms of European civilisation. 64 The search for reconciliation goes on.
J.D. Popkin, 'The abbe Gregoire: a hero for our times?', Popkin and Popkin eds, The abbe Gregoire and his world.
64
Chapter 8
Ideas of the Future in the French Revolution Marisa Linton
The French Revolution shaped the future. But it was a future that the Revolution's leaders did not anticipate because revolutionaries who sought to impose their will on events found the task beyond their powers. They evoked radiant goddesses of liberty, equality and fraternity to help them create a new era of social and political virtue. In the process they brought about the Terror that devoured friends and foes alike. All this is readily apparent, though not easily explained, and the reasons for it cannot be investigated here. Nevertheless, the way in which revolutionary leaders imagined the future in the form of utopian models is worthy of more specific attention. These imaginings may have had little basis in reality, but they can tell us a great deal about how the revolutionaries thought and how they conceptualised the Revolution. This is a potentially vast area of study, and there is only space here to examine certain specific aspects of it. Firstly, there are the reasons why utopian models of the future played a key part in revolutionary thought. Secondly, there is the question of what kind of utopian models were favoured by the revolutionaries. This chapter will outline the different models that were available and consider why most of these gradually lost ground during the years 1789 to 1793. Thirdly, there is the problem of why the classical past came to predominate over alternative models of the future during the most experimental and radical phase of the Revolution: the attempt between June 1793 and July 1794 to institute a 'republic of virtue'. In the wake of the collapse of the ancien regime, the revolutionaries needed to be able to visualise a possible future in order to pursue it: they needed models to give shape to their projections. The urgent need to establish a stable form of government encouraged revolutionary thinkers to seek inspiration from models of alternative social and political structures, some of which were derived from distant times and places. Much of the revolutionaries' future planning was pragmatic, based on practical projects for social and political change, and formulated in response to the demands
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of foreign and civil war But radical thought had an idealised and even utopian dimension. Although some of this thinking seems more like dreams or reveries than serious projects for the future, even reveries could take on a degree of political or social reality in the highly-charged and fluctuating context of revolutionary politics. Much can be learned by exploring the more utopian dimensions of the models the revolutionaries considered. The very fact that revolutionary leaders chose to adopt certain models and yet discarded others, can be revealing of their mentalities. One of the striking things about their aspirations for the future is how often they drew on inspiration from the past or from geographically remote locations. By definition they were rejecting the world with which they were familiar, the ancien regime as they termed it, which they saw as having corrupted the French people. It was clear that they needed radically alternative conceptions of society and politics, but why did they seek them in the past, particularly in the remote past of classical antiquity? The radical republicans were engaged in a curious dialectic between the bounds of the possible and the impossible, in the course of which they struggled not only against the constraints of reality but also against the limitations of their own ability to imagine sufficiently an alternative society or an alternative way of being. This dialectic frames the boundaries within which revolutionary concepts of the future were conceived. Whether revolutionaries were discussing the glories of Roman antiquity or the wonders of the future city, their real subject was their own present time and its meaning. Rather than invent new models, revolutionaries tended to adopt ones with which they were already familiar. There was an eighteenth-eentury repertoire which they adapted to suit their strategic needs. The choice of model depended in part on the current political situation but also on their personal inclination. Revolutionaries and non-revolutionaries alike shared many assumptions about the ideal form of society, the fulfilment of individual life, and the nature of happiness. What differentiated the revolutionary from the non-revolutionary was not so much their conception of the ideal form of society, but the decision to try to give that ideal a tangible reality. The revolutionary emphasis on the ideal of political virtue owed much to two well-established rhetorical frameworks of the eighteenth century: the language of classical republicanism on the one hand and the vogue for natural social virtue on the other. Both these sets of ideas were common currency long before the revolutionaries attempted to bring into
1 On the pract;cal and social dimensions of Jacobin egalitarianism, see J.-P. Gross, Fair shares for all: Jacobin egalitarianism in practice, Cambridge, 1997.
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2
being a 'republic of virtue' . Ideas were transformed within the revolutionary context. There was a world of difference between a 'republic of virtue' on paper and the reality of the prisons of the Terror. But there remained a connection between them: a similar language and a similar set of assumptions. The revolutionaries' view of time had been transformed by the dramatic break with the past brought about by the Revolution of 1789. Time now seemed to be linear rather than cyclical. Historical progress was possible. Previously one could only imagine a better world. Now, for those who believed in the benign potential of the Revolution, it followed that by force of will alone one might transform one's dreams into physical reality. Robespierre declared in 1792: ... normally the imagination defines the boundaries between the possible and the impossible; but when one has the will to do good, one must have the courage to cross these limits. 3
The very act of Revolution was, of necessity, based on confidence in the future: nowhere more so than in Condorcet's famous treatise on the future perfectibility of humanity, Sketch of a historical tableau on the progress of the human mind. (Ironically, this great defence of the scientific and progressive benefits of the Enlightenment was written whilst in hiding, in defiance of his present circumstances and his probable fate). Yet alongside this faith in progress, a more pessimistic frame of mind ran through revolutionary thinking from its earliest months. This was expressed through the fear that the enemies of the Revolution were continually conspiring against it and seeking to undermine it from within. This fear of subterranean forces and secret enemies was apparent from as early as 1789, particularly in the speeches of men such as Robespierre and Marat who by temperament were always inclined to see conspiracies proliferating 4 everywhere. But the shadow of revolutionary pessimism was to lengthen during the successive and traumatic political crises of Jacobin government. This underlying pessimism was in marked contrast to the official Jacobin
On the influence of the eighteenth-century concept of political virtue on the revolutionaries, see M. Linton, The politics of virtue in Enlightenment France, Basingstoke, 2001, esp. the conclusion. 3 From an intervention made in the Convention on the plan for national education by Lepeletier. M. Bouloiseau and A. Soboul eds, Oeuvres de Maximilien Robespierre, Paris, 1977, x. 70. 4 On fears of conspiracy in 1789, see T. Tackett, 'A conspiracy obsession in a time of revolution: French elites and the origins of the Terror', American. Historical Review, 105, 2000,691-713. 2
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Ideas a/the Future
rhetoric of confidence in the future as expressed in the many revolutionary festivals and projects, and presents a problem to which we shall return. If we come now to a consideration of specific models that the revolutionaries used for projects of the future we may ask why it was that models that were popular during the early years of the Revolution subsequently lost ground to those based on classical antiquity. The only model grounded in the French past was that of the Franks. The Franks were seen as the ancestors of the modem French nobility. The idealisation of their historical role derived from the time when the liberty of the French nation as a whole had supposedly been defended by the Frankish nobles against the growing power of the monarchy. This model owed much of its 5 modem interpretation to Boulainvilliers and Montesquieu. It was popular amongst the parlementaires and their supporters: they claimed that the assemblies of the Frankish nobility were forerunners of the modem parlements, and that it was the right, indeed the duty, of the parlements to speak on behalf of the nation in defence of its rights, just as the Franks had done. 6 Like classical antiquity, the Frankish model was based on an idealised view of the past. But, unlike classical antiquity, the Frankish model tended to reinforce the power of the nobility. This political vision played a key polemical role in contestations over power in the prerevolutionary period. It was employed in such works as d' Antraigues' pamphlet, Memoire sur les Etats-generaux, which first appeared in 1788, went through fourteen editions and was seen at the time as a leading argument for the patriotic cause. D' Antraigues was subsequently to defend noble rights in the Estates General, wanting the nobility to have a separate constitutional identity.? But the golden age of the Franks had begun to disappear from radical polemics from the time that the nobles of the parlement of Paris dug in their heels by denying the Third Estate double representation in the Estates General, and began the first wave of counterrevolution. 8 The events of late June and July 1789 clinched the rejection of the Frankish model. Henceforward, few would dare to argue that the
nobility was singularly fitted to provide political leadership on behalf of the nation. Few people saw a powerful nobility as compatible with the nation. This moment, as Van Kley says, saw the 'elimination of French history from revolutionary ideology,.9 This left the revolutionaries no viable model in the French past. With regard to England and the English constitution, popularised by Montesquieu and Voltaire, there were many admirers of it in France at the outset of the Revolution. to It found particular favour with monarchiens, such as Lally-Tollendal and Mounier who proposed a bicameral system with an absolute veto for the monarch based on the English model, a proposal rejected in September 1789. Whilst the English model was vastly influential in this early phase, England was all too close in space and time to be seen in utopian terms by the French. Many criticised the English political system for its corruption. Admiration of English politics was based on a pragmatic assessment of the tangible benefits of a constitutional monarchy, and as such, its popularity declined along with the liberal phase of the Revolution. It had become untenable long before the declaration of war with Britain in February 1793. America was altogether a different proposition, for it was both a political model of a successful republic, and also a 'new' country in a utopian sense. It therefore appealed to the French on two counts. Firstly, as has been well-attested, it provided a realisable political model, which was considered superior to that of England because the Americans had dispensed with both monarchy and privilege. America offered a model of republicanism in practice in the contemporary world. II This version of America was promoted through such works as Claviere and Brissot's influential On France and the United States published in 1787, and via the 'Gallo-American Society' that they founded in January of that year. There was a growing belief that France could aspire to imitate this political future by seeking an end to absolutism, privilege and commercial monopolies. Yet another, more idealised, view of the American republic also appealed to French sensibilities. This was the evocation of America as a land of free citizens, in contrast to the corruption and dependency endured by the peoples of Europe. From this perspective, America's citizens were straightforward, virtuous and economically independent, living a largely rural existence, close to nature and far from the corruption of city life.
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On BoulainvilJiers' interpretation of the Frankish past and the role of the French nobility, see H.A. Ellis, 'Genealogy, history and aristocratic reaction in early modern France: the case of Henri de BoulainvilJiers', JournaL of Modern History, 58, 1986,414-51. 6 See K.M. Baker, 'Memory and practice: politics and the representation of the past in eighteenth-century France', Representations, 2, 1985, 134-64. 7 On d' Antraigues' version of the French past, see D. Van Kley, 'From the lessons of French history to truths for all times and all people: the historical origins of an anti-historical declaration', in idem ed., The French idea offreedom: the oLd regime and the Declaration of Rights of 1789, Stanford, 1994, pp. 81-4. 8 On the use of Frankish arguments in the pre-revolutionary period, see D. Van Kley, 'New wine in old wineskins: continuity and rupture in the pamphlet debate of the French Prerevolution, 1787-1789', French HistoricaL Studies, 17, 1991. 5
157
Van Kley, 'From the lessons of French history', pp. 106-7, 109. On the influence of English republicanism in France, see P. Gueniffey, La poLitique de La Terreur: essai sur La vioLence revoLutionnaire, 1789-1794, Paris, 2000, pp. 43-9. liOn the impact of the American model in France, see D. Momet, Les origines intellectuelles de La RevoLution fram;aise: 17 J5- J 78, 1933; this edition, Paris, 1954, ch. Vlll; D. Lacorne, L'invention de La repubLique: Le modeLe americain, Paris, 1991, pp. 77-84.
9
10
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ldeas of the Future
Works such as Saint-Jean de Crevecoeur's Letters from an American farmer, whose first French edition was in 1784, did much to popularise this view of America as a golden age, though its haunting account of the horrors of the American system of slavery presented a grim underside to the seeming idyll.12 In France the cult of Benjamin Franklin helped perpetuate the view of America as a haven for virtuous citizens. In a eulogy of Franklin delivered in 1790 the radical priest Claude Fauchet extended his praises to all Franklin's fellow citizens whose religion had brought them close to fundamental truths: 'As a Catholic preacher I will, no doubt, incur reproach for eulogising Quakers just as I have been reproached for eulogising Jansenists', but he persisted nonetheless in praising 'the virtuous Philadelphians, simple and sublime practitioners of universal fraternity' .13 In the early years of the French Revolution the American model had a distinct advantage over antiquity in being based on an existing society rather than a remote past. Men such as Brissot had seen for themselves that it was feasible to create a republic in a large country such as America and that republics did not have to be founded on the rarefied model of the city state. Part of the attraction of America in the early years of the French Revolution lay in the fact that its political settlement constituted a compromise which took into account pragmatic politics and human nature as it actually existed. This made the American version look more feasible. Indeed, up until August 1792 the American Revolution seems to have offered France a more compelling example than the lofty but remote idylls of antiquity. But after that the situation was transformed. The fall of the monarchy meant the popularity of the American model suffered a sharp decline. A fundamental difference between the two was that in 1793 the French enshrined the right of the people to insurrection, whilst the American constitution gave more extensive powers to the people's representatives. Paradoxically, those very aspects of the American Revolution that had previously helped secure its popularity (its compromises, its pragmatic reality) now worked against it. French republicans were now committed to going much further than their American counterparts - and they knew it. One of the most selfconsciously revolutionary acts of the National Convention was to refashion time itself, in the shape of the new revolutionary calendar. It was an assertion that the future would be without precedent. The republic would be unlike any currently existing form of government; there was no room
for political compromises on American lines. 14 Speakers upheld French unity as having distinct advantages over the American constitution. As Robespierre saw it, the universal character of the French Revolution showed up the American Revolution as 'imperfect' and limited by comparison. IS. The early Christian Church provided a rather different model for utopian inspiration. This was based on the view that the early Church had been founded on fundamental truths, on egalitarianism, brotherly love and the rejection of superfluous luxury; ideals long since abandoned by the Catholic hierarchy. This model owed much to Jansenist theology and its variant, Richerism, which had many adherents amongst the lower clergy. It was particularly persuasive amongst some of the clergy who hoped great things from the Revolution, but who remained doubtful about the merits of antiquity because of its overt paganism. Gregoire, influenced by Jansenist ideas but with his own independent theology, is the best-known proponent 16 of this model as applied to revolutionary politics. Another was Claude Fauchet, a founder of the Cercle Social where he was one of the people to bring the term 'fraternity' into revolutionary currency. In 1790 Fauchet published On the national religion which he had written several years prior to this but had not dared to publish before. In it he declared his desire that France should become a 'Christian Republic', and return to the forms of the early church, where liberty and equality had been the Church's practice rather than an abstract doctrine. He stated that the Revolution had not changed his ideas: he had always held the same views. For Fauchet, as for many others, the outbreak of Revolution in 1789 seemed to herald a better world. 17 But as the split between the Revolution and the Church widened so tensions increased. Many of the clergy rejected the Revolution altogether and refused to take an oath of loyalty to the constitution. Amongst some of the constitutional clergy there was an increasing enthusiasm for millenarianism and a belief that the Revolution was connected to the apocalyptic events that would prepare the path for the return of Christ to earth. But this brand of utopianism was never going to amount to more than a marginal concern in what was essentially a secular
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12 M.GJ. Saint-Jean de Crevecoeur, Lellres d'un cultivateur americain, 1784; republished as Let/res d'un cultivateur americain ... depuis l'annee 1770 jusqu'en 1786, Paris, 1787, p. 28. 13 C. Fauchet, L 'eloge civique de Franklin, Paris, 1790, p. 6.
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14 On the differences between America and France, see Gueniffey, La politique de la Terreur, pp. 53-7. 15 See the comparisons between France and America made by a succession of speakers in the Convention, in the Archives Parlementaires: lxii. 158, Robespierre, 15 Apr. 1793; lxiii. 392, Clootz, 26 Apr. 1793; and Ixiv. 698, Saint-Just, 15 May 1793. 16 The extent of Gregoire's Jansenist sympathies is discussed by D. Van Kley, The religious origins of the French Revolution, New Haven, 1996, p. 352. 17 On the background to clerical radicalism in 1789, see N. Aston, Religion and Revolution in France, 1780-1804, Basingstoke, 2000, esp. pp. 30-3.
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republic. 18 By 1793 the gulf between the secular Republic and a Christian utopia had proved almost impossible to bridge. Fauchet came under suspicion from the Jacobins and was guillotined in 1793. Gregoire was one of very few leading members of the constitutional clergy to survive the period of Jacobin rule relatively unscathed and unchallenged. So why did the republics of classical antiquity gain such an ascendancy over the political landscape by 1793? Classical republicanism was by far the most important model for the idealised conceptualisation of politics in the eighteenth century.19 It constituted part of a shared culture for all men who had had a formal education beyond the basic level. 20 They were familiar with the republics of classical antiquity, most important of which were the city states of Athens and Sparta and the Roman republic, which they studied mainly through the writings of Tacitus, Livy, Sallust, Cicero and Plutarch. Though each of these republics had specific characteristics, they were all deemed to have been founded on the principle that civic virtue was the highest political attribute. The attraction of antiquity lay both in its universality and in its elusiveness. The histories of Roman republics and ancient Greek democracies which were taught to the revolutionary generation, as to many preceding generations, in the French colleges presented an idealised account. Historians such as Livy and Tacitus who themselves wrote at a period when the Roman Republic was already in the past, eulogised this remote republican era, representing it as a lost 'golden age' which was all the more flawless when seen against the backdrop of what they saw as their mundane, dreary and corrupted present. Classical republicanism was potentially the most politically egalitarian of the models available to the eighteenth century. It featured in countless
texts of the period, of which the most influential included Montesquieu, especially in his Consideration of the causes of the grandeur of the Romans and of their decline (1734) and The spirit of the laws (1748); Rousseau's Social contract, and the many writings of Mably on antiquity?1 It lent itself readily to the argument that the republicanism of antiquity, sustained by civic virtue, was superior to the hierarchical political structure of the ancien regime. The view of most of the philosophes was that the classical republic was an ideal, but outmoded, form of government. According to both Montesquieu and Rousseau, the city state structure of the republics of antiquity meant that their direct democracy was unsuitable for a country the size of France. Notwithstanding, the rhetoric of classical republicanism served during the eighteenth century as a yardstick against 22 which to measure the shortcomings of ancien regime government. For the revolutionaries, the foremost appeal of classical republicanism lay both in its effectiveness as a form of political critique and in its undoubted utopian vision. But it was a long way from lingering on the delights of antiquity to actually envisioning it as a political model for France. Most revolutionaries began by concurring with the philosophes that it was neither possible nor desirable to reconstitute this kind of alldemanding politics?3 During the early years of the Revolution many revolutionaries thought that France had now eclipsed the ancients. Even Desmoulins, who had been a great admirer of antiquity now thought that France had surpassed them: 'How the face of this empire has changed! We have taken giant steps towards liberty! ... A few years ago I sought out everywhere republican souls: I was desperate at not having been born a Greek or a Roman'. But now, he asserted, it was the tum of other countries 24 to envy France. It was the failure of the attempt to set up a constitutional monarchy that became apparent after the flight to Varennes, that finally convinced the more radical revolutionaries that the only possible future for the Revolution lay in the uncharted seas of a democratic Republic. As the tensions grew between Church and Revolution, antiquity's essential
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18 On millenarianism in the constitutional church, see Aston, Religion and Revolution, pp. 202-3. On the ideas and motivation of the constitutional bishops, see R. Graham, 'The revolutionary bishops and the philosophes', Eighteenth-Century Studies, 16, 1982/3, 117-40. 19 Of the many works to examine this phenomenon one of the first and most influential is J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian moment: Florentine political thought and the Atlantic republican tradition, Princeton, 1975. 20 On the common culture it has been estimated that in 1789,48,000 boys (one boy in every fifty-two) aged between the ages of eight and eighteen were attending a college: R. Chartier, M.M. Compere and D. Julia eds, L'education en France du XVle au XVllIe siecle, Paris, 1976. On the importance of classical antiquity as a whole for eighteenth-century France, see C. Grell, Le dix-huitieme siecle et l'antiquite en France, 1660-1789, in Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 330-1, 1995. On the classical education of the revolutionary generation see the classic work by H.T. Parker, The cult of antiquity and the French revolutionaries, originally published Chicago, 1937, reprinted New York, 1965, pp. 8-36. For a reappraisal of the relationship between classical republicanism and the Revolution, see K.M. Baker, '1 ransformations of classical republicanism in eighteenth-century France', Journal of Modern History, 73, 2001, 32-53.
21 On Mably as a classical republican, see J.K. Wright, A classical republican in eighteenthcentury France: the political thoughts of Mably, Stanford, 1997. 22 On the tensions between existing eighteenth-century republics which were increasingly seen as outmoded and corrupt, and the vision of republican antiquity in utopian terms, see F. Venturi, Utopia and reform in the Enlightenment, Cambridge, 1971. On the many works that used utopian versions of antiquity to criticise ancien regime government, see I. Hartig and A. Soboul, Pour une histoire de l'utopie en France au XV1JJe siecle.· essai de bibliographie, Paris, 1977. 23 Parker argued convincingly that even radical revolutionaries did not adopt a classical republican framework for politics until 1792: Parker, The cult of antiquity, pp. 89-102. 24 'La France Iibre', in C. Desmoulins, Oeuvres, Paris, 1874, i. 127.
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secularism was an additional attraction for those revolutionaries who sought an alternative moral framework to set against that of the Church. Even then, it seems as though antiquity came to the fore in part at least because it was one of the few areas of common ground that a majority of the revolutionary leaders could agree upon. As each of the other models incurred suspicion and political discredit, only antiquity retained some potential to unite warring factions. Antiquity seems to have had little effect on political choices as such; it was never a direct model in that sense. But it did suffuse the political culture of the Republic. It became a sort of cult, colouring everything from the style of speeches to the decoration of the hall in the Tuileries where the National Convention met. 25 Antiquity served as a means by which it was hoped that the French people might be 'regenerated', that is, that their old misplaced loyalties to monarchy and church might be given a new, egalitarian and patriotic direction. Its influence was felt most in the fields of education, festivals and political culture. 26 Even then, revolutionary leaders were fully aware that there were distinct limits to the applicability of classical antiquity to revolutionary politics. It was at no time a blueprint to be applied uncritically, but a rhetorical strategy to be used like any other. Some of them rejected it as a model altogether, and many more were unconvinced about its relevance. Condorcet and Brissot were amongst those who remained most resolute in their repudiation of antiquity - at least as a political model. Even amongst the Montagnards there continued to be considerable doubt about the extent to which the political vision of antiquity was applicable to their situation. Robespierre explicitly rejected the Spartan version of the classical republican model on several occasions. He was particularly sceptical about the political relevance of the Spartan idyll as expounded by his political opponents. In January 1793 he criticised the current (Girondin-backed) plans for education which he claimed relied too uncritically on Spartan antiquity. The Spartan republic, he said, had been founded 'on two principles which horrify us: poverty and the community of goods'. Sparta already had virtue: but France had just emerged from servitude and the constitution was not yet fixed. As for himself:
Even Saint-Just, whose youthful admiration of the Ancients has often been remarked upon, was far from wanting to mould the French literally into a nation of Spartans. In the notes found after his death and published under the title Fragments on republican institutions he had sketched out ideas and future projects for France that uncannily recalled aspects of Spartan culture and practices, such as the education of all boys by the patrie in collective communities. Even here there is no indication that the French should adopt the central features of Spartan social organisation: the creation of an exclusive warrior elite, sustained by the labour of helots. 28 Saint-Just's concern was rather to nurture a nation of farmers and artisans, albeit ones who knew how to fight. His enthusiasm for Sparta lay chiefly in response to the problem of collective education and how to teach the people to think of themselves as part of a moral community: how to make them virtuous. One last utopia that frequently occurred in revolutionary writings in the Year II was not a political model at all: if anything, it was a rejection of the political world. This was the rural utopia that drew its inspiration from an even more remote and mythologised past - that of man in a state of nature. The vogue for the pastoral life in the late eighteenth century owed much to Rousseau, especially to Emile and La nouvelle Hiloi"se. Yet the idealisation of rural life was also closely connected to some of the models we have already considered: the utopias of antiquity, of America and of Christianity. All of these extolled rural life, contrasting it favourably with the false values of the city, its luxury and corruption. The rural idyll featured strongly in revolutionary literature, sometimes as an aspect of these other utopias, and also as a utopian model in its own right. It was not uncommon for revolutionaries to claim that real happiness lay far away from the politics of the Revolution, and that the ideal life for a revolutionary would be to follow in the tradition of Cincinnatus, living a private life as a simple farmer, close to nature, unless called upon by the Republic to playa part in politics. The dream of rural happiness provided a source of solace for revolutionaries who found that the tide of revolutionary politics had turned against them. During his imprisonment Brissot sought in his imagination to return to a private life, which he pictured in terms of a rural idyll, with an alternative future. He wrote to his children:
I could recount to you dazzling descriptions of national festivals and perhaps produce for a moment an illusion, regaling you with the phantom of certain Spartan institutions which have no relevance to our actual situation. 27 On the adoption of the cult of antiquity see Parker, The cult ofantiquity, pp. 119-77. On regeneration and education, see M. Ozouf, L'homme regenere: essais sur la Revolutionfram;aise, Paris, 1989. 27 Lettres a ses cornmettans, 10 Jan. 1793, in M. Robespierre, Oeuvres, v. 211.
I have always regretted that heaven did not make me the son of a farmer ... one is always better when constantly in the presence of the sky and its
25
26
Fragments sur les institutions republicaines, in L.A. Saint-Just, Theorie politique, ed., A Lienard, Paris, 1976. E. Rawson, The Spartan tradition in European thought, Oxford, 1969, pp. 268-300, discusses the Spartan model in the French Revolution.
28
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And he imagined how, if he were to regain his liberty, he would retire from public life: ' ... I want to hide away in some peaceful little village with you, my children, and be able to teach you there' .30 A recurrent theme for those who had young children was the wish that they had devoted themselves to shaping the future of their children, rather than that of the ungrateful Republic. 3t We have considered these models separately in order to distinguish them and pick out specific elements. But in practice they often interacted and mingled in the landscape of revolutionary rhetoric. When we look at how they were actually used in revolutionary speeches it can be hard to disentangle them. Certain models had a number of elements in common: the American and English political models themselves owed much to the classical republican world, whilst the idea of a rural idyll was also apparent in the treatment of both America and antiquity. In a similar vein, one of the most renowned political utopias of the eighteenth century was based on Fenelon's Telemaque which combined not only elements of classical mythology but also Christian and rural utoEias and exerted a profound influence on the revolutionary generation. 2 In practice, revolutionary speakers used such models strategically, adapting them to specific political circumstances, emphasising some elements and playing down others. As we have seen, the changing political context played a major part in determining which model might be favoured at a particular given moment. The vocabulary of none of these utopias was adequate to deal with the problems of government during the Year II. Yet many leading revolutionaries continued to deal in these terms, and particularly to dwell upon antiquity. Let us now return to the question of why the model based on classical antiquity came to surpass the others in 1793. There seem to have been three principal reasons for this. Firstly, there were few alternative models that were still viable. As we have seen, other models were rejected because J.P. Brissot, Memoires, ed., C. Perroud, 2 vols., Paris, 1912, i. 3-4. Ibid. 31 Other examples of proscribed deputies who looked back nostalgically to the pleasures of a rural life include C. Barbaroux, Correspondance et memoires de Barbaroux, ed., C. Perroud, Paris, 1928, p. 515; and J.B. Louvet de Couvray, Memoires de Louvet de Couvray, Paris, 1823, p. 25. On Condorcet's remorse at not having devoted himself to his daughter, which he partly sought to exorcise by writing his Conseils a safille, see E. and R. Badinter, Condorcet: un intellectuel en politique, Paris, 1988, pp. 604-5. 32 On the contrioution of Telemaque to the construction of a model of a political utopia, see A. Delaporte, L'idee d'egalite en France au XVlIIe siecle, Paris, 1987, pp. 204-16. 29
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of a changing political climate. The more pragmatic and interest-based Frankish and English models had been outflanked by events in the early months of the Revolution of 1789. Increasing tensions between Church and revolutionary state and the secularism of many leading revolutionaries made the ideal of an overtly Christian republic untenable. The American model was too much of a compromise to prove attractive after the overthrow of the monarchy; whilst the rural idyll was more of a private than a political or collective model. Secondly, the appeal of classical antiquity was not solely due to a lack of viable alternatives. It had several very positive elements of its own, which owed relatively little to antiquity itself, and rather more to the idealised interpretation of it, especially by Plutarch, Rousseau and Montesquieu. It was an emotional choice as well as a political one. What revolutionary admirers of antiquity took from it was a rhetoric and a culture, a way of speaking and acting, but also a number of key ideals or beliefs. Several of these ideals were of particular significance to the revolutionaries. There was the idea that people in the republican societies of antiquity experienced a sense of wholeness, of belonging in a community or brotherhood. The ancient republics were thus the spiritual prototypes of 'the Republic one and indivisible'. Related to this was the belief that such republics were founded on virtue, so that they functioned as truly moral societies in which individuals sought the good of all, rather than their own self-advancement. Largely as a consequence of this emphasis on community and virtue, there was also the belief that the people of the antique republics had been happier and more fulfilled than inhabitants of modern society. This belief was itself closely related to the Enlightenment theory of bienfaisance, or active social virtue, and the idea that the only true happiness lay in helping others. 33 All these ideals were about the social community. But antiquity was also relevant to the isolation of the individual through the belief in the heroism of the ancients. The heroes of the ancient republics had been able to achieve great things on behalf of the people and to impose their will on events, and when circumstances had defeated them they had remained stoical and defiant, retaining their integrity. Many of these elements can be seen in some of the other utopias that we have considered: the idea of a spiritually and emotionally united community was a major element of both Christian and American utopias, whilst virtuous citizenship was very much associated with the American republic. But only in antiquity did these elements retain 33 On bienfaisance, see Linton, The politics of virtue, esp. pp. 69-71,173-6. On happiness, see R. Mauzi, L'idee du bonheur dans la XVlIIe siecle, Paris, 1960, esp. pp. 580-7. On projects for revolutionary bienfaisance, see C. Duprat, Le temps des philanthropes, 2 vols., Paris, 1993.
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a compelling hold on the revolutionary imagination, perhaps because its very remoteness made it easier to idealise. Lastly, whilst classical antiquity was important in providing both conceptual and cultural ways of understanding politics, it also worked at a deeper level, as a way of understanding and making sense of the Revolution. The model of antiquity gave meaning and significance to the Revolution. The 'golden age' of antiquity pointed to the 'golden age' of the French Republic. If societies in antiquity had been fulfilled and happy then it was possible to project a future for France in which a similar happiness was possible. If, however, one ceased to believe that it was possible for people to become virtuous, bienfaisant and fulfilled by society, then the Revolution lost its meaning and would be seen to be only futile selfdestruction. It was necessary therefore to cling most closely to the vision of the past when the present seemed in danger of becoming meaningless. We may return at last to the problem of the profound sense of foreboding that ran not far beneath the surface of revolutionary optimism. The sense that the revolutionaries' projects were doomed to failure may have owed much to the Christian world-view and the rejection of secular progress, ideas in which they were steeped from their infancy. But most radical republicans had long-since consciously rejected the comforts of revealed religion and would not return to it now, even in extremis. The idea of the inevitable decay of human endeavour was also central to classical antiquity, however, and in this form was much more conducive to their way of thinking. These gloomy preoccupations appeared in the writings of some of the Girondin leaders who had some time between their political overthrow and their execution to meditate on the collapse of their plans. Rejected by the present, they fell back on the past once more, or took refuge in the future. From the past they now took examples of virtuous heroes who were stoical in defeat. Most were from antiquity such as Phocion, or Socrates, but they also took examples of men from the turbulent history of seventeenth-century England, such as Sydney, to teach themselves how to die. They recalled that inany great heroes of antiquity, from Solon to the Gracchus brothers, were unappreciated by the very people they had sought to help, and that it is rarely given to heroes to die a natural death. As well as to the distant past they also appealed to the remote future. They hoped that the future would vindicate them, demonstrate their good faith, and uphold their claims to have acted through virtue, not self-interest. Madame Roland, who in the first months of her imprisonment had written with confidence that the Girondin forces would either rescue her or immediately revenge her death, gradually lost hope of any vindication in the foreseeable future and, setting her sights instead on the remote future,
entitled her memoirs An impartial appeal to posterity. Several of the Girondin deputies, even when they were on the run and in constant fear for their lives, were determined to write their memoirs, so that the truth as they saw it should be told. Posterity should know what they had done and what their intentions had been. Posterity would judge who had been the 'men of virtue'. Buzot recited the list of his friends who had died, like 'Phocion' and 'Sydney' for liberty, and announced defiantly, 'One day posterity will utter your names with nothing but veneration and recognition' .34 Barbaroux, wrote to Mme Bouquey, to whom he had entrusted his memoirs, and who was subsequently guillotined for having sheltered the deputies, ' ... it is you we entrust with making known to our children, to our friends, to the French people now so cruelly deceived ... what we have done for Liberty, for Virtue ... ' .35 Brissot wrote from his prison cell of how he had found himself thinking back to other 'martyrs' of the past, to Sydney and Russell, and he returned to his boyhood love of relemaque. I recalled the fate of Phocion and, in my sad plight, I congratulated myself on sharing the destiny of these great men. I was certain that posterity would 36 avenge my memory.
In such circumstances it was only by making appeals to a remote, idealised past, or to an equally distant, imagined future, that revolutionaries could write a narrative that would make sense of their present. Fewer examples exist of such appeals written by Montagnards. Most of the leading Montagnards who were imprisoned and executed in the Year II were only given a brief time between arrest and death, and had scant opportunity to think about the future, or to seek justification from posterity. Nevertheless, during his last months Robespierre's public speeches were more than ever haunted by the conviction that he too was marked out for death, and that the enemies of the Revolution would prove too strong for 'the men of virtue'. This idea was made most explicit in the language of conspiracy and plot that reached its peak during the first half of 1794. Robespierre was its most vocal exponent, but it was part of a common rhetorical currency, and central to the way in which radical republicans understood the dynamics of the Revolution. 3? The revolutionary generation F.N. Buwt, Memoires inedits de Pition et memoires de Buzot et de Barbaroux precedes d'une introduction par c.A. Dauban, Paris, 1866, p. 100. 35 Barbaroux, Correspondance et memoires, p. 413. 36 Brissot, Memoires, i. 9. 37 On Robespierre's view of conspiracy as the major threat to the Revolution see N. Hampson, The life and opinions of Maximilien Robespierre, London, 1974, pp. 201-23, and G. Cubitt, 'Robespierre and conspiracy theories', in C. Haydon and W. Doyle eds, Robespierre, Cambridge, 1999, pp. 75-91. 34
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had learned from Montesquieu that virtue inspired the highest form of republics. But Montesquieu also maintained that this kind of virtue could not be long sustained and that republics founded on such high ideals must inevitably decline and die. It was an idea that Montesquieu in tum had taken from the classical authors: it permeated the concept of a 'republic of virtue'. Almost in spite of their will to prove otherwise, it seems that the revolutionaries could never shrug off the conviction that their own attempts to create a better future were doomed.
Chapter 9
'A Ferocious and Misled Multitude' : Elite Perceptions of Popular Action from Rousseau to Robespierre David Andress
... every assembly of the people not summoned by the magistrates appointed for that purpose, and in accordance with the prescribed forms, should be regarded as unlawful, and all its acts as null and void ... Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, Book 3, Chapter 13
When Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, Baron de l' Aulne and former ControllerGeneral of France, heard the news of the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots in London in 1780, he wrote to his friend and collaborator Dupont de Nemours that such events proved 'that there is no greater enemy to liberty than the people'.' Turgot himself might be forgiven for his attitude, as popular disorders attendant on his reforms to the grain trade and artisan guilds had been at least partly responsible for his departure from high office in 1776. 2 Nevertheless, his view also reflected a near-consensus amongst the philosophes of the Enlightenment - from Montesquieu and Voltaire to Diderot and d'Holbachthat popular political activity was associated with the twin evils of violent mobrule and manipulation by unscrupulous despots. 3 Needless to say, when the reform-minded high priests of the lumieres could find few good words for the people, the attitudes of the French state remained unhesitatingly repressive. As Arlette Farge and others have shown,
in H.C. Payne, The philosophes and the people, New Haven, 1976, p. 166. S.L. Kaplan,' Social classification and representation in the corporate world of eighteenthcentury France: Turgot's "carnival"', in idem and c.J. Koepp eds, Work in France: representations, meaning, organization and practice, Ithaca, 1986, pp. 176-228, and idem, The famine plot persuasion in eighteenth-century France, Philadelphia, 1982. For wider discussion of the 'Flour War' of 1775, see C. Bouton, The Flour War: gender, class and community in late ancien regime French society, University Park, 1993. 3 See Payne, The philosophes and the people, pp. 165-71. 1 Cited
2 See
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the street-life of Paris brought forth ever-harsher and more pointed critiques of royal policy through the reign of Louis XV. The police, however, continued to voice the assumption that either individual dissidents were insane, or more likely, had been paid by elite actors to parrot the content of quarrels that were none of their business (this despite the burgeoning surveillance of such dangerous speech, a process Farge likens to psychological denial).4 Even the voices of more sympathetic commentators echoed critical perspectives on popular actions. When one author came to write a discussion of the political crisis over the recall of the Paris Parlement in August-September 1788, he noted that while the 'public' acclaimed the king at Versailles upon the resolution of the issue, the 'populace' lit bonfires on the Place Dauphine, and 5 the 'rabble' burned effigies of disgraced ministers on the Place de Greve. Here the group that other commentators generally referred to indiscriminately as 'people' is broken down into differentiated elements, but the schema used associates, once again, dangerous violence (albeit here in largely-symbolic form) and 'lowness'. Such characterisations would remain commonplace throughout the 1790s, mutating, sometimes subtly, sometimes grotesquely, with the development of new revolutionary groups and ideologies. The French Revolution had many paradoxes at its heart, and one of the greatest was that, despite being the event which signalled the arrival of 'popular politics' in European history, 'the people' were almost always scorned by its leading actors when passive, and feared when active. Engagement with popular activity by the political elites remained crippled by overlapping sets of stereotypes concerning the pauper, the peasant, and the lower-class woman, all of which interacted to prevent popular action from ever escaping its negative conceptual straitjacket. Throughout the eighteenth century, thinkers betrayed an almost obsessive fear of the poor, characterising them as 'without morals' and 'enemies of work', and consigning any able-bodied pauper by default to the realms of criminality.6 The Constituent Assembly in 1791 would echo this rhetoric,
defining the 'bad poor' (mauvais pauvres) as 'those who, known by the name of professional beggars or vagabonds, refuse all work, trouble public order, [and] are a scourge of society, calling down its just severity [upon themselves]'.7 Even Jean-Jacques Rousseau had scorned the beggar, commenting in his Social Contract on the nefarious political consequences of poverty:
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[A]lIow neither rich men nor beggars. These two estates, which are naturally inseparable, are equally fatal to the common good; from the one come the friends of tyranny, and from the other tyrants. It is always between them that public liberty is put up to auction; the one buys, and the other sells. 8
As Alfred Cobban documented many years ago, the literate classes who produced the Third-Estate cahiers of 1789 regarded the poor with 'a mixture of fear and enmity'.9 The lowest classes were alleged to be infested with a 'spirit of disorder, of independence, of roguery, of rapine and theft', to be lost in alcohol at every opportunity, to abuse traditional gleaning-rights and ignore opportunities for honest work, and generally to be possessed of what the late twentieth century called a dependency culture. As Cobban also noted, where the voices of the poorer sections of society intruded into the cahiers and other protest-documents of 1789, vitriolic denunciations of speculative wealth, of abusive wage-fixing, and of concentration of landownership were amongst the results. 10 Upon reading such statements as these, there is every reason to think that the perpetual conflict between the haves and the have-nots was coming to a violent head in France as the Estates General met. 11 This tension was one of the central problems of the French Revolution. Given that social disorder was so universally regarded as aimless noise produced by semi-bestial and eminently corruptible mobs, violent social change was very difficult to explain comfortably. The revolutionary events of
Report of the Comite de mendicite, cited in O. Hufton, The poor ofeighteenth-century France, 1750-1789, Oxford, 1974, p. 22. g 1.-1. Rousseau, The social contract, bk. 2, ch. II, note to second paragraph (p. 225 of The social contract and discourses, trans. G.D.H. Cole, London, 1986). 9 A. Cobban, The social interpretation ofthe French Revolution, 2nd ed., Cambridge, 1999, p. 137. 10 Ibid., chs. 12 and 13, passim, citation p. 136. 11 It should be acknowledged that such issues did not, of course, predominate in the cahiers. According to 1. Markoff, The abolition offeudalism: peasants, lords and legislators in the French Revolution, University Park, 1996, p. 32, 'the poor' came 38th in the top 50 issues in parish cahiers, and 'beggars' were 47th for third-estate bailliage meetings. This does indicate, however, that such issues got into the top 50 of a very extensive list of grievances. Markoffs text pays no further attention to issues such as those raised by Cobban, concentrating on peasant attitudes to 'feudalism', and legislators' attitudes to peasant insurrection. 7
A. Farge, Subversive words. Public opinion in eighteenth-century France, Cambridge, 1994; esp. pp. 3-4. See also D. Garrioch, Neighbourhood and community in Paris, 1740-1790, Cambridge, 1986; L.1. Graham, if the king only knew: seditious speech in the reign ofLouis XV, Charlottesville, 2000. The tracking of one seditious poem is reconstructed in R. Damton, 'An early information society: news and the media in eighteenth-century Paris', American Historical Review, 105,2000, pp. 23-8. 5 1. Charon, Lettre ou memoire historique sur les troubles populaires de Paris en aoat et septembre, 1788, London, 1788, cited in 1. Kaplow, The names ofkings. The Parisian laboring poor in the eighteenth century, New York, 1972, pp. 158-9. 6 See T.M. Adams, Bureaucrats and beggars: French social policy in the age of the Enlightenment, Oxford, 1990; and R. Schwartz. Policing the poor in eighteenth-century France, Chapel Hill, 1988. 4
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1789, as many historians have successfully demonstrated, were entirely dependent on the force provided by the popular classes to push over the tottering edifice of absolutism. And the popular classes were willing to push because they were highly aggrieved at the state of the country and its effects on their lives and livelihoods. Their demands were social, even if their consequences were political. The so-called 'Reveillon Riots' of late April 1789, or the outbreaks of protest and disorder connected with food-hoarding and seigneurial rights in the Midi and elsewhere during that spring, all left behind clear evidence of an agenda for change and an assertion of popular . hts. 12 ng Such events, nonetheless, were described by the authorities who witnessed them in the same old cliches: it was 'really tiresome' that peasants believed themselves free of obligations after drafting their cahiers, those who believed this were 'poor misguided people', and their arguments were 'senseless' .13 When rural protest combined with change in Paris and other towns, first to create the revolution of July, and then to terrify the National Assembly into the 'abolition of feudalism', the same underlying responses were still present. As Norman Hampson observes, the Parisian press was 'unanimous in denouncing the peasant rebels as bandits and in demanding their repression', and 'the first reaction of the Assembly, supported by both conservative and radical deputies, was to create a comite des recherches to investigate plots' .14 The night of 4 August 1789 offered the spectacle, albeit somewhat staged, of the privileged classes' renunciation of their rights. The decree of 11 August that codified this showed that the peasantry was not actually to be let off any of its most onerous burdens, and a decree of the previous day, 10 August, announced that the current disturbances were the work of 'the enemies of the nation, [who] having lost hope of preventing public regeneration and the establishment of liberty by the violence of despotism, appear to have conceived the criminal project of arriving at the same goal by way of disorder and anarchy ...'. This decree denounced the 'false alarms' which were 'troubling the universal order of society', and provided for municipalities to suppress 'all seditious gatherings' by requesting military force. 15
Before reaching this point, the revolutionary legislators had had to pass through the fire of the Parisian uprising itself, which had required a torrent of commentary to account for the brutal violence with which liberty was preserved. In effect, the violence was not actually accounted for, but rather explained away. The events of 12-14 July, culminating in the murder of de Launay, commandant of the Bastille, became wrapped up in a fog of patriotic effervescence, in which what had happened was an uprising in defence of liberty by a generalised, universalistic 'people'. This action could then be counterposed to events such as those a week later, in which Foulon and Bertier were tortured and killed by a crowd that accused them of being hoarders. By this stage, the discourse of the National Assembly had already returned to older channels: these were 'bloody and revolting scenes', and while 'resistance to oppression is legitimate and honours a nation, licence debases it'. These 'excesses' were 'misfortunes that must now be prevented' .16 The capital was far from alone in displaying such attitudes. In Lyon, where social relations were particularly tense, the upper-middle classes' fear that popular demonstrations were 'the first foundations of anarchy' led them to form a corps de volontaires to supplement the royal garrison - which itself, unlike in Paris, was welcomed, and reinforced, as a protection against social disorder. 17 By the end of July 1789 some of these Volunteers were being sent out 'to hunt down the chateau-burners' in the surrounding region. As the currents of the Great Fear lapped near the city, the extensive landholdings of the Lyonnais bourgeoisie were defended by these troops against the 'brigands', even to the extent of further hostilities with the population of the Lyon faubourgs as Volunteers returned from their punitive expeditions with prisoners. 18 At Bordeaux, by contrast, the population of the city seems to have taken part in the revolutionary process of July with little internal conflict, but it was still thought necessary to form a 'patriotic army' of some twelve to fifteen thousand 'to defend the newly won rights against possible reaction and to defend urban property against possible attack' , in Alan Forrest's words. Across the south-west more generally, the element of fear in the formation of armed bodies was much more significant, and both this and the reorganisation of municipal government that occurred spontaneously in many centres can be seen
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12 For the Reveillon events and their surrounding mobilisation of opinion, see 1. Godechot, The taking ofthe Bastille, London, 1970, ch. 6. On the events of early 1789 in the provinces, there is still no better brief account than G. Lefebvre, The Great Fear of 1789: rural panic in revolutionary France, London, 1973, pI. I, esp. pp. 24-46. 13 Lefebvre, The Great Fear, pp. 39-40. 14 N. Hampson, Prelude to Terror. The Constituent Assembly and the failure of consenSllS, 1789-1791, Oxford, 1988, pp. 54-5. 15 Decree of 10 Aug. 1789, translated in D. Andress, French society in revolution, Manchester, 1999, pp. 172-3. The decree of II Aug., which begins with the ringing declaration that 'The
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National Assembly abolishes the feudal system entirely', is cited in various collections, including J. Hardman, The French Revolution sourcebook, London, 1999, pp. 111-12. 16 W.H. Sewell, jr., 'Historical events as transformations of structures: inventing revolution at the Bastille', Theory and Society, 25, 1996, p. 859. See also C. Lucas, 'Talking about urban popular violence in 1789', in A. Forrest and P. Jones eds, Reshaping France: town, country and region in the French Revolution, Manchester, 1991, 122-36. 17 W.O. Edmonds, Jacobinism and the revolt of Lyon 1789-1793, Oxford, 1990, pp. 44-5. 18 Ibid., pp. 46-7.
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as a process whereby 'the urban elites gave themselves the means to fend off peasant attacks and to take crucial decisions on provisioning and on law and order' .19 As Paul Spagnoli has shown, by this time the events of the July uprising were already being written into a narrative that emphasised the connection of the respectable classes to the conflict, and downplayed what was otherwise viewed as disorder. Thus it was that major and violent clashes between royal troops and lower-class crowds, in which the latter were drawing little distinction between self-defence and looting, were left out of the account, and replaced instead by the glorification of a more respectable crowd's encounter at the Tuileries with the Royal-Allemand cavalry. The start of the uprising, with its assault on the city's customs-barriers, seemed to many to be no more than 'an attack on property and an episode of popular violence in the streets', and indeed, a few months later, in a prodigy of unconscious irony, the failure to effectively suppress this 'brigandage' was one of the charges laid against the 20 royal commander, Besenval, by the city authorities. By contrast, the charge of the Royal-Allemand seemed worthy of record, Spagnoli argues,
October,23 Even the supposed friends of the people were left uneasy by yet another demonstration of the latter's might, as Parisian women of the popular classes spearheaded demands to deal with the subsistence crisis in the capital by direct intervention. Although a public show of unity demanded that the decision to move the Court and National Assembly to Paris be acclaimed as a wise one, fears soon resurfaced. The female-led crowds had at first seemed likely to vent their fury on the Paris municipality, and their male supporters in the National Guard had carried out an effective mutiny to get General Lafayette to lead them to Versailles. These facts had to disappear in the retelling, as Jacques-Pierre Brissot put it in the Patriote Franrais on 8 October: 'The People was unhappy. But it was not its leaders ... whom it accused. The sole object of its hatred ... was the aristocratic party at Versailles'. He went on to observe that a 'happy' result could only be achieved in the longer term
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because it occurred in the heart of well-to-do Paris, because it impinged on the leisure activities of the Parisian elite and their middle and lower middle class emulators, and because it seemed to epitomize the arbitrary, even stupid, behaviour of the royal government, which threatened to destroy their comfortable way of life ... 21
Thus, as 'the Revolution' became almost immediately a story and an historical event, it was one in which the suffering and valour of the middle classes was highlighted, and that of the lower orders acknowledged only on sufferance, and with profound reservations. The double aspect of patriotic attitudes to the poor is caught neatly by the title of a utopian pamphlet on land reform produced in 1789 by a Norman lawyer: 'Means to bring an end to the misery of the people, to assure their happiness, and to remedy permanently the brigandage and beggary which desolate France,.z2 Such doubled attitudes are equally reflected in the responses to the great revolutionary episode of the autumn of 1789, the 'March on Versailles' of 5-6
if the People, now satisfied, is willing to restrain itself ... if it is careful not to listen to the insinuations of turbulent men who incite revolt for their own private interest, and if it is willing to accept ... that a free People must be a reasonable People, that a reasonable People does not hang or exterminate before discussing and judging, and that, incapable of judging when it is too numerous, it must entrust this difficult mission to others. 24
An anonymous pamphleteer, writing to congratulate the 'Heroines of Paris' for their role in these events, also urged that 'they must not embark on any more expeditions which could degrade them', and 'should take upon themselves a respectable self-discipline'. This included abstaining from drunkenness, and reproving it in their menfolk, and also, rather oddly, the twin roles of preventing 'lack of respect for the clergy and for titled people', and policing the customs-barriers to prevent the guards 'letting green or rotten fruits through for transport to the markets' .25 The latter injunction harks back to a long tradition of the female police of the marketplace, while the former seems to draw on a language of popular respectability, and of women as the upholders thereof, that had already become little more than empty exhortation. In the longer term, the vision of the 'October Days' that was established in The political dimensions of this episode are analysed by B.M. Shapiro, Revolutionaryjustice in Paris, 1789-1790, Cambridge, 1993, pp. 84-98. Some testimony from those involved is reproduced in D.G. Levy, H.B. Applewhite and M.D. Johnson, Women in revolutionary Paris 1789-1795, Urbana, Ill., 1979, pp. 36-50. A recent article reviews interpretations of the events: D. Garrioch, 'The everyday lives of Parisian women and the October Days of 1789', Social History 24, 1999, pp. 23 1-49 24 Cited in Shapiro, Revolutionary justice, p. 92. 25 Anon., Les heroi"nes de Paris, ou l'entihe liberte de la France, par des femmes, cited in Levy, Applewhite and Johnson, Women in revolutionary Paris, p. 54. 23
19 A. Forrest, The Revolution in provincial France; Aquitaine, 1789-1799, Oxford, 1996, pp. 64-8, citations pp. 65, 67. 20 P.G. Spagnoli, 'The Revolution begins: Lambesc's charge, 12 July 1789', French Historical Studies, 17, 1991, p. 492. 21 Ibid., p. 496. 22 C. Peyrard, Les JacotJins de I'Ouest. Sociabilite revolutionnaire et formes de politisation dans Ie Maine et la Basse-Normandie (1789-1799), Paris, 1996, p. 25.
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the minds of the political class became one in which a dangerous and gullible popular class had been misled by counter-revolutionary forces. The direct encounter of the legislators with angry Parisians had been a rude shock, and some felt like prisoners of Paris from the first days of their move. More broadly, as Timothy Tackett notes: 'Increasingly, for a great many representatives, all public disturbances, all recalcitrance to authority, virtually any occurrence with potentially negative consequences for the patriot cause were construed as part and parcel of a generalized conspiracy' .26 Uncontrolled popular intervention in politics was thus clearly seen as a Bad Thing, and as the National Assembly delved ever-deeper into its work of constitution-making, it soon became clear that such intervention was to be structurally hindered at every tum. Amongst the first principles of the new Constitution settled in late 1789 was its status as a censitary regime - that is, one based on a taxpayer franchise, 27 set at a variety of levels according to the degree of political activity perrnitted. Although it must be acknowledged that the approximately four million 'active citizens' thus created were by far the largest political class in the world at the time, these measures nevertheless disenfranchised groups of people, notably amongst the urban working classes, who had already developed a habit of political activity. In Lyon, an urban insurrection in February 1790 forced the reversal of an attempt to set the voting threshold as high as possible, with a stringent interpretation of the qualifying payment of three days labour. Even so, when this sum was reduced to a more realistic, and indeed comparatively generous level, it still left around half the adult male population of the city voteless. 28 In Paris, a similar level of disenfranchisement had been entrenched since 'one hundred and fifty thousand Parisian workers and artisans' had been excluded from the voting for the Estates General by a uniquely narrow interpretation of the voting rules, intended no doubt to safeguard social order in the capital. 29 Evidence suggests that no more than around 10,000 Parisians ever took part in formal political institutions under the Constituent Assembly, a tiny
T. Tackett, Becoming a revolutionary: the deputies ofthe French National Assembly and the emergence ofa revolutionary political culture (1789-1790), Princeton, 1996, pp. 165-9, 195-9, citation pp. 244-5. 27 See P. Gueniffey, Le nombre et la raison. La Revolution fran<;aise et les elections, Paris, 1993; and M. Crook, Elections in the French Revolution: an apprenticeship in democracy. 1789-1799, Cambridge, 1996. 28 See Edmonds, Jacobinism, pp. 49-51. 29 Godechot, The taking of the Bastille, pp. 133-6, citation from the title of an anonymous pamphlet, p. 135. 26
'A Ferocious and Misled Multitude'
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minority even of 'active citizens'. 30 What evolved in Paris, and to a lesser extent in other major urban centres from 1789 onwards, was a political system in which the common people had a constant, active and vociferous input, but where this input was persistently denigrated by the political class. The activity of the population took place largely out-of-doors, in parks, gardens and streets, where discussions went on with ferocious vigour, and where violence was not uncommon. 3l Regardless, however, of the content or target of this activity, it was subsumed by administrators, journalists and other observers into the gyrations of a 'ferocious and misled multitude', who at best were guilty of the 'exaggeration of patriotism [through] impatient ardour', and at worst were accused of being 'vagabond etrangers, without domicile, paid to excite disorder,.32 As early as 7 August 1789, the Paris Commune condemned any and all public gatherings except official District sessions as 'seditious', and at the end of that month, as protest meetings attacked the project for a royal veto on legislation, such meetings were said to 'overturn all forms of order', and were sites where 'the factious, through their half-knowledge and their criminal enthusiasms, might impose [their views] on the credulous and ill-informed class of the people'. 33 Alongside the denigration of the urban population's interest in political matters went a scorn for the rural population that was, if anything, even more harsh. It was not until the spring of 1790 that the Assembly took action on the 'feudal' issue, having previously ordered that all dues were to be paid as normal. Anti-seigneurial rioting that had broken out by February 1790 was denounced by moderates and conservatives, while the best that putative radicals could do was either to deny that the reports of disorder were true, or to proclaim the offenders as 'misled and wretched rather than guilty'. The assumption that any disorder was stirred up by counter-revolutionaries went unchallenged, except by those on the right who were the target of the
30 Average attendance at District meetings remained below 200, and often well below: see M. Genty, Paris, 1789-1795: l'apprentissage de la citoyennete, Paris, 1987. 31 For Paris, this culture is explored in detail in D. Andress, Massacre at the Champ de Mars: popular dissent and political culture in the French Revolution, Woodbridge, 2000. For Lyon, see Edmonds, Jacobinism, esp. chapters 2-4. Other cities, it must be acknowledged, were less precocious, although the southeast produced a similarly confrontation environment: see H.C. Johnson, The Midi in Revolution: a study of reg ional political diversity, 1789-1793, Princeton, 1986, ch. 5. 32 Comments cited in Andress, Massacre at the Champ de Mars, pp. 57-8, 114. The first and last comments are from the Moniteur of 27 and 28 May 1790, and the second from the Municipality of Paris on 26 Apr. 1791; their tone, however, is ubiquitous to this period. 33 See S. Lacroix, Actes de La Commune de Paris pendant La Revolution, 1st series, Paris, 1894, i. 124,423-5.
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accusation. 34 Measures taken in March and May 1790 to deal with the feudal issue left peasants faced with charges equivalent to twenty years' worth of payments if they wished to 'redeem' their obligations, and also faced with litigation from their former seigneurs to claim back-payments from the previous two years. 35 Alongside these material problems, the National Assembly's decision to interfere with the basic forms of religious life set some regions of the country at odds with revolutionary authority from early 1790 onwards, and with an accelerating rhythm. 36 The consequence of all this was a succession of insurrectionary events, against state-supported seigneurial authority and state religious policy, and also against state tax-gathering activity and subsistence-management, which meant that, at almost any point during the 37 years after 1789, some part of rural France was experiencing disorder. Against this disorder, the authorities deployed force. This force was largely composed of the National Guard, the formalised militia that had emerged from the disorders of July 1789. Service in the Guard was a technical requirement of active citizenship, and although the origins of the Guard were partly insurrectionary, it had always been a defence against threats to property, and its role as a defence against threats to the state was amplified in successive regulations and legislation. 38 In late November 1790, Rabaut de Saint-Etienne spelled out in the National Assembly what the Guard meant for the state: 'To deliberate, hesitate, refuse, are crimes. To obey, there, in a single word, are all their duties. A blind and purely passive instrument, the public force has neither soul, nor thought, nor will' .39 In July 1790, at the Festival of Federation, Guards had already sworn to protect free trade in grain and the collection of seigneurial dues, and in late July 1791 a further law re-codified the fields in which force would be used against the people:
Hampson, Prelude to Terror, pp. 92-3. See P. Jones, The peasantry in the French Revolution, Cambridge, 1988, esp. chs. 4 and 6. 36 See T. Tackett, Religion, revolution and regional culture in eighteenth-century France: the ecclesiastical oath of 1791, Princeton, 1986, idem, 'The West in France in 1789: The religious factor in the origins of the Countemevolution', Journal ofModern History 52, 1982,715-45, and idem, 'Women and men in counter-revolution: The Sommieres riot of 1791', Journal of Modern History 56, 1987, 680-704. 37 The maps on pp. 403-4 and 406 of Markoff, The abolition offeudalism, illustrate this extent, while it is charted chronologically on p. 300 - at the lowest point of activity, in Nov.-Dec. 1790, there were still over a dozen reported incidents each month. 38 This did not stop rural National Guard formations from siding with their communities in insurrection - but that itself did not stop urban National Guards being used against them: see Jones, Peasantry, pp. 110-21 for a series of examples from 1790-2. 39 F. Devenne, 'La garde nationale: creation et evolution, 1789-aoilt 1792', Annales historiques de la Revolutionfranr;aise, 283,1991,56. 34 35
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Seditious gatherings ... [against the collection of feudal dues], against the collection of public contributions [i.e. taxes], against the absolute liberty of circulation of foodstuffs and gold and silver currency ... against the freedom of work and industry, as well as [concerning] conventions relative to the level of wages, will be dispersed ... 40
In both urban and rural contexts, the use of the National Guard to suppress dissent was endemic - as early as July 1790, the National Guard of Lyon, despite having been formed initially as a more 'radical' body than the 1789 corps des volontaires, was being used to disarm popular quarters of the city after disturbances related to taxation and city governance, and was using that opportunity for the punitive destruction of workers' property.41 The Parisian National Guard, which continued also to pride itself on its revolutionary credentials, was caught up in an escalating spiral of violent confrontation with popular and radical dissent that ended with the 'Champ de Mars Massacre' of 17 July 1791, effectively silencing radical protest in the city for a number of 42 months. In the countryside, the National Guard increasingly became the instrument of punitive expeditions, especially in the West as widespread religious agitation took hold through 1790 and 1791. Long and bitter battles over the religious issue would culminate, of course, in outright civil war, while a series of waves of insurrection would push the (albeit increasingly sympathetic) legislature to capitulation on the 'feudal' issues of the 43 countryside. As the Revolution's politics evolved, passing into war in April 1792 and republicanism in August-September, the increasingly implacable hostility of revolutionaries towards pre-revolutionary elites, now identified categorically as 'aristocrats', led to a superficial shift in the rhetorical treatment of 'the people'. Always a referent of debate, the increasingly central identity of 'the people' as the critical constituency of revolutionary politics was illustrated in May 1792 by Brissot, writing in the Patriote franr;ais about the three 'parties' he saw as operating within revolutionary politics: Patriote: Friend of the people, friend of the constitution Modere: False friend of the constitution, enemy of the people Enrage: False friend of the people, enemy of the constitution. 44
Ibid., p. 61. Edmonds, Jacobinism, pp. 58-60. 42 See Andress, Massacre at the Champ de Mars, passim, esp. ch. 3 on Guard organisation, and chs. 5-7 on rising hostility. 43 See Jones, Peasantry, chs. 4 and 5, Markoff, The abolition offeudalism, chs. 7 and 8, and A. Ado. Paysans en revolution: terre, pouvoir et jacquerie, 1789-1794, Paris, 1996, chs. 4-6. 44 Cited in J. Guilhaumou, L'avenement des porte-parole de la Republique (1789-1792). Essai 40
41
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Ironically, a few months earlier in February 1792, a suggestion by Petion that a union between 'bourgeoisie' and 'people' was needed for revolutionary success had ignited political debate which revealed that some commentators associated the term 'people' with a sub-class of proletarians, while others denied outright that a 'bourgeoisie' could be distinguished from the people, and all sides foresaw disorder and possible civil war in perpetuating the idea that such a division might exist,45 Thus, while its centrality was in no doubt, what 'the people' meant to revolutionary politicians remained highly problematic. Further political crisis in the summer of 1792 would make the understanding of popular action by politicians even more complex. During these months, the notiQn of the 'sans-culotte' as a defining identity gained strength on the left of politics, taking up an insulting nickname peddled by right-wing journalists, and infusing it with a set of meanings that coalesced around the city-dwelling, independent, plebeian patriot, for whom love of equality and liberty were key values, along with a willingness to undertake militant action, or heroic sacrifice. 46 Whether any such group existed as what one might call a sociological referent, it is clear that the sans-culotte would be a key ideological term in the evolution of revolutionary politics over the following year. 47 On 10 August 1792 forces which were represented as embodying this ideal deposed the monarch, and nine months later would do the same to the Girondins. The fact that both of these events were planned and coordinated via the Commune and Parisian National Guard prevented neither 48 friend nor foe from discoursing on their 'popular' nature. The upsurge of political activity that was marked out as being explicitly 'popular' , associated with the birth of the sans-culotte ideal, and with the fall of the monarchy, also marked a broader transition in the political perception of popular activity. This was on two contradictory levels. The first level developed the suspicion of popular activity built up during the early years of
the Revolution, and combined this with a belief that direct political manipulation of popular sentiments was not merely a shadowy threat, but increasingly a fatal danger to the public good, and to individual political actors. On 12 June 1792, the departmental administrators of Paris wrote in anguished tones to the Ministry of the Interior concerning the influence of the Jacobin Club, which was spreading 'unjust suspicions, vague mistrust [and] calumnies' against all authority, all of which were 'repeated by simple and innocent mouths' throughout the population. 49 After the 20 June invasion of the Tuileries by protestors, an address from the 'active citizens of Rouen' condemned this action, denouncing the 'true conspirators ... who, working without rest on a multitude easy to mislead, push them to crime, in intoxicating them with mistrust ... [and] who disparage the sovereignty of the legislative body' through republican demands. 50 Following the fall of the monarchy, such alarms intensified - quite justifiably, in many cases - and also continued to resonate with accusations of conspiratorial corruption of the people. Madame Roland's correspondence on 2 September 1792 spoke of the 'evils of anarchy' and of massacres by the 'mob', all encouraged by the confusion and indiscipline of 'our mad [Paris] Commune'. By 5 September, with the complexion of the Massacres clearer to her, she wrote in harder-edged tones of a 'small army' in the pay of Robespierre and Marat, attempting to overthrow national authority, and of (so far) unsuccessful efforts to sweep up Brissotin figures into the deliberately plotted carnage. 51 Charge and counter-charge of conspiracy would of course become the stock-in-trade of the GirondinMontagnard confrontation, and the faction fighting that succeeded it, with 'the 52 people' as a passive but dangerous force to be stirred up on either side. The second level of political perception of popular activity was that which associated political activity with a popular identity. While in previous years revolutionary actors had been eager to affirm the 'popular' nature of actions they agreed with, this had tended, with some exceptions, to be in the context of seeing 'the people' as a body observed from outside. Increasingly during the course of the Jacobin Republic's existence, political actors would claim that
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de synthese sur les langages de la Revolution franr;aise, Lille, 1998, p. 214. 45 Ibid., pp. 209-10. 46 Ibid., pp. 211-13. 47 For a debate around the 'identity' of the sans-culottes, see R.M. Andrews, 'Social structures, political elites and ideology in revolutionary Paris, 1792-4: a critical evaluation of Albert Soboul's Les sans-culottes parisiens ... ', Journal of Social History, 19, 1-985-6, 71-112; M. Sonenscher, 'The sans-culottes of the Year II: rethinking the language of labour in revolutionary France', Social History, 9, 1984, 301-28; and idem, 'Artisans, sans-culottes and the French Revolution', in Forrest and Jones eds, Reshaping France, pp. 105-21. 48 See L. Whaley, 'Political factions and the second revolution: the insurrection of 10 August 1792', French History, 7, 1993, 205-24; and M. Slavin, The making of an insurrection: Parisian sections and the Gironde, Cambridge, Mass., 1986.
Cited in Andress, French society, p. 180. Cited in ibid., p. 181. 51 Cited in Hardman, The French Revolution sourcebook, pp. 156-7. L. Whaley, Radicals: politics and republicanism in the French Revolution, Stroud, 2001, pp. 82-4, observes that the massacres themselves provoked no particular outrage from 'Brissotins' until they became seen as part of a plot against them (and once the Brissotins were defeated in fresh elections). 52 For some observations on this, see D. Andress, 'Representing the sovereign people in the Terror', in M.F. Cross and D. Williams eds, The French experiencefrom republic to monarchy, 1793-1824: new dawns in politics, knowledge and culture, Basingstoke, 2000, pp. 28-41, esp. pp. 34-5. 49
50
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'A Ferocious and Misled Multitude'
they were the people themselves. Perhaps the most condensed version of this doctrine came from the lips of Collot d'Herbois, who proclaimed in the Jacobin Club on 29 July 1794 (11 Thermidor II) that 'The Jacobins are the Convention! The Convention is the People!' .53 As the date indicates, such formulations survived the fall of Robespierre for a short time, but their usage must be intimately associated with the government of the Terror. A great deal of ink has been spilt in recent decades elaborating on and nuancing Franc;ois Furet's insight that 'the "people" was not a datum or a concept that reflected existing society. Rather, it was the Revolution's claim to legitimacy, its very definition ... which it was nonetheless impossible to embody'. 54 The work of Jacques Guilhaumou and Bernard Conein has analysed how the linguistic entity 'the people' became an essential component of the presentation of all political positions and demands, and how speakers and writers took up almost unanimously the position of presenting themselves as spokespersons (porte-parole) of the people. 55 Lucien Jaume's discussion of Jacobin discourse and democracy notes that while Jacobin constitutional thought insisted on the fundamental rightness and goodness of the people's minds and actions, in comparison to their corruptible ruling officials, Jacobin educational thought spoke contradictorily of the need to completely remodel the people's understandings, 'degraded by the vice of our former social system' .56 Most recently, Patrice Gueniffey, in a wide-ranging discussion, has observed the ease (and consistency over time) with which revolutionary politicians arrogated to themselves, acting in the name of 'the whole body of the nation', the sovereign rights of an absolute monarch, up to and including the right to make exterminatory war on the people of the Vendee in the name of 'the despotism of liberty against tyranny' .57 What occurred around and alongside this stream of totalising discourse was of course a process whereby politics became ever more a realm of the deployment of direct physical force, and at the same time ever more a matter of factional dispute and interpersonal suspicion. While the increased presence during 1793-4 of actors drawn from social strata below the legal, mercantile and other pre-1792 elites is a demonstrable fact at every level of administration,
so also is the increasing inability of anything that might realistically be called popular action to succeed in deflecting the governing agenda. 58 When, for example, women employed in state-sponsored spinning workshops in Paris launched protests against tyrannical management practices in early 1794, 'the administrators viewed the workers' actions through the grid of ... political events', and at least one female worker ended up before the Revolutionary Tribunal on a charge of hebertisme. 59 The entire Parisian 'popular movement', along with all the more-or-less spontaneous 'ultra-revolutionary' groupings and the paramilitary armees revolutionnaires, would be ground out of existence by the centralising Revolutionary Government. 60 Outside of Paris, the grinding had started earlier, of course, and in some cases ground exceedingly fine. When Lyon revolted against its own Jacobins, and subsequently resisted central authority, those sent to suppress this rebellion became convinced that' the mass of its population were ... victims of a vicious local disease which disqualified them collectively from the French nation's mystic revolutionary union'. Since for Jacobins 'the identification of people and revolution was complete', Lyon's resistance to their version of the revolutionary message was therefore seen as a 'pathological case' , requiring extirpatory treatment. The demolition of the city was planned, and partly carried through, and it was even suggested that the surviving population should be scattered across France, where 'amongst free men they will take up their sentiments', and be cured of their counter-revolutionary disease. 61 The Vendee, of course, suffered a wider and more extended punishment for its collective apostasy from the revolutionary faith. 62 The mentality that led to such acts had been prefigured already by Robespierre in a speech on 6 April 1793, denouncing the participants in rioting
182
Cited in J. Cowans, To speak for the people: public opinion and the problem of political legitimacy in the French Revolution, London, 2001, p. 131. 54 F. Furet, Interpreting the French Revolution, Cambridge, 1981, p. 51: 55 See Guilhaumou, L'avenement des porte-parole, passim, and esp. pp. 221-9 on this phenomenon around 10 Aug. 1792. 56 L. Jaume, Le discours jacobin et la democratie, Paris, 1989, pp. 219-21; citation at p. 220, from Michel Lepelletier's plans for public instruction. 57 P. Gueniffey, La po:itique de la terreur. Essai sur la violence revolutionnaire 1789-1794, Paris, 2000; citations pp. 192-3. 53
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See L. Hunt, Politics, culture and class in the French Revolution, Berkeley, 1984, esp. pp. 163-5. Artisan and shopkeeper representation in the local poli tics of the four cities studied here approximately doubled in the period of the Terror, but in so doing, only reached 25-30 per cent of the total personnel. 59 L. DiCaprio, 'Women workers, state-sponsored work, and the right to subsistence during the French Revolution', Journal of Modern History, 71,1999, 537ff. 60 See M. Slavin, The Hebertistes to the guillotine: anatomy ofa 'conspiracy' in revolutionary France, Baton Rouge, 1994; and R. Cobb, The people's armies; the armees revolutionnaires, instrument of the Terror in the departments, April 1793 to floreal Year II, New Haven, 1987, esp. bk. 3, 'The liquidation of the popular armies: frimaire-germinal Year 11'. 61 Edmonds, Jacobinism, pp. 279-80. Edmonds notes, p. 281, the irony that it was partly because of its own plebeians' political engagement, in the context of a socially-divisive environment, that Lyon could not play its role properly in the 'revolutionary-democratic fantasy' of the Jacobin leadership. 62 On this subject see most recently A. Gerard, 'Par principe d'humanite': la Terreur et la Vendee, Paris, 1999; J.-C. Martin, Guerre et repression: la Vendee et Ie monde, Nantes, 1993; idem. La Vendee et la France, Paris, 1987. 58
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'A Ferocious and Misled Multitude'
over the price offoodstuffs: 'What is there in common between the people of Paris and a mob of women, led by valets of the aristocracy, by disguised valets; a gathering the fme sans-culottes took absolutely no part in ...?,63 His answer, of course, was 'nothing', and as time wore on, the defmition ofthe 'people of Paris' , and that of 'the people of France' , became that of a set of passive followers, willing to trust their existence entirely to the Convention and its leadership. Thus it was in the summer of 1793 that those speakers and writers who defended the rights of the population to subsistence were denounced, first as mere enrages and then, fatally, as counter-revolutionaries, even in the days and weeks when the very same demands were put before the Convention in the name of the Commune and the Conumttee of Public Safety.64 The involution of the Robespierrist concept of dissent is visible in the famous 'Report on the Principles ofPolitical Morality' given by Robespierre on 5 February 1794. Here he casts all acts which challenge his vision of revolutionary conduct as in themselves counter-revolutionary:
We can decipher in these words reference to the ultra and citra positions that Robespierre was campaigning against, of course, but more tellingly, they clearly establish a link between necessity, as determined by Robespierre, and the good of the people (which at one time may mean strengthening government, and at another weakening it, apparently). Thus Robespierre projects a view that, under any political circumstances, the right path for the people will be determined by the political leadership. The people should (must?), implicitly, follow. Such a view found outlets in action across France. Jean-Pierre Gross, in documenting the efforts of Jacobin representatives-onmission to feed the populations of their districts and support the war-effort, offers countless examples of these Jacobin apostles' confident and determinedly paternalist attitude to even the best of the patriots amongst their 67 flocks. The array of heavily didactic local festivals commissioned to draw communities into a circle of republican celebration, with the representative frequently taking a leading role, echoed at a local level the mission of 68 regenerative education envisaged for the nation. Once the French Revolution enters the period of the Terror, it becomes difficult to distinguish any responses the political elite may have had to individual episodes of popular action from that elite's increasingly general, and increasingly pathological, assumptions about the nature of the French people. As Olwen Hufton has remarked, the discourse of the Republic towards the mass of the population by Year II 'made [it] abundantly clear that peasants were considered idiots by central authority'. While male idiots 'could be coaxed or bullied into acceptance of the official line' , women were viewed as so intractably irrational that the records shower them with dehumanising epithets: 'Females, little women (jemelettes), bigots, animals, woolly beasts, sheep, lentils, vegetables, fanatics' .69 It is fitting to give the last word here to Norman Hampson, who wrote in 1983 that the Jacobin version of democracy revealed itself to be not 'giving people what they thought they wanted', but 'making them like what was good for them'. Furthermore, since it was apparent to those Jacobins by 1794 that 'the great mass of the population had been infected by false values that wou Id
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It is much more convenient [than open confrontation] to don the mask of patriotism in order to disfigure, by insolent parodies, the sublime drama of the Revolution, in order to compromise the cause of liberty by a hypocritical moderation or by studied extravagance. And so the aristocracy establishes itself in popular societies; counter-revolutionary pride hides its plots and its daggers beneath rags; fanaticism smashes its own altars; royalism sings hymns to the Republic ... If all hearts are not changed, how many countenances are masked! How many traitors meddle in our affairs only to ruin them!65 To illustrate his point, Robespierre goes on to list a great many examples of how such people had sought to counter every sensible move of the Convention with their own more foolhardy suggestions. The final two oppositions are revealing: Is it necessary to make the sovereignty of the people a reality and concentrate their strength by a strong, respected government? They discover that the principles of government injure popular sovereignty. Is it necessary to call for the rights of the people oppressed by the government? They talk only of respect for the laws and of obedience owed to constitutional authority.66 63 Cited in
C. Blum, Rousseau and the republic of virtue; the language of politics in the French Revolution, Ithaca, 1986, p. 198. 64 The classic discussion of this episode is A. Mathiez, Lo. vie chere et Ie mouvement social sous la Terreur, Paris, 1973, esp. pp. 200-88 and 339-65; a briefer treatment can be found in R.B. Rose, The enrages: socialists ofthe French Revolution?, Sydney, 1968. 65 Cited in K.M. Baker ed., The Old Regime and the French Revolution, Chicago, 1987, p. 379. 66 Cited ibid., pp. 379-80. N.B. This translation uses the phrase 'must we' to translate 'faut-il'. I have replaced this with a more precise rendering to avoid confusion about identities.
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67 J.-P. Gross, Fair sharesfor all: Jacobin egalitarianism in action, Cambridge, 1997. See for example the discussion of price-controls, food-requisitioning and rationing, pp. 72-92. 68 Ibid., pp. 193-9. For example, the parade at Perigueux in niv6se II, that began with children, moved on to 'erstwhile victims of egoism and unconcern', and ended with representative RouxFazillac himself at the handle of a plough-team surrounded by 'joyous country folk, all heading for a beller future' (p. 194). 69 O. Hurton, Women and the limits of citizenship in the French Revolution, Toronto, 1992, pp.99-100.
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make any democratic polity unworkable', a wholesale national purification was required. Thus: If the example of the French Revolution is of any general relevance, it suggests that a definition of democracy that implies the re-shaping of society by those who think they know what the majority ought to desire, is likely to take its practitioners very far from their original objectives. 7o
One might add that, in the whole history of late eighteenth-century France, it is hard to see any political actors who, if put to the test, would not have shared the Jacobins' views concerning the capacities of 'the great mass of the population' .
Chapter 10
'England Expects ... ': Trading in Liberty in the Age of Trafalgar Peter Jones
When Martha Russell boarded the Mary at Falmouth on 13 August 1794, she had good reason to feel confident about the immediate future. Prominent casualties of the 1791 riots in Birmingham, the Russell family were following the example of the Priestleys and many hundreds of less well-known 'friends of liberty' in seeking political asylum in America. It is unlikely that any member of the travelling party would have been aware of the threat posed by the decree of 7 Prairial (26 May 1794). In this measure the French Republic abandoned the pretence of distinguishing between the tyranny of governments and the goodness of peoples and sternly declared that 'no English or Hanoverian prisoners are to be taken'.' Whatever may have been the intentions of its framers, the law was sometimes applied to 2 merchantmen sailing the high seas, as Norman Hampson has recorded. Still, there was no sense of apprehension among the passengers as the French eighteen-gun frigate La Proserpine 3 bore down on their vessel. 'I hurried on my cloaths', Martha confided to her diary, 'well pleased with the thought of seeing the good republicans'.4
70
N. Hampson, The French Revolution and democracy, Reading, 1983, pp. 17-18.
I gratefully acknowledge the help of Mr Adam Green, senior archivist, Archives of Soho Project, Binningham Central Library and of Mr Paul Spencer-Longhurst, curator of the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Binningham in preparing this essay. 1 See Collection generale des decrets rendus par la Convention nationale, Prairial an II, Paris, n.d., p. 28. 2 N. Hampson, 'The idea of the nation in revolutionary France', in A. Forrest and P. Jones,eds, Reshaping France: town, country and region during the French Revolution, Manchester, 1991, p. 22 and note 15. 3 N. Hampson, La marine de l'an II: mobilisation de lajlotte de I 'Ocean, 1793-1794, Paris, 1959, appendix V. Martha Russell records that the vessel was armed with forty guns, but this seems unlikely. 4 Birmingham City Archives (hereafter BCA) 660349, 'A diary written by Miss Martha Russell', 3 vols., typescript, i. 15. For an abridged version, see S.H. Jeyes, The Russells of Birmingham in the French Revolution and in America, 1791-1814, London, 1911, p. 61.
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Fortunately the encounter resulted in a collective loss of liberty rather than life, not to mention the loss of a considerable quantity of baggage. The American captaincy of the vessel on which they were travelling probably spared the Russells a good deal of unpleasantness. Only after many months of incarceration on a hulk moored in full view of the guillotine serving the port of Brest, was the Committee of Public Safety finally persuaded that William Russell and his family had been intercepted whilst fleeing the shores of Albion. True, the family had not been able to produce passports for America, but their steadfastness whilst in detention, and their personal possessions, testified in their favour. Martha, her sister, brother and father all dressed themselves in tricolour cockades and their baggage would have contained medals and other iconographic representations of freedom. Only under the threat of violence at the hands of captive officers of a British man-of-war did they consent to conceal these emblems of liberte. As the British officers pointed out, no doubt, a nation that had condoned summary execution was in no position to lecture others on the subject of personal freedom. The family finally set foot on French soil in late December 1794, just as the news that representant Carrier had mounted the scaffold was filtering into the western port cities. They would travel to Paris where Martha made use of the opportunity to attend the trial of Fouquier-Tinville and the jurors of the Revolutionary Tribunal. On resuming the interrupted journey to America some five months later, she admitted to her diary that her views of the French Republic had been 'somewhat changed'. 5 Possession of medals or medallions and personal ornaments bearing uplifting images or inscriptions was a tangible and visible sign of the consumerist boom gripping nearly all sections of British society in the second half of the eighteenth century. These were accessories rather than necessities and as such were acquired primarily for purposes of display and mutual recognition, whether social or intellectual. Medallic art provided a tasteful medium for the assertion of allegiances, and one with a capacity to override frontiers that few other art forms could match. The celebratory 'dinner' held in Birmingham on the afternoon of 14 July 1791 that was the indirect cause of the Russell family's misfortunes had brought together local enthusiasts for the Revolution in France, and they supped in the presence of 'three elegant pieces of emblematic sculpture' whose central feature was 'a finely executed medallion of His Majesty Louis XVI encircled with a glory, on each side of which was an alabaster obelisk, one exhibiting Gallic Liberty breaking the bonds of Despotism, and the other
'England Expects ... '
representing British Liberty in its present enjoyment'.6 Although William Russell did not attend the dinner, his house was among those to be torched by the Birmingham mob. Joseph Priestley had absented himself too, but it made no difference. The inventory of his losses lists, among many other household items, a print of oath-taking on the Champ de Mars, several framed and unframed medals (Newton, Franklin, Wilkinson, Priestley himself) and a large oval cameo of Newton in ceramic.? It is likely, indeed almost certain, that these artefacts came from Etruria and the Soho manufactories. Josiah Wedgwood and Matthew Boulton yielded to no one in their determination to expand the market for tasteful products. Birmingham 'toys' - that is to say fashion and ornamental goods - enjoyed an increasing international renown that was starting to eclipse the older reputation of the West Midlands as a centre for the manufacture of utilitarian hardwares. Wedgwood and Boulton both cooperated and competed to supply this market, and medal, or medallion, production would prove peculiarly suited to the cultural ambitions of each, and the technologies that each would make his own. Wedgwood's mastery of ceramic chemistry enabled him to produce plaques and medallions of almost sculptural quality. Indeed, his polished black basalts looked indistinguishable from bronze. The finn's last catalogue, compiled in 1787, listed 1,091 cameos and intaglios, 648 small portraits and 233 portrait medallions, some of which were oval in fonn and up to ten inches in height. 8 The theme of Liberty or, more properly, of Reform is best illustrated in the slave oval with its famous motto 'Am I not a Man and a Brother?', but Wedgwood also marketed a ceramic head of Necker scaled to fit on to the lids of snuff-boxes, and a tablet in blue and white jasper to commemorate the signing of the Free Trade Treaty between Britain and France. The artwork for 'Mercury Uniting the Hands of Britain and France' was done by John Flaxman junior under a clear instruction to avoid cultural bias: 'we must take care not to show that these representations were invented by an Englishman; as they are meant to be conciliatory, they should be scrupulously impartial. The figures, for instance, which represent the two nations, should be equally magnificent and important in their dress, attitude, charcter and attributes, and Mercury should not perhaps seem more inclined to one than the other,.9 Like
Jeyes, The Russells oj Birmingham, p. 21. BCA 3998011ll R30, Manuscript memoir entitled' Inventory of the house and goods of Dr Joseph Priestley which were destroyed during the riots at Birmingham in 1791'. g See R. Reilly, Josiah Wedgwood, 1730-1795, London, 1992, p. 86. 9 Ibid., p. 276.
6 7
5
BCA 660349, 'A diary', iii. 1. See also, Jeyes, The Russells oj Birmingham, p. 156.
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Matthew Boulton subsequently, Wedgwood never lost sight of his customers and in 1787 his customers could be found throughout Europe. Wedgwood is not the subject of this essay, however, but Boulton. Less remarked upon by historians of material culture than the illustrious potter, Matthew Boulton of Soho near Birmingham can also be taken to epitomise the socially-relaxed, commercially-minded and fundamentally secular thrust of the Enlightenment in England. Indeed, his engagement with Liberty was probably more typical of English men and women of the late eighteenth century inasmuch as it was functional and pragmatic rather than ideological and moralising. Boulton, according to one historian, was a businessman first and an Englishman second, while another has described him more bluntly as 'a perfect weathercock,.10 Unlike Wedgwood, Priestley or the Russells he did not wear his colours on his sleeve or in his lapel. The story of his medal striking and coining activities recounted below discloses few moral scruples. When French-style Liberty lost its charm in the marketplace, the presses could soon be made to sing the praises of the 'freeborn' Englishman instead. Boulton entered the medal-making market as an extension of his activities as a button and buckle manufacturer. Having successfully applied steam power to the rolling, cutting and stamping of metals, huge commercial vistas appeared to beckon. While the Dissenters of Birmingham joyously celebrated the news of the fall of the Bastille, Matthew Boulton proudly recorded that his new coining presses were capable of processing six cwt of blanks a day at a rate of thirty-five blows per minute. A succession of technological improvements followed, culminating in a complete re-build of his mint in 1798-99. By 1802 he could inform a foreign visitor - in his usual inimitable style - 'that by my improved machinery and apparatus eight boys of 12 years old are able to strike 40 thousand Guineas p. Hour, all equal in diameter & perfectly round' . II A boast, perhaps, but there can be no doubt that the Soho Mint, from its modest beginnings in 1788-89, pioneered the industrialisation of money. Compared with Boulton's coining ambitions, medal striking was never more than a secondary activity. Nevertheless, he took the business seriously because it helped to promote his status as one of the country's leading producers of populux wares, and because in this area, too, new commercial opportunities materialised as a consequence of the dramatic J.R. Harris, 'Matthew Boulton: a slight adjustment of the halo', unpublished manuscript. 11 BCA Matthew Boulton Papers (hereafter MBP) 253, M. Boulton to the Prince of SalmSalm, Soho, 25 JU:1e 1802. (NB: the Matthew Boulton Papers are currently being recatalogued and all class-marks are provisional). IO
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events of 1789. Specialists are generally agreed that Boulton deserves most of the credit for generating the speculative trade in commemorative medals. One of his earliest ventures was a medal to mark King George Ill's recovery from insanity in April 1789. The subject need only detain us insofar as it demonstrates the abiding preoccupations of Boulton's medallic oeuvre: design and marketing. Commissioned medals - the more usual case until the final quarter of the eighteenth century - had only to reflect the taste of the patron or commissioning body, and marketing was not an issue since such products were rarely destined for open sale. By contrast, speculative pieces had necessarily to be in touch with public taste, and be available in sufficient quantity at the optimum moment. Boulton expended enormous energy, as was his wont, in securing an exact and up-to-date likeness of the monarch for his engraver to copy. The society artist, Benjamin West, played a crucial role in this respect, although his gratuitous advice on composition and styling was not adhered to. London opinion, Boulton's agent reported, did not speak with one voice on the subject of naturalistic portraiture in medallic art. 12 Nevertheless, the king's effigy on the obverse - clad in wig and laurel wreath - was widely admired. Marketing proved something of a fiasco, however, and Boulton learned the valuable lesson that it was inadvisable to advertise a product before the supply line had been put securely in place. Richard Chippindall, his London agent, advised that the Recovery medal would chiefly sell as an item of dress fashion and that most orders would need to be satisfied in time for the thanksgiving service scheduled to take place in St. Paul's on Wednesday 23 April, for 'after Thursday it will be a flat piece of business' .13 However, die sinking for medals as opposed to buttons was a far more time-consuming operation, while the technology of annealing, or tempering, was not precisely understood and frequently led to mishaps. Boulton's dies cracked and a marketing opportunity was lost. It is not known how many medals he sold: perhaps a few thousand. Yet one London shopkeeper shifted sixty gross of an inferior specimen in the days leading up to the thanksgiving service alone. By mid-May 1789 the market was in rapid decline and Chippindall advised against any further production runs.
12 West's combination of neo-classical styling and modem dress portraiture had been a subject of public debate ever since his painting of the Death of General Wolfe (1770). See H. von Erffa and A. Stanley, The paintings of Benjamin West, New Haven and London, 1986. 13 BCA MBP 300, R. Chippindall to M. Boulton, London, 20 Apr. 1789.
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Engravers and the complex procedures involved in making dies capable of withstanding the forces exerted by steam-driven stamping machines were the weak points in Boulton's coining business. By common consent, the best engravers were to be found on the Continent, and notably in France. Over the decade and a half of most active medal production at Soho (1789-1806), Boulton dealt with half a dozen engravers, several of whom eventually came to work for him in Birmingham. Jean-Pierre Droz, the Paris-based Swiss moneyer, was probably the most talented. He sank the dies for the George III Recovery medal and was therefore responsible for the conventional neo-c1assical styling of the bust. Unfortunately he did little else, despite a generous salary and comfortable lodgings at Soho. After nearly two years of semi-inactivity, he parted from Boulton on very bad terms and returned to work for the Paris Mint. Thereafter, Boulton chose more pliant individuals as collaborators (Rambert Dumarest and Noel-Alexandre Ponthon), although the most reliable engraver he ever engaged came to him almost by accident. Conrad Heinrich Kuchler fled to London in 1793, a refugee from advancing French armies on the Continent, and applied to Boulton for contract work. He seems to have engraved about thirty medals over a seventeen-year period. Half were joint speculations, that is to say medals produced for the market, and of all Boulton's medallists he adapted most successfully to the norms of taste prevailing in these islands. Dumarest would dismiss Kuchler's work as that of 'a mere mannerist' ,14 which seems to imply that the English public was unconvinced by the formulaic neo-classicism towards which French engravers were moving. Wedgwood was the first to enter the market for representations of Liberty. On 28 July 1789 his son, Josiah II, enquired: 'Do you choose to have anything modelled ... which should relate to the late revolution in France & to the support given to the public credit by the national assembly? What do you think of Public faith on an alter [sic] & France embracing liberty in the front. Mr Byerley [the firm's London showroom manager] says we ought to do something & that quickly' .15 By the end of the year Etruria had also produced two different jasper medallions commemorating the taking of the Bastille. Each carried inscriptions in French, indicating that they were primarily destined for overseas markets. Dissent-driven enthusiasm for Liberty, or any other cause, was not part of 14 See J.G. Pollard, 'Matthew Boulton and Conrad Heinrich KUchler', Numismatic Chronicle and JournaL of the RoyaL Numismatic Society, 10, 1970,269. 15 H. Young ed., The genius of Wedgwood, The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1995,p.90
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Matthew Boulton's psyche, however. Even so, he was keenly aware that support for 'public credit' could help line private pockets. In November 1789 Soho was invited to tender for the large quantity of copper shoe buckles required by the National Guard of Paris, now that the Assembly had enjoined all Frenchmen to make the patriotic sacrifice of their silver adornments. Gilded or polished replacements were particularly sought after, and the gilding, bronzing and polishing of base metals were all processes in which the workmen of Soho excelled. Yet Boulton's abiding concern of the early 1790s was to find a use for his new mint. While the striking of tokens and medals offered some employment, only a contract for a regal re-coinage would justify the considerable investment in men and machinery undertaken since 1787. To this end he looked towards both London and Paris, in the hope of persuading one or other government, and preferably both, of the manifest superiority of his new minting technology. Boulton was a familiar figure in the Palace of Westminster and in Whitehall, but negotiations with the French government had to be conducted at one remove. They were complicated, moreover, by the fact that the Revolution had re-routed the channels of executive authority and only in the spring of 1791 did it become clear that coinage would remain the primary responsibility of the Crown and not an area in which the Legislature could properly take the initiative. 16 The go-between in whom Boulton placed his trust was FranzXavier Swediaur, an amphibian Austrian physician who appears to have taken up residence in Edinburgh in the 1780s and to have attracted public notice as the translator into English and French of works by the Swedish chemists Scheele and Bergman. Swediaur was a 'cloak and dagger' character whose effectiveness seems not to have been matched by his energy. Part of his correspondence with Boulton was consigned to paper with the aid of invisible ink, but for reasons that are not at all evident. Swediaur's remit upon arrival in Paris in February 1791 was to seek out authorised persons with the aim either of securing a contract to re-coin the metallic currency of France in an emblematic style appropriate to constitutional monarchy, or of selling a fully equipped mint to the new rulers of the country. Should agreement on one or other of these proposals be secured, Boulton further empowered Swediaur to tender for the bell metal accumulating in depots all over northern France following the implementation of the reforms enshrined in the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. Not unreasonably, Swediaur quickly identified the Finance and Coinage Committees of the National Assembly as the bodies likely to offer 16
Law of 27 May 1791.
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the best political leverage, but the support of powerful figures in the Assembly would need to be enlisted, too. Mirabeau had just been elected as one of the directors of the Paris Mint, having published two pamphlets on the subject of re-coinage. 'This man we therefore must absolutely have on our side', Swediaur reported (using invisible ink), 'but as he is poor and in debt, I think a gentle hint of remuneration will be useful: write me how much you think I may offer, if occasion required it' .17 Bribery seemed all the more necessary in that other consortia were bidding for are-coinage contract. The Anglesey Company had an emissary in Paris who was offering to buy up redundant church bells and to turn them into coin, and Swediaur was deeply suspicious of the activities of the engraver JeanPierre Droz as well. Droz had apparently teamed up with the Perier brothers (other adversaries of Boulton who had pirated the technology of the Watt steam engine), and was lobbying the members of the Coinage Committee. According to Swediaur, the specimen coins that Droz was hawking around as evidence of his own technical expertise had almost certainly been struck at Soho. With the news that the power of decision in matters relating to the coinage was likely to migrate from the Assembly and its Committees to an e.ight-member Commission Generale des Monnaies headed by the Minister of Finances, everyone had to change tack, however. Swediaur secured an interview with Minister De Lessart on 16 March 1791 and received a sympathetic hearing, helped no doubt by the fact that he had found an ally in Gabriel de Cussy, formerly Director of the Caen Mint and currently rapporteur of the Coinage Committee. The Minister gave them to understand that he would not be deflected by partisan considerations from serving the public interest, which was what both Swediaur and de Cussy wanted to hear. In a trial Boulton's presses could outperform any mint then in existence, both in terms of the quality and the quantity of the product. On the other hand, the Assembly's conviction that a single mint, sited in Paris, would not be able to cater for the money needs of a far-flung country complicated Matthew Boulton's projections. Even one mint, designed to the most up-to-date specifications and incorporating steam-powered rolling and cutting mills, would take a year to build and install. The mint dream with its commercially advantageous link to the Boulton and Watt steamengine business began to recede. Yet Swediaur urged Boulton to stay in the running for a French re-coinage contract, advising in June 1791 that he ship over 700 or 800 of the new and much admired English halfpennies so that a specimen coin could be distributed to each of the deputies. 17
BCA MBP 346, F. Swediaur to 'A. Smith' (alias M. Boulton), Paris, 27 Feb. 1791.
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In anticipation of more lucrative deals involving regal coinage, Matthew Boulton had begun trading with France in medals and tokens. The technology and know-how was already in place, and the engravers needed to be put to work. Dies cut for medals and tokens and depicting scenes of Liberty could easily be re-cycled for coins should the occasion arise. Swediaur played a key role in this commerce, too, acting as a recruiting agent for engravers, as a design scout, and as a merchant for the dissemination of the products of the Soho Mint. His personal commitment to the Revolutionary cause ensured that he would become an excellent judge of what could be sold and what could not. That autumn Dumarest began to sink dies of Mirabeau and Lafayette, and by late December 1791 a die of Rousseau had been successfully tempered in Soho as well. Swediaur urged Boulton to ever greater efforts, reporting a huge pent-up demand for medals in the French capital. Copper gilt and bronzed copper specimens of the Serment du Roi, that is to say Louis XVI's acceptance of the Constitution on 14 September 1791, were selling particularly well, he reported. But the Revolution was advancing in leaps and bounds and soon the demand was all for Rousseau medals. Late in January Boulton was advised that 100,000 of these medals could be sold if only he could strike them quickly. This estimate was made by Monneron Freres, a Paris-based banking house which came to supplant Swediaur as Boulton's principal agent in France from the spring of 1792 onwards. The four Monneron brothers were wealthy merchants who had made fortunes in the French colonies, specifically in Pondichery, Chandernagor and Ceylon. Matthew Boulton seems to have learned of their existence from the London trading firm of Bourdieu, Chollet and Bourdieu who were linked to the Monnerons by marriage, but he hesitated long before finally entering into a commercial agreement with them, and for good reason as it turned out. Both Jean-Louis and Pierre-Antoine Monneron sat in the National Assembly as deputies for the French East Indies, and their youngest sibling, Jean-Joseph Augustin, would be returned to the Legislative Assembly. As such they were probably better able than Swediaur to grasp that a regal re-coinage was simply not likely to happen. The deputies and ministers had far more pressing concerns. On the other hand, they were all too aware of the desperate shortage of small coin that had developed since the spring of 1790. What the Monnerons proposed to Matthew Boulton, therefore, was a regal coinage by another route, that is to sayan issue of tokens. Moreover, since dies cut for tokens could be used interchangeably, they also promised a lucrative trade in collectors' medals.
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The legal status of token coins ('medailles de confiance'), and particularly of token coins imported from outside the kingdom, was unclear to say the least. Yet the commercial need for small change (5 and 2 sols pieces) was not to be questioned, and, since 1789, a huge opportunity on the stylistic front had opened up. The Monnerons were convinced that they could make a killing, and they furnished Boulton with large sums of (borrowed) money with which to purchase fine copper. While demurring at the profit margin that the Monnerons were proposing to take from their tokens, Boulton encouraged them with assurances that his presses would easily keep pace with the demand. At forty-five strikes per minute by 1792, a single press could, in theory, stamp 2,700 blanks per hour or 21,600 per eight-hour shift, and the Monnerons simply took him at his word. In January of that year they had urged him to increase production of the 5 sols tokens to 'at least two tons a day' .18 Even if Boulton had been able to lay his hands upon sufficient quantities of fine grade copper, it is extremely unlikely that he would have been able to keep two or three presses in continuous operation so as to produce 48,000 coins per day. The Monneron tokens were struck in thick metal and rapidly wore out the dies, and besides, stylistic changes necessitated frequent interruptions in the process of production. On 7 January 1792 Pierre-Antoine Monneron wrote to advise that the Soho engravers should alter the device on the 2 sols piece from Liberte sous la Loi to Liberte et Egalite. Yet two days later Swediaur was cautioning Boulton to change the date inscription on the 5 sols die to 'L' An IV de la Libert€' following the decision of the Legislative Assembly that the fourth year of Revolutionary freedom be aligned with the calendar year 1792. Nevertheless, Boulton shipped considerable quantities of coin to France during the winter of 1791-92. Medals were shipped in smaller quantities, notwithstanding the huge demand for these beautifully executed and perfectly round specimens of the Soho Mint. Ticklish issues such as the legality of the token coinage or the liability of imported medals to excise duties were left for the Monnerons to sort out. Medals depicting the founding fathers or the founding events of the Revolution had become 'must have' items and they were manufactured to suit all pockets. Lafayette sold particularly well: over a third of the 1,222 assorted specimens shipped on 2 August 1792 bore his image. Not until 20 August did Matthew Boulton, then in London, issue the urgent instruction: 'please to observe that no medals of La Fayette must be sent' .19 However, by this 18 19
'England Expects ... '
BCA MBP 329, Monneron Freres to M. Boulton. Paris, 30 Jan. 1792. BCA MBP 280, M. Boulton to M.R. Boulton, London, 20 Aug. 1792.
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date the partnership was under serious strain, while the political risks incurred by the Monneron brothers in launching their alternative currency were about to become all too obvious. Having over-extended themselves, the brothers had been forced to suspend payments to creditors in April. Pierre-Antoine blamed himself (and Boulton) and threatened suicide. The business was saved from bankruptcy by Jean-Joseph Augustin, the youngest brother, who reached terms with the creditors and managed to carryon trading. Boulton did everything he could in the spring of 1792 to keep Augustin Monneron afloat, whether out of sympathy or self-interest. Any lingering hopes of a re-coinage contract appeared to have been extinguished by the fall from power of Minister Claviere (20 June 1792), but the medal side of the business was thriving on the fortunes of war. In order to meet the payment terms of his rescheduled debts, Augustin decided to go down market and instructed Boulton to strike paper-thin medals (80 to 1 lb weight of copper) that he could sell at 1 sol apiece. The production of tokens continued, too, although the storm gathering around the fate of the monarchy made the operation increasingly precarious. Both the 5 and the 2 sols tokens carried an inscription on the reverse ('medaille de confiance de [cinq] sols remboursable en assignats de 50# et au dessus') that appeared to encourage speculation against the Nation's paper currency. Boulton grew jumpy and on 28 June queried whether it would be prudent to put the king's head on the new Hercules medal that had been commissioned. Augustin Monneron seems to have agreed. At any rate he travelled over to Soho for a business meeting, returning to Paris just in time to witness at first hand the uprising of 10 August. This event brought a rapid conclusion to Matthew Boulton's coining and medal-making for France. Recounting his experiences in two letters addressed to Boulton on 13 and 23 August, Monneron breathed a huge sigh of relief that a premonition had prompted him to leave in London the box of specimen medals that had been given him whilst in Soho (' ... for in the present circumstances it is best not to be in possession of such things. Domiciliary visits have been greatly increased under the pretext of searching for conspirators and aristocrats')?O Yet worse was to follow: the mood of tolerance towards those who had circulated trading tokens was fast disappearing. Coining, the Legislative Assembly decreed, was a prerogative of the 'souverain', whoever or whatever that might be. Augustin Monneron remained hopeful that the medal business could continue notwithstanding, but towards the end of that month he was placed 20
BCLA MBP 329, J.-J.-A. Monneron to M. Boulton, Paris, 23 Aug. 1792.
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under arrest, although no charges were ever preferred against him. Then an order of the Assembly banned medal importation and circulation, too. Monneron emerged from prison unscathed, but it was clear that the partnership would have to be wound up. Boulton received a request to melt down all the remaining 2 sols pieces warehoused in Soho, Hull and London, and to remit the value of the copper. However, he instructed his workmen to experiment with overstriking them, suggesting 'Hercules on a Pyramid' with the inscription 'La Sagesse guide sa Force' and the exergue 'Les Sceptres brises' .21 Clearly he still entertained some hopes of trade with the infant French Republic. The shock of the September Prison Massacres disrupted relations between England and France at every level, as is well known. It triggered the reaction among the educated public that would ensure the almost total disappearance within two years of visual imagery that might be construed as sympathetic to the French and their revolution. The trade in liberty was now reversed, so to speak, and the medallists' art would become instead a celebration of English 'freedoms'. Boulton, whose loss of the Monneron contract and failure to secure a regal re-coinage for Great Britain had left his minting machinery under-employed, was quick to respond to this changing environment. The timely arrival of Conrad Heinrich KUchler, a German refugee from French-style liberty, no doubt helped in this regard. Between them, the talented engraver and the buccaneering entrepreneur coaxed into life a commercial market for patriotic memorabilia. KUchler's trio of royal family medals pick out the transition from public sympathy for the predicament of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette to public revulsion towards all things French. The idea for an Execution medal seems to have come directly from the marketplace, that is to say from Chippindall in London and quite likely from KUchler himself. On the other hand Boulton's in-house engraver, Ponthon, had a similar project underway even before Boulton and KUchler agreed terms, and it is probable that the finished dies were the work of several hands. Boulton already had punches of the king and queen of France in stock, but was unwilling to cut corners and re-use them because they depicted the royal couple in their youth. Medallic design for the market left little room for manoeuvre. Customers expected a good composition, a strong story line and a true likeness. Settling on suitable inscriptions caused further delay, but by the end of the summer of 1793 Boulton was ready to strike the Execution medal. In anticipation of heavy demand, he advised KUchler that he intended to have a large quantity made up in copper. However, the fate of Marie-Antoinette
was now preoccupying public opinion, and her trial and subsequent death on 16 October created another opportunity to cater for the shifting temper of the market. James Watt senior, Boulton's business partner, recorded on 25 December that the design-work for this medal was proceeding apace, and, to judge from his account, the message was becoming more explicit: 'On the reverse (a sad reverse) the Queen in a Cart with her confessor the Guillotine at a distance, Guards and sans-culottes rejoicing around her'.z2 Watt's help had been enlisted in order to obtain Latin inscriptions or epithets 'expressive of Piety, Pity or horror, or of the sad reverse of her fate', and whilst modestly declaring himself to be 'no Latin scholar', he provided no fewer than a dozen alternatives. Classical authority was not to be challenged even though the medal market was no longer confined to individuals enjoying the advantages of a gentlemanly education. All the more reason to ensure an unmistakable story line, therefore, although there is a suggestion that Chippindall provided London shopkeepers with briefing notes to enable them to explain the finer points of medallic design to 'the vulgar part'.z3 The pendant to the denigration of the French, or at least of the sansculottes, was the descent into truculent patriotism. War had broken out in February 1793, and opportunities for the display of military superiority on land and at sea were not lacking. 'I wish you w[oul]d send me a sketch of any subjects that you may think proper for medals,' wrote Boulton to KUchler on 26 August, adding 'I think the Duke of York's head and the reverse the storming or rather the taking of Valenciennes would sell at this time'.z4 The medal was never struck, no doubt because British success in the Netherlands proved ephemeral. Indeed, the Russells would observe the French celebrate their victory over the Duke of York from the deck of their prison hulk the following year. Instead KUchler was put to work engraving a medal in honour of Lord Cornwallis, whose campaign against the Sultan of Mysore had produced altogether more satisfactory results. Boulton supplied the story line (Tippoo Sahib's sons being handed over as hostages) which was directly inspired by Henry Singleton's painting of the scene. It had been exhibited in London only a short while earlier. Success in India at a time when success in the continental war against Revolutionary France was so singularly lacking must have been a popular theme. The East India Company would commission Boulton to strike a medal commemorating the capture of Seringapatam some years later. 22 23
21
BCA MBP 280, M. Boulton to M.R. Boulton, London, 15 Jan. 1793.
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BCA James Watt Papers, Private letter bk. 2, fo. 144. BCA MBP 300, R. Chippindall to M. Boulton, London, 19 Apr. 1789. BCA MBP 320, M. Boulton to C.-I-I. KUchler, Soho, 26 Aug. 1793.
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Naval victories (and great naval escapes) provided some consolation, however, and a medium in which to stir the muscular reflexes of the 'freeborn' Englishman in contrast to the frothy rights and liberties invoked by the French. Lord Howe's victory off Ushant on 1 June 1794 caught the imagination of many: KUchler was not alone in hastening to his workbench. A free-lance engraver, he could expect payment only when he produced dies. Boulton promised to do the necessary to ensure that their joint speculation reached the market first, but he was not overly impressed by the medallist's initial efforts. Plainly KUchler had little experience of the sea or of maritime battle scenes upon which to draw. 'I like your design of Lord How's [sic] ship sinking a French ship,' wrote Boulton 'but I think there should appear at some distance a Fleet of Ships, something like the sketch marked B inclosed. I have likewise sent you a medal with a ship upon it for you to take any hints from you please'. Ever alert to the importance of the story line, he advised KUchler to make 'the 3 coulerd Flag in the French ship' more obvious - pointing out that a French tricolour flag could be viewed in St. Paul's. Finally, and not a little damningly, he observed 'When a Man of War fires a Broadside I presume the recoil of the guns turns the ship on one side, at least it will not be so perpendicular as you have drawn it'. 25 KUchler avoided close-quarter depictions of naval engagements thereafter, and probably wisely if we may judge from the reverse of the Howe medal. 26 When Earl St. Vincent gave instructions for the manufacture of a medal to be distributed to the crew of his flagship, HMS Ville de Paris, in recognition of their loyalty during the Nore Mutiny of 1797, KUchler simply followed models supplied by the sculptor John Flaxman. The obverse carries a bust of St. Vincent, and the reverse a Union Jack with a sailor and a royal marine shaking hands. The Nile medal which commemorates Rear Admiral Lord Nelson's daring strike of 1798 against the French in Aboukir Bay shows only distant ships at anchor and the English fleet readying for action. Neither medal was destined for the open market, of course. In fact the latter only came into being because Lord Nelson's prize agent, Alexander Davison, decided to present as a patriotic gesture a token to every officer and man who had participated in the battle. He therefore commissioned Boulton to strike over 6,700 specimens (the majority in bronzed copper or copper) and, after some negotiation, settled a bill of £762. 4s. for the work. 27 This was the example
that Boulton would recall to mind when the engagement off Cape Trafalgar delivered England from much greater peril. By 1805 Matthew Boulton could contemplate the economic health of his mint business with some equanimity. His persistence in soliciting a government order had finally been rewarded, in 1797, with a contract to produce a new regal copper coinage (the famous 'cartwheel' pennies and tuppences). Within a couple of years he had eight heavy-duty presses up and running and activity would reach a peak in 1804,zs As far as we can judge in the absence of detailed accounts, the medal sideline remained buoyant, too. The marketing thrust was now almost wholly 'patriotic': Soho received orders from the Manchester and also the Birmingham Volunteers, and proposals were made for a medal depicting 'Mr Pitt, the pilot that weathered the storm' ,29 and another featuring the new dockyards at Shadwell and the Isle of Dogs. The rude health of the mint business was not reflected in Boulton's own health, however. After 1802 he was frequently confined to bed by the stone, and early in 1805 he fell seriously ill, making it necessary to transfer the day-to-day operation of the mint to his son, Matthew Robinson Boulton. The decision to issue a medal to every sailor and marine who had participated in the Battle of Trafalgar (fought on 21 October 1805), may not have been his alone, then, even though it bears the authentic hallmarks of the old man's marketing flair. Indeed, we hear of the project first in a letter written by Matthew Robinson Boulton to John Woodward, the employee now in charge of the firm's London office: 'I have it in contemplation to make an offer of supplying gratis every sailor concerned in the late action at Trafalgar with a medal representing the Battle on the reverse & the portrait of the gallant commander on the obverse' .30 Woodward was instructed to sound out Lord Barham, the First Lord of the Admiralty, and an official replied encouragingly (to the father) a few days later, describing him as 'a distinguished ornament of the human race' .31 The offer soon became public knowledge and drew words of warm praise from many quarters, not least Windsor Castle. However, it would be nearly a year before Boulton father and son could deliver on their undertaking. KUchler produced a proof specimen bearing Nelson's effigy very speedily, but it was based on a two-dimensional drawing and those who had known the nation's hero expressed reservations as to the likeness. With the help of See R. Doty, The Soho mint and the industriaLisation of money, London, 1998, pp. 56-61. BCA MBP 300, M. Boulton to R. Chippindall, Soho, 20 Nov. 1802. 30 BCA MBP 372, M.R. Boulton to J. Woodward, Soho, 2 Dec. 1805. 31 BCA MBP 421, Jervis to M. Boulton, London, 19 Dec. 1805.
28
25 26 27
Ibid., M. Boulton to C.-H. KUchler (undated press copy). See Pollard, 'Matthew Boulton and Conrad-Heinrich KUchler', plate XXI. 2. Ibid., p. 286.
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a life-bust and then a wax profile provided by Lady Hamilton, an acceptable representation of the dead commander was finally achieved at the third attempt. The inscription intended for the reverse also proved troublesome initially. Through an intermediary, Matthew Robinson Boulton tried to find out the precise words used in the telegraphic signal to the fleet. Nelson's chaplain could not recollect them exactly and referred the enquirer to Captain Hardy, commander of the flagship. But in the meantime he volunteered the phrase 'England expects every man will do his duty,.32 This was good enough for Boulton who looked no further. Kuchler copied the panoramic view of the battle sketched by the marine artist Richard Cleveley, and placed the motto around the circumference. With the first anniversary of the battle approaching, the medal was finally ready for despatch. Fine specimens were sent to the king and the royal family, who received them 'graciously' on 24 October 1806, according to Boulton's old friends at Court, Fanny and J.-A. De Luc, while cased silver gilt, copper gilt, bronzed copper and tin versions were delivered to about fifty other named individuals depending on status. 33 But what of the original purpose of the exercise: the honouring of those who had fought successfully in order to preserve their country's freedom? Enquiries put in train by the Navy Board determined that a total of 18,414 men had participated in the engagement on the British side, of whom 423 had lost their lives in the action. These figures tally roughly with the 19,000 base-metal medals which Matthew Robinson Boulton had anticipated would be required. The officers were to be excluded from the distribution, if only because they could not be expected to receive the same tokens as ordinary seamen and marines. Boulton rarely struck gold medals even for sale, and to have distributed several hundred precious metal specimens would have placed a prohibitive price on patriotism. In the event, though, detailed manifests for the crews of only twenty-four vessels were forthcoming, with the result that the initial consignment despatched from Soho to the Admiralty comprised about 14,000 rather 18,000 medals. Subsequent correspondence revealed that several ships' crews had been paid off and discharged immediately after the battle, while others had been omitted from the lists altogether. It discloses also the growth of a secondary market in the medals, which testifies to the deep rumination on the meaning of Liberty that Trafalgar had stirred in the country at large. Everyone wished to share in the event, however vicariously. The Reverend
Outhwaite, one-time chaplain of HMS Orion, wrote to request 'a token that I served my country at the time'. A non-combatant, he had been required, nevertheless, 'to hold down the subjects of four amputated legs and one arm without any assistance during the engagement' .34 The clerk to the captain of HMS Bellisle petitioned in similar vein, as did the commander of the Revenge on behalf of his manservant. Indeed, individuals having no connection with the battle whatsoever solicited medals which presented Boulton with something of a marketing dilemma. 'I will pay the price to any Person in Town', wrote J. Bedingfeld, an employee of the Navy Pay Office, who claimed to be acting for a gentleman who had been present at 35 the encounter but whose medal had been stolen. Matthew Robinson Boulton reluctantly instructed Woodward to hand one over, only to have Bedingfeld writing again a few weeks later requesting specimens for his friends. Matthew Boulton struck coins and medals for markets in England, France and the United States in the name of Liberty and in the belief that commerce was the best antidote to conflict among nations. Unlike the Russells, he did not attach much moral or ideological significance to the output of the Soho Mint, although he would draw a line at commercial piracy and declined to help French emigres manufacture counterfeit assignats. His finest hour was unquestionably the distribution of the Trafalgar medal. It consecrated the much-improved mint machinery of which he was justifiably proud, and earned him the reputation of 'the first 36 and greatest manufacturer' that he had coveted for so long. It mattered little that his son, Matthew Robinson, was probably the main architect of this last success. He was more than willing to allow his father to remain the focus of public favour. When Boulton finally succumbed to kidney stone in 1809, Matthew Robinson ordered the striking of a decidedly secular and matter-of-fact funerary token in memory of his father. It was distributed among the 530 employees of his industrial premises, together with the wherewithal to eat and drink to their master's memory.
34
32 33
BCA MBP 421, J.F. Tuffin to M.R. Boulton, London, 26 Jan. 1806. See Pollard, 'Matthew Boulton and Conrad Heinrich KUchler', p. 309.
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BCA MBP 421, Outhwaite to M. R. Boulton, Hackney, 20 Aug. 1808. Ibid., J. Bedingfeld to M. Boulton, Navy Pay Office, II Feb. 1808. Ibid., T. Greville to M.R. Boulton, n.p., 21 Oct. 1806.
The Haitian Revolution
Chapter 11
The Haitian Revolution and the World of Atlantic Slavery James Walvin
On the eve of the Revolution, Saint-Domingue was the unquestioned prize possession in France's colonial empire. 1 The centre of French Caribbean prosperity, it symbolised a genuine French challenge to British slave-based dominance in the region. The French West Indian islands (Martinique and Guadaloupe, but especially Saint-Domingue) generated two-fifths of French foreign trade, two-thirds of the country's ocean-going tonnage, and one-third of its seamen? The key, however, was Saint-Domingue which also posed a clear economic threat to British slave-based power in the Caribbean. On an open market, sugar and coffee from Saint-Domingue could undercut the best produce from Britain's major slave islands. French planters could produce better and cheaper tropical staples than their British rivals (in large part because their crops were grown on more recently developed, and therefore more fertile land) confirming the need to maintain the highly-protected barriers which ringed and sustained the British system. This prosperity of Saint-Domingue was reflected in what was widely accepted as a dazzling social life in the urban centres of the island. 3 Not surprisingly then, Saint-Domingue was a sore temptation to the British who, like all Europeans throughout the history of the slave islands, enviously coveted neighbouring islands, always tempted to annexe them in the next (inevitable) round of European conflicts played out in the region. Saint-Domingue was clearly a colonial possession worth defending - and seizing - and it was an irresistible temptation to the British, who were ever 1 The work of David Geggus is crucial for an understanding of Saint-Domingue/Haiti. See especially his latest edited volume: The impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World, Columbia, 2001. 2 M. Duffy, 'World-wide war and British expansion, 1793-1815,' in P.J. Marshall ed., The Oxford History ofthe British Empire. The eighteenth century, Oxford, 1998, ch. 9. 3 R. Blackburn, ihe making of New World slavery. From the baroque to the modem, 14921800, London, 1997,pp.449-51.
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keen to augment their own Caribbean possessions. Like other maritime Europeans, the British simply assumed that the West Indian islands should generate wealth for the metropolis. Today, few doubt the role played by the plantations of the British 4 Caribbean in generating wealth and prosperity for the British homeland. By comparison, however, the French plantations fared even better, returning to metropolitan France not only sugar, coffee and indigo, but enabling France to dominate the wider European market for those commodities. French re-exports of goods cultivated in the slave islands satisfied the expanding European demand for key tropical staples. And much of this came via the merchants of Bordeaux and Nantes. Those same merchants were largely responsible for shipping astonishing numbers of Africans into the islands. 5 In the first half of the eighteenth century, French West Indian expansion came via the development of Martinique and Guadaloupe. But from c.1750 it was Saint-Domingue (much bigger and geographically more varied than the other French islands) which became the engine of French West Indian growth. Two industries fuelled this expansion, firstly sugar, and secondly (at higher altitudes) coffee. The consequent rise of Saint-Domingue was astonishing. By the 1780s the Jamaicans (by then the leading British planters) regarded their neighbouring rivals in Saint-Domingue as much more efficient and profitable agriculturists. There seemed no limit to the volume of high quality exports the planters of Saint-Domingue could produce. But this French success came at a price, firstly of massive indebtedness to the merchants of Bordeaux and Nantes (estimated at a staggering four million pounds on the eve of the Revolution). Secondly, it came at a human cost, in the form of a massive, sullen and often grotesquely violated army of slaves, many of them recent arrivals. Saint-Domingue was the most African society in the region. In the century to 1776, some 800,000 Africans had been poured into SaintDomingue. Yet by then, the slave population stood at only 290,000, an indication both of brutal mortality rates and of damagingly low levels of fertility. By the 1780s about two-thirds of all slaves in Saint-Domingue were Africans (from a wide range of different African societies). These armies of reluctant Africans, dragooned and driven into the plantation settlements of Saint-Domingue, made everything possible. Whatever material benefits flowed into Nantes, Bordeaux and Paris came from the S. Drescher, From slavery to freedom. Comparative studies in the rise and fall of Atlantic slavery, London, 1999, see especially pt. I. 5 Blackburn, The making of New World slavery, p. 431.
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sweat of the Africans. But their efforts (and pains) generally went unregarded in what was an apparently limitless colonial expansion. Yet within little more than a decade, this whole spectacle - the reality and the prospects of Saint-Domingue - had turned to dust. By the time the Republic of Haiti was founded in 1804 all had changed. The island's economy lay shattered, its slave-based prosperity (to France, if not the slaves) gone for ever. Within a decade, Haiti became a place to avoid. It had thwarted the most vaulting of colonial ambitions (notably British), and had sucked in and destroyed European arms on a scarcely imaginable scale. Haiti was now a place of haunting European nightmares. The former jewel in the crown of the French slave empire had become the first independent black republic outside Africa. The events of the 1790s witnessed more than the end of colonial rule in Saint-Domingue, for the upheavals there had shaken the very foundations of slavery right across the Americas. The history of the Caribbean since the 1620s had seen a succession of islands rise to importance and prosperity on the back of African slaves. Barbados initially, and then, early in the eighteenth century, Jamaica became the key to British prosperity in the region. In both those islands, and other smaller ones, armies of Africans (and the military image always sprang to mind among visitors) tapped the luxuriant environment for the tropical prosperity which flowed back to Europe (thence to the wider world). Historians continue to debate the precise balance sheet of this 6 Atlantic slave system. How much wealth did the British derive from the slave islands? More controversially, did wealth from the Caribbean lay the basis for British emergent industrialisation by the late eighteenth century? Finally, and more puzzling, did the British turn against slavery (did they become abolitionist) because the slave system had begun to lose its commercial appeal? This complex historical debate about the economics of slavery and abolition shows no sign of retreating. Yet it is a debate which cannot be fully answered by a simple accountancy of empire (even if such a thing could be agreed on). What blurs the neat edges of economic analysis is what happened in Haiti. The devastating impact of the French Revolution sent shock waves throughout the Caribbean. But what happened in Saint-Domingue after 1789 was a seismic upheaval which threatened to destabilise the entire Atlantic slave system, and which serves to complicate any clear economic analysis of slavery and abolition. The Republic of Haiti was the black child born to the Revolution in 6 These issues can best be approached through the essays in N. Canny ed., The Oxford history ofthe British Empire. The origins of Empire, Oxford, 1998.
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the Americas. Even by the grim standards of the eighteenth-century Caribbean, the lot of slaves in Saint-Domingue was harsh. This was not so much because of any distinctive French cruelty towards their slaves, but more a result of the rate and intensity of African settlement in the island. Slavery in Saint-Domingue grew at an unprecedented pace. The initial cultivation of indigo in Saint-Domingue had given way to sugar, but with a speed which greatly surpassed anything seen elsewhere in the Caribbean. There were no sugar plantations in Saint-Domingue in 1689, but within fifteen years 120 had sprouted. Thereafter sugar was king, driving forward the island's rising prosperity, and its growing dependence on African labour. In the thirty years to 1720, the slave population rose from 3,000 to 47,000, doubling again in the next twenty-four years. The 206,000 slaves in Saint-Domingue in 1763 had increased to half a million on the eve of the Revolution. This rate of expansion was sustainable only by massive importations of Africans; by the 1780s they averaged 40,000 a year. 7 The Africans were in effect used as assault troops in the crippling work of bringing the luxuriant wilderness into profitable cultivation for their colonial and metropolitan masters. Adding to this volatile human brew was the emergence of a class of free coloureds in Saint-Domingue, notably in the expanding coffee industry. As with the slaves, this was most dramatic in the last twenty years of colonial rule. By 1775 their numbers stood at about 7,000. On the eve of the Revolution however they numbered 28,000: almost equal to the number of whites (30,000). Many had been educated in France, returning with a host of inevitable aspirations. By 1789, the free coloureds owned one-third of the plantations and one quarter of the slaves in Saint-Domingue. In the words of Carolyn Fick, 'Nowhere in the eighteenth-century Caribbean was there such a combination of demographic and economic strength among the free coloured population,.8 Saint-Domingue stood out as an unusual slave colony. It was new, prospering to a remarkable degree, its slave barracoons crowded with new Africans, and it bucked the trend seen in other islands of a social structure sharply divided between black and white. In between black and white there had emerged an increasingly vital stratum of free coloureds. In 1789, they were able to give voice to their own, distinctive demands. As the numbers of free coloureds increased, there developed a running C.E. Fick, 'The French Revolution in Saint-Domingue', in D. Gaspar and D. Geggus eds, A turbulent time. The French Revolution and the Greater Caribbean, Bloomington. 1997, pp. 54-5. 8 Ibid., p. 56.
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The Haitian Revolution
political debate, both within Saint-Domingue and in France, about the political rights of the free coloured community. The ideals of 1789 were nowhere more attractive than in the slave colonies. The 'Rights of Man' would, if conceded, corrode the very fabric of slave society. Free coloureds in the colony were instantly alert to their own potential claims. From the first, however, their demands for equality with whites were resisted. It was a plea which inevitably challenged white dominance. The rising chorus of the free coloureds to be treated as equals was rebuffed both by metropolitan and colonial authorities. The calling of the Estates General, with the consequent demand by colonial whites for their own voice to be heard in Paris, served to open the door to the demands already promoted by free people of colour. The vernacular of 1789 exposed to full scrutiny the racial and political tensions of Saint-Domingue. More important, as political argument intensified, and as news (and rumour) flowed east and west across the Atlantic, it was inevitable that debate about political and social rights would seep into the crowded slave quarters. 9 Slave owners (planters especially) were notoriously injudicious in their table-talk, and slaves were quick to pick up the gossip and news they overheard, passing on a potent mix of trans-Atlantic tittle-tattle and facts back to the slave quarters. Though the tide of revolutionary ideals and rhetoric lapping around the French colonies could have been predicted, and was certainly feared, few could have imagined the enormity of the resulting convulsions in Saint-Domingue, still less their ramifications throughout the Americas. From the first, the confusion of French politics (royalists versus reformers, planters versus colonial officials, free coloureds versus whites) was reflected in the island and, of course, among absentee interests in France itself. Opposition to colonial representation in Paris, even among absentee planters, stemmed from the fear of the potential contagion of any discussion about natural and political rights. If planters were to have a formal voice in the metropolis, why not free coloureds (whose interests were ably promoted by the abbe Gregoire)?lo Proposed colonial constitutional change in 1790 which excluded the free coloured voice created an unbridgeable divide between white and coloured in SaintDomingue itself. The rebuffs from Paris created an inevitable sense of
outrage among free coloureds, quickly followed by violence, which was suppressed with exemplary and swift colonial violence early in 1791. That, in its tum, prompted the very kind of democratic debate the planters had always feared, with the egalitarian view expressed most stridently by Robespierre:
208
The best and fullest account of the Revolution in Haiti remains D. Geggus, Slavery, war and revolution: the British occupation of Saint-Domingue. 1793-1798, Oxford, 1982. But see also the classic account by C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins, Penguin ed., London, 200 I. 10 On the abbe Gregoire, see W.N. Cohen, The French encounter with Africans: white responses to blacks, 1530-1800, Bloomington, 1980.
9
Perish the colonies if they are to be maintained at the cost of your freedom and glory. I repeat it: perish the colonies if the colonies, by their threats, want to force us to decree that which best suits their own interests! I declare in the name of the Assembly, of those members of the Assembly who do not wish to see the constitution overturned, and in the name of the entire nation which desires freedom, that we will sacrifice to the colonial deputies neither the nation, nor the colonies, nor the whole of humanity ... I ask the Assembly to declare that the free men of colour shall enjoy all the rights of active ll citizens.
Where did the slaves figure in all of this? For all his rhetoric and support of the free coloureds, Robespierre was not an abolitionist. In the event, the slaves looked to themselves for salvation. The decree to grant representation to a tiny number of free coloureds (15 May 1791) merely illustrated the confusions, both in France and in Saint-Domingue, about social and political rights. All was swept aside, in August that year, by the eruption of slave revolt in the north of SaintDomingue. Up to that point, the slaves had been marginal figures in the political debate. Yet, at one level, they were the most obvious beneficiaries of any debate about the Rights of Man (which was why colonial interests felt so uneasy about the discussions in the first place). Throughout the Atlantic slave system, Africans had long been relegated to the level of chattel, and not merely by the French. Slaves were things; bought and sold, bartered and bequeathed. In the paperwork of the Atlantic slave ships, in the accountancy of European trading houses, and in the plantation ledgers, slaves were listed as material objects, their commercial value calibrated by age, skill and condition. Slave empires across the Americas needed Africans and their local-born children as slaves - as things. Europeans throughout the hemisphere had first tried, then turned their face against, other forms of labour to develop their specific colonial settlements, particularly for the cultivation of sugar. The world of the sugar plantation was the world of slavery, and however many labouring alternatives may have been possible, they simply fell away in the teeth of
II
Quoted in Fick, 'The French Revolution in Saint-Domingue', pp. 58-9.
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the undoubted benefits which Europeans and settlers derived from slavebased sugar cultivation. Whatever the obvious, visual, evidence to the contrary, however powerful the moral or anthropological evidence that Africans were, clearly, not things, France's slave empire (like others around them) was sustained by the political and economic ideology of chattel-based slavery.12 In 1789, however, it was immediately obvious, to anyone who pondered the matter, that the coming of the 'Rights of Man' posed a fatal threat to slavery itself, by exposing the inherent contradiction at the heart of the slave system. If the slave was indeed a man or woman ('Am I not a man and a brother?'), here was a right which would shatter, at a stroke, the very foundations of slave-based prosperity. However potent the ideology of the Revolution in France, it was nowhere more revolutionary than in the slave colonies. The 1780s had seen a number of French changes to the Code Noir of 1685, all designed to secure amelioration in slave life, and to curb the worst forms of plantocratic brutality.13 Though immensely hard to put into practice, such amelioration clearly had an effect on the slaves themselves. Other European slave powers had also begun to tinker with slavery. The British abolitionist campaign, effectively launched in 1787 but with much older political and religious roots, sent confusing messages about black freedom and black rights rippling westwards across the Atlantic and through the Caribbean. Hard information, facts and figures, ideas, rumours and idle gossip, all found their way into the slave quarters in all the slave islands. They were carried there on the myriad ships (many with black crew members - some of them slaves) which criss-crossed the Atlantic,14 and through the complexity of communications which formed the heart of 15 the black Atlantic. Slaves everywhere picked up the latest news from London and Paris, however garbled, at the dockside, at slave markets, and, of course, at their masters' tables (where unguarded white conversation often took place as if the slaves were deaf).16 Thus did rumour compound half-fact, in its tum being transmuted into gossip and word-of-mouth, the
whole confusion spilling into the slave quarters, and sharpening the slaves' resentment and hatred, itself born of the injustice and violence of slavery. Slaves in Saint-Domingue had seen or heard of their owners' resistance to French authority and decisions; they quickly learned of the revolt of the free coloureds in 1790, and the whole concoction was fermented by what was gleaned of events in France itself. It was hardly surprising (as planters always feared) that the initiative for change might slip away from the plantocracy towards the slaves. Slave resistance had of course been a feature of slave societies everywhere from their inception, but there was nothing to match the number and intensity of the upheavals of the 1790s. 17 David Geggus has counted forty-four revolts or conspiracies in the Americas in that decade alone. 18 The epicentre was Saint-Domingue, where slave violence (and white repression) was most extreme but, however ubiquitous slave resistance, freedom came only to slaves in SaintDomingue. What was unfolding there was of great interest to other Europeans. The British for their part saw the mounting confusion in Saint-Domingue as an opportunity to secure a new slave colony, and to add that prized French colony to their own slave-based empire in the Caribbean. In the event, the British interest in acquiring Saint-Domingue proved a disastrous move, but initially it seemed no more than a reprise of traditional European rivalries in the region; of one power grabbing the colonial possessions of a faltering rival. In this case, however, Saint-Domingue proved a disaster, for French, British (and Spanish) alike; a fatal bog of tropical disease and successful slave resistance. The potential value of Saint-Domingue to the British, the store they placed on its potential as an addition to their slave empire, can be measured by the unprecedented military effort they threw into trying to capture it, but to no avail. The British dispatched some 89,000 troops to the Caribbean between 1793 and 1801. About half of them died and perhaps 14,000 were discharged as unfit for further service. In addition, between 19,000 and 24,000 sailors died. They faced, in Saint-Domingue, a war like no other; a putrid mix of conventional warfare, guerrilla tactics, and a convulsion of racial hatred. Most deadly of all was tropical disease which saw local graveyards rapidly fill with British dead, leaving survivors generally debilitated beyond military usefulness. What had seemed, at the outbreak
12 The classic discussion about this is to be found in D.B. Davis, The problem oj slavery in western culture, Ithaca, 1975. 13 Blackburn, The making oj New World slavery, pp. 290-2 and Fick,'The French Revolution in Saint-Domingue', pp. 60-1. 14 W.J. Bolster, Black Jacks. AJrican American seamen in the Age oj Sail, Cambridge, Mass., 1997. 15 J. Walvin, An AJrican's life. The life and times oJOlaudah Equiano, 1745-1797, London, 1998. 16 P. Linebaugh ar.d M. Rediker, The many-headed hydra. Sailors, slaves, commoners, and the hidden history ojthe revolutionary Atlantic, London, 2000, pp. 241-7.
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17 The best account of slave resistance is M. Craton, Testing the chains. Resistance to slavery in the British West Indies, Ithaca, 1982. 18 D. Geggus, 'Slavery, war, and revolution in the Greater Caribbean, 1789-1815,' in Gaspar and Geggus eds, A turbulent time, pp. 46-8.
T 212
of war with France, an ideal opportunity to enhance the British Empire at French expense, had rapidly turned into a military disaster. Indeed, in the end the British began to fear for their existing West Indian possessions (threatened by the very ideals and forces unleashed by the slave rebellion in Saint-Domingue) and were relieved to hang on to what they held. The British experience in Saint-Domingue in the 1790s marked the end of the grand dreams of expansion in the Caribbean, though peace in Europe saw more islands added to their collection. For his part, Napoleon failed to learn the obvious lesson, and his own abortive effort to re-impose slavery in Haiti between 1802 and 1804 (using 40,000 men) proved no less disastrous than the earlier British venture. Thereafter, the defence of existing possessions was the limit of British ambitions in the region, though peace in 1815 brought new Caribbean pickings for the victors. What had happened? What had made the region so implacable, so resistant, so difficult to contain? Why did the grand colonial vision of both French and British collapse so catastrophically? The explanation lies with the slaves. The war in Saint-Domingue brought about a change in European attitudes towards the Caribbean as a whole. And in large measure that change was effected by the slaves themselves. 19 Doubts quickly spread among the colonial powers about the value of the Caribbean. Yet this change of heart has usually been overlooked by historians. European historians of the Age of Revolution tended to regard Caribbean affairs as a sideshow; a distraction from the main course of revolutionary and military events played out in Europe or on the high seas. Caribbeanists and historians of slavery, on the other hand, have long been aware of the broader dramatic shift triggered by the events in Saint-Domingue in the 1790s. Led by the pioneering work of a small school of Caribbean historians, notably c.L.R. James and Eric Williams, it has become clear that we need to think of the Caribbean not simply in regional terms, but as part of the warp and weft of European historical experience. This is especially clear when we consider what happened in Saint-Domingue. Firstly, there is clear evidence of the importance of the Caribbean in the rising material well-being of maritime Europe in the century before 1789?O It was, to repeat a point which remains a descant to this essay, a prosperity forged by the sweat of imported Africans. Secondly, the conflicts of the 1790s took on an especially brutal form when played out in the Caribbean. Notwithstanding the role of tropical disease, European 19
20
The Haitian Revolution
Enlightenment and Revolution
Duffy, 'World-\',ide war', p. 88. The best summary is found in Blackburn, The making of New World Slavery, pp. 509-73.
I I
I I
213
losses were catastrophic, and the sufferings of both French and British were enormous. The Caribbean disasters of the 1790s had a sobering effect on the European colonial powers. Of course, much the same story needs also to be told of the Africans themselves. European statesmen recoiled when the details of the loss of life in Saint-Domingue began to accumulate in London and Paris. But Europeans had barely flinched in the 1780s, when similar numbers of Africans were plucked annually from their African homelands and scattered to the slave outposts of the Americas. In Britain, the most immediate political effects of the Caribbean troubles were felt by the campaign against the slave trade. The abolitionist campaign to end the slave trade, formally begun in 1787 but with much earlier political (and especially religious) origins, had managed to secure support in Parliament before the shadow of the Revolution began to transmute even the mildest forms of change into Jacobinism (even Wilberforce, persistent in his abolitionism throughout the period, was eventually denounced as a Jacobin). But British abolition was also popular, thanks largely to the remarkable travels and researches of Thomas Clarkson between 1787 and 1792. Abolition petitions (supported by unprecedented numbers of signatories, both male and female) poured into Parliament. At the same time, abolitionist literature flew off the presses, and, courtesy of the Quakers' remarkable national organisation, was distributed across the country?l There had never been a political movement like this abolitionist campaign in terms of geographic reach, social inclusion and impact, and it was to remain unsurpassed until the last phase of Chartism in the 1840s. However, just when abolition seemed poised to succeed, just when Parliament seemed ready to end the British slave trade (though the Lords, of course, remained stubbornly defiant) the Terror in France and the outburst of violence in Saint-Domingue forced many people (including staunch abolitionists) to hesitate, and to entertain doubts about the whole enterprise. But the popular and parliamentary roots already cultivated by the abolitionists proved too secure and wellnourished to wither, and the ending of the British slave trade was in sight. Abolition in France enjoyed no such deep-seated popularity, and for one simple reason. British abolition had been conceived and nurtured in the healthy environment of British religiosity, more especially within the sympathetic company of Dissent, and among early Evangelicals. In France, interest in abolishing the slave trade was minimal, not least because the religious base to abolition (so crucial in Britain) was absent. Monarchical J. Jennings, The business of abolishing the slave trade, London, 1997; J. Walvin, The Quakers, money and morals, London, 1997.
21
.,.,..
214
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attacks on the Jesuits and their missionaries in the 1760s and 1770s were followed by the shattering of the Church after 1789. French churchmen were incapable of mobilising opinion against the slave trade or slavery, at the very time when British religious sensibility (admittedly of a different kind to the French) resolutely turned its face against the slave empire. 22 The Amis des Noirs, short-lived and politically ineffectual, did not even try to rally support for its cause in the Church or among priests. British abolitionists, however, quickly discovered that the pulpit, and the parish, afforded some of the most effective of anti-slave trade platforms. Any French religious hostility to slavery before 1789 was, like the Church itself, simply swept aside by the Revolution. When the Church finally made its peace with the post-revolutionary government, it was a government which had 'already restored slavery and required civil subservience in exchange for its protection'. More than that, the archexponent of French abolition, the abbe Gregoire, was identified by the Church 'with all the sufferings and apostasies of its revolutionary martyrdom ... '. The Church above all else needed to secure its own survival after the Revolution, and it was unthinkable that it should display sympathy for any of the ideals even remotely associated with the Terror at home and with the disasters in Saint-Domingue. Besides, Catholicism was intimately associated with the colonial system, and especially with support for slavery.23 In France, anti-slavery had been too closely linked to anticlericalism, a fact which explained the French Church's reluctance to contemplate anti-slavery until the late 1840s. By then, British slavery had been dead for a decade. Comparisons between British and French abolition cannot, of course, be persuasively studied solely by the religious parallels. Indeed the most critical shift in the historiography of abolition was the concentration on the economics of slavery and anti-slavery, effectively pioneered by Eric Williams in Capitalism and Slavery (1944). What Williams offered as an original argument is now commonly accepted in broad outline. Stated simply, the ending of the slave trade needs to be considered against the changing economic and social circumstances of Britain itself. The British turned their back on their own slave system, beginning with the slave trade in 1807, at a time when domestic British life was being transformed by the emergence of an increasingly urbanised population. Urban people were, of course, more easily politicised by effective pressure groups, and none was more finely tuned than abolition. It was in British towns that abolitionists
made effective use of mass meetings and the power of the printed word. Equally, the British centre of economic gravity had begun to shift. Since the appearance of Eric Williams' work, historians of British slavery and abolition have grappled with the complexities of economic (more especially industrial) change, seeking to tease out cause and effect in the difficult relationship between slavery and economic change. We need, again, to remind ourselves that this important historiographical breakthrough was effectively inaugurated by two West Indian historians, c.L.R. James and Eric Williams himself. More important for our concerns here, their starting point was the revolution in Saint-Domingue. In 1789, revolutionary ideals had a powerful resonance in SaintDomingue. Indeed, they had uncomfortable echoes for anyone with an investment in the Caribbean. Planters, merchants, shippers, slaves: all and more could see that the Rights of Man had an immediately contagious effect, which was unlikely to stop at the boundaries of French colonial control. Initially, revolutionary ideals had a contradictory impact in Britain. On the one hand, they confirmed the arguments of the pioneering abolitionists while, on the other, they worried and then stiffened the resolve of the West Indian lobby and its political supporters. As the Revolution escalated to Jacobin Terror, and as Saint-Domingue collapsed in a tumult of colonial warfare and, later, slave insurrection, the planters' worse nightmares were realised. Pitt's government initially saw an extraordinary opportunity in SaintDomingue. Here was an unexpected prize well-worth seizing; a buoyant, profitable sugar colony (better even than lucrative Jamaica) which could become British by resolute military action. As a bonus, efforts to seize the colony could be promoted as part of the broader campaign against the Revolution. British colonial self-interest thus went hand-in-hand with a principled stand against the evils of the Revolution. As the whole enterprise rapidly disintegrated into a military defeat, however, what had once seemed so promising now raised doubts in the official British mind about the wisdom and benefits of the entire slave system. Faced by vast cost and the horrendous losses inflicted by insurgent slaves and disease, people began to ask the simple question: was it worth it?24 The French (or at least Napoleon) clearly thought so, despite the scale of their losses. Determined to re-take Saint-Domingue, and to use the island as a base for further operations in the region, Napoleon dispatched another huge army to the island, luring the leader of the ex-slaves, Toussaint l'Ouverture, back to a miserable incarceration and death in
22 23
Drescher, From slavery to freedom, ch. 2. Ibid., p. 42.
241.
Walvin, Britain's slave empire, Stroud, 2000, ch.12.
215
216
217
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France. Like other armies before them, Napoleon's faced a black guerrilla army fiercely resistant to foreign domination and violently opposed to the re-introduction of slavery. And, again, like others before them, Napoleon's depleted forces retreated to France, and on 1 January 1804 Toussaint's successor, Dessalines, declared Haitian independence. In the space of little more than a decade, the ex-slaves had defeated invading armies from Britain, France and Spain. It was, of course, a more complex tale than mere military gain and loss. Equally, events in SaintDomingue in the 1790s did much more than simply unravel colonial and plantocratic power in that colony. It was, first and foremost, a stunning reversal of what had come to be seen as the natural order of things. Throughout the slave colonies of the Americas, white Europeans had ruled precariously. As the slave societies matured, whites dominated with a distinctive mix of brutality and racial arrogance. They seemed to be the lords of all they surveyed, despite persistent worries regarding the world they had brought into being. They remained a white minority marooned in a sea of hostile African faces, able to maintain their dominance only with the help of metropolitan military power and the ferocity of their own exemplary punishments meted out for slave transgressions. The French and British navies kept the islands alive and ticking. They protected them against other marauding Europeans, defended their economic lifelines to and from Europe, and secured the slave routes to Africa. The slave islands were in effect the exposed outposts of empire, made all the more vulnerable by their changing internal racial and social composition. This was especially true of Saint-Domingue, with its large, vibrant and ambitious class of 'coloured' people unable to match their social and economic position with a complementary political voice. It was generally recognised that, on the eve of the Revolution, Saint-Domingue had an unusually dazzling social world, with its shops and theatre, its displays of Parisian finery and its replica of French style, as lavish as anything to be found in the colonial Americas. Yet such social fripperies stood in stark contrast to the foul stink of every slave ship, and the violent misery of the slave quarters. Colonial frustrations with Paris, thwarted political ambitions among arrivistes in the teeth of local privilege, brooding discontents among the slave majority; all this in an island which dispatched substantial prosperity back to France. To this was added the predatory shadow of the British, watching from neighbouring Jamaica. Throughout the eighteenth century the British were keen to deal their traditional rivals any military and economic blow which might both damage Franc~ and enhance their own standing and well-being. But
through all these colonial threats and counter-threats, both sides, French. and British alike, had reckoned without the slaves. The emergence of Haiti in the early years of the nineteenth century, however broken-backed the island and its economy after a decade of savage warfare, was, to repeat, a dramatic reversal of the 'natural' order. Since the first introduction of African slavery into the Americas to create the Brazilian sugar industry, Africans and their local-born descendants had been the helots to European settlement and economic advancement. It was a peculiar story (why Africans, and why slaves?) which required legal justification and unusual colonial and metropolitan arrangements. But it also required an attachment, however illogical and flawed, to the idea of black inhumanity. The widespread belief that the African was a thing, a chattel, to be bought and bartered, traded and exchanged, became the lubricant of the whole Atlantic system. There were, it is true, critics who, from the outset, raised their voices against this dehumanisation of Africans for the advancement of European interests in the Americas. There were also areas of unease which exposed the fallacy of such arguments; borderland cases where blacks emerged from their chattel status to rebut, through their own attainments, the image of inhumanity imposed on them. There was, too, a legal confusion which emerged about how slaves should be treated on different sides of the Atlantic: could the severity of the slave codes (different of course between French and British possessions) simply be transplanted to Europe? Could slavery exist in France or in Britain either England or Scotland - in the face of different local legal systems?25 Haiti put an end to all that. It did so not simply through force of slave arms, but via a revolutionary ideology which, for all its practical reversals, sent ideals of equality washing through the slave quarters - and not merely in French possessions. The political turmoil in all the French islands in the West Indies, but especially in Saint-Domingue, inevitably spread throughout the region. Slave owners everywhere were terrified of what might happen, especially as refugees (white, black and brown) fled from the convulsions in Saint-Domingue. Jamaica, because of its proximity, seemed especially vulnerable and sought to staunch the flow of French emigres to the island. But the migrations of dispossessed swept on, to other islands throughout the region, on as far north as Charleston and across the Gulf to the sympathetic refuge of New Orleans. 26 The upheavals in Saint25 S. Peabody, 'There is no slavery in France '. The political culture of race and slavery in the ancien regime, New York, 1996. 26 For the flight of refugees from Saint-Domingue, see the essays in Geggus ed., The impact of the Haitian Revolution.
Enlightenment and Revolution
The Haitian Revolution
Domingue propelled people (of all sorts and conditions), ideas, gossip, idealism (and fierce opposition to the Revolution), across the Americas. And there was little the old powers could do about it. The Revolution had allowed the genie of black freedom to escape from the enslaved bottle, and there was no way of forcing it back. Of course, the institution of slavery continued elsewhere in the Americas. The British clung to it until 1834, the Americans until the Civil War, and Brazil and Cuba hung on till the 1880s. But all of them had to confront a totally new problem: how to justify and shore up slave systems which had been forged in the pre-1789 world. Easy to justify in the generally unchallenged world of old regimes, black slavery was fundamentally damaged and weakened by the ideals of 1789. It remains a curiosity, however, that the significance of what happened in Haiti remained largely unremarked by many historians interested in the Revolution. This changed with the rise of a new generation of Caribbean intellectuals who looked at the region not from the outside but from within, scanning the wider world from the islands themselves. Even influential historians who advanced arguments about the emergence of the modem Atlantic paid little attention to the world of the slaves, or to the consequences of the Haitian upheavals. 27 In part, this was a result of the broader marginalisation of the African contribution to the making of the modem Americas. In retrospect this looks very odd, not least because Africans formed an overwhelming majority of all the peoples who have crossed the Atlantic and settled in the Americas before the 1820s. Up to the early nineteenth century, the real pioneer of American settlement was the African slave. 28 Two books (in English) were critical in first drawing attention to the importance of events in Haiti. The first was The Black Jacobins, published in 1938 by the Trinidadian Marxist CL.R. James. Later, his Trinidadian contemporary Eric Williams revised his 1938 Oxford thesis to publish Capitalism and Slavery in 1944. Those two books subsequently spawned a historiography of remarkable variety and durability. Thanks to James and Williams, and the historians who followed their lead, no serious historian could now challenge the centrality of the events in Haiti to the story of slavery in the Americas.
The Haitian revolution was a massive blow which not only cracked the French slave empire, but shattered theories of white dominance and invincibility. It was a titantic story, unappealing to Europeans, but the stuff of legends for black people. Not surprisingly its first major historians were West Indians writing in the 1930s, flexing their anti-colonial muscles, and seeing in Haiti a story with extraordinary resonance for contemporary black life and for anti-colonialism. For the events in the Caribbean in the 1790s were at once, a compelling story and a morality tale with massive implications for Caribbean dealings with its varied colonial masters. It would be wrong to think that the Haitian Revolution was limited to that single French possession. Like the upheavals in France itself in the 1790s, the slave revolution in Saint-Domingue had ramifications far beyond its immediate locale. In effect, Toussaint and his black followers laid the axe to the roots of black slavery throughout the Atlantic world.
218
The most startling example is R.R. Palmer, The age of the democratic revolution, 2 vols., Princeton, 1959-64. 28 P.D. Morgan,'British encounters with Africans and African-Americans, circa 1600-1780', in Strangers within [he realm. Cultural margins of the first British Empire, eds, B. Bailyn and PD. Morgan, Chapel Hill, 1991, p. 162. 27
219
Index
Index
Academie des sciences 39,41,79 Adams, John 108 Alder, Ken 43 d' Alembert, Jean Ie Rond 24,41-2 America 157-9, 165, 187 Amiot, Joseph-Marie 70-78, 83-9 Antoine, Michel 71 Argument from Design 26-7 d'Artois, Comte 65 astronomy 40, 79 Aulard, A. 117,123 Aylmer, Gerald 10 Bagehot, Walter 55 Baker, Keith 68 Barry, Madame du 56,64 Batz, Baron de 17-18 Baudeau, abbe 64, 67 Beales, Derek 63 Bertaud, Jean-Paul 127 Bertin, Henri 69-90 Besterman, Theodore 25 bienfaisance 165-6 Blanc, Honore 43 Bordeaux 173, 205 Borghesi, Antonio 110 Bossuet, l-B. 142 Boucher, Fran~ois 77 Boulainvilliers, Henri de 156 Boulton, Matthew 189-203 passim Boulton, Matthew Robinson 201-3 Brissot, Jacques-Pierre 123-9 passim, 158, 162-4, 167, 175, 179 Burke, Edmund 7 Campan, Madame 62 Carnot, Lazare 41-2,52-3 Catholic Church 133-4
Cawthorne, James 77 Censer, Jack 121 Chabot, Fran~ois 9, 128 Chaline, Olivier 54 Chamier, Anthony 94 Charles X 60 Chartres, Duc de 64 China 69-90 Chippindall, Richard 191, 198-9 Choudieu, R. 119 Civil Constitution 140-141,145, 149,193 Clarke, Samuel 26 Clarkson, Thomas 213 Clement XIV, Pope 81 Cleveley, Richard 202 Cobb, Richard 3-4, 8 Cobban, Alfred 4, 171 coinage 193-8,201 Colbert, Jean Baptiste 71 Collins, Anthony 26 colonialism 205-6,212-19 Condorcet, Marquis de 38, 155, 162 Conein, Bernard 182 Confucius 88 Constitutional Church 132-4, 144-7,150-151 Conway, Henry Seymour 96-9, 105-6, 113 Cordier, Henri 77 Corneille, Pierre 33 Cornwallis, Lord 199 Crawford Collection 5 Cromwell, Oliver 28-9 Croy, Due de 56 Cussy, Gabriel de 194 Dahl, Kathleen Aileen 118
Danton, George Jacq ues 11-12, 128 Darnton, Robert 11-12, 64, 67 David, Jacques 139 Davison, Alexander 200 Dermigny, Louis 89 Desaguliers, Thomas 95, 98 Desmoulins, C. 161 Desmoulins, Lucile 126-8 Diamond Necklace Affair 65-6 Diderot, Denis 22, 134 Dorset, Michael 105-6, 113 Doyle, William 89 Droz, Jean-Pierre 192, 194 Dumont, Etienne 127 Dybikowski, James 109-10 East India Company 199 Eden, William 66 education 103-4 Enlightenment thought 69,73,81, 92, 134, 137-8, 155, 190 Erskine, Sir Harry 31 Farge, Arlette 169-70 Fauchet, Claude 138,158-60 Fawkener, Sir Everard 23 feminism 116, 131 Fenelon, Fran~ois de Salignac de la Mothe 164 Ferguson, Adam 103,105 Fick, Carolyn 207 Flaxman, John 189,200 Forrest, Alan 173 Fox, Charles James 106-11 Franklin, Benjamin 36, 158 Frederick the Great 62 Furet, Fran~ois 5, 61, 182 Gallicanism 141-7,151 Gaxotte, Pierre 82 Geggus, David 211 Genlis, Madame de 56 George III 59,62,68,191-2 Gibbon, Edward 30 Gillispie, Charles 38
221 Glenie, James 95-6 Godwin, William 108-13 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 65-6 Gordon Riots 169 Gouges, Olympe de 115-18, 131 Gregoire, Henri 132-52, 159-60, 208,214 Gregory, John 119 Griffiths, Ralph 107 Gross, Jean-Pierre 185 Gueniffey, Patrice 182 Guibert, l-A.-H. de 41,47-9,52, 105-6 Guilhaumou, Jacques 182 Guines, Louis-Joseph de 85-6 Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden 45 Habermas, Jilrgen 5 Haiti 216-19; see aLso SaintDomingue Hampson, Norman 1-18,39, In, 185,187; writings of 19-21 Hardman, John 65 Hardy, Thomas Masterman 202 Helvetius, Claude 24 Henry IV of France 59 Henry VIII 28-9 d'Herbois, Collot 182 Hermon-Belot, Rita 137-8 Hesse, Carla 118 Howe, Lord 200 Hufton,Olwen 185 Hume, David 22-37, 102 Hutton, Charles 95,98, 109 Irwin, John 96 Jacobin Republic 181-6 James, C.L.R. 212,215,218 Jansenism 55,141-4,151,158-9 Jardine, Alexander 91 Jesuit Order 70-74,81,144 Jewish communities 135-6 Joseph II of Austria 63-4, 66, 68
222
Enlightenment and Revolution
Kames, Lord 33 Keate, George 23 Keralio, Louise de 115-31 Kien-Iong 69, 83, 89 Ko, Louis 74-87 passim KUchler, Conrad Heinrich 192, 198-202 Kuscinski, A. 117 La Bruyere, Jean de 48 Lacasse, Jean 55 Lacombe, Claire 115 Lafayette, General 175, 195-6 Lamballe, Princesse de 62 Lamourette, Adrien 134-5 Landes,Joan 115 Laugier, Lucien 82 Lavoisier, Antoine-Laurent 42 Leechman, William 22, 36 Lefebvre, Georges 3 Leibnitz, Gottfried 69 Leon, Pauline 115 Lloyd, Henry 105-6, 108 Locke, John 24 Louis XIV 54, 89 Louis XV 54-7,62,64,69-70,170 Louis XVI 54-68 passim, 83, 90, 142,148,188,195,198 Lyon 173, 179, 183 Macaulay, Thomas 28 Macbean, Forbes 95 Manceron, Claude 12 Mantel, Hilary 9 Marat, Jean Paul 13, 155, 181 Marie-Antoinette 61-7,198-9 Marne, Prieur de la 52-3 mathematics 41 medals, making of 190-2,196-201 Mercier, Louis-Sebastien 58-9 Mercure National 116, 121-4, 128-31 Mercy, Count 66 Mesmer, Franz-Anton 78 Michelet, Jules 116-17, 130 Middleton, Conyers 26
Index
military reform 44-53, 103-6, 113 military technology 41-3 Millar, John 103 Mirabeau, Comte de 194-5 miracles 25-6 Miranda, Francisco de 107-8 Mitterrand, Fran~ois 151 Monneron Freres 195-8 Montesquieu, Baron de 6, 12, 14, 92,101,156-7,161,165,168 Montleon, Guillon de 132 Moreau, Jacob 72-4,77,82-3, 86-90 Morocco 100, 103 Morveau, Guyton de 52-3 Mossner, E.C. 36 Motte, Frederick 80-81,84-5 Muller, John 95
Richerism 143, 159 Richmond, Duke of 106, 113 Robert, Fran~ois 115-23 passim, 128-31 Robertson, William 28, 35-6 Robespierre, Maximilien 4,8-12, 15,119,122,125-6,129-30, 140,155,159,162,167, 181-5,209 Roche, Daniel 61 Rochemonteix, Camille de 70 Roederer, Pierre-Louis 135 Rohan, Louis de 65 Roland, Madame 116, 126-7, 130, 166-7,181 Rousseau, Andre-Marie 22 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 6-8, 12-15,22-4,32,35,58,134, 161,163,165,169,171,195 Royal Military Academy 95 Royal Society 95 Ruggieri, Michele 71 rural idylls 163-5 Russell, Martha 187-8 Russell, William 188-9 Russia 83-4
Napoleon I 60,151,212,215-16 National Guard 178-80, 193 Nelson, Lord 200-201 Orleans, Due d' 67, 130 Palm d' Aelders, Etta 116, 125-6 Paris Commune 177,181 Pascal, Blaise 27 Pecquigny, Madame de 64 Philo 27 Pitt, William 201,215 Plongeron, Bernard 141 Pluchon, Pierre 78 Poivre, Pierre 88 Polignac, Gabrielle de 62 Pompadour, Marquise de 55-6, 70 Priestley, Joseph 109, 189 public opinion 57-8,61-2,67-8, 89 Quelen, Mgr de 132-4 Racine, Jean 33 republicanism, classical 160-68 passim Ricci, Matthew 71
I·
I
Sacy, Sylvestre de 78 Saint-Domingue 204-19 Saint-Etienne, Rabaut de 178 Saint-Germain, c.-L. de 46 Saint-Jean de Crevecoeur, M.GJ. 158 St Vincent, Earl 200 Schama, Simon 5 science, attitudes to 38-41, 52, 79 Segur, Comte de 47,67 Servan, Joseph 49-50,52 Shakespeare, William 33 Silhouette, Etienne de 71-2 Singleton, Henry 199 slavery and the slave trade 123-4, 137,204-19 Smith, Adam 31-2,101 Society for the Study of French History 17 Sombart, Werner 56
223 Somerset, Duke of 28 Spagnoli, Paul 174 Swediaur, Franz-Xavier 193-6 Tackett, Timothy 176 Talmon, J.L. 12 Tartar, Joseph 76 Teil, Jean du 44 Thompson, J .M. 2 Tocqueville, Alexis de 68 Toussaint l'Ouverture 215-16,219 Tracy, Destutt de 40 Trafalgar, Battle of 200-202 Turgot, Jacques 38-9,42,59-61, 74-5, 169 utopian thought 153-4, 159-60, 163-5 Van Kley, Dale 151,157
~
Veuillot, Louis 133-4,151 Voltaire, Fran~ois-Marie Arouet 22-37,47-8,60,69,78,88, 134, 157 Walpole, Horace 22,30 Watt, James 199 Watteau, Jean-Antoine 77 Wedgwood, Josiah 189-92 Wedgwood, Josiah II 192 West, Benjamin 191 Wilberforce, William 213 Williams, David 106-10 Williams, Eric 212,214-15,218 Wollstonecraft, Mary 107, 109, 113 women, role of 103-4, Ill, 114, 125-7,131 Xu Dashou 79-80 Yang, Etienne 74-88 passim York University History Department 10 Young, Arthur 93, 109 Zhu Yan 80
