The Recollections of Alexis de Tocqueville
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Title: The Recollections of Alexis de Tocqueville
Author: Alexis de Tocqueville
Translator: Alexander Teixeira de Mattos
Release date: October 31, 2011 [eBook #37892]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37892
Credits: Produced by Gary Rees and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was
produced from scanned images of public domain material
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RECOLLECTIONS OF ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE ***
Produced by Gary Rees and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was
produced from scanned images of public domain material
from the Google Print project.)
[Transcriber's Note: Words and phrases appearing in italics in the
original publication have been delimited with underscore characters in
this transcription. Additional notes appear at the end of this text.]
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
[Illustration: Alexis de Tocqueville]
THE RECOLLECTIONS OF ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
EDITED BY THE COMTE DE TOCQUEVILLE AND NOW FIRST TRANSLATED INTO
ENGLISH BY ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS
WITH A PORTRAIT IN HELIOGRAVURE
NEW YORK
THE MACMILLAN CO.
1896
PREFACE
"C'est tousiours plaisir de veoir les choses escriptes par ceulx
qui ont essaye comme il les faut conduire."
MONTAIGNE.
Alexis de Tocqueville made his entrance in political life in 1839.[1] At
the outbreak of the Revolution of February he was in the prime of his
age and in the maturity of his talent. He threw himself into the
struggle, resolving to devote himself to the interests of the country
and of society, and he was one of the first among those whole-hearted,
single-minded men who endeavoured to keep the Republic within a wise and
moderate course by steering clear of the two-fold perils of Caesarism on
the one hand and revolution on the other. A dangerous and thankless
enterprise, of which the difficulties were never hidden from a mind so
clear-sighted as his, and of which he soon foresaw the ephemeral
duration.
[1: At the age of 34. Alexis Clerel de Tocqueville was born in
1805 at Verneuil. His father was the Comte de Tocqueville, who was
made a peer of France and a prefect under the Restoration; his
mother, _nee_ Mlle. de Rosambo, was a grand-daughter of
Malesherbes. Alexis de Tocqueville was appointed an assistant
judge, and in 1831 was sent to America, in company with G. de
Beaumont to study the penal system in that continent. On his
return he published a treatise on this subject; and in 1835
appeared his great work on American Democracy, which secured his
election to the Academy of Moral Science in 1839 and to the French
Academy in 1841. Two years earlier he had been sent to the Chamber
as deputy for the arrondissement of Valognes in Normandy, in which
the paternal property of Tocqueville was situated; and this seat
he retained until his withdrawal from political life. He died in
1859.--A.T. de M.]
After the fall of his short-lived ministry, which had been filled with
so many cares and such violent agitation, thinking himself removed for a
time (it was to be for ever) from the conduct of public affairs, he went
first to Normandy and then to Sorrento, on the Bay of Naples, in search
of the peace and repose of which he stood in need. The intellect,
however, but rarely shows itself the docile slave of the will, and his,
to which idleness was a cause of real suffering, immediately set about
to seek an object worthy of its attention. This was soon found in the
great drama of the French Revolution, which attracted him irresistibly,
and which was destined to form the subject-matter of his most perfect
work.
It was at this time, while Alexis de Tocqueville was also preoccupied by
the daily increasing gravity of the political situation at home, that he
wrote the Recollections now first published. These consisted of mere
notes jotted down at intervals on odds and ends of paper; and it was not
until the close of his life that, yielding to the persuasions of his
intimates, he gave a reluctant consent to their publication. He took a
certain pleasure in thus retracing and, as it were, re-enacting the
events in which he had taken part, the character of which seemed the
more transient, and the more important to establish definitely, inasmuch
as other events came crowding on, precipitating the crisis and altering
the aspect of affairs. Thus those travellers who, steering their
adventurous course through a series of dangerous reefs, alight upon a
wild and rugged island, where they disembark and live for some days, and
when about to depart for ever from its shores, throw back upon it a long
and melancholy gaze before it sinks from their eyes in the immensity of
the waves. Already the Assembly had lost its independence; the reign of
constitutional liberty, under which France had lived for thirty-three
years, was giving way; and, in the words of the famous phrase, "The
Empire was a fact."
We are to-day well able to judge the period described in these
Recollections, a period which seems still further removed from us by the
revolutions, the wars, and even the misfortunes which the country has
since undergone, and which now only appears to us in that subdued light
which throws the principal outlines into especial relief, while
permitting the more observant and penetrating eye to discover also the
secondary features. Living close enough to those times to receive
evidence from the lips of survivors, and not so close but that all
passion has become appeased and all rancour extinguished, we should be
in a position to lack neither light nor impartiality. As witness, for
instance, the impression retained by us of the figure of Ledru-Rollin,
which nevertheless terrified our fathers. We live in a generation which
has beheld Raoul, Rigault and Delescluze at work. The theories of Louis
Blanc and Considerant arouse no feeling of astonishment in these days,
when their ideas have become current coin, and when the majority of
politicians feel called upon to adopt the badge of some socialism or
other, whether we call it Christian, State, or revolutionary socialism.
Cormenin, Marrast and Lamartine belong to history as much as do Sieyes,
Petion or Mirabeau; and we are able to judge as freely of the men and
the events of 1848 as of those of 1830 or 1789.
Alexis de Tocqueville had the rare merit of being able to forestall this
verdict of posterity; and if we endeavour to discover the secret of this
prescience, of the loftiness of sight with which he was so specially
gifted, we shall find that, belonging to no party, he remained above all
parties; that, depending upon no leader, he kept his hands free; and
that, possessed of no vulgar ambition, he reserved his energies for the
noble aim which he had in view--the triumph of liberty and of the
dignity of man.
Interest will doubtless be taken in the account contained in these
Recollections of the revolutionary period, written by one of the
best-informed of its witnesses, and in the ebbs and flows of the
short-lived ministry which was conducted with so much talent and
integrity. But what will be especially welcome is the broad views taken
by this great mind of our collective history; his profound reflections
upon the future of the country and of society; the firm and
conscientious opinions which he expresses upon his contemporaries; and
the portraits drawn by a master hand, always striking and always alive.
When reading this private record, which has been neither revised nor
corrected by its author, we seem to approach more closely to the
sentiments, the desires, the aspirations, I was almost saying the dreams
of this rare mind, this great heart so ardently pursuing the chimera of
absolute good that nothing in men or institutions could succeed in
satisfying it.
Years passed, and the Empire foundered amid terrible disaster. Alexis de
Tocqueville was no more; and we may say that this proved at that time an
irreparable loss to his country. Who knows what part he might have been
called upon to play, what influence he could have brought to bear to
unmask the guilty intrigues and baffle the mean ambitions under whose
load, after the lapse of more than twenty years, we are still
staggering? Enlightened by his harsh experience of 1848, would he have
once again tried the experiment, which can never be more than an eternal
stop-gap, of governing the Republic with the support of the Monarchists?
Or rather, persuaded as he was that "the republican form of government
is not the best suited to the needs of France," that this "government
without stability always promises more, but gives less, liberty than a
Constitutional Monarchy," would he not have appealed to the latter to
protect the liberty so dear to him? One thing is certain, that he would
never have "subordinated to the necessity of maintaining his position
that of remaining true to himself."
We have thought that the present generation, which so rarely has the
opportunity of beholding a man of character, would take pleasure in
becoming acquainted with this great and stately figure; in spending some
short moments in those lofty regions, in which it may learn a powerful
lesson and find an example of public life in its noblest form, ever
faithful to its early aspirations, ever filled with two great ideas: the
cult of honour and the passion of liberty.
COMTE DE TOCQUEVILLE.
CONTENTS
PART THE FIRST
CHAPTER I PAGE
Origin and Character of these Recollections--General aspect of
the period preceding the Revolution of 1848--Preliminary
symptoms of the Revolution 3
CHAPTER II
The Banquets--Sense of security entertained by the
Government--Anxiety of Leaders of the
Opposition--Arraignment of Ministers 19
CHAPTER III
Troubles of the 22nd of February--The Sitting of the 23rd--The
New Ministry--Opinions of M. Dufaure and M. de Beaumont 33
CHAPTER IV
The 24th of February--The Ministers' Plan of Resistance--The
National Guard--General Bedeau 44
CHAPTER V
The Sitting of the Chamber--Madame la Duchesse D'Orleans--The
Provisional Government 56
PART THE SECOND
CHAPTER I
My Explanation of the 24th of February, and my views as to its
effects upon the future 79
CHAPTER II
Paris on the morrow of the 24th of February and the next
days--The socialistic character of the New Revolution 90
CHAPTER III
Vacillation of the Members of the Old Parliament as to the
attitude they should adopt--My own reflections on my mode
of action, and my resolves 102
CHAPTER IV
My candidature of the department of la Manche--The aspect of
the country--The General Election 114
CHAPTER V
The First Sitting of the Constituent Assembly--The appearance
of this Assembly 129
CHAPTER VI
My relations with Lamartine--His Subterfuges 145
CHAPTER VII
The 15th of May 1848 156
CHAPTER VIII
The Feast of Concord and the preparations for the Days of June 174
CHAPTER IX
The Days of June 187
CHAPTER X
The Days of June--(_continued_) 215
CHAPTER XI
The Committee for the Constitution 233
PART THE THIRD
CHAPTER I
My return to France--Formation of the Cabinet 263
CHAPTER II
Aspect of the Cabinet--Its first Acts until after the
insurrectionary attempts of the 13th of June 278
CHAPTER III
Our domestic policy--Internal quarrels in the Cabinet--Its
difficulties in its relations with the Majority and the
President 301
CHAPTER IV
Foreign Affairs 325
APPENDIX
I
Gustave de Beaumont's version of the 24th of February 379
II
Barrot's version of the 24th of February (_10 October 1850_) 385
III
Some incidents of the 24th of February 1848 389
1
M. Dufaure's efforts to prevent the Revolution of
February--Responsibility of M. Thiers, which renders
them futile 389
2
Dufaure's conduct on the 24th of February 1848 392
IV
My conversation with Berryer, on the 21st of June, at an
appointment which I had given him at my house. We were
both Members of the Committee for the revision of the
Constitution 394
INDEX 399
PART THE FIRST
_Written in July 1850, at Tocqueville._
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
CHAPTER I
ORIGIN AND CHARACTER OF THESE RECOLLECTIONS--GENERAL ASPECT OF THE
PERIOD PRECEDING THE REVOLUTION OF 1848--PRELIMINARY SYMPTOMS OF
THE REVOLUTION.
Removed for a time from the scene of public life, I am constrained, in
the midst of my solitude, to turn my thoughts upon myself, or rather to
reflect upon contemporary events in which I have taken part or acted as
a witness. And it seems to me that the best use I can make of my leisure
is to retrace these events, to portray the men who took part in them
under my eyes, and thus to seize and engrave, if I can, upon my memory
the confused features which compose the disturbed physiognomy of my
time.
In taking this resolve I have taken another, to which I shall be no less
true: these recollections shall be a relaxation of the mind rather than
a contribution to literature. I write them for myself alone. They shall
be a mirror in which I will amuse myself in contemplating my
contemporaries and myself; not a picture painted for the public. My most
intimate friends shall not see them, for I wish to retain the liberty of
depicting them as I shall depict myself, without flattery. I wish to
arrive truly at the secret motives which have caused them, and me, and
others to act; and, when discovered, to reveal them here. In a word, I
wish this expression of my recollections to be a sincere one; and to
effect this, it is essential that it should remain absolutely secret.
I intend that my recollections shall not go farther back than the
Revolution of 1848, nor extend to a later date than the 30th of October
1849, the day upon which I resigned my office. It is only within these
limits that the events which I propose to relate have any importance, or
that my position has enabled me to observe them well.
My life was passed, although in a comparatively secluded fashion, in the
midst of the parliamentary world of the closing years of the Monarchy of
July. Nevertheless, it would be no easy task for me to recall distinctly
the events of a period so little removed from the present, and yet
leaving so confused a trace in my memory. The thread of my recollections
is lost amid the whirl of minor incidents, of paltry ideas, of petty
passions, of personal views and contradictory opinions in which the life
of public men was at that time spent. All that remains vivid in my mind
is the general aspect of the period; for I often regarded it with a
curiosity mingled with dread, and I clearly discerned the special
features by which it was characterized.
Our history from 1789 to 1830, if viewed from a distance and as a whole,
affords as it were the picture of a struggle to the death between the
Ancien Regime, its traditions, memories, hopes, and men, as represented
by the aristocracy, and New France under the leadership of the middle
class. The year 1830 closed the first period of our revolutions, or
rather of our revolution: for there is but one, which has remained
always the same in the face of varying fortunes, of which our fathers
witnessed the commencement, and of which we, in all probability, shall
not live to behold the end. In 1830 the triumph of the middle class had
been definite and so thorough that all political power, every franchise,
every prerogative, and the whole government was confined and, as it
were, heaped up within the narrow limits of this one class, to the
statutory exclusion of all beneath them and the actual exclusion of all
above. Not only did it thus alone rule society, but it may be said to
have formed it. It ensconced itself in every vacant place, prodigiously
augmented the number of places, and accustomed itself to live almost as
much upon the Treasury as upon its own industry.
No sooner had the Revolution of 1830 become an accomplished fact, than
there ensued a great lull in political passion, a sort of general
subsidence, accompanied by a rapid increase in the public wealth. The
particular spirit of the middle class became the general spirit of the
government; it ruled the latter's foreign policy as well as affairs at
home: an active, industrious spirit, often dishonourable, generally
sober, occasionally reckless through vanity or egoism, but timid by
temperament, moderate in all things, except in its love of ease and
comfort, and wholly undistinguished. It was a spirit which, mingled with
that of the people or of the aristocracy, can do wonders; but which, by
itself, will never produce more than a government shorn of both virtue
and greatness. Master of everything in a manner that no aristocracy had
ever been or may ever hope to be, the middle class, when called upon to
assume the government, took it up as a trade; it entrenched itself
behind its power, and before long, in their egoism, each of its members
thought much more of his private business than of public affairs, and of
his personal enjoyment than of the greatness of the nation.
Posterity, which sees none but the more dazzling crimes, and which loses
sight, in general, of mere vices, will never, perhaps, know to what
extent the government of that day, towards its close, assumed the ways
of a trading company, which conducts all its transactions with a view to
the profits accruing to the shareholders. These vices were due to the
natural instincts of the dominant class, to the absoluteness of its
power, and also to the character of the time. Possibly also King
Louis-Philippe had contributed to their growth.
This Prince was a singular medley of qualities, and one must have known
him longer and more nearly than I did to be able to portray him in
detail.
Nevertheless, although I was never one of his Council, I have frequently
had occasion to come into contact with him. The last time that I spoke
to him was shortly before the catastrophe of February. I was then
director of the Academie Francaise, and I had to bring to the King's
notice some matter or other which concerned that body. After treating
the question which had brought me, I was about to retire, when the King
detained me, took a chair, motioned me to another, and said, affably:
"Since you are here, Monsieur de Tocqueville, let us talk; I want to
hear you talk a little about America."
I knew him well enough to know that this meant: I shall talk about
America myself. And he did actually talk of it at great length and very
searchingly: it was not possible for me, nor did I desire, to get in a
word, for he really interested me. He described places as though he saw
them before him; he recalled the distinguished men whom he had met forty
years ago as though he had seen them the day before; he mentioned their
names in full, Christian name and surname, gave their ages at the time,
related their histories, their pedigrees, their posterity, with
marvellous exactness and with infinite, though in no way tedious,
detail. From America he returned, without taking breath, to Europe,
talked of all our foreign and domestic affairs with incredible
unconstraint (for I had no title to his confidence), spoke very badly of
the Emperor of Russia, whom he called "Monsieur Nicolas," casually
alluded to Lord Palmerston as a rogue, and ended by holding forth at
length on the Spanish marriages, which had just taken place, and the
annoyances to which they subjected him on the side of England.
"The Queen is very angry with me," he said, "and displays great
irritation; but, after all," he added, "all this outcry won't keep me
from _driving my own cart_."[2]
[2: "_Mener mon fiacre_": to drive my hackney-coach.--A.T. de M.]
Although this phrase dated back to the Old Order, I felt inclined to
doubt whether Louis XIV. ever made use of it on accepting the Spanish
Succession. I believe, moreover, that Louis-Philippe was mistaken, and,
to borrow his own language, that the Spanish marriage helped not a
little to upset his cart.
After three-quarters of an hour, the King rose, thanked me for the
pleasure my conversation had given him (I had not spoken four words),
and dismissed me, feeling evidently as delighted as one generally is
with a man before whom one thinks one has spoken well. This was my last
audience of the King.
Louis-Philippe improvised all the replies which he made, even upon the
most critical occasions, to the great State bodies; he was as fluent
then as in his private conversation, although not so happy or
epigrammatic. He would suddenly become obscure, for the reason that he
boldly plunged headlong into long sentences, of which he was not able to
estimate the extent nor perceive the end beforehand, and from which he
finally emerged struggling and by force, shattering the sense, and not
completing the thought.
In this political world thus constituted and conducted, what was most
wanting, particularly towards the end, was political life itself. It
could neither come into being nor be maintained within the legal circle
which the Constitution had traced for it: the old aristocracy was
vanquished, the people excluded. As all business was discussed among
members of one class, in the interest and in the spirit of that class,
there was no battle-field for contending parties to meet upon. This
singular homogeneity of position, of interests, and consequently of
views, reigning in what M. Guizot had once called the legal country,
deprived the parliamentary debates of all originality, of all reality,
and therefore of all genuine passion. I have spent ten years of my life
in the company of truly great minds, who were in a constant state of
agitation without succeeding in heating themselves, and who spent all
their perspicacity in vain endeavours to find subjects upon which they
could seriously disagree.
On the other hand, the preponderating influence which King
Louis-Philippe had acquired in public affairs, which never permitted the
politicians to stray very far from that Prince's ideas, lest they should
at the same time be removed from power, reduced the different colours of
parties to the merest shades, and debates to the splitting of straws. I
doubt whether any parliament (not excepting the Constituent Assembly, I
mean the true one, that of 1789) ever contained more varied and
brilliant talents than did ours during the closing years of the Monarchy
of July. Nevertheless, I am able to declare that these great orators
were tired to death of listening to one another, and, what was worse,
the whole country was tired of listening to them. It grew unconsciously
accustomed to look upon the debates in the Chambers as exercises of the
intellect rather than as serious discussions, and upon all the
differences between the various parliamentary parties--the majority, the
left centre, or the dynastic opposition--as domestic quarrels between
children of one family trying to trick one another. A few glaring
instances of corruption, discovered by accident, led it to presuppose a
number of hidden cases, and convinced it that the whole of the governing
class was corrupt; whence it conceived for the latter a silent contempt,
which was generally taken for confiding and contented submission.
The country was at that time divided into two unequal parts, or rather
zones: in the upper, which alone was intended to contain the whole of
the nation's political life, there reigned nothing but languor,
impotence, stagnation, and boredom; in the lower, on the contrary,
political life began to make itself manifest by means of feverish and
irregular signs, of which the attentive observer was easily able to
seize the meaning.
I was one of these observers; and although I was far from imagining that
the catastrophe was so near at hand and fated to be so terrible, I felt
a distrust springing up and insensibly growing in my mind, and the idea
taking root more and more that we were making strides towards a fresh
revolution. This denoted a great change in my thoughts; since the
general appeasement and flatness that followed the Revolution of July
had led me to believe for a long time that I was destined to spend my
life amid an enervated and peaceful society. Indeed, anyone who had only
examined the inside of the governmental fabric would have had the same
conviction. Everything there seemed combined to produce with the
machinery of liberty a preponderance of royal power which verged upon
despotism; and, in fact, this result was produced almost without effort
by the regular and tranquil movement of the machine. King Louis-Philippe
was persuaded that, so long as he did not himself lay hand upon that
fine instrument, and allowed it to work according to rule, he was safe
from all peril. His only occupation was to keep it in order, and to
make it work according to his own views, forgetful of society, upon
which this ingenious piece of mechanism rested; he resembled the man who
refused to believe that his house was on fire, because he had the key in
his pocket. I had neither the same interests nor the same cares, and
this permitted me to see through the mechanism of institutions and the
agglomeration of petty every-day facts, and to observe the state of
morals and opinions in the country. There I clearly beheld the
appearance of several of the portents that usually denote the approach
of revolutions, and I began to believe that in 1830 I had taken for the
end of the play what was nothing more than the end of an act.
A short unpublished document which I composed at the time, and a speech
which I delivered early in 1848, will bear witness to these
preoccupations of my mind.
A number of my friends in Parliament met together in October 1847, to
decide upon the policy to be adopted during the ensuing session. It was
agreed that we should issue a programme in the form of a manifesto, and
the task of drawing it up was deputed to me. Later, the idea of this
publication was abandoned, but I had already written the document. I
have discovered it among my papers, and I give the following extracts.
After commenting on the symptoms of languor in Parliament, I continued:
"... The time will come when the country will find itself once
again divided between two great parties. The French Revolution,
which abolished all privileges and destroyed all exclusive rights,
has allowed one to remain, that of landed property. Let not the
landlords deceive themselves as to the strength of their position,
nor think that the rights of property form an insurmountable
barrier because they have not as yet been surmounted; for our times
are unlike any others. When the rights of property were merely the
origin and commencement of a number of other rights, they were
easily defended, or rather, they were never attacked; they then
formed the surrounding wall of society, of which all other rights
were the outposts; no blows reached them; no serious attempt was
ever made to touch them. But to-day, when the rights of property
are nothing more than the last remnants of an overthrown
aristocratic world; when they alone are left intact, isolated
privileges amid the universal levelling of society; when they are
no longer protected behind a number of still more controversible
and odious rights, the case is altered, and they alone are left
daily to resist the direct and unceasing shock of democratic
opinion....
"... Before long, the political struggle will be restricted to
those who have and those who have not; property will form the great
field of battle; and the principal political questions will turn
upon the more or less important modifications to be introduced into
the rights of landlords. We shall then have once more among us
great public agitations and great political parties.
"How is it that these premonitory symptoms escape the general view?
Can anyone believe that it is by accident, through some passing
whim of the human brain, that we see appearing on every side these
curious doctrines, bearing different titles, but all characterized
in their essence by their denial of the rights of property, and all
tending, at least, to limit, diminish, and weaken the exercise of
these rights? Who can fail here to recognise the final symptom of
the old democratic disease of the time, whose crisis would seem to
be at hand?"
I was still more urgent and explicit in the speech which I delivered in
the Chamber of Deputies on the 29th of January 1848, and which appeared
in the _Moniteur_ of the 30th.
I quote the principal passages:
"... I am told that there is no danger because there are no riots;
I am told that, because there is no visible disorder on the surface
of society, there is no revolution at hand.
"Gentlemen, permit me to say that I believe you are deceived. True,
there is no actual disorder; but it has entered deeply into men's
minds. See what is passing in the breasts of the working classes,
who, I grant, are at present quiet. No doubt they are not disturbed
by political passion, properly so-called, to the same extent that
they have been; but can you not see that their passions, instead of
political, have become social? Do you not see that there are
gradually forming in their breasts opinions and ideas which are
destined not only to upset this or that law, ministry, or even form
of government, but society itself, until it totters upon the
foundations on which it rests to-day? Do you not listen to what
they say to themselves each day? Do you not hear them repeating
unceasingly that all that is above them is incapable and unworthy
of governing them; that the present distribution of goods
throughout the world is unjust; that property rests on a foundation
which is not an equitable foundation? And do you not realize that
when such opinions take root, when they spread in an almost
universal manner, when they sink deeply into the masses, they are
bound to bring with them sooner or later, I know not when nor how,
a most formidable revolution?
"This, gentlemen, is my profound conviction: I believe that we are
at this moment sleeping on a volcano. I am profoundly convinced of
it....
* * * * *
"... I was saying just now that this evil would, sooner or later, I
know not how nor whence it will come, bring with it a most serious
revolution: be assured that that is so.
"When I come to investigate what, at different times, in different
periods, among different peoples, has been the effective cause that
has brought about the downfall of the governing classes, I perceive
this or that event, man, or accidental or superficial cause; but,
believe me, the real reason, the effective reason which causes men
to lose their power is, that they have become unworthy to retain
it.
"Think, gentlemen, of the old Monarchy: it was stronger than you
are, stronger in its origin; it was able to lean more than you do
upon ancient customs, ancient habits, ancient beliefs; it was
stronger than you are, and yet it has fallen to dust. And why did
it fall? Do you think it was by some particular mischance? Do you
think it was by the act of some man, by the deficit, the oath in
the Tennis Court, La Fayette, Mirabeau? No, gentlemen; there was
another reason: the class that was then the governing class had
become, through its indifference, its selfishness and its vices,
incapable and unworthy of governing the country.
"That was the true reason.
"Well, gentlemen, if it is right to have this patriotic prejudice
at all times, how much more is it not right to have it in our own?
Do you not feel, by some intuitive instinct which is not capable of
analysis, but which is undeniable, that the earth is quaking once
again in Europe? Do you not feel ... what shall I say? ... as it
were a gale of revolution in the air? This gale, no one knows
whence it springs, whence it blows, nor, believe me, whom it will
carry with it; and it is in such times as these that you remain
calm before the degradation of public morality--for the expression
is not too strong.
"I speak without bitterness; I am even addressing you without any
party spirit; I am attacking men against whom I feel no
vindictiveness. But I am obliged to communicate to my country my
firm and decided conviction. Well then, my firm and decided
conviction is this: that public morality is being degraded, and
that the degradation of public morality will shortly, very shortly,
perhaps, bring down upon you a new revolution. Is the life of kings
held by stronger threads? Are these more difficult to snap than
those of other men? Can you say to-day that you are certain of
to-morrow? Do you know what may happen in France a year hence, or
even a month or a day hence? You do not know; but what you must
know is that the tempest is looming on the horizon, that it is
coming towards us. Will you allow it to take you by surprise?
"Gentlemen, I implore you not to do so. I do not ask you, I implore
you. I would gladly throw myself on my knees before you, so
strongly do I believe in the reality and the seriousness of the
danger, so convinced am I that my warnings are no empty rhetoric.
Yes, the danger is great. Allay it while there is yet time; correct
the evil by efficacious remedies, by attacking it not in its
symptoms but in itself.
"Legislative changes have been spoken of. I am greatly disposed to
think that these changes are not only very useful, but necessary;
thus, I believe in the need of electoral reform, in the urgency of
parliamentary reform; but I am not, gentlemen, so mad as not to
know that no laws can affect the destinies of nations. No, it is
not the mechanism of laws that produces great events, gentlemen,
but the inner spirit of the government. Keep the laws as they are,
if you wish. I think you would be very wrong to do so; but keep
them. Keep the men, too, if it gives you any pleasure. I raise no
objection so far as I am concerned. But, in God's name, change the
spirit of the government; for, I repeat, that spirit will lead you
to the abyss."[3]
[3: This speech was delivered in the Chamber of Deputies on the
27th of January 1848, in the debate on the Address in reply to the
Speech from the Throne.--Cte. de T.]
These gloomy predictions were received with ironical cheers from the
majority. The Opposition applauded loudly, but more from party feeling
than conviction. The truth is that no one as yet believed seriously in
the danger which I was prophesying, although we were so near the
catastrophe. The inveterate habit contracted by all the politicians,
during this long parliamentary farce, of over-colouring the expression
of their opinions and grossly exaggerating their thoughts had deprived
them of all power of appreciating what was real and true. For several
years the majority had every day been declaring that the Opposition was
imperilling society; and the Opposition repeated incessantly that the
Ministers were ruining the Monarchy. These statements had been made so
constantly on both sides, without either side greatly believing in them,
that they ended by not believing in them at all, at the very moment when
the event was about to justify both of them. Even my own friends
themselves thought that I had overshot the mark, and that my facts were
a little blurred by rhetoric.
I remember that, when I stepped from the tribune, Dufaure took me on one
side, and said, with that sort of parliamentary intuition which is his
only note of genius:
"You have succeeded, but you would have succeeded much more if you had
not gone so far beyond the feeling of the Assembly and tried to frighten
us."
And now that I am face to face with myself, searching in my memory to
discover whether I was actually myself so much alarmed as I seemed, the
answer is no, and I readily recognise that the event justified me more
promptly and more completely than I foresaw (a thing which may sometimes
have happened to other political prophets, better authorized to predict
than I was). No, I did not expect such a revolution as we were destined
to have; and who could have expected it? I did, I believe, perceive more
clearly than the others the general causes which were making for the
event; but I did not observe the accidents which were to precipitate it.
Meantime the days which still separated us from the catastrophe passed
rapidly by.
CHAPTER II
THE BANQUETS--SENSE OF SECURITY ENTERTAINED BY THE
GOVERNMENT--ANXIETY OF LEADERS OF THE OPPOSITION--ARRAIGNMENT OF
MINISTERS.
I refused to take part in the affair of the banquets. I had both serious
and petty reasons for abstaining. What I call my petty reasons I am
quite willing to describe as bad reasons, although they were consistent
with honour, and would have been unexceptionable in a private matter.
They were the irritation and disgust aroused in me by the character and
by the tactics of the leaders of this enterprise. Nevertheless, I
confess that the private prejudice which we entertain with regard to
individuals is a bad guide in politics.
A close alliance had at that time been effected between M. Thiers and M.
Barrot, and a real fusion formed between the two sections of the
Opposition, which, in our parliamentary jargon, we called the Left
Centre and the Left. Almost all the stubborn and intractable spirits
which were found in the latter party had successively been softened,
unbent, subjugated, made supple, by the promises of place spread
broadcast by M. Thiers. I believe that even M. Barrot had for the first
time allowed himself not exactly to be won over, but surprised, by
arguments of this kind. At any rate, the most complete intimacy reigned
between the two great leaders of the Opposition, whatever was the cause
of it, and M. Barrot, who likes to mingle a little simplicity with his
weaknesses as well as with his virtues, exerted himself to his utmost to
secure the triumph of his ally, even at his own expense. M. Thiers had
allowed him to involve himself in this matter of the banquets; I even
think that he had instigated Barrot in that direction without consenting
to involve himself. He was willing to accept the results, but not the
responsibilities, of that dangerous agitation. Wherefore, surrounded by
his personal friends, he stayed mute and motionless in Paris, while
Barrot travelled all over the country for three months, making long
speeches in every town he stopped at, and resembling, in my opinion,
those beaters who make a great noise in order to bring the game within
easy range of the sportsman's gun. Personally, I felt no inclination to
take part in the sport. But the principal and more serious reason which
restrained me was this: and I expounded it pretty often to those who
wanted to drag me to those political meetings:
"For the first time for eighteen years," I used to tell them, "you are
proposing to appeal to the people, and to seek support outside the
middle class. If you fail in rousing the people (and I think this will
be the most probable result), you will become still more odious than you
already are in the eyes of the Government and of the middle classes,
who for a great part support it. In this way you will strengthen the
administration which you desire to upset; while if, on the contrary, you
succeed in rousing the people, you are no more able than I am to foresee
whither an agitation of this kind will lead you."
In the measure that the campaign of the banquets was prolonged, the
latter hypothesis became, contrary to my expectation, the more probable.
A certain anxiety began to oppress the ringleaders themselves; an
indefinite anxiety, passing vaguely through their minds. I was told by
Beaumont, who was at that time one of the first among them, that the
excitement occasioned in the country by the banquets surpassed not only
the hopes, but the wishes, of those who had started it. The latter were
labouring to allay rather than increase it. Their intention was that
there should be no banquet in Paris, and that there should be none held
anywhere after the assembling of the Chambers. The fact is that they
were only seeking a way out of the mischievous road which they had
entered upon. And it was undoubtedly in spite of them that this final
banquet was resolved on; they were constrained to take part in it, drawn
into it; their vanity was compromised. The Government, by its defiance,
goaded the Opposition into adopting this dangerous measure, thinking
thus to drive it to destruction. The Opposition let itself be caught in
a spirit of bravado, and lest it should be suspected of retreating; and
thus irritating each other, spurring one another on, they dragged each
other towards the common abyss, which neither of them as yet perceived.
I remember that two days before the Revolution of February, at the
Turkish Ambassador's ball, I met Duvergier de Hauranne. I felt for him
both friendship and esteem; although he possessed very nearly all the
failings that arise from party spirit, he at least joined to them the
sort of disinterestedness and sincerity which one meets with in genuine
passions, two rare advantages in our day, when the only genuine passion
is that of self. I said to him, with the familiarity warranted by our
relations:
"Courage, my friend; you are playing a dangerous game."
He replied gravely, but with no sign of fear:
"Believe me, all will end well; besides, one must risk something. There
is no free government that has not had to go through a similar
experience."
This reply perfectly describes this determined but somewhat narrow
character; narrow, I say, although with plenty of brain, but with the
brain which, while seeing clearly and in detail all that is on the
horizon, is incapable of conceiving that the horizon may change;
scholarly, disinterested, ardent, vindictive, sprung from that learned
and sectarian race which guides itself in politics by imitation of
others and by historical recollection, and which restricts its thought
to one sole idea, at which it warms, in which it blinds itself.
For the rest, the Government were even less uneasy than the leaders of
the Opposition. A few days before the above conversation, I had had
another with Duchatel, the Minister of the Interior. I was on good terms
with this minister, although for the last eight years I had been very
boldly (even too boldly, I confess, in the case of its foreign policy)
attacking the Cabinet of which he was one of the principal members. I am
not sure that this fault did not even make me find favour in his eyes,
for I believe that at the bottom of his heart he had a sneaking fondness
for those who attacked his colleague at the Foreign Office, M. Guizot. A
battle which M. Duchatel and I had fought some years before in favour of
the penitentiary system had brought us together and given rise to a
certain intimacy between us. This man was very unlike the one I
mentioned above: he was as heavy in his person and his manners as the
other was meagre, angular, and sometimes trenchant and bitter. He was as
remarkable for his scepticism as the other for his ardent convictions,
for flabby indifference as the former for feverish activity; he
possessed a very supple, very quick, very subtle mind enclosed in a
massive body; he understood business admirably, while pretending to be
above it; he was thoroughly acquainted with the evil passions of
mankind, and especially with the evil passions of his party, and always
knew how to turn them to advantage. He was free from all rancour and
prejudice, cordial in his address, easy of approach, obliging, whenever
his own interests were not compromised, and bore a kindly contempt for
his fellow-creatures.
I was about to say that, some days before the catastrophe, I drew M.
Duchatel into a corner of the conference room, and observed to him that
the Government and the Opposition seemed to be striving in concert to
drive things to an extremity calculated to end by damaging everybody;
and I asked him if he saw no honest way of escape from a regrettable
position, some honourable transaction which would permit everyone to
draw back. I added that my friends and I would be happy to have such a
way pointed out to us, and that we would make every exertion to persuade
our colleagues in the Opposition to accept it. He listened attentively
to my remarks, and assured me that he understood my meaning, although I
saw clearly that he did not enter into it for a moment.
"Things had reached such a pitch," he said, "that the expedient which I
sought was no longer to be found. The Government was in the right, and
could not yield. If the Opposition persisted in its course, the result
might be a combat in the streets, but this combat had long been
foreseen, and if the Government was animated with the evil passions with
which it was credited, it would desire this fighting rather than dread
it, being sure to triumph in the end."
He went on in his complaisant fashion to tell me in detail of all the
military precautions that had been taken, the extent of the resources,
the number of the troops, and the quantity of ammunition.... I took my
leave, satisfied that the Government, without exactly striving to
promote an outbreak, was far from dreading one, and that the Ministry,
in its certainty of ultimate victory, saw in the threatening catastrophe
possibly its last means of rallying its scattered supporters and of
finally reducing its adversaries to powerlessness. I confess that I
thought as he did; his air of unfeigned assurance had proved contagious.
The only really uneasy people in Paris at that moment were the Radical
chiefs and the men who were sufficiently in touch with the people and
the revolutionary party to know what was taking place in that quarter. I
have reason to believe that most of these looked with dread upon the
events which were ready to burst forth, whether because they kept up the
tradition of their former passions rather than these passions
themselves, or because they had begun to grow accustomed to a state of
things in which they had taken up their position after so many times
cursing it; or again, because they were doubtful of success; or rather
because, being in a position to study and become well acquainted with
their allies, they were frightened at the last moment of the victory
which they expected to gain through their aid. On the very day before
the outbreak, Madame de Lamartine betrayed extraordinary anxiety when
calling upon Madame de Tocqueville, and gave such unmistakable signs of
a mind heated and almost deranged by ominous thoughts that the latter
became alarmed, and told me of it the same evening.
It is not one of the least curious characteristics of this singular
revolution that the incident which led to it was brought about and
almost longed for by the men whom it eventually precipitated from power,
and that it was only foreseen and feared by those who were to triumph by
its means.
Here let me for a moment resume the chain of history, so that I may the
more easily attach to it the thread of my personal recollections.
It will be remembered that, at the opening of the session of 1848, King
Louis-Philippe, in his Speech from the Throne, had described the authors
of the banquets as men excited by blind or hostile passions. This was
bringing Royalty into direct conflict with more than one hundred members
of the Chamber. This insult, which added anger to all the ambitious
passions which were already disturbing the hearts of the majority of
these men, ended by making them lose their reason. A violent debate was
expected, but did not take place at once. The earlier discussions on the
Address were calm: the majority and the Opposition both restrained
themselves at the commencement, like two men who feel that they have
lost their tempers, and who fear lest while in that condition they
should perpetrate some folly in word or deed.
But the storm of passion broke out at last, and continued with
unaccustomed violence. The extraordinary heat of these debates was
already redolent of civil war for those who knew how to scent
revolutions from afar.
The spokesmen of the moderate section of the Opposition were led, in the
heat of debate, to assert that the right of assembling at the banquets
was one of our most undeniable and essential rights;[4] that to question
it, was equivalent to trampling liberty itself underfoot and to
violating the Charter, and that those who did so unconsciously made an
appeal, not to discussion, but to arms. On his side M. Duchatel, who
ordinarily was very dexterous in debate, displayed in this circumstance
a consummate want of tact.[5] He absolutely denied the right of
assemblage, and yet would not say clearly that the Government had made
up its mind to prohibit thenceforth any manifestations of the kind. On
the contrary, he seemed to invite the Opposition to try the experiment
once more, so that the question might be brought before the Courts. His
colleague, M. Hebert, the Minister of Justice, was still more tactless,
but this was his habit. I have always observed that lawyers never make
statesmen; but I have never met anyone who was less of a statesman than
M. Hebert. He remained the Public-Prosecutor down to the marrow of his
bones; he had all the mental and physical characteristics of that
office. You must imagine a little wizened, sorry face, shrunk at the
temples, with a pointed forehead, nose and chin, cold, bright eyes, and
thin, in-drawn lips. Add to this a long quill generally held across the
mouth, and looking at a distance like a cat's bristling whiskers, and
you have a portrait of a man, than whom I have never seen anyone more
resembling a carnivorous animal. At the same time, he was neither stupid
nor even ill-natured; but he was by nature hot-headed and unyielding; he
always overshot his goal, for want of knowing when to turn aside or stop
still; and he fell into violence without intending it, and from sheer
want of discrimination. It showed how little importance M. Guizot
attached to conciliation, that under the circumstances he sent a speaker
of this stamp into the tribune;[6] his language while there was so
outrageous and so provoking that Barrot, quite beside himself and almost
without knowing what he was doing, exclaimed, in a voice half stifled
with rage, that the ministers of Charles X., that Polignac and
Peyronnet, had never dared to talk like that. I remember that I
shuddered involuntarily in my seat when I heard this naturally moderate
man exasperated into recalling, for the first time, the terrible
memories of the Revolution of 1830, holding it up in some sort as an
example, and unconsciously suggesting the idea of repeating it.
[4: See the speech of M. Duvergier de Hauranne, 7 February
1848.--Cte. de T.]
[5: The minister replied to M. Leon de Mandeville. He quoted the
laws of 1790 and 1791, which empowered the authorities to oppose
any public meetings which seemed to threaten danger to the public
peace, and he declared that the Government would be failing in its
duty if it were to give way before manifestations of any
description. At the end of his speech he again brought in the
phrase "blind or hostile passions," and endeavoured to justify
it.--Cte. de T.]
[6: Replying to M. Odilon Barrot, M. Hebert maintained that, since
the right of public meeting was not laid down in the Charter, it
did not exist.--Cte. de T.]
The result of this heated discussion was a sort of challenge to mortal
combat exchanged between the Government and the Opposition, the scene of
the duel to be the law-courts. It was tacitly agreed that the challenged
party should meet at one final banquet; that the authorities, without
interfering to prevent the meeting, should prosecute its organizers, and
that the courts should pronounce judgment.
The debates on the Address were closed, if I remember rightly, on the
12th of February, and it is really from this moment that the
revolutionary movement burst out. The Constitutional Opposition, which
had for many months been constantly pushed on by the Radical party, was
from this time forward led and directed not so much by the members of
that party who occupied seats in the Chamber of Deputies (the greater
number of these had become lukewarm and, as it were, enervated in the
Parliamentary atmosphere), as by the younger, bolder, and more
irresponsible men who wrote for the democratic press. This change was
especially apparent in two principal facts which had an overwhelming
influence upon events--the programme of the banquet and the arraignment
of Ministers.
On the 20th of February, there appeared in almost all the Opposition
newspapers, by way of programme of the approaching banquet, what was
really a proclamation calling upon the entire population to join in an
immense political demonstration, convoking the schools and inviting the
National Guard itself to attend the ceremony in a body. It read like a
decree emanating from the Provisional Government which was to be set up
three days later. The Cabinet, which had already been blamed by many of
its followers for tacitly authorising the banquet, considered that it
was justified in retracing its steps. It officially announced that it
forbade the banquet, and that it would prevent it by force.
It was this declaration of the Government which provided the field for
the battle. I am in a position to state, although it sounds hardly
credible, that the programme which thus suddenly turned the banquet into
an insurrection was resolved upon, drawn up and published without the
participation or the knowledge of the members of Parliament who
considered themselves to be still leading the movement which they had
called into existence. The programme was the hurried work of a nocturnal
gathering of journalists and Radicals, and the leaders of the Dynastic
Opposition heard of it at the same time as the public, by reading it in
the papers in the morning.
And see how uncertain is the course of human affairs! M. Odilon Barrot,
who disapproved of the programme as much as anyone, dared not disclaim
it for fear of offending the men who, till then, had seemed to be moving
with him; and then, when the Government, alarmed by the publication of
this document, prohibited the banquet, M. Barrot, finding himself
brought face to face with civil war, drew back. He himself gave up this
dangerous demonstration; but at the same time that he was making this
concession to the men of moderation, he granted to the extremists the
impeachment of Ministers. He accused the latter of violating the
Constitution by prohibiting the banquet, and thus furnished an excuse to
those who were about to take up arms in the name of the violated
Constitution.
Thus the principal leaders of the Radical Party, who thought that a
revolution would be premature, and who did not yet desire it, had
considered themselves obliged, in order to differentiate themselves from
their allies in the Dynastic Opposition, to make very revolutionary
speeches and fan the flame of insurrectionary passion. On the other
hand, the Dynastic Opposition, which had had enough of the banquets, had
been forced to persevere in this bad course so as not to present an
appearance of retreating before the defiance of the Government. And
finally, the mass of the Conservatives, who believed in the necessity of
great concessions and were ready to make them, were driven by the
violence of their adversaries and the passions of some of their chiefs
to deny even the right of meeting in private banquets and to refuse the
country any hopes of reform.
One must have lived long amid political parties, and in the very
whirlwind in which they move, to understand to what extent men mutually
push each other away from their respective plans, and how the destinies
of this world proceed as the result, but often as the contrary result,
of the intentions that produce them, similarly to the kite which flies
by the antagonistic action of the wind and the cord.
CHAPTER III
TROUBLES OF THE 22ND OF FEBRUARY--THE SITTING OF THE 23RD--THE NEW
MINISTRY--OPINIONS OF M. DUFAURE AND M. DE BEAUMONT.
I did not perceive anything on the 22nd of February calculated to give
rise to serious apprehensions. There was a crowd in the streets, but it
seemed to be composed rather of sight-seers and fault-finders than of
the seditiously inclined: the soldier and the townsman chaffed each
other when they met, and I heard more jokes than cries uttered by the
crowd. I know that it is not safe to trust one's self to these
appearances. It is the street-boys of Paris who generally commence the
insurrections, and as a rule they do so light-heartedly, like schoolboys
breaking up for the holidays.
When I returned to the Chamber, I found a seeming listlessness reigning
there, beneath which one could perceive the inner seething of a thousand
restrained passions. It was the only place in Paris in which, since the
early morning, I had not heard discussed aloud what was then absorbing
all France. They were languidly discussing a bill for the creation of a
bank at Bordeaux; but in reality no one, except the man talking in the
tribune and the man who was to reply to him, showed any interest in the
matter. M. Duchatel told me that all was going well. He said this with
an air of combined confidence and nervousness which struck me as
suspicious. I noticed that he twisted his neck and shoulders (a common
trick with him) much more frequently and violently than usual; and I
remember that this little observation gave me more food for reflection
than all the rest.
I learnt that, as a matter of fact, there had been serious troubles in
many parts of the town which I had not visited; a certain number of men
had been killed or wounded. People were no longer accustomed to this
sort of incident, as they had been some years before and as they became
still more a few months later; and the excitement was great. I happened
to be invited to dine that evening at the house of one of my
fellow-members of Parliament and of the Opposition, M. Paulmier, the
deputy for Calvados. I had some difficulty in getting there through the
troops which guarded the surrounding streets. I found my host's house in
great disorder. Madame Paulmier, who was expecting her _accouchement_
and who had been frightened by a skirmish that had taken place beneath
her windows, had gone to bed. The dinner was magnificent, but the table
was deserted; out of twenty guests invited, only five presented
themselves; the others were kept back either by material impediments or
by the preoccupations of the day. We sat down with a very thoughtful air
amid all this abundance. Among the guests was M. Sallandrouze, the
inheritor of the great business house of that name, which had made a
large fortune by its manufacture of textile fabrics. He was one of those
young Conservatives, richer in money than in honours, who, from time to
time, made a show of opposition, or rather, of captious criticism,
mainly, I think, to give themselves a certain importance. In the course
of the last debate on the Address, M. Sallandrouze had moved an
amendment[7] which would have compromised the Cabinet, had it been
adopted. At the time when this incident was most occupying attention, M.
Sallandrouze one evening went to the reception at the Tuileries, hoping
that this time, at least, he would not remain unrecognized in the crowd.
And, in fact, no sooner had King Louis-Philippe seen him than he came up
to him with a very assiduous mien, and solemnly took him aside and began
to talk to him eagerly, and with a great display of interest, about the
branch of manufacture to which the young deputy owed his fortune. The
latter, at first, felt no astonishment, thinking that the King, who was
known to be clever at managing men's minds, had selected this little
private road in order to lead round to affairs of State. But he was
mistaken; for, after a quarter of an hour, the King changed not the
conversation but the person addressed, and left our friend standing very
confused amid his carpets and woollen stuffs. M. Sallandrouze had not
yet got over this trick played upon him, but he was beginning to feel
very much afraid that he would be revenged too well. He told us that M.
Emile Girardin had said to him the day before, "In two days, the
Monarchy of July will have ceased to exist." This seemed to all of us a
piece of journalistic hyperbole, and perhaps it was; but the events that
followed turned it into an oracle.
[7: M. Sallandrouze de Lamornaix' amendment proposed to modify the
expression "blind or hostile passions," by adding the words: "Amid
these various demonstrations, your Government will know how to
recognise the real and lawful desires of the country; it will, we
trust, take the initiative by introducing certain wise and moderate
reforms called for by public opinion, among which we must place
first parliamentary reform. In a Constitutional Monarchy, the union
of the great powers of the State removes all danger from a
progressive policy, and allows every moral and material interest of
the country to be satisfied."--Cte. de T.]
On the next day, the 23rd of February, I learnt, on waking, that the
excitement in Paris, so far from becoming calmer, was increasing. I went
early to the Chamber; silence reigned around the Assembly; battalions of
infantry occupied and closed the approaches, while troops of Cuirassiers
were drawn up along the walls of the Palace. Inside, men's feelings were
excited without their quite knowing the reason.
The sitting had been opened at the ordinary time; but the Assembly had
not had the courage to go through the same parliamentary comedy as on
the day before, and had suspended its labours; it sat receiving reports
from the different quarters of the town, awaiting events and counting
the hours, in a state of feverish idleness. At a certain moment, a loud
sound of trumpets was heard outside. It appeared that the Cuirassiers
guarding the Palace were amusing themselves, in order to pass the time,
by sounding flourishes on their instruments. The gay, triumphant tones
of the trumpets contrasted in so melancholy a fashion with the thoughts
by which all our minds were secretly disturbed, that a message was
hurriedly sent out to stop this offensive and indiscreet performance,
which caused such painful reflections to all of us.
At last, it was determined to speak aloud of what all had been
discussing in whispers for several hours. A Paris deputy, M. Vavin,
commenced to question the Cabinet upon the state of the city. At three
o'clock M. Guizot appeared at the door of the House. He entered with his
firmest step and his loftiest mien, silently crossed the gangway,
ascended the tribune, throwing his head almost back from his shoulders
for fear of seeming to lower it, and stated in two words that the King
had called upon M. Mole to form a new ministry. Never did I see such a
piece of clap-trap.
The Opposition kept their seats, most of them uttering cries of victory
and satisfied revenge; the leaders alone sat silent, busy in communing
with themselves upon the use they would make of their triumph, and
careful not to insult a majority of which they might soon be called upon
to make use. As to the majority, they seemed thunderstruck by this so
unexpected blow, moved to and fro like a mass that sways from side to
side, uncertain as to which side it shall fall on, and then descended
noisily into the semi-circle. A few surrounded the ministers to ask
them for explanations or to pay them their last respects, but the
greater number clamoured against them with noisy and insulting shouts.
"To throw up office, to abandon your political friends under such
circumstances," they said, "is a piece of gross cowardice;" while others
exclaimed that the members ought to repair to the Tuileries in a body,
and force the King to re-consider his fatal resolve.
This despair will arouse no astonishment when it is remembered that the
greater number of these men felt themselves attacked, not only in their
political opinions, but in the most sensitive part of their private
interest. The fall of the Government compromised the entire fortune of
one, the daughter's dowry of another, the son's career of a third. It
was by this that they were almost all held. Most of them had not only
bettered themselves by means of their votes, but one may say that they
had lived on them. They still lived on them, and hoped to continue to
live on them; for, the Ministry having lasted eight years, they had
accustomed themselves to think that it would last for ever; they had
grown attached to it with the honest, peaceful feeling of affection
which one entertains for one's fields. From my seat, I watched this
swaying crowd; I saw surprise, anger, fear and avarice mingle their
various expressions upon those bewildered countenances; and I drew an
involuntary comparison between all these legislators and a pack of
hounds which, with their jaws half filled, see the quarry withdrawn
from them.
I grant, however, that, so far as many of the Opposition were concerned,
it only wanted that they should be put to a similar test in order to
make the same display. If many of the Conservatives only defended the
Ministry with a view to keeping their places and emoluments, I am bound
to say that many of the Opposition seemed to me only to attack it in
order to reap the plunder in their turn. The truth--the deplorable
truth--is that a taste for holding office and a desire to live on the
public money are not with us a disease restricted to either party, but
the great, chronic ailment of the whole nation; the result of the
democratic constitution of our society and of the excessive
centralization of our Government; the secret malady which has undermined
all former powers, and which will undermine all powers to come.
At last the uproar ceased, as the nature of what had happened became
better known: we learnt that it had been brought about by the
insurrectionary inclinations of a battalion of the Fifth Legion and the
applications made direct to the King by several officers of that section
of the Guard.
So soon as he was informed of what was going on, King Louis-Philippe,
who was less prone to change his opinions, but more ready to change his
line of conduct, than any man I ever saw, had immediately made up his
mind; and after eight years of complacency, the Ministry was dismissed
by him in two minutes, and without ceremony.
The Chamber rose without delay, each member thinking only of the change
of government, and forgetting about the revolution.
I went out with M. Dufaure, and soon perceived that he was not only
preoccupied but constrained. I at once saw that he felt himself in the
critical and complicated position of a leader of the Opposition, who was
about to become a minister, and who, after experiencing the use his
friends could be to him, was beginning to think of the difficulties
which their pretentions might well cause him.
M. Dufaure had a somewhat cunning mind, which readily admitted such
thoughts as these, and he also possessed a sort of natural rusticity
which, combined with great integrity, but rarely permitted him to
conceal them. He was, moreover, the sincerest and by far the most
respectable of all those who at that moment had a chance of becoming
ministers. He believed that power was at last within his grasp, and his
ambition betrayed a passion that was the more eager inasmuch as it was
discreet and suppressed. M. Mole in his place would have felt much
greater egoism and still more ingratitude, but he would have been only
all the more open-hearted and amiable.
I soon left him, and went to M. de Beaumont's. There I found every heart
rejoicing. I was far from sharing this joy, and finding myself among
people with whom I could talk freely, I gave my reasons.
"The National Guard of Paris," I said, "has upset a Cabinet; therefore
it is during its good pleasure only that the new Ministers will remain
at the head of affairs. You are glad because the Government is upset;
but do you not see that it is authority itself which is overthrown?"
This sombre view of the political situation was not much to Beaumont's
taste; he was carried away by rancour and ambition.
"You always take a gloomy view of everything," he said. "Let us first
rejoice at the victory: we can lament over the results later."
Madame de Beaumont, who was present at the interview, seemed herself to
share her husband's elation, and nothing ever so thoroughly proved to me
the irresistible power of party feeling. For, by nature, neither hatred
nor self-interest had a place in the heart of this distinguished and
attractive woman, one of the most truly and consistently virtuous that I
have met in my life, and one who best knew how to make virtue both
touching and lovable. To the nobility of heart of the La Fayettes she
added a mind that was witty, refined, kindly and just.
I, nevertheless, sustained my theory against both him and her, arguing
that upon the whole the incident was a regrettable one, or rather that
we should see more in it than a mere incident, a great event which was
destined to change the whole aspect of affairs. It was very easy for me
to philosophize thus, since I did not share the illusions of my friend
Dufaure. The impulse given to the political machine seemed to me to be
too violent to permit of the reins of government falling into the hands
of the moderate party to which I belonged, and I foresaw that they would
soon fall to those who were almost as obnoxious to me as the men from
whose hands they had slipped.
I was dining with another of my friends, M. Lanjuinais, of whom I shall
have to speak often in future. The company was fairly numerous, and
embraced many shades of political opinion. Many of the guests rejoiced
at the result of the day's work, while others expressed alarm; but all
thought that the insurrectionary movement would stop of its own accord,
to break out again later on another occasion and in another form. All
the rumours that reached us from the town seemed to confirm this belief;
cries of war were replaced by cries of joy. Portalis, who became
Attorney-General of Paris a few days later, was of our number: not the
son, but the nephew of the Chief President of the Court of Appeal. This
Portalis had neither his uncle's rare intelligence, nor his exemplary
character, nor his solemn dulness. His coarse, violent, perverse mind
had quite naturally entered into all the false ideas and extreme
opinions of our times. Although he was in relation with most of those
who are regarded as the authors and leaders of the Revolution of 1848, I
can conscientiously declare that he did not that night expect the
revolution any more than we did. I am convinced that, even at that
supreme moment, the same might have been said of the greater number of
his friends. It would be a waste of time to try to discover what secret
conspiracies brought about events of this kind. Revolutions accomplished
by means of popular risings are generally longed for beforehand rather
than premeditated. Those who boast of having contrived them have done no
more than turn them to account. They spring spontaneously into being
from a general malady of men's minds, brought suddenly to the critical
stage by some fortuitous and unforeseen circumstance. As to the
so-called originators or leaders of these revolutions, they originate
and lead nothing; their only merit is identical with that of the
adventurers who have discovered most of the unknown countries. They
simply have the courage to go straight before them as long as the wind
impels them.
I took my leave early, and went straight home to bed. Although I lived
close to the Foreign Office, I did not hear the firing which so greatly
influenced our destinies, and I fell asleep without realizing that I had
seen the last day of the Monarchy of July.
CHAPTER IV
THE 24TH OF FEBRUARY--THE MINISTERS' PLAN OF RESISTANCE--THE
NATIONAL GUARD--GENERAL BEDEAU.
The next morning was the 24th of February. On leaving my bed-room, I met
the cook, who had been out; the good woman was quite beside herself, and
poured out a sorrowing rigmarole, of which I failed to understand a
word, except that the Government was massacring the poor people. I went
downstairs at once, and had no sooner set foot in the street than I
breathed for the first time the atmosphere of revolution. The roadway
was empty; the shops were not open; there were no carriages nor
pedestrians to be seen; none of the ordinary hawkers' cries were heard;
neighbours stood talking in little groups at their doors, with subdued
voices, with a frightened air; every face seemed distorted with fear or
anger. I met a National Guard hurrying along, gun in hand, with a tragic
gait; I accosted him, but I could learn nothing from him, save that the
Government was massacring the people (to which he added that the
National Guard would know how to put that right). It was the same old
refrain: it is easily understood that this explanation explained
nothing. I was too well acquainted with the vices of the Government of
July not to know that cruelty was not one of them. I considered it one
of the most corrupt, but also one of the least bloodthirsty, that had
ever existed, and I only repeat this observation in order to show the
sort of report that assists the progress of revolutions.
I hastened to M. de Beaumont, who lived in the next street. There I
learnt that the King had sent for him during the night. The same reply
was given to my enquiry at M. de Remusat's, where I went next. M. de
Corcelles, whom I met in the street, gave me his account of what was
happening, but in a very confused manner; for, in a city in state of
revolution, as on a battle-field, each one readily regards the incidents
of which himself is a witness as the events of the day. He told me of
the firing on the Boulevard des Capucines, and of the rapid development
of the insurrection of which this act of unnecessary violence was the
cause or the pretext; of M. Mole's refusal to take office under these
circumstances; and lastly, of the summons to the Palace of Messrs.
Thiers, Barrot and their friends, who were definitely charged with the
formation of a cabinet, facts too well known to permit of my lingering
over them. I asked M. de Corcelles how the ministers proposed to set
about appeasing people's minds.
"M. de Remusat," said he, "is my authority for saying that the plan
adopted is to withdraw all the troops and to flood Paris with National
Guards." These were his own words.
I have always observed that in politics people were often ruined through
possessing too good a memory. The men who were now charged to put an end
to the Revolution of 1848 were exactly the same who had made the
Revolution of 1830. They remembered that at that time the resistance of
the army had failed to stop them, and that on the other hand the
presence of the National Guard, so imprudently dissolved by Charles X.,
might have embarrassed them greatly and prevented them from succeeding.
They took the opposite steps to those adopted by the Government of the
Elder Branch, and arrived at the same result. So true is it that, if
humanity be always the same, the course of history is always different,
that the past is not able to teach us much concerning the present, and
that those old pictures, when forced into new frames, never have a good
effect.
After chatting for a little while on the dangerous position of affairs,
M. de Corcelles and I went to fetch M. Lanjuinais, and all three of us
went together to M. Dufaure, who lived in the Rue Le Peletier. The
boulevard, which we followed to get there, presented a strange
spectacle. There was hardly a soul to be seen, although it was nearly
nine o'clock in the morning, and one heard not the slightest sound of a
human voice; but all the little sentry-boxes which stand along this
endless avenue seemed to move about and totter upon their base, and from
time to time one of them would fall with a crash, while the great trees
along the curb came tumbling down into the roadway as though of their
own accord. These acts of destruction were the work of isolated
individuals, who went about their business silently, regularly, and
hurriedly, preparing in this way the materials for the barricades which
others were to erect. Nothing ever seemed to me more to resemble the
carrying on of an industry, and, as a matter of fact, for the greater
number of these men it was nothing less. The instinct of disorder had
given them the taste for it, and their experience of so many former
insurrections the practice. I do not know that during the whole course
of the day I was so keenly struck as in passing through this solitude in
which one saw, so to speak, the worst passions of mankind at play,
without the good ones appearing. I would rather have met in the same
place a furious crowd; and I remember that, calling Lanjuinais'
attention to those tottering edifices and falling trees, I gave vent to
the phrase which had long been on my lips, and said:
"Believe me, this time it is no longer a riot: it is a revolution."
M. Dufaure told us all that concerned himself in the occurrences of the
preceding evening and of the night. M. Mole had at first applied to him
to assist him to form the new Cabinet; but the increasing gravity of the
situation had soon made them both understand that the moment for their
intervention had passed. M. Mole told the King so about midnight, and
the King sent him to fetch M. Thiers, who refused to accept office
unless he was given M. Barrot for a colleague. Beyond this point, M.
Dufaure knew no more than we did. We separated without having succeeded
in deciding upon our line of action, and without coming to any
resolution beyond that of proceeding to the Chamber so soon as it
opened.
M. Dufaure did not come, and I never precisely learnt why. It was
certainly not from fear, for I have since seen him very calm and very
firm under much more dangerous circumstances. I believe that he grew
alarmed for his family, and desired to take them to a place of safety
outside Paris. His private and his public virtues, both of which were
very great, did not keep step: the first were always ahead of the
second, and we shall see signs of this on more than one subsequent
occasion. Nor, for that matter, would I care to lay this to his account
as a serious charge. Virtues of any kind are too rare to entitle us to
vex those who possess them about their character or their degree.
The time which we had spent with M. Dufaure had sufficed to enable the
rioters to erect a large number of barricades along the road by which we
had come; they were putting the finishing touches to them as we passed
on our way back. These barricades were cunningly constructed by a small
number of men, who worked very diligently: not like guilty men hurried
by the dread of being taken in the act, but like good workmen anxious to
get their task done well and expeditiously. The public watched them
quietly, without expressing disapproval or offering assistance. I did
not discover any signs of that sort of general seething which I had
witnessed in 1830, and which made me at the time compare the whole city
to a huge boiling caldron. This time the public was not overthrowing the
Government; it was allowing it to fall.
We met on the boulevard a column of infantry falling back upon the
Madeleine. No one addressed a word to it, and yet its retreat resembled
a rout. The ranks were broken, the soldiers marched in disorder, with
hanging heads and an air that was both downcast and frightened. Whenever
one of them became separated for a mere instant from the main body, he
was at once surrounded, seized, embraced, disarmed and sent back: all
this was the work of a moment.
Crossing the Place du Havre, I met for the first time a battalion of
that National Guard with which Paris was to be flooded. These men
marched with a look of astonishment and an uncertain step, surrounded by
street boys shouting, "Reform for ever!" to whom they replied with the
same cry, but in a smothered and somewhat constrained voice. This
battalion belonged to my neighbourhood, and most of those who composed
it knew me by sight, although I knew hardly any of them. They
surrounded me and greedily pressed me for news; I told them that we had
obtained all we wanted, that the ministry was changed, that all the
abuses complained of were to be reformed, and that the only danger we
now ran was lest people should go too far, and that it was for them to
prevent it. I soon saw that this view did not appeal to them.
"That's all very well, sir," said they; "the Government has got itself
into this scrape through its own fault, let it get out of it as best it
can."
It was of small use my representing to them that it was much less a
question for the Government at present than for themselves:
"If Paris is delivered to anarchy," I said, "and all the Kingdom is in
confusion, do you think that none but the King will suffer?"
It was of no avail, and all I could obtain in reply was this astounding
absurdity: it was the Government's fault, let the Government run the
danger; we don't want to get killed for people who have managed their
business so badly. And yet this was that middle class which had been
pampered for eighteen years: the current of public opinion had ended by
dragging it along, and was driving it against those who had flattered it
until it had become corrupt.
This was the occasion of a reflection which has often since presented
itself to my mind; in France a government always does wrong to rely
solely for support upon the exclusive interests and selfish passions of
one class. This can only succeed with nations more self-interested and
less vain than ours: with us, when a government established upon this
basis becomes unpopular, it follows that the members of the very class
for whose sake it has lost its popularity prefer the pleasure of
traducing it with all the world to the privileges which it assures them.
The old French aristocracy, which was more enlightened than our modern
middle class and possessed much greater _esprit de corps_, had already
given the same example; it had ended by thinking it a mark of
distinction to run down its own privileges, and by thundering against
the abuses upon which it existed. That is why I think that, upon the
whole, the safest method of government for us to adopt, in order to
endure, is that of governing well, of governing in the interest of
everybody. I am bound to confess, however, that, even when one follows
this course, it is not very certain that one will endure for long.
I soon set out to go to the Chamber, although the time fixed for the
opening of the sitting had not yet come: it was, I believe, about eleven
o'clock. I found the Place Louis XV still clear of people, but occupied
by several regiments of cavalry. When I saw all these troops drawn up in
such good order, I began to think that they had only deserted the
streets in order to mass themselves around the Tuileries and defend
themselves there. At the foot of the obelisk were grouped the staff,
among whom, as I drew nearer, I recognized Bedeau, whose unlucky star
had quite recently brought him back from Africa, in time to bury the
Monarchy. I had spent a few days with him, the year before, at
Constantine, and there had sprung up between us a sort of intimacy which
has since continued. So soon as Bedeau caught sight of me, he sprang
from his horse, came up to me, and grasped my hand in a way that clearly
betrayed his excitement. His conversation gave yet stronger evidence of
this, and I was not surprised, for I have always observed that the men
who lose their heads most easily, and who generally show themselves
weakest on days of revolution, are soldiers; accustomed as they are to
have an organized force facing them and an obedient force in their
hands, they readily become confused before the uproarious shouts of a
mob and in presence of the hesitation and the occasional connivance of
their own men. Unquestionably, Bedeau was confused, and everybody knows
what were the results of this confusion: how the Chamber was invaded by
a handful of men within pistol-shot of the squadrons protecting it, and
how, in consequence, the fall of the Monarchy was proclaimed and the
Provisional Government elected. The part played by Bedeau on this fatal
day was, unfortunately for himself, of so preponderating a character
that I propose to stop a moment in order to analyze this man and his
motives for acting as he did. We have been sufficiently intimate both
before and after this event to enable me to speak with knowledge. It is
true that he received the order not to fight; but why did he obey so
extraordinary an order, which circumstances had rendered so
impracticable?
Bedeau was assuredly not timid by nature, nor even, properly speaking,
undecided; for, when he had once made up his mind, you saw him making
for his goal with great firmness, coolness and courage; but his mind was
the most methodical, the least self-reliant, the least adventurous, and
the least adapted for unpremeditated action that can well be imagined.
He was accustomed to consider the action which he was about to undertake
in all its aspects before setting to work, taking the worst aspects
first, and losing much precious time in diluting a single thought in a
multitude of words. For the rest, he was a just man, moderate,
liberal-minded, as humane as though he had not waged war in Africa for
eighteen years, modest, moral, even refined, and religious: the kind of
honest, virtuous man who is very rarely to be met with in military
circles, or, to speak plainly, elsewhere. It was assuredly not from want
of courage that he did certain acts which seemed to point to this
defect, for he was brave beyond measure; still less was treachery his
motive: although he may not have been attached to the Orleans Family, he
was as little capable of betraying those Princes as their best friends
could have been, and much less so than their creatures eventually were.
His misfortune was that he was drawn into events which were greater than
himself, and that he had only merit where genius was needed, and
especially the genius to grapple with revolutions, which consists
principally in regulating one's actions according to events, and in
knowing how to disobey at the right time. The remembrance of February
poisoned General Bedeau's life, and left a cruel wound deep down in his
soul, a wound whose agony betrayed itself unceasingly by endless
recitals and explanations of the events of that period.
While he was engaged in telling me of his perplexities, and in
endeavouring to prove that the duty of the Opposition was to come down
to the streets in a body and calm the popular excitement with their
speeches, a crowd of people glided in between the trees of the
Champs-Elysees and came down the main avenue towards the Place Louis XV.
Bedeau perceived these men, dragged me towards them on foot until he was
more than a hundred paces from his cavalry, and began to harangue them,
for he was more disposed to speech-making than any military man I have
ever known.
While he was holding forth in this way, I observed that the circle of
his listeners was gradually extending itself around us, and would soon
close us in; and through the first rank of sight-seers I clearly caught
sight of men of riotous aspect moving about, while I heard dull murmurs
in the depths of the crowd of these dangerous words, "It's Bugeaud." I
leant towards the general and whispered in his ear:
"I have more experience than you of the ways of the populace; take my
word, get back to your horse at once, for if you stay here, you will be
killed or taken prisoner before five minutes are over."
He took my word for it, and it was well he did. A few moments later,
these same men whom he had undertaken to convert murdered the occupants
of the guard-house in the Rue des Champs-Elysees; I myself had some
difficulty in forcing my way through them. One of them, a short,
thick-set man, who seemed to belong to the lower class of workmen, asked
me where I was going.
I replied, "To the Chamber," adding, to show that I was a member of the
Opposition, "Reform for ever! You know the Guizot Ministry has been
dismissed?"
"Yes, sir, I know," replied the man, jeeringly, and pointing to the
Tuileries, "but we want more than that."
CHAPTER V
THE SITTING OF THE CHAMBER--MADAME LA DUCHESSE D'ORLEANS--THE
PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT.
I entered the Chamber; the sitting had not yet commenced. The deputies
were wandering about the lobbies like men distraught, living on rumours,
and quite without information. It was not so much an assembly as a mob,
for nobody was leading it.
The leaders of both parties were absent: the ex-ministers had fled, the
new ones had not appeared. Members cried loudly for the sitting to open,
impelled rather by a vague desire for action than by any definite
intention; the President refused: he was accustomed to do nothing
without instructions, and since there was no one left to instruct him,
he was unable to make up his mind. I was begged to go and find him, and
persuade him to take the chair, and I did so. I found this excellent
man--for so he was, in spite of the fact that he often indulged in
well-meaning pieces of trickery, in little pious frauds, in petty
villainies, in all the venial sins which a faint heart and a wavering
mind are able to suggest to an honest nature--I found him, as I have
said, walking to and fro in his room, a prey to the greatest excitement.
M. Sauzet possessed good but not striking features; he had the dignity
of a parish beadle, a big fat body, with very short arms. At times when
he was restless and perplexed--and he almost always was so--he used to
wave his little arms convulsively, and move them about like a swimmer.
His demeanour during our conversation was of the strangest: he walked
about, stopped still, sat down with one foot underneath his clumsy
frame, as he used to do in moments of great excitement, stood up again,
sat down anew, and came to no decision. It was very unfortunate for the
House of Orleans that it had an honest man of this kind to preside over
the Chamber on a day like this: an audacious rogue would have served its
turn better.
M. Sauzet gave me many reasons for not opening the sitting, but one
which he did not give me convinced me that he was right. Seeing him so
helpless and so incapable of adopting any resolution, I considered that
he would only confuse men's minds the more he tried to regulate them. I
therefore left him, and thinking it more important to find protectors
for the Chamber than to open its deliberations, I went out, intending to
proceed to the Ministry of the Interior and ask for help.
As I crossed the Place du Palais-Bourbon with this object, I saw a very
mixed crowd accompanying two men, whom I soon recognized as Barrot and
Beaumont, with loud cheers. Both of them wore their hats crushed down
over their eyes; their clothes were covered with dust, their cheeks
looked hollow, their eyes weary: never were two men in triumph so
suggestive of men about to be hanged. I ran up to Beaumont, and asked
him what was happening. He whispered that the King had abdicated in his
presence, and had taken to flight; that Lamoriciere had apparently been
killed when he went out to announce the abdication to the rioters (in
fact, an aide-de-camp had come back to say that he had seen him at a
distance fall from his horse), that everything was going wrong, and
finally, that he and Barrot were now on their way to the Ministry of the
Interior in order to take possession of it, and to try and establish
somewhere a centre of authority and resistance.
"And the Chamber!" I said. "Have you taken any precautions for the
defence of the Chamber?"
Beaumont received this observation with ill-humour, as though I had been
speaking of my own house. "Who is thinking of the Chamber?" he replied
brusquely. "What good or what harm can it do at the present juncture?"
I thought, and rightly, that he was wrong to speak like this. The
Chamber, it is true, was at that moment in a curious state of
powerlessness, its majority despised, and its minority left behind by
public opinion. But M. de Beaumont forgot that it is just in times of
revolution that the very least instruments of the law, and much more its
outer symbols, which recall the idea of the law to the minds of the
people, assume the greatest importance; for it is especially in the
midst of this universal anarchy and turmoil that the need is felt of
some simulacrum of authority and tradition in order to save the remnants
of a half-destroyed constitution or to complete its overthrow. Had the
deputies been able to proclaim the Regency, the latter might have ended
by triumphing, in spite of the unpopularity of the deputies; and, on the
other hand, it is an undoubted fact that the Provisional Government owed
much to the chance which caused it to come into being between the four
walls which had so long sheltered the representatives of the nation.
I followed my friends to the Ministry of the Interior, where they were
going. The crowd which accompanied us entered, or rather swept in,
tumultuously, and even penetrated with us as far as the room which M.
Duchatel had just quitted. Barrot tried to free himself and dismiss the
mob, but was unable to succeed.
These people, who held two very different sets of opinions, as I was
then enabled to observe, some being Republicans and others
Constitutionalists, began vehemently to discuss with us and among
themselves the measures which were to be taken; and as we were all
squeezed together in a very small space, the heat, dust, confusion, and
uproar soon became unbearable. Barrot, who always launched out into
long, pompous phrases at the most critical moments, and who preserved an
air of dignity, and even of mystery, in the most ludicrous
circumstances, was holding forth at his best _in angustis_. His voice
occasionally rose above the tumult, but never succeeded in quelling it.
In despair and disgust at so violent and ludicrous a scene, I left this
place, where they were exchanging almost as many cuffs as arguments, and
returned to the Chamber.
I reached the entrance to the building without suspecting what was
happening inside, when I saw people come running up, crying that Madame
la Duchesse d'Orleans, the Comte de Paris and the Duc de Nemours had
just arrived. At this news, I flew up the stairs of the Palace, four at
a time, and rushed into the House.
I saw the three members of the Royal Family whom I have named, at the
foot of the tribune, facing the House. The Duchesse d'Orleans was
seated, dressed in mourning, calm and pale; I could see that she was
greatly excited, but her excitement seemed to be that of courageous
natures, more prone to turn to heroism than fright.
The Comte de Paris displayed the carelessness of his age and the
precocious impassiveness of princes. Standing by their side was the Duc
de Nemours, tightly clad in his uniform--cold, stiff, and erect. He was,
to my mind, the only man who ran any real danger that day; and during
the whole time that I saw him exposed to it, I constantly observed in
him the same firm and silent courage.
Around these unhappy Princes pressed the National Guards who had come
with them, some deputies, and a small number of the people. The
galleries were empty and closed, with the exception of the press
gallery, into which an unarmed but clamorous crowd had forced its way. I
was more struck by the cries that issued at intervals from there than by
all else that occurred during the sitting.
Fifty years had passed since the last scene of this kind. Since the time
of the Convention, the galleries had been silent, and the silence of the
galleries had become part of our parliamentary customs. However, if the
Chamber at this moment already felt embarrassed in its actions, it was
not as yet in any way constrained; the deputies were in considerable
numbers, though the party leaders were still absent. I heard enquiries
on every side for M. Thiers and M. Barrot; I did not know what had
become of M. Thiers, but I knew only too well what M. Barrot was doing.
I hurriedly sent one of our friends to tell him of what was happening,
and he came running up with all speed. I can answer for that man that
his soul never knew fear.
After for a moment watching this extraordinary sitting, I had hastened
to take my usual seat on the upper benches of the Left Centre: it has
always been my contention that at critical moments one should not only
be present in the assembly of which one is a member, but occupy the
place where one is generally to be found.
A sort of confused and turbulent discussion had been opened: I heard M.
Lacrosse, who since became my colleague in office, cry amid the uproar:
"M. Dupin wishes to speak!"
"No, no!"
"No," replied M. Dupin, "I made no such request."
"No matter," came from every side; "speak, speak!"
Thus urged, M. Dupin ascended the tribune, and proposed in two words
that they should return to the law of 1842, and proclaim the Duchesse
d'Orleans Regent. This was received with applause in the Assembly,
exclamations in the gallery, and murmurs in the lobbies. The lobbies,
which at first were pretty clear, began to grow crowded in an alarming
manner. The people did not yet come into the Chamber in streams, but
entered little by little, one by one; each moment there appeared a new
face; the Chamber grew flooded as it were by drops. Most of the
new-comers belonged to the lowest classes; many of them were armed.
I witnessed this growing invasion from a distance, and I felt the danger
momentarily increase with it. I cast my eyes round the Chamber in search
of the man best able to resist the torrent; I saw only Lamartine, who
had the necessary position and the requisite capacity to make the
attempt; I remembered that in 1842 he was the only one who proposed the
regency of the Duchesse d'Orleans. On the other hand, his recent
speeches, and especially his recent writings, had obtained for him the
favour of the people. His talent, moreover, was of a kind that appeals
to the popular taste. I was not aware that, half an hour before, he had
been extolling the Republic to an assemblage of journalists and deputies
in one of the offices of the Chamber. I saw him standing by his bench. I
elbowed my way to him, and, when I reached him:
"We shall be lost," I whispered, hurriedly: "you alone can make yourself
heard at this supreme moment; go to the tribune and speak."
I can see him still, as I write these lines, so struck was I with his
appearance. I see his long, straight, slender figure, his eye turned
towards the semi-circle, his fixed and vacant gaze absorbed in inward
contemplation rather than in observing what was passing around him. When
he heard me speak, he did not turn towards me, but only stretched out
his arm towards the place where the Princes stood, and, replying to his
own thought rather than to mine, said:
"I shall not speak so long as that woman and that child remain where
they are."
I said no more; I had heard enough. Returning to my bench, I passed by
the Right Centre, near where Lanjuinais and Billault were sitting, and
asked, "Can you suggest nothing that we could do?" They mournfully shook
their heads, and I continued on my way.
Meantime, the crowd had accumulated to such an extent in the
semi-circle, that the Princes ran the risk of being crushed or
suffocated at any moment.
The President made vain efforts to clear the House; failing in his
endeavours, he begged the Duchesse d'Orleans to withdraw. The courageous
Princess refused, whereupon her friends, with great difficulty,
extricated her from the throng, and made her climb to the top bench of
the Left Centre, where she sat down with her son and the Duc de Nemours.
Marie and Cremieux had just, amid the silence of the deputies and the
acclamations of the people, proposed the establishment of a provisional
government, when Barrot at last appeared. He was out of breath, but not
alarmed. Climbing the stairs of the tribune:
"Our duty lies before us," he said; "the Crown of July lies on the head
of a child and a woman."
The Chamber, recovering its courage, plucked up heart to burst into
acclamations, and the people in their turn were silent. The Duchesse
d'Orleans rose from her seat, seemed to wish to speak, hesitated,
listened to timid counsels, and sat down again: the last glimmer of her
fortune had gone out. Barrot finished his speech without renewing the
impression of his opening words; nevertheless, the Chamber had gathered
strength, and the people wavered.
At that moment, the crowd filling the semi-circle was driven back, by a
stream from outside, towards the centre benches, which were already
almost deserted; it burst and spread over the benches. Of the few
deputies who still occupied them, some slipped away and left the House,
while others retreated from bench to bench, like victims surprised by
the tide, who retreat from rock to rock always pursued by the rising
waters. All this commotion was produced by two troops of men, for the
most part armed, which marched through the two lobbies, each with
officers of the National Guards and flags at its head. The two officers
who carried the flags, of whom one, a swaggering individual, was, as I
heard later, a half-pay colonel called Dumoulin, ascended the tribune
with a theatrical air, waved their standards, and with much skipping
about and great melodramatic gestures, bawled out some revolutionary
balderdash or other. The President declared the sitting suspended, and
proceeded to put on his hat, as is customary; but, since he had the
knack of making himself ridiculous in the most tragic situations, in his
precipitation he seized the hat of a secretary instead of his own, and
pulled it down over his eyes and ears.
Sittings of this sort, as may be believed, are not easily suspended, and
the President's attempts only succeeded in adding to the disorder.
Thenceforth there was nothing but one continuous uproar, broken by
occasional moments of silence. The speakers appeared in the tribune in
groups: Cremieux, Ledru-Rollin, and Lamartine sprang into it at the same
time. Ledru-Rollin drove Cremieux out, and himself held on with his two
great hands, while Lamartine, without leaving or struggling, waited for
his colleague to finish speaking. Ledru-Rollin began incoherently,
interrupted every instant by the impatience of his own friends. "Finish!
finish!" cried Berryer, more experienced than he, and warier in his
dynastic ill-will than was the other in his republican passion.
Ledru-Rollin ended by demanding the appointment of a provisional
government and descended the stair.
Then Lamartine stepped forward and obtained silence. He commenced with a
splendid eulogium on the courage of the Duchesse d'Orleans, and the
people themselves, sensible, as always, to generous sentiments wrapped
up in fine phrases, applauded. The deputies breathed again. "Wait," said
I to my neighbours, "this is only the exordium." And in fact, before
long, Lamartine tacked round and proceeded straight in the same
direction as Ledru-Rollin.
Until then, as I said, all the galleries except the one reserved for the
press had remained empty and closed; but while Lamartine was speaking,
loud blows were heard at the door of one of them, and yielding to the
strain, the door burst into atoms. In a moment the gallery was invaded
by an armed mob of men, who noisily filled it and soon afterwards all
the others. A man of the lower orders, placing one foot on the cornice,
pointed his gun at the President and the speaker; others seemed to
level theirs at the assembly. The Duchesse d'Orleans and her son were
hurried out of the Chamber by some devoted friends and into the corridor
behind the Chair. The President muttered a few words to the effect that
the sitting was adjourned, and stepped, or rather slid, off the platform
on which the chair was placed. I saw him passing before my eyes like a
shapeless mass: never would I have believed that fear could have
inspired with such activity, or rather, suddenly reduced to a sort of
fluidity, so huge a body. All who had remained of the Conservative
members then dispersed, and the populace sprawled over the centre
benches, crying, "Let us take the place of the corrupt crew!"
During all the turbulent scenes which I have just described, I remained
motionless in my seat, very attentive, but not greatly excited; and now,
when I ask myself why I felt no keener emotion in presence of an event
bound to exercise so great an influence upon the destinies of France and
upon my own, I find that the form assumed by this great occurrence did
much to diminish the impression it made upon me.
In the course of the Revolution of February, I was present at two or
three scenes which possessed the elements of grandeur (I shall have
occasion to describe them in their turn); but this scene lacked them
entirely, for the reason that there was nothing genuine in it. We
French, especially in Paris, are prone to introduce our literary or
theatrical reminiscences into our most serious demonstrations; this
often gives rise to the belief that the sentiments we express are not
genuine, whereas they are only clumsily adorned. In this case the
imitation was so evident that the terrible originality of the facts
remained concealed beneath it. It was a time when every imagination was
besmeared with the crude colours with which Lamartine had been daubing
his _Girondins_. The men of the first Revolution were living in every
mind, their deeds and words present to every memory. All that I saw that
day bore the visible impress of those recollections; it seemed to me
throughout as though they were engaged in acting the French Revolution,
rather than continuing it.
Despite the presence of drawn swords, bayonets and muskets, I was unable
to persuade myself for a single instant not only that I was in danger of
death, but that anybody was, and I honestly believe that no one really
was. Bloodthirsty hatreds only showed themselves later: they had not yet
had the time to spring up; the special spirit which was to characterize
the Revolution of February did not yet manifest itself. Meantime, men
were fruitlessly endeavouring to warm themselves at the fire of our
fathers' passions, imitating their gestures and attitudes as they had
seen them represented on the stage, but unable to imitate their
enthusiasm or to be inflamed with their fury. It was the tradition of
violent deeds that was being imitated by cold hearts, which understood
not the spirit of it. Although I clearly saw that the catastrophe of the
piece would be a terrible one, I was never able to take the actors very
seriously, and the whole seemed to me like a bad tragedy performed by
provincial actors.
I confess that what moved me most that day was the sight of that woman
and child, who were made to bear the whole weight of faults that they
had not committed. I frequently looked with compassion towards that
foreign Princess, thrown into the midst of our civil discords; and when
she had fled, the remembrance of the sweet, sad, firm glances which I
had seen her cast upon the Assembly during that long agony came back so
vividly to my memory, I felt so touched with pity when I thought of the
perils attending her flight that, suddenly springing from my seat, I
rushed in the direction which my knowledge of the building led me to
believe that she and her son would have taken to seek a place of safety.
In a moment I made my way through the crowd, crossed the floor, passed
out through the cloak-room, and reached the private staircase which
leads from the entrance in the Rue de Bourgogne to the upper floor of
the Palace. A messenger whom I questioned as I ran past him told me that
I was on the track of the Royal party; and, indeed, I heard several
persons hurriedly mounting the upper portion of the stairs. I therefore
continued my pursuit, and reached a landing; the steps which preceded
me had just ceased. Finding a closed door in front of me, I knocked at
it, but it was not opened. If princes were like God, who reads our
hearts and accepts the intention for the deed, assuredly these would be
pleased with me for what I wished to do that day; but they will never
know, for no one saw me and I told no one.
I returned to the House and resumed my seat. Almost all the members had
left; the benches were occupied by men of the populace. Lamartine was
still in the tribune between the two banners, continuing to address the
crowd, or rather conversing with them; for there seemed to be almost as
many orators as listeners. The confusion was at its height. In a moment
of semi-silence, Lamartine began to read out a list containing the names
of the different people proposed by I don't know whom to take share in
the Provisional Government that had just been decreed, nobody knows how.
Most of these names were accepted with acclamations, some rejected with
groans, others received with jests, for in scenes in which the people
take part, as in the plays of Shakspeare, burlesque often rubs shoulders
with tragedy, and wretched jokes sometimes come to the relief of the
ardour of revolution. When Garnier-Pages' name was proposed, I heard a
voice cry, "You've made a mistake, Lamartine; it's the dead one that's
the good one;" Garnier-Pages having had a celebrated brother, to whom he
bore no resemblance except in name.
M. de Lamartine, I think, was beginning to grow greatly embarrassed at
his position; for in a rebellion, as in a novel, the most difficult part
to invent is the end. When, therefore, someone took it into his head to
cry, "To the Hotel de Ville!" Lamartine echoed, "Yes, to the Hotel de
Ville," and went out forthwith, taking half the crowd with him; the
others remained with Ledru-Rollin, who, in order, I suppose, to retain a
leading part for himself, felt called upon in his turn to go through the
same mock election, after which he too set out for the Hotel de Ville.
There the same electoral display was gone through once more; in
connection with which I cannot refrain from repeating an anecdote which
I was told, a few months later, by M. Marrast. It interrupts the thread
of my story a little, but it gives a marvellous picture of two men who
were both at that moment playing a great part, and shows the difference,
if not in their opinions, at least in their education and habits of
thought.
"A list of candidates for the Provisional Government," said Marrast,
"had hurriedly been drawn up. It had to be read out to the people, and I
handed it to Lamartine, asking him to read it aloud from the top of the
steps. 'I can't,' replied Lamartine, after looking at it; 'my name is on
it.' I then passed it on to Cremieux, who, after reading it, said,
'You're making fun of me: you're asking me to read out to the people a
list which has not got my name on it!'"
When I saw Ledru-Rollin leave the House, where remained behind none but
the sheer dregs of the insurrection, I saw that there was nothing more
to be done there. I accordingly went away, but as I did not care to find
myself in the middle of the mob marching towards the Hotel de Ville, I
took the opposite direction, and began to go down those steep steps,
like cellar stairs, which lead to the inner yard of the Palace. I then
saw coming towards me a column of armed National Guards, ascending the
same staircase at a run, with set bayonets. In front of them were two
men in civilian dress, who seemed to be leading them, shouting at the
top of their voices, "Long live the Duchesse d'Orleans and the Regency!"
In one I recognized General Oudinot and in the other Andryane, who was
imprisoned in the Spielberg, and who wrote his Memoirs in imitation of
those of Silvio Pellico. I saw no one else, and nothing could prove more
clearly how difficult it is for the public ever to learn the truth of
events happening amid the tumult of a revolution. I know that a letter
exists, written by Marshal Bugeaud, in which he relates that he
succeeded in getting together a few companies of the Tenth Legion,
inspired them in favour of the Duchesse d'Orleans, and led them at the
double through the yard of the Palais Bourbon and to the door of the
Chamber, which he found empty. The story is true, but for the presence
of the marshal, whom I should most certainly have seen had he been
there; but there was no one, I repeat, except General Oudinot and M.
Andryane. The latter, seeing me standing still and saying nothing, took
me sharply by the arm, exclaiming:
"Monsieur, you must join us, to help to free Madame la Duchesse
d'Orleans and save the Monarchy."
"Monsieur," I replied, "your intention is good, but you are too late:
the Duchesse d'Orleans has disappeared, and the Chamber has risen."
Now, where was the spirited defender of the Monarchy that evening? The
incident is worthy of being told and noted among the many incidents of
versatility with which the history of revolutions abounds.
M. Andryane was in the office of M. Ledru-Rollin, officiating in the
name of the Republic as general secretary to the Ministry of the
Interior.
To return to the column which he was leading: I joined it, although I
had no longer any hope of success for its efforts. Mechanically obeying
the impulse communicated to it, it proceeded as far as the doors of the
Chamber. There the men who composed it learnt what had taken place; they
turned about for a moment, and then dispersed in every direction. Half
an hour earlier, this handful of National Guards might (as on the
ensuing 15th of May) have changed the fortunes of France. I allowed this
new crowd to pass by me, and then, alone and very pensive, I resumed my
road home, not without casting a last look on the Chamber, now silent
and deserted, in which, during nine years, I had listened to the sound
of so many eloquent and futile words.
M. Billault, who had left the Chamber a few minutes before me by the
entrance in the Rue de Bourgogne, told me that he met M. Barrot in this
street.
"He was walking," he said, "at a rapid rate, without perceiving that he
was hatless, and that his grey hair, which he generally carefully
brushed back along his temples, was falling on either side and
fluttering in disorder over his shoulders; he seemed beside himself."
This man had made heroic efforts all day long to maintain the Monarchy
on the declivity down which he himself had pushed it, and he remained as
though crushed beneath its fall. I learned from Beaumont, who had not
left him during any part of the day, that in the morning M. Barrot faced
and mounted twenty barricades, walking up to each unarmed, meeting
sometimes with insults, often with shots, and always ending by
overcoming with his words those who guarded them. His words, in fact,
were all-powerful with the multitude. He had all that was wanted to act
upon them at a given moment: a strong voice, an inflated eloquence, and
a fearless heart.
While M. Barrot, in disorder, was leaving the Chamber, M. Thiers, still
more distraught, wandered round Paris, not daring to venture home. He
was seen for an instant at the Assembly before the arrival of the
Duchesse d'Orleans, but disappeared at once, giving the signal for the
retreat of many others. The next morning, I learnt the details of his
flight through M. Talabot, who had assisted in it. I was connected with
M. Talabot by fairly intimate party ties, and M. Thiers, I believe, by
former business relations. M. Talabot was a man full of mental vigour
and resolution, very fit for an emergency of that kind. He told me as
follows--I believe I have neither omitted nor added anything:
"It seems," he said, "that M. Thiers, when crossing the Place Louis XV,
had been insulted and threatened by some of the populace. He was greatly
excited and upset when I saw him enter the House; he came up to me, led
me aside, and told me that he would be murdered by the mob if I did not
assist him to escape. I took him by the arm and begged him to go with me
and fear nothing. M. Thiers wished to avoid the Pont Louis XVI, for fear
of meeting the crowd. We went to the Pont des Invalides, but when we got
there, he thought he saw a gathering on the other side of the river, and
again refused to cross. We then made for the Pont d'Iena, which was
free, and crossed it without any difficulty. When we reached the other
side, M. Thiers discovered some street-boys, shouting, on the
foundations of what was to have been the palace of the King of Rome, and
forthwith turned down the Rue d'Auteuil and made for the Bois de
Boulogne. There we had the good luck to find a cabman, who consented to
drive us along the outer boulevards to the neighbourhood of the
Barriere de Clichy, through which we were able to reach his house.
During the whole journey," added M. Talabot, "and especially at the
start, M. Thiers seemed almost out of his senses, gesticulating,
sobbing, uttering incoherent phrases. The catastrophe he had just
beheld, the future of his country, his own personal danger, all
contributed to form a chaos amid which his thoughts struggled and
strayed unceasingly."
PART THE SECOND
_Everything contained in this note-book (Chapters I. to XI.
inclusive) was written in stray moments at Sorrento, in November
and December 1850, and January, February, and March 1851._
CHAPTER I
MY EXPLANATION OF THE 24TH OF FEBRUARY, AND MY VIEWS AS TO ITS
EFFECTS UPON THE FUTURE.
And so the Monarchy of July was fallen, fallen without a struggle, and
before rather than beneath the blows of the victors, who were as
astonished at their triumph as were the vanquished at their defeat. I
have often, since the Revolution of February, heard M. Guizot and even
M. Mole and M. Thiers declare that this event should only be attributed
to a surprise and regarded as a mere accident, a bold and lucky stroke
and nothing more. I have always felt tempted to answer them in the words
which Moliere's Misanthrope uses to Oronte:
Pour en juger ainsi, vous avez vos raisons;
for these three men had conducted the affairs of France, under the
guidance of King Louis-Philippe, during eighteen years, and it was
difficult for them to admit that it was the King's bad government which
had prepared the catastrophe which hurled him from the Throne.
As for me, I have not the same motives for forming an opinion, and I
could hardly persuade myself to be of theirs. I am not prepared to say
that accidents played no part in the Revolution of February: on the
contrary, they played a great one; but they were not the only thing.
I have come across men of letters, who have written history without
taking part in public affairs, and politicians, who have only concerned
themselves with producing events without thinking of describing them. I
have observed that the first are always inclined to find general causes,
whereas the others, living in the midst of disconnected daily facts, are
prone to imagine that everything is attributable to particular
incidents, and that the wires which they pull are the same that move the
world. It is to be presumed that both are equally deceived.
For my part, I detest these absolute systems, which represent all the
events of history as depending upon great first causes linked by the
chain of fatality, and which, as it were, suppress men from the history
of the human race. They seem narrow, to my mind, under their pretence of
broadness, and false beneath their air of mathematical exactness. I
believe (_pace_ the writers who have invented these sublime theories in
order to feed their vanity and facilitate their work) that many
important historical facts can only be explained by accidental
circumstances, and that many others remain totally inexplicable.
Moreover, chance, or rather that tangle of secondary causes which we
call chance, for want of the knowledge how to unravel it, plays a great
part in all that happens on the world's stage; although I firmly believe
that chance does nothing that has not been prepared beforehand.
Antecedent facts, the nature of institutions, the cast of minds and the
state of morals are the materials of which are composed those impromptus
which astonish and alarm us.
The Revolution of February, in common with all other great events of
this class, sprang from general causes, impregnated, if I am permitted
the expression, by accidents; and it would be as superficial a judgment
to ascribe it necessarily to the former or exclusively to the latter.
The industrial revolution which, during the past thirty years, had
turned Paris into the principal manufacturing city of France and
attracted within its walls an entire new population of workmen (to whom
the works of the fortifications had added another population of
labourers at present deprived of work) tended more and more to inflame
this multitude. Add to this the democratic disease of envy, which was
silently permeating it; the economical and political theories which were
beginning to make their way and which strove to prove that human misery
was the work of laws and not of Providence, and that poverty could be
suppressed by changing the conditions of society; the contempt into
which the governing class, and especially the men who led it, had
fallen, a contempt so general and so profound that it paralyzed the
resistance even of those who were most interested in maintaining the
power that was being overthrown; the centralization which reduced the
whole revolutionary movement to the overmastering of Paris and the
seizing of the machinery of government; and lastly, the mobility of all
things, institutions, ideas, men and customs, in a fluctuating state of
society which had, in less than sixty years, undergone the shock of
seven great revolutions, without numbering a multitude of smaller,
secondary upheavals. These were the general causes without which the
Revolution of February would have been impossible. The principal
accidents which led to it were the passions of the dynastic Opposition,
which brought about a riot in proposing a reform; the suppression of
this riot, first over-violent, and then abandoned; the sudden
disappearance of the old Ministry, unexpectedly snapping the threads of
power, which the new ministers, in their confusion, were unable either
to seize upon or to reunite; the mistakes and disorder of mind of these
ministers, so powerless to re-establish that which they had been strong
enough to overthrow; the vacillation of the generals; the absence of the
only Princes who possessed either personal energy or popularity; and
above all, the senile imbecility of King Louis-Philippe, his weakness,
which no one could have foreseen, and which still remains almost
incredible, after the event has proved it.
I have sometimes asked myself what could have produced this sudden and
unprecedented depression in the King's mind. Louis-Philippe had spent
his life in the midst of revolutions, and certainly lacked neither
experience, courage, nor readiness of mind, although these qualities all
failed him so completely on that day. In my opinion, his weakness was
due to his excessive surprise; he was overwhelmed with consternation
before he had grasped the meaning of things. The Revolution of February
was _unforeseen_ by all, but by him more than any other; he had been
prepared for it by no warning from the outside, for since many years his
mind had withdrawn into that sort of haughty solitude into which in the
end the intellect almost always settles down of princes who have long
lived happily, and who, mistaking luck for genius, refuse to listen to
anything, because they think that there is nothing left for them to
learn from anybody. Besides, Louis-Philippe had been deceived, as I have
already said that his ministers were, by the misleading light cast by
antecedent facts upon present times. One might draw a strange picture of
all the errors which have thus been begotten, one by the other, without
resembling each other. We see Charles I. driven to tyranny and violence
at the sight of the progress which the spirit of opposition had made in
England during the gentle reign of his father; Louis XVI. determined to
suffer everything because Charles I. had perished by refusing to endure
anything; Charles X. provoking the Revolution, because he had with his
own eyes beheld the weakness of Louis XVI.; and lastly, Louis-Philippe,
who had more perspicacity than any of them, imagining that, in order to
remain on the Throne, all he had to do was to observe the letter of the
law while violating its spirit, and that, provided he himself kept
within the bounds of the Charter, the nation would never exceed them. To
warp the spirit of the Constitution without changing the letter; to set
the vices of the country in opposition to each other; gently to drown
revolutionary passion in the love of material enjoyment: such was the
idea of his whole life. Little by little, it had become, not his
leading, but his sole idea. He had wrapped himself in it, he had lived
in it; and when he suddenly saw that it was a false idea, he became like
a man who is awakened in the night by an earthquake, and who, feeling
his house crumbling in the darkness, and the very ground seeming to yawn
beneath his feet, remains distracted amid this unforeseen and universal
ruin.
I am arguing very much at my ease to-day concerning the causes that
brought about the events of the 24th of February; but on the afternoon
of that day I had many other things in my head: I was thinking of the
events themselves, and sought less for what had produced them than for
what was to follow.
I returned slowly home. I explained in a few words to Madame de
Tocqueville what I had seen, and sat down in a corner to think. I cannot
remember ever feeling my soul so full of sadness. It was the second
revolution I had seen accomplish itself, before my eyes, within
seventeen years!
On the 30th of July 1830, at daybreak, I had met the carriages of King
Charles X. on the outer boulevards of Versailles, with damaged
escutcheons, proceeding at a foot pace, in Indian file, like a funeral,
and I was unable to restrain my tears at the sight. This time my
impressions were of another kind, but even keener. Both revolutions had
afflicted me; but how much more bitter were the impressions caused by
the last! I had until the end felt a remnant of hereditary affection for
Charles X.; but that King fell for having violated rights that were dear
to me, and I had every hope that my country's freedom would be revived
rather than extinguished by his fall. But now this freedom seemed dead;
the Princes who were fleeing were nothing to me, but I felt that the
cause I had at heart was lost.
I had spent the best days of my youth amid a society which seemed to
increase in greatness and prosperity as it increased in liberty; I had
conceived the idea of a balanced, regulated liberty, held in check by
religion, custom and law; the attractions of this liberty had touched
me; it had become the passion of my life; I felt that I could never be
consoled for its loss, and that I must renounce all hope of its
recovery.
I had gained too much experience of mankind to be able to content myself
with empty words; I knew that, if one great revolution is able to
establish liberty in a country, a number of succeeding revolutions make
all regular liberty impossible for very many years.
I could not yet know what would issue from this last revolution, but I
was already convinced that it could give birth to nothing that would
satisfy me; and I foresaw that, whatever might be the lot reserved for
our posterity, our own fate was to drag on our lives miserably amid
alternate reactions of licence and oppression.
I began to pass in review the history of our last sixty years, and I
smiled bitterly when I thought of the illusions formed at the conclusion
of each period in this long revolution; the theories on which these
illusions had been fed; the sapient dreams of our historians, and all
the ingenious and deceptive systems by the aid of which it had been
endeavoured to explain a present which was still incorrectly seen, and a
future which was not seen at all.
The Constitutional Monarchy had succeeded the Ancien Regime; the
Republic, the Monarchy; the Empire, the Republic; the Restoration, the
Empire; and then came the Monarchy of July. After each of these
successive changes it was said that the French Revolution, having
accomplished what was presumptuously called its work, was finished; this
had been said and it had been believed. Alas! I myself had hoped it
under the Restoration, and again after the fall of the Government of the
Restoration; and here is the French Revolution beginning over again, for
it is still the same one. As we go on, its end seems farther off and
shrouded in greater darkness. Shall we ever--as we are assured by other
prophets, perhaps as delusive as their predecessors--shall we ever
attain a more complete and more far-reaching social transformation than
our fathers foresaw and desired, and than we ourselves are able to
foresee; or are we not destined simply to end in a condition of
intermittent anarchy, the well-known chronic and incurable complaint of
old races? As for me, I am unable to say; I do not know when this long
voyage will be ended; I am weary of seeing the shore in each successive
mirage, and I often ask myself whether the _terra firma_ we are seeking
does really exist, and whether we are not doomed to rove upon the seas
for ever.
I spent the rest of the day with Ampere, who was my colleague at the
Institute, and one of my best friends. He came to discover what had
become of me in the affray, and to ask himself to dinner. I wished at
first to relieve myself by making him share my vexation; but I soon
perceived that his impression was not the same as mine, and that he
looked differently upon the revolution which was in progress. Ampere was
a man of intelligence and, better still, a man full of heart, gentle in
manner, and reliable. His good-nature caused him to be liked; and he was
popular because of his versatile, witty, amusing, good-humoured
conversation, in which he made many remarks that were at once
entertaining and agreeable to hear, but too shallow to remember.
Unfortunately, he was inclined to carry the _esprit_ of the salons into
literature and the _esprit_ of literature into politics. What I call
literary _esprit_ in politics consists in seeking for what is novel and
ingenious rather than for what is true; in preferring the showy to the
useful; in showing one's self very sensible to the playing and elocution
of the actors, without regard to the results of the play; and, lastly,
in judging by impressions rather than reasons. I need not say that this
eccentricity exists among others besides Academicians. To tell the
truth, the whole nation is a little inclined that way, and the French
Public very often takes a man-of-letters' view of politics. Ampere held
the fallen Government in great contempt, and its last actions had
irritated him greatly. Moreover, he had witnessed many instances of
courage, disinterestedness, and even generosity among the insurgents;
and he had been bitten by the popular excitement.
I saw that he not only did not enter into my view, but that he was
disposed to take quite an opposite one. Seeing this, I was suddenly
impelled to turn against Ampere all the feelings of indignation, grief
and anger that had been accumulating in my heart since the morning; and
I spoke to him with a violence of language which I have often since
recalled with a certain shame, and which none but a friendship so
sincere as his could have excused. I remember saying to him, _inter
alia_:
"You understand nothing of what is happening; you are judging like a
poet or a Paris cockney. You call this the triumph of liberty, when it
is its final defeat. I tell you that the people which you so artlessly
admire has just succeeded in proving that it is unfit and unworthy to
live a life of freedom. Show me what experience has taught it! Where are
the new virtues it has gained, the old vices it has laid aside? No, I
tell you, it is always the same, as impatient, as thoughtless, as
contemptuous of law and order, as easily led and as cowardly in the
presence of danger as its fathers were before it. Time has altered it in
no way, and has left it as frivolous in serious matters as it used to be
in trifles."
After much vociferation we both ended by appealing to the future, that
enlightened and upright judge who always, alas! arrives too late.
CHAPTER II
PARIS ON THE MORROW OF THE 24TH OF FEBRUARY AND THE NEXT DAYS--THE
SOCIALISTIC CHARACTER OF THE NEW REVOLUTION.
The night passed without accidents, although not until the morning did
the streets cease to resound with cries and gun-shots; but these were
sounds of triumph, not of combat. So soon as it was light, I went out to
observe the appearance of the town, and to discover what had become of
my two young nephews,[8] who were being educated at the Little Seminary.
The Little Seminary was in the Rue de Madame, at the back of the
Luxembourg, so that I had to cross a great part of the town to reach it.
[8: Hubert and Rene de Tocqueville.--Cte. de T.]
I found the streets quiet, and even half deserted, as they usually are
in Paris on a Sunday morning, when the rich are still asleep and the
poor are resting. From time to time, along the walls, one met the
victors of the preceding day; but they were filled with wine rather than
political ardour, and were, for the most part, making for their homes
without taking heed of the passers-by. A few shops were open, and one
caught sight of the frightened, but still more astonished, shopkeepers,
who reminded one of spectators witnessing the end of a play which they
did not quite understand. What one saw most of in the streets deserted
by the people, was soldiers; some walking singly, others in little
groups, all unarmed, and crossing the city on their roads home. The
defeat these men had just sustained had left a very vivid and lasting
impression of shame and anger upon them. This was noticed later, but was
not apparent at the time: the pleasure of finding themselves at liberty
seemed to absorb every other feeling in these lads; they walked with a
careless air, with a light and easy gait.
The Little Seminary had not been attacked nor even insulted. My nephews,
however, were not there; they had been sent home the evening before to
their maternal grandmother. Accordingly, I turned back, taking the Rue
du Bac, to find out what had become of Lamoriciere, who was then living
in that street; and it was only after recognizing me that the servants
admitted that their master was at home, and consented to take me to him.
I found this singular person, whom I shall have occasion to mention more
than once, stretched upon his bed, and reduced to a state of immobility
very much opposed to his character or taste. His head was half broken
open; his arms pierced with bayonet-thrusts; all his limbs bruised and
powerless. For the rest, he was the same as ever, with his bright
intelligence and his indomitable heart. He told me of all that happened
to him the day before, and of the thousand dangers which he had only
escaped by miracle. I strongly advised him to rest until he was cured,
and even long after, so as not uselessly to endanger his person and his
reputation in the chaos about to ensue: good advice, undoubtedly, to
give to a man so enamoured of action and so accustomed to act that,
after doing what is necessary and useful, he is always ready to
undertake the injurious and dangerous, rather than do nothing; but no
more effective than all those counsels which go against nature.
I spent the whole afternoon in walking about Paris. Two things in
particular struck me: the first was, I will not say the mainly, but the
uniquely and exclusively popular character of the revolution that had
just taken place; the omnipotence it had given to the people properly
so-called--that is to say, the classes who work with their hands--over
all others. The second was the comparative absence of malignant passion,
or, as a matter of fact, of any keen passion--an absence which at once
made it clear that the lower orders had suddenly become masters of
Paris.
Although the working classes had often played the leading part in the
events of the First Revolution, they had never been the sole leaders and
masters of the State, either _de facto_ or _de jure_; it is doubtful
whether the Convention contained a single man of the people; it was
composed of _bourgeois_ and men of letters. The war between the Mountain
and the Girondists was conducted on both sides by members of the middle
class, and the triumph of the former never brought power down into the
hands of the people alone. The Revolution of July was effected by the
people, but the middle class had stirred it up and led it, and secured
the principal fruits of it. The Revolution of February, on the contrary,
seemed to be made entirely outside the _bourgeoisie_ and against it.
In this great concussion, the two parties of which the social body in
France is mainly composed had, in a way, been thrown more completely
asunder, and the mass of the people, which had stood alone, remained in
sole possession of power. Nothing more novel had been known in our
annals. Similar revolutions had taken place, it is true, in other
countries and other days; for the history of our own times, however new
and unexpected it may seem, always belongs at bottom to the old history
of humanity, and what we call new facts are oftenest nothing more than
facts forgotten. Florence, in particular, towards the close of the
middle ages, had presented on a small scale a spectacle analogous to
ours; the noble classes had first been succeeded by the burgher classes,
and then one day the latter were, in their turn, expelled from the
government, and a _gonfalonier_ was seen marching barefoot at the head
of the people, and thus leading the Republic. But in Florence this
popular revolution was the result of transient and special causes, while
with us it was brought about by causes very permanent and of a kind so
general that, after stirring up France, it was to be expected that it
would excite all the rest of Europe. This time it was not only a
question of the triumph of a party; the aim was to establish a social
science, a philosophy, I might almost say a religion, fit to be learned
and followed by all mankind. This was the really new portion of the old
picture.
Throughout this day, I did not see in Paris a single one of the former
agents of the public authority: not a soldier, not a gendarme, not a
policeman; the National Guard itself had disappeared. The people alone
bore arms, guarded the public buildings, watched, gave orders, punished;
it was an extraordinary and terrible thing to see in the sole hands of
those who possessed nothing all this immense town, so full of riches, or
rather this great nation: for, thanks to centralization, he who reigns
in Paris governs France. Hence the affright of all the other classes was
extreme; I doubt whether at any period of the Revolution it had been so
great, and I should say that it was only to be compared to that which
the civilized cities of the Roman Empire must have experienced when they
suddenly found themselves in the power of the Goths and Vandals. As
nothing like this had ever been seen before, many people expected acts
of unexampled violence. For my part I did not once partake of these
fears. What I saw led me to predict strange disturbances in the near
future--singular crises. But I never believed that the rich would be
pillaged; I knew the men of the people in Paris too well not to know
that their first movements in times of revolution are usually generous,
and that they are best pleased to spend the days immediately following
their triumph in boasting of their victory, laying down the law, and
playing at being great men. During that time it generally happens that
some government or other is set up, the police returns to its post, and
the judge to his bench; and when at last our great men consent to step
down to the better known and more vulgar ground of petty and malicious
human passion, they are no longer able to do so, and are reduced to live
simply like honest men. Besides, we have spent so many years in
insurrections that there has arisen among us a kind of morality peculiar
to times of disorder, and a special code for days of rebellion.
According to these exceptional laws, murder is tolerated and havoc
permitted, but theft is strenuously forbidden; although this, whatever
one may say, does not prevent a good deal of robbery from occurring upon
those days, for the simple reason that society in a state of rebellion
cannot be different from that at any other time, and it will always
contain a number of rascals who, as far as they are concerned, scorn the
morality of the main body, and despise its point of honour when they are
unobserved. What reassured me still more was the reflection that the
victors had been as much surprised by success as their adversaries were
by defeat: their passions had not had time to take fire and become
intensified in the struggle; the Government had fallen undefended by
others, or even by itself. It had long been attacked, or at least keenly
censured, by the very men who at heart most deeply regretted its fall.
For a year past the dynastic Opposition and the republican Opposition
had been living in fallacious intimacy, acting in the same way from
different motives. The misunderstanding which had facilitated the
revolution tended to mitigate its after effects. Now that the Monarchy
had disappeared, the battle-field seemed empty; the people no longer
clearly saw what enemies remained for them to pursue and strike down;
the former objects of their anger, themselves, were no longer there; the
clergy had never been completely reconciled to the new dynasty, and
witnessed its ruin without regret; the old nobility were delighted at
it, whatever the ultimate consequences might be: the first had suffered
through the system of intolerance of the middle classes, the second
through their pride: both either despised or feared their government.
For the first time in sixty years, the priests, the old aristocracy and
the people met in a common sentiment--a feeling of revenge, it is true,
and not of affection; but even that is a great thing in politics, where
a community of hatred is almost always the foundation of friendships.
The real, the only vanquished were the middle class; but even this had
little to fear. Its reign had been exclusive rather than oppressive;
corrupt, but not violent; it was despised rather than hated. Moreover,
the middle class never forms a compact body in the heart of the nation,
a part very distinct from the whole; it always participates a little
with all the others, and in some places merges into them. This absence
of homogeneity and of exact limits makes the government of the middle
class weak and uncertain, but it also makes it intangible, and, as it
were, invisible to those who desire to strike it when it is no longer
governing.
From all these united causes proceeded that languor of the people which
had struck me as much as its omnipotence, a languor which was the more
discernible, in that it contrasted strangely with the turgid energy of
the language used and the terrible recollections which it evoked. The
lukewarm passions of the time were made to speak in the bombastic
periods of '93, and one heard cited at every moment the name and example
of the illustrious ruffians whom no one possessed either the energy or
even a sincere desire to resemble.
It was the Socialistic theories which I have already described as the
philosophy of the Revolution of February that later kindled genuine
passion, embittered jealousy, and ended by stirring up war between the
classes. If the actions at the commencement were less disorderly than
might have been feared, on the very morrow of the Revolution there was
displayed an extraordinary agitation, an unequalled disorder, in the
ideas of the people.
From the 25th of February onwards, a thousand strange systems came
issuing pell-mell from the minds of innovators, and spread among the
troubled minds of the crowd. Everything still remained standing except
Royalty and Parliament; yet it seemed as though the shock of the
Revolution had reduced society itself to dust, and as though a
competition had been opened for the new form that was to be given to the
edifice about to be erected in its place. Everyone came forward with a
plan of his own: this one printed it in the papers, that other on the
placards with which the walls were soon covered, a third proclaimed his
loud-mouthed in the open air. One aimed at destroying inequality of
fortune, another inequality of education, a third undertook to do away
with the oldest of all inequalities, that between man and woman.
Specifics were offered against poverty, and remedies for the disease of
work which has tortured humanity since the first days of its existence.
These theories were of very varied natures, often opposed and sometimes
hostile to one another; but all of them, aiming lower than the
government and striving to reach society itself, on which government
rests, adopted the common name of Socialism.
Socialism will always remain the essential characteristic and the most
redoubtable remembrance of the Revolution of February. The Republic
will only appear to the on-looker to have come upon the scene as a
means, not as an end.
It does not come within the scope of these Recollections that I should
seek for the causes which gave a socialistic character to the Revolution
of February, and I will content myself with saying that the discovery of
this new facet of the French Revolution was not of a nature to cause so
great surprise as it did. Had it not long been perceived that the people
had continually been improving and raising its condition, that its
importance, its education, its desires, its power had been constantly
increasing? Its prosperity had also grown greater, but less rapidly, and
was approaching the limit which it hardly ever passes in old societies,
where there are many men and but few places. How should the poor and
humbler and yet powerful classes not have dreamt of issuing from their
poverty and inferiority by means of their power, especially in an epoch
when our view into another world has become dimmer, and the miseries of
this world become more visible and seem more intolerable? They had been
working to this end for the last sixty years. The people had first
endeavoured to help itself by changing every political institution, but
after each change it found that its lot was in no way improved, or was
only improving with a slowness quite incompatible with the eagerness of
its desire. Inevitably, it must sooner or later discover that that which
held it fixed in its position was not the constitution of the
government but the unalterable laws that constitute society itself; and
it was natural that it should be brought to ask itself if it had not
both the power and the right to alter those laws, as it had altered all
the rest. And to speak more specially of property, which is, as it were,
the foundation of our social order--all the privileges which covered it
and which, so to speak, concealed the privilege of property having been
destroyed, and the latter remaining the principal obstacle to equality
among men, and appearing to be the only sign of inequality--was it not
necessary, I will not say that it should be abolished in its turn, but
at least that the thought of abolishing it should occur to the minds of
those who did not enjoy it?
This natural restlessness in the minds of the people, this inevitable
perturbation of its thoughts and its desires, these needs, these
instincts of the crowd formed in a certain sense the fabric upon which
the political innovators embroidered so many monstrous and grotesque
figures. Their work may be regarded as ludicrous, but the material on
which they worked is the most serious that it is possible for
philosophers and statesmen to contemplate.
Will Socialism remain buried in the disdain with which the Socialists of
1848 are so justly covered? I put the question without making any reply.
I do not doubt that the laws concerning the constitution of our modern
society will in the long run undergo modification: they have already
done so in many of their principal parts. But will they ever be
destroyed and replaced by others? It seems to me to be impracticable. I
say no more, because--the more I study the former condition of the world
and see the world of our own day in greater detail, the more I consider
the prodigious variety to be met with not only in laws, but in the
principles of law, and the different forms even now taken and retained,
whatever one may say, by the rights of property on this earth--the more
I am tempted to believe that what we call necessary institutions are
often no more than institutions to which we have grown accustomed, and
that in matters of social constitution the field of possibilities is
much more extensive than men living in their various societies are ready
to imagine.
CHAPTER III
VACILLATION OF THE MEMBERS OF THE OLD PARLIAMENT AS TO THE ATTITUDE
THEY SHOULD ADOPT--MY OWN REFLECTIONS ON MY MODE OF ACTION, AND MY
RESOLVES.
During the days immediately following upon the 24th of February, I
neither went in search of nor fell in with any of the politicians from
whom the events of that day had separated me. I felt no necessity nor,
to tell the truth, any inclination to do so. I felt a sort of
instinctive repugnance to remembering this wretched parliamentary world,
in which I had spent six years of my life, and in whose midst I had seen
the Revolution sprouting up.
Moreover, at that time I saw the great vanity of any sort of political
conversation or combination. However feeble the reasons may have been
which first imparted the movement to the mob, that movement had now
become irresistible. I felt that we were all in the midst of one of
those great floods of democracy in which the embankments, intended to
resist individuals and even parties, only serve to drown those who build
them, and in which, for a time, there is nothing to be done but to study
the general character of the phenomenon. I therefore spent all my time
in the streets with the victors, as though I had been a worshipper of
fortune. True, I paid no homage to the new sovereign, and asked no
favours of it. I did not even address it, but contented myself with
listening to and observing it.
Nevertheless, after the lapse of some days, I resumed relations with the
vanquished: I once more met ex-deputies, ex-peers, men of letters, men
of business and finance, land-owners, all who in the language of the
moment were commencing to be known as the idle. I found that the aspect
of the Revolution was no less extraordinary when thus seen from above
than it had seemed to me when, at the commencement, I viewed it from
below. I encountered much fear, but as little genuine passion as I had
seen in other quarters; a curious feeling of resignation, no vestige of
hope, and I should almost say no idea of ever returning to the
Government which they had only just left. Although the Revolution of
February was the shortest and the least bloody of all our revolutions,
it had filled men's minds and hearts with the idea of its omnipotence to
a much greater extent than any of its predecessors. I believe this was,
to a great extent, due to the fact that these minds and hearts were void
of political faith and ardour, and that, after so many disappointments
and vain agitations, they retained nothing but a taste for comfort--a
very tenacious and very exclusive, but also a very agreeable feeling,
which easily accommodates itself to any form of government, provided it
be allowed to satisfy itself.
I beheld, therefore, an universal endeavour to make the best of the new
state of things and to win over the new master. The great landlords
were glad to remember that they had always been hostile to the middle
class and always favoured the people; the _bourgeois_ themselves
remembered with a certain pride that their fathers had been working men,
and when they were unable, owing to the inevitable obscurity of their
pedigrees, to trace back their descent to a labourer who had worked with
his hands, they at least strove to discover a plebeian ancestor who had
been the architect of his own fortune. They took as great pains to make
a display of the latter as, not long before, they would have taken to
conceal his existence: so true is it that human vanity, without changing
its nature, can show itself under the most diverse aspects. It has an
obverse and a reverse side, but it is always the same medal.
As there was no longer any genuine feeling left save that of fear, far
from breaking with those of his relations who had thrown themselves into
the Revolution, each strove to draw closer to them. The time had come to
try and turn to account any scapegrace whom one had in one's family. If
good luck would have it that one had a cousin, a brother, or a son who
had become ruined by his disorderly life, one could be sure that he was
in a fair way to succeed; and if he had become known by the promulgation
of some extravagant theory or other, he might hope to attain to any
height. Most of the commissaries and under-commissaries of the
Government were men of this type.
As to King Louis-Philippe, there was no more question of him than if he
had belonged to the Merovingian Dynasty. Nothing struck me more than the
absolute silence that had suddenly surrounded his name. I did not hear
it pronounced a single time, so to speak, either by the people or by the
upper class. Those of his former courtiers whom I saw did not speak of
him, and I honestly believe they did not think of him. The Revolution
had so completely turned their thoughts in another direction, that they
had forgotten their Sovereign. I may be told that this is the ordinary
fate of fallen kings; but what seems more worthy of remark, his enemies
even had forgotten him: they no longer feared him enough to slander him,
perhaps even to hate him, which is one of fortune's greatest, or at
least rarest, insults.
I do not wish to write the history of the Revolution of 1848, I only
wish to retrace my own actions, ideas, and impressions during the course
of this revolution; and I therefore pass over the events that took place
during the weeks immediately following the 24th of February, and come to
the period preceding the General Election.
The time had come to decide whether one cared merely to watch the
progress of this singular revolution or to take part in events. I found
the former party leaders divided among themselves; and each of them,
moreover, seemed divided also within himself, to judge by the
incoherence of the language used and the vacillation of opinion. These
politicians, who had almost all been trained to public business amid the
regulated, restrained movement of constitutional liberty, and upon whom
a great revolution had unexpectedly come, were like river oarsmen who
should suddenly find themselves called upon to navigate their boat in
mid-ocean. The knowledge they had acquired in their fresh water trips
would be of more trouble than assistance to them in this greater
adventure, and they would often display more confusion and uncertainty
than the passengers themselves.
M. Thiers frequently expressed the opinion that they should go to the
poll and get elected, and as frequently urged that it would be wiser to
stand aside. I do not know whether his hesitation arose from his dread
of the dangers that might follow upon the election, or his fear lest he
should not be elected. Remusat, who always sees so clearly what might,
and so dimly what should be done, set forth the good reasons that
existed for staying at home, and the no less good reasons for going to
the country. Duvergier was distracted. The Revolution had overthrown the
system of the balance of power in which his mind had sat motionless
during so many years, and he felt as though he were hung up in mid-air.
As for the Duc de Broglie, he had not put his head out of his shell
since the 24th of February, and in this attitude he awaited the end of
society, which in his opinion was close at hand. M. Mole alone,
although he was by far the oldest of all the former parliamentary
leaders, and possibly for that very reason, resolutely maintained the
opinion that they should take part in public affairs and try to lead the
Revolution; perhaps because his longer experience had taught him that in
troubled times it is dangerous to play the looker-on; perhaps because
the hope of again having something to lead cheered him and hid from him
the danger of the undertaking; or perhaps because, after being so often
bent in contrary directions, under so many different _regimes_, his mind
had become firmer as well as more supple and more indifferent as to the
kind of master it might serve. On my side, as may be imagined, I very
attentively considered which was the best resolution to adopt.
I should like here to inquire into the reasons which determined my
course of action, and having found them, to set them down without
evasion: but how difficult it is to speak well of one's self! I have
observed that the greater part of those who have written their Memoirs
have only well shown us their bad actions or their weaknesses when they
happened to have taken them for deeds of prowess or fine instincts, a
thing which often occurs. As in the case of the Cardinal de Retz, who,
in order to be credited with what he considers the glory of being a good
conspirator, confesses his schemes for assassinating Richelieu, and
tells us of his hypocritical devotions and charities lest he should fail
to be taken for a clever man. In such cases it is not the love of truth
that guides the pen, but the warped mind which involuntarily betrays the
vices of the heart.
And even when one wishes to be sincere, it is very rarely that one
succeeds in the endeavour. The fault lies, in the first place, with the
public, which likes to see one accuse, but will not suffer him to
praise, himself; even one's friends are wont to describe as amiable
candour all the harm, and as unbecoming vanity all the good, that he
says of himself: so that at this rate sincerity becomes a very thankless
trade, by which one has everything to lose and nothing to gain. But the
difficulty, above all, lies with the subject himself: he is too close to
himself to see well, and prone to lose himself amid the views,
interests, ideas, thoughts and inclinations that have guided his
actions. This net-work of little foot-paths, which are little known even
by those who use them, prevent one from clearly discerning the main
roads followed by the will before arriving at the most important
conclusions.
Nevertheless, I will try to discover myself amid this labyrinth, for it
is only right that I should take the same liberties with myself which I
have taken, and shall often continue to take, with others.
Let me say, then, that when I came to search carefully into the depths
of my own heart, I discovered, with some surprise, a certain sense of
relief, a sort of gladness mingled with all the griefs and fears to
which the Revolution had given rise. I suffered from this terrible
event for my country, but clearly not for myself; on the contrary, I
seemed to breathe more freely than before the catastrophe. I had always
felt myself stifled in the atmosphere of the parliamentary world which
had just been destroyed: I had found it full of disappointments, both
where others and where I myself was concerned; and to commence with the
latter, I was not long in discovering that I did not possess the
necessary qualifications to play the brilliant role that I had imagined:
both my qualities and my defects were impediments. I had not the virtues
necessary to command respect, and I was too upright to stoop to all the
petty practices which were at that time essential to a speedy success.
And observe that this uprightness was irremediable; for it forms so
integral a part both of my temperament and my principles, that without
it I am never able to turn myself to any account. Whenever I have, by
ill-luck, been obliged to speak in defence of a bad cause, or to assist
in bad measures, I have immediately found myself deprived of all talent
and all ardour; and I confess that nothing has consoled me more at the
want of success with which my uprightness has often met, than the
certainty I have always been in that I could never have made more than a
very clumsy and mediocre rogue. I also ended by perceiving that I was
absolutely lacking in the art of grouping and leading a large number of
men. I have always been incapable of dexterity, except in _tete-a-tete_,
and embarrassed and dumb in the presence of a crowd; I do not mean to
say that at a given moment I am unable to say and do what will please
it, but that is not enough: those great occasions are very rare in
parliamentary warfare. The trick of the trade, in a party leader, is to
be able to mix continually with his followers and even his adversaries,
to show himself, to move about daily, to play continually now to the
boxes, now to the gallery, so as to reach the level of every
intelligence, to discuss and argue without end, to say the same things a
thousand times in different ways, and to be impassioned eternally in the
face of the same objects. These are all things of which I am quite
incapable. I find it troublesome to discuss matters which interest me
little, and painful to discuss those in which I am keenly concerned.
Truth is for me so rare and precious a thing that, once found, I do not
like to risk it on the hazard of a debate; it is a light which I fear to
extinguish by waving it to and fro. And as to consorting with men, I
could not do so in any habitual and general fashion, because I never
recognize more than a very few. Unless a person strikes me by something
out of the common in his intellect or opinions, I, so to speak, do not
see him. I have always taken it for granted that mediocrities, as well
as men of merit, had a nose, a mouth, eyes; but I have never, in their
case, been able to fix the particular shape of these features in my
memory. I am constantly inquiring the name of strangers whom I see
every day, and as constantly forgetting them; and yet, I do not despise
them, only I consort but little with them, treating them as constant
quantities. I honour them, for the world is made up of them; but they
weary me profoundly.
What completed my disgust was the mediocrity and monotony of the
parliamentary events of that period, as well as the triviality of the
passions and the vulgar perversity of the men who pretended to cause or
to guide them.
I have sometimes thought that, though the habits of different societies
may differ, the morality of the politicians at the head of affairs is
everywhere the same. What is very certain is that, in France, all the
party leaders whom I have met in my time have, with few exceptions,
appeared to me to be equally unworthy of holding office, some because of
their lack of personal character or of real parts, most by their lack of
any sort of virtue. I thus experienced as great a difficulty in joining
with others as in being satisfied with myself, in obeying as in acting
on my own initiative.
But that which most tormented and depressed me during the nine years I
had spent in business, and which to this day remains my most hideous
memory of that time, is the incessant uncertainty in which I had to live
as to the best daily course to adopt. I am inclined to think that my
uncertainty of character arises rather from a want of clearness of idea
than from any weakness of heart, and that I never experienced either
hesitation or difficulty in following the most rugged road, when once I
clearly saw where it would lead me. But amid all these little dynastic
parties, differing so little in aim, and resembling one another so much
in the bad methods which they put into practice, which was the
thoroughfare that led visibly to honour, or even to utility? Where lay
truth? Where falsehood? On which side were the rogues? On which side the
honest men? I was never, at that time, fully able to distinguish it, and
I declare that even now I should not well be able to do so. Most party
men allow themselves to be neither distressed nor unnerved by doubts of
this kind; many even have never known them, or know them no longer. They
are often accused of acting without conviction; but my experience has
proved that this was much less frequently the case than one might think.
Only they possess the precious and sometimes, in politics, even
necessary faculty of creating transient convictions for themselves,
according to the passions and interests of the moment, and thus they
succeed in committing, honourably enough, actions which in themselves
are little to their credit. Unfortunately, I could never bring myself to
illuminate my intelligence with these special and artificial lights, nor
so readily to convince myself that my own advantage was one and the same
with the general good.
It was this parliamentary world, in which I had suffered all the
wretchedness that I have just described, which was broken up by the
Revolution; it had mingled and confounded the old parties in one common
ruin, deposed their leaders, and destroyed their traditions and
discipline. There had issued from this, it was true, a disordered and
confused state of society, but one in which ability became less
necessary and less highly rated than courage and disinterestedness; in
which personal character was more important than elocution or the art of
leadership; but, above all, in which there was no field left for
vacillation of mind: on this side lay the salvation of the country; on
that, its destruction. There was no longer any mistake possible as to
the road to follow; we were to walk in broad daylight, supported and
encouraged by the crowd. The road seemed dangerous, it is true, but my
mind is so constructed that it is less afraid of danger than of doubt. I
felt, moreover, that I was still in the prime of life, that I had few
needs, and, above all, that I was able to find at home the support, so
rare and precious in times of revolution, of a devoted wife, whom a firm
and penetrating mind and a naturally lofty soul would easily maintain at
the level of every situation and above every reverse.
I therefore determined to plunge boldly into the arena, and in defence,
not of any particular government, but of the laws which constitute
society itself, to risk my fortune, my person, and my peace of mind. The
first thing was to secure my election, and I left speedily for Normandy
in order to put myself before the electors.
CHAPTER IV
MY CANDIDATURE OF THE DEPARTMENT OF LA MANCHE--THE ASPECT OF THE
COUNTRY--THE GENERAL ELECTION.
As every one knows, the Department of la Manche is peopled almost
exclusively by farmers. It contains few large towns, few manufactures,
and, with the exception of Cherbourg, no places in which workmen are
gathered in large numbers. At first, the Revolution was hardly noticed
there. The upper classes immediately bent beneath the blow, and the
lower classes scarcely felt it. Generally speaking, agricultural
populations are slower than others in perceiving, and more stubborn in
retaining, political impressions; they are the last to rise and the last
to settle down again. The steward of my estate, himself half a peasant,
describing what was taking place in the country immediately after the
24th of February, wrote:
"People here say that if Louis-Philippe has been sent away, it is a good
thing, and that he deserved it...."
This was to them the whole moral of the play. But when they heard tell
of the disorder reigning in Paris, of the new taxes to be imposed, and
of the general state of war that was to be feared; when they saw
commerce cease and money seem to sink down into the ground, and when, in
particular, they learnt that the principle of property was being
attacked, they did not fail to perceive that there was something more
than Louis-Philippe in question.
Fear, which had first displayed itself in the upper circles of society,
then descended into the depths of the people, and universal terror took
possession of the whole country. This was the condition in which I found
it when I arrived about the middle of March. I was at once struck by a
spectacle that both astonished and charmed me. A certain demagogic
agitation reigned, it is true, among the workmen in the towns; but in
the country all the landed proprietors, whatever their origin,
antecedents, education or means, had come together, and seemed to form
but one class: all former political hatred and rivalry of caste or
fortune had disappeared from view. There was no more jealousy or pride
displayed between the peasant and the squire, the nobleman and the
commoner; instead, I found mutual confidence, reciprocal friendliness,
and regard. Property had become, with all those who owned it, a sort of
badge of fraternity. The wealthy were the elder, the less endowed the
younger brothers; but all considered themselves members of one family,
having the same interest in defending the common inheritance. As the
French Revolution had infinitely increased the number of land-owners,
the whole population seemed to belong to that vast family. I had never
seen anything like it, nor had anyone in France within the memory of
man. Experience has shown that this union was not so close as it
appeared, and that the former parties and the various classes had drawn
closer rather than mingled together; fear had acted upon them as a
mechanical pressure might upon very hard bodies, which are compelled to
adhere to one another so long as the pressure continues, but which
separate so soon as it is relaxed.
As a matter of fact, from the first moment I saw no trace whatever of
political opinions, properly so-called. One would have thought that the
republican form of government had suddenly become not only the best, but
the only one imaginable for France. Dynastic hopes and regrets were
buried so profoundly in the souls of men that not even the place they
had once occupied was visible. The Republic respected persons and
property, and it was accepted as lawful. In the spectacle I have just
described, I was most struck at witnessing the universal hatred,
together with the universal terror, now for the first time inspired by
Paris. In France, provincials have for Paris, and for the central power
of which Paris is the seat, feelings analogous to those which the
English entertain for their aristocracy, which they sometimes support
with impatience and often regard with jealousy, but which at bottom they
love, because they always hope to turn its privileges to their private
advantage. This time Paris and those who spoke in its name had so
greatly abused their power, and seemed to be giving so little heed to
the rest of the country, that the idea of shaking off the yoke and of
acting for themselves came to many who had never before conceived it:
uncertain and timid desires, it is true, feeble and ephemeral passions
from which I never believed that there was much to be either hoped or
feared; but these new feelings were then turning into electoral ardour.
Everyone clamoured for the elections; for to elect the enemies of the
demagogues of Paris presented itself to public opinion less as the
constitutional exercise of a right, than as the least dangerous method
one could employ of making a stand against the tyrant.
I fixed my head-quarters in the little town of Valognes, which was the
natural centre of my influence; and as soon as I had ascertained the
condition of the country, I set about my candidature. I then saw what I
have often observed under a thousand different circumstances, that
nothing makes more for success than not to desire it too ardently. I
very much wanted to get elected; but in the difficult and critical
condition of affairs then reigning, I easily reconciled myself to the
idea of being rejected; and from this placid anticipation of a rebuff I
drew a tranquillity and clearness of mind, a respect for myself and a
contempt for the follies of the time, that I should perhaps not have
found in the same degree had I been swayed only by a longing to
succeed.
The country began to fill with roving candidates, hawking their
protestations of Republicanism from hustings to hustings. I refused to
present myself before any other electoral body than that of the place
where I lived. Each small town had its club, and each club questioned
the candidates regarding their opinions and actions, and subjected them
to formulas. I refused to reply to any of these insolent
interrogatories. These refusals, which might have seemed disdainful,
appeared in the light of dignity and independence in the face of the new
rulers, and I was more esteemed for my rebelliousness than the others
for their obedience. I therefore contented myself with publishing an
address and having it posted up throughout the department.
Most of the candidates had resumed the old customs of '92. When writing
to people they called them "Citizens," and signed themselves
"fraternally yours." I would never consent to adopt this revolutionary
nonsense. I headed my address, "Gentlemen," and ended by proudly
declaring myself my electors' "very humble servant."
"I do not come to solicit your suffrages," I said, "I come only to
place myself at the orders of my country. I asked to be your
representative when the times were easy and peaceful; my honour
forbids me to refuse to be so in a period full of agitation, which
may become full of danger. That is the first thing I had to tell
you."
I added that I had been faithful to the end to the oath I had taken to
the Monarchy, but that the Republic, which had been brought about
without my aid, should have my energetic support, and that I would not
only accept but assist it. Then I went on:
"But of what Republic is it a question? There are some who, by a
Republic, understand a dictatorship exercised in the name of
liberty; who think that the Republic should not only change
political institutions but the face of society itself. There are
some who think that the Republic should needs be of an aggressive
and propagandist kind. I am not a Republican after this fashion. If
this were your manner of being Republicans, I could be of no use to
you, for I should not be of your opinion; but if you understand the
Republic as I understand it myself, you can rely upon me to devote
myself heart and soul to the triumph of a cause which is mine as
well as yours."
Men who show no fear in times of revolution are like princes with the
army: they produce a great effect by very ordinary actions, because the
peculiar position which they occupy naturally places them above the
level of the crowd and brings them very much in view. My address was so
successful that I myself was astonished at it; within a few days it made
me the most popular man in the department of la Manche, and the object
of universal attention. My old political adversaries, the agents of the
old Government, the Conservatives themselves who had so vigorously
opposed me, and whom the Republic had overthrown, came in crowds to
assure me that they were ready not only to vote for me, but to follow my
views in everything.
In the meantime, the first meeting of the electors of the Arrondissement
of Valognes took place. I appeared together with the other candidates. A
shed did duty for a hall; the chairman's platform was at the bottom, and
at the side was a professorial pulpit which had been transformed into a
tribune. The chairman, who himself was a professor at the College of
Valognes, said to me with a loud voice and a magisterial air, but in a
very respectful tone: "Citizen de Tocqueville, I will tell you the
questions which are put to you, and to which you will have to reply;" to
which I replied, carelessly, "Mr Chairman, pray put the questions."
A parliamentary orator, whose name I will not mention, once said to me:
"Look here, my dear friend, there is only one way of speaking well from
the tribune, and that is to be fully persuaded, as you get into it, that
you are the cleverest man in the world."
This had always appeared to me easier to say than to do, in the presence
of our great political assemblies. But I confess that here the maxim was
easy enough to follow, and that I thought it a wonderfully good one.
Nevertheless, I did not go so far as to convince myself that I was
cleverer than all the world; but I soon saw that I was the only one who
was well acquainted with the facts they brought up, and even with the
political language they wished to speak. It would be difficult to show
one's self more maladroit and more ignorant than did my adversaries;
they overwhelmed me with questions which they thought very close, and
which left me very free, while I on my side made replies which were
sometimes not very brilliant, but which always to them appeared most
conclusive. The ground on which they hoped, above all, to crush me was
that of the banquets. I had refused, as I have already said, to take
part in these dangerous demonstrations. My political friends had found
fault with me for abandoning them in that matter, and many continued to
bear me ill-will, although--or perhaps because--the Revolution had
proved me to be right.
"Why did you part from the Opposition on the occasion of the banquets?"
I was asked.
I replied, boldly:
"I could easily find a pretext, but I prefer to give you my real reason:
I did not want the banquets because I did not want a revolution; and I
venture to say that hardly any of those who sat down to the banquets
would have done so had they foreseen, as I did, the events to which
these would lead. The only difference I can see between you and myself
is that I knew what you were doing while you did not know it
yourselves." This bold profession of anti-revolutionary had been
preceded by one of republican faith; the sincerity of the one seemed to
bear witness to that of the other; the meeting laughed and applauded. My
adversaries were scoffed at, and I came off triumphant.
I had won the agricultural population of the department by my address; I
won the Cherbourg workmen by a speech. The latter had been assembled to
the number of two thousand at a patriotic dinner. I received a very
obliging and pressing invitation to attend, and I did.
When I arrived, the procession was ready to start for the
banqueting-hall, with, at its head, my old colleague Havin, who had come
expressly from Saint-Lo to take the chair. It was the first time I had
met him since the 24th of February. On that day, I saw him giving his
arm to the Duchesse d'Orleans, and the next morning I heard that he was
Commissary of the Republic in the department of la Manche. I was not
surprised, for I knew him as one of those easily bewildered, ambitious
men who had found themselves fixed for ten years in opposition, after
thinking at first that they were in it only for a little. How many of
these men have I not seen around me, tortured with their own virtue, and
despairing because they saw themselves spending the best part of their
lives in criticizing the faults of others without ever in some measure
realizing by experience what were their own, and finding nothing to
feed upon but the sight of public corruption! Most of them had
contracted during this long abstinence so great an appetite for places,
honours and money that it was easy to predict that at the first
opportunity they would throw themselves upon power with a sort of
gluttony, without taking time to choose either the moment or the morsel.
Havin was the very type of these men. The Provisional Government had
given him as his associate, and even as his chief, another of my former
colleagues in the Chamber of Deputies, M. Vieillard, who has since
become famous as a particular friend of Prince Louis Napoleon's.
Vieillard was entitled to serve the Republic, since he had been one of
the seven or eight republican deputies under the Monarchy. Moreover, he
was one of the Republicans who had passed through the salons of the
Empire before attaining demagogism. In literature he was a bigoted
classic; a Voltairean in religious belief; rather fatuous, very
kind-hearted; an honest man, and even an intelligent; but a very fool in
politics. Havin had made him his tool: whenever he wished to strike a
blow at one of his own enemies, or to reward one of his own friends, he
invariably put forward Vieillard, who allowed him to do as he pleased.
In this manner Havin made his way sheltered beneath the honesty and
republicanism of Vieillard, whom he always kept before him, as the miner
does his gabion.
Havin scarcely seemed to recognize me; he did not invite me to take a
place in the procession. I modestly withdrew into the midst of the
crowd; and when we arrived at the banqueting-hall, I sat down at one of
the lower tables. We soon got to the speeches: Vieillard delivered a
very proper written speech, and Havin read out another written speech,
which was well received. I, too, was very much inclined to speak, but my
name was not down, and moreover I did not quite see how I was to begin.
A word which one of the orators (for all the speakers called themselves
orators) dropped to the memory of Colonel Briqueville gave me my
opportunity. I asked for permission to speak, and the meeting consented.
When I found myself perched in the tribune, or rather in that pulpit
placed twenty feet above the crowd, I felt a little confused; but I soon
recovered myself, and delivered a little piece of oratorical fustian
which I should find it impossible to recollect to-day. I only know that
it contained a certain appositeness, besides the warmth which never
fails to make itself apparent through the disorder of an improvised
speech, a merit quite sufficient to succeed with a popular assembly, or
even with an assembly of any sort; for, it cannot be too often repeated,
speeches are made to be listened to and not to be read, and the only
good ones are those that move the audience.
The success of mine was marked and complete, and I confess it seemed
very sweet to me to revenge myself in this way on the manner in which
my former colleague had endeavoured to abuse what he considered the
favours of fortune.
If I am not mistaken, it was between this time and the elections that I
made my journey to Saint-Lo, as member of the Council General. The
Council had been summoned to an extraordinary sitting. It was still
composed as under the Monarchy: most of its members had shown themselves
complaisant towards Louis-Philippe's ministers, and may be reckoned
among those who had most contributed to bring that Prince's government
into contempt in our country. The only thing I can recall of the
Saint-Lo journey is the singular servility of these ex-Conservatives.
Not only did they make no opposition to Havin, who had insulted them for
the past ten years, but they became his most attentive courtiers. They
praised him with their words, supported him with their votes, smiled
upon him approvingly; they even spoke well of him among themselves, for
fear of indiscretion. I have often seen greater pictures of human
baseness, but never any that was more perfect; and I think it deserves,
despite its pettiness, to be brought fully to light. I will, therefore,
display it in the light of subsequent events, and I will add that some
months later, when the turn of the popular tide had restored them to
power, they at once set about pursuing this same Havin anew with
unheard-of violence and even injustice. All their old hatred became
visible amid the quaking of their terror, and it seemed to have become
still greater at the remembrance of their temporary complaisance.
Meantime the general election was drawing nigh, and each day the aspect
of the future became more sinister. All the news from Paris represented
the capital as on the point of constantly falling into the hands of
armed Socialists. It was doubted whether these latter would allow the
electors to vote freely, or at least whether they would submit to the
National Assembly. Already in every part of the country the officers of
the National Guard were being made to swear that they would march
against the Assembly if a conflict arose between that body and the
people. The provinces were becoming more and more alarmed, but were also
strengthening themselves at the sight of the danger.
I spent the few days preceding the contest at my poor, dear Tocqueville.
It was the first time I had visited it since the Revolution: I was
perhaps about to leave it for ever! I was seized on my arrival with so
great and uncommon a feeling of sadness that it has left in my memory
traces which have remained marked and visible to this day amid all the
vestiges of the events of that time. I was not expected. The empty
rooms, in which there was none but my old dog to receive me, the
undraped windows, the heaped-up dusty furniture, the extinct fires, the
run-down clocks--all seemed to point to abandonment and to foretell
ruin. This little isolated corner of the earth, lost, as it were, amid
the fields and hedges of our Norman coppices, which had so often seemed
to me the most charming of solitudes, now appeared to me, in the actual
state of my thoughts, as a desolate desert; but across the desolation of
its present aspect I discovered, as though from the depth of a tomb, the
sweetest and most attractive episodes of my life. I wonder how our
imagination gives so much deeper colour and so much more attractiveness
to things than they possess. I had just witnessed the fall of the
Monarchy; I have since been present at the most sanguinary scenes; and
nevertheless I declare that none of these spectacles produced in me so
deep and painful an emotion as that which I experienced that day at the
sight of the ancient abode of my forefathers, when I thought of the
peaceful days and happy hours I had spent there without knowing their
value--I say that it was then and there that I best understood all the
bitterness of revolutions.
The local population had always been well disposed to me; but this time
I found them affectionate, and I was never received with more respect
than now, when all the walls were placarded with the expression of
degrading equality. We were all to go and vote together at the borough
of Saint-Pierre, about one league away from our village. On the morning
of the election, all the voters (that is to say, all the male population
above the age of twenty) collected together in front of the church. All
these men formed themselves in a double column, in alphabetical order.
I took up my place in the situation denoted by my name, for I knew that
in democratic times and countries one must be nominated to the head of
the people, and not place one's self there. At the end of the long
procession, in carts or on pack-horses, came the sick or infirm who
wished to follow us; we left none behind save the women and children. We
were one hundred and sixty-six all told. At the top of the hill which
commands Tocqueville there came a halt; they wished me to speak. I
climbed to the other side of a ditch; a circle was formed round me, and
I spoke a few words such as the circumstances inspired. I reminded these
worthy people of the gravity and importance of what they were about to
do; I recommended them not to allow themselves to be accosted or turned
aside by those who, on our arrival at the borough, might seek to deceive
them, but to march on solidly and stay together, each in his place,
until they had voted. "Let no one," I said, "go into a house to seek
food or shelter [it was raining] before he has done his duty." They
cried that they would do as I wished, and they did. All the votes were
given at the same time, and I have reason to believe that they were
almost all given to the same candidate.
After voting myself, I took my leave of them, and set out to return to
Paris.
CHAPTER V
THE FIRST SITTING OF THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY--THE APPEARANCE OF
THIS ASSEMBLY.
I stopped at Valognes only long enough to bid good-bye to some of my
friends. Many left me with tears in their eyes, for there was a belief
current in the country that the representatives would be exposed to
great danger in Paris. Several of these worthy people said to me, "If
they attack the National Assembly, we will come and defend you." I feel
a certain remorse at having seen only vain words in this promise at the
time; for, as a matter of fact, they did all come, they and many more,
as I shall show later.
It was only when I reached Paris that I learnt that I had received
110,704 votes out of a possible 120,000. Most of my new colleagues
belonged to the old dynastic Opposition: two only had professed
republican principles before the Revolution, and were what was called in
the jargon of the day "Republicans of yesterday." The same was the case
in most parts of France.
There have certainly been more wicked revolutionaries than those of
1848, but I doubt if there were ever any more stupid; they neither knew
how to make use of universal suffrage nor how to do without it. If they
had held the elections immediately after the 24th of February, while the
upper classes were still bewildered by the blow they had just received,
and the people more amazed than discontented, they would perhaps have
obtained an assembly after their hearts; if, on the other hand, they had
boldly seized the dictatorship, they might have been able for some time
to retain it. But they trusted themselves to the nation, and at the same
time did all that was most likely to set the latter against them; they
threatened it while placing themselves in its power; they alarmed it by
the recklessness of their proposals and the violence of their language,
while inviting it to resistance by the feebleness of their actions; they
pretended to lay down the law to it at the very time that they were
placing themselves at its disposal. Instead of opening out their ranks
after the victory, they jealously closed them up, and seemed, in one
word, to be striving to solve this insoluble problem, namely, how to
govern through the majority and yet against its inclination.
Following the examples of the past without understanding them, they
foolishly imagined that to summon the crowd to take part in political
life was sufficient to attach it to their cause; and that to popularize
the Republic, it was enough to give the public rights without offering
them any profits. They forgot that their predecessors, when they gave
every peasant the vote, at the same time did away with tithes, abolished
statute labour and the other seignorial privileges, and divided the
property of the nobles among the peasants; whereas they were not in a
position to do anything of the kind. In establishing universal suffrage
they thought they were summoning the people to the assistance of the
Revolution: they were only giving them arms against it. Nevertheless, I
am far from believing that it was impossible to arouse revolutionary
passions, even in the country districts. In France, every agriculturist
owns some portion of the soil, and most of them are more or less
involved in debt; it was not, therefore, the landlords that should have
been attacked, but the creditors; not the abolition promised of the
rights of property, but the abolition of debts. The demagogues of 1848
did not think of this scheme; they showed themselves much clumsier than
their predecessors, but no less dishonest, for they were as violent and
unjust in their desires as the others in their acts. Only, to commit
violent and unjust acts, it is not enough for a government to have the
will, or even the power; the habits, ideas, and passions of the time
must lend themselves to the committal of them.
As the party which held the reins of government saw its candidates
rejected one after the other, it displayed great vexation and rage,
complaining now sadly and now rudely of the electors, whom it treated as
ignorant, ungrateful blockheads, and enemies of their own good; it lost
its temper with the whole nation; and, its impatience exhausted by the
latter's coldness, it seemed ready to say with Moliere's Arnolfe, when
he addresses Agnes:
"Pourquoi ne m'aimer pas, madame l'impudente?"
One thing was not ridiculous, but really ominous and terrible; and that
was the appearance of Paris on my return. I found in the capital a
hundred thousand armed workmen formed into regiments, out of work, dying
of hunger, but with their minds crammed with vain theories and visionary
hopes. I saw society cut into two: those who possessed nothing, united
in a common greed; those who possessed something, united in a common
terror. There were no bonds, no sympathy between these two great
sections; everywhere the idea of an inevitable and immediate struggle
seemed at hand. Already the _bourgeois_ and the _peuple_ (for the old
nicknames had been resumed) had come to blows, with varying fortunes, at
Rouen, Limoges, Paris; not a day passed but the owners of property were
attacked or menaced in either their capital or income: they were asked
to employ labour without selling the produce; they were expected to
remit the rents of their tenants when they themselves possessed no other
means of living. They gave way as long as they could to this tyranny,
and endeavoured at least to turn their weakness to account by publishing
it. I remember reading in the papers of that time this advertisement,
among others, which still strikes me as a model of vanity, poltroonery,
and stupidity harmoniously mingled:
"Mr Editor," it read, "I make use of your paper to inform my tenants
that, desiring to put into practice in my relations with them the
principles of fraternity that should guide all true democrats, I will
hand to those of my tenants who apply for it a formal receipt for their
next quarter's rent."
Meanwhile, a gloomy despair had overspread the middle class thus
threatened and oppressed, and imperceptibly this despair was changing
into courage. I had always believed that it was useless to hope to
settle the movement of the Revolution of February peacefully and
gradually, and that it could only be stopped suddenly, by a great battle
fought in the streets of Paris. I had said this immediately after the
24th of February; and what I now saw persuaded me that this battle was
not only inevitable but imminent, and that it would be well to seize the
first opportunity to deliver it.
The National Assembly met at last on the 4th of May; it was doubtful
until the last moment whether it would meet at all. I believe, in fact,
that the more ardent of the demagogues were often tempted to do without
it, but they dared not; they remained crushed beneath the weight of
their own dogma of the sovereignty of the people.
I should have before my eyes the picture which the Assembly presented at
its opening; but I find, on the contrary, that only a very confused
recollection of it has lingered in my mind. It is a mistake to believe
that events remain present in one's memory in proportion to their
importance or their greatness alone; rather is it certain little
particularities which occur, and cause them to penetrate deep into the
mind, and fix them there in a lasting manner. I only remember that we
shouted, "Long live the Republic" fifteen times during the course of the
sitting, trying who could out-shout the other. The history of the
Assemblies is full of parallel incidents, and one constantly sees one
party exaggerating its feelings in order to embarrass its opponents,
while the latter feign to hold sentiments which they do not possess, in
order to avoid the trap. Both sides, with a common effort, went either
beyond, or in the contrary direction to, the truth. Nevertheless, I
think the cry was sincere enough; only it responded to diverse or even
contrary thoughts. All at that time wished to preserve the Republic; but
some wished to use it for purposes of attack, others for purposes of
defence The newspapers spoke of the enthusiasm of the Assembly and of
the public; there was a great deal of noise, but no enthusiasm at all.
Everyone was too greatly preoccupied with the immediate future to allow
himself to be carried beyond that thought by sentiment of any kind. A
decree of the Provisional Government laid down that the representatives
should wear the costume of the Conventionals, and especially the white
waistcoat with turn-down collar in which Robespierre was always
represented on the stage. I thought at first that this fine notion
originated with Louis Blanc or Ledru-Rollin; but I learned later that it
was due to the flowery and literary imagination of Armand Marrast. No
one obeyed the decree, not even its author; Caussidiere was the o
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