Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 65, No. 400, February, 1849
The great feast of fraternity, last spring, was, on de Maistre's principles, the natural harbinger of that fraternal massacre in June; and the ineffectual attempt to be festive over the late inauguration of the constitution, has but one redeeming feature to prevent a corresponding augury of disaster. Its miserable failure makes it possible that the constitution will survive its anniversary. Then there will be a demonstration, at any rate, and then the thing will be superannuated. Since 1790, there has been no end to such glorifications; each chased and huzza'd, in turn, by a nation of full-grown children, and all hollow and transient as bubbles. Perpetual beginnings, every one warranted to be no failure this time, and each going out in a stench. What continual Champs-de-Mars and Champs-de-Mai! what wavings of new flags, and scattering of fresh flowers! and all ending in confessed failure, and beginning the same thing over again! "Nothing great has great beginnings" – says Mentor again. "History shows no exception to this rule. Crescit occulto velut arbor ævo, – this is the immortal device of every great institution."
Legitimacy never makes such mistakes, except when permitted by God, to accomplish its own temporary abasement. It needs not to support itself by tricks and shams. It has a creative power which dignifies everything it touches; which often turns its own occasions into festivals, but makes no festivals on purpose to dignify itself. When Henry V. is crowned at Rheims, or at Notre-Dame, he will not send over the Alps for Pio Nono, nor consult Savans to learn how Cæsar should be attired that day. That youth may safely dispense with all superfluous pageantry, for he is not new Charlemagne, but old Charlemagne. The blood of the Carlovingians has come down to him from Isabella of Hainault, through St Louis and Henry IV. Chateaubriand should not have forgotten this, when (speaking of this prince's unfortunate father, the Duke de Berry) he enthusiastically sketched a thousand years of Capetian glory, and cried – "He bien! la revolution a livré tout cela au couteau de Louvel." Another revolution has thus far relegated the same substantial dignity to exile and obscurity, as if France could afford to lose its past, and begin again, as an infant of days. But besides the evident tendency of things to reaction, there is something about the legitimate king of France which looks like destiny. He was announced to the kingdom by the dying lips of his murdered sire, while yet unborn, as if the fate of empire depended on his birth. Ménagez-vous, pour l'enfant que vous portez dans votre sein," said the unhappy man to his duchess, and the group of bystanders was startled! It was the first that France heard of Henry the Fifth, and it seemed to inspire Chateaubriand with the spirit of prophecy, and he eloquently remarks upon it as a dernière espérance. "The dying prince," he says, "seemed to bear with him a whole monarchy, and at the same moment to announce another. Oh God! and is our salvation to spring out of our ruin? Has the cruel death of a son of France been ordained in anger, or in mercy? is it a final restoration of the legitimate throne, or the downfall of the empire of Clovis?" This grand question now hangs in suspense: but, as I said, Chateaubriand must have taken courage before he died, and inwardly answered it favourably. That great writer seems to have felt beforehand, for his countrymen, the loyalty to which they will probably return. To the prince he stood as a sort of sponsor for the future. When the royal babe was baptised, he presented water from the Jordan, in which the last hope of legitimacy received the name of Dieu-donné: when Charles the Tenth was dethroned, he stood up for the young king, and consented to fall with his exclusion; and the last years of France's greatest genius were a consistent confessorship for that legitimacy with which he believed the prosperity of his country indissolubly bound. Now, I should like to ask a French republican – if I could find a sane one, – what would you wish to do with Henry of Bordeaux? Would you wish this heir of your old histories to renounce his birth-right, declare legitimacy an imposition, and undertake to settle down in Paris as one of the people? Why not, if you are all republicans, and see no more in a prince than in a gamin? Why should not this Henry Capet throw up his cap for the constitution, and stick up a tradesman's sign in the Place de la Revolution, as "Henry Capet, parfumeur?" Why not let him hire a shop in the lower stories of the Palais Royal and teach the Parisians better manners than to cut off his head, by devoting himself to shaving their beards? Everybody knows the reason why not; and that reason shows the reality of legitimacy. Night and day such a shop would be mobbed by friends and foes alike. Go where he might, the parfumeur would be pointed at by fingers, and aimed at by lorgnettes, and bored to death by a rabble of starers, who would insist upon it that he was the hereditary lord of France. Mankind cannot free themselves from such impressions, and, what is more conclusive, princes cannot free themselves from the impressions of mankind, or undertake to live like other men, as if history and genealogy were not facts. For weal or for woe, they are as unchangeable as the leopard with his spots. Let Henry Capet come to America, and try to be a republican with us. Our very wild-cats would assert their inalienable right to "look at a king," and he would certainly be torn to pieces by good-natured curiosity.
It is curious to see the natural instinct amusing itself, for the present, with such a mere nominis umbra as Louis Napoleon. In some way or other the hereditary prestige must be created; nothing less is satisfactory, and the "imperial fetishism" will answer very well till something more substantial is found necessary. Richard Cromwell was necessary to Charles II., and so is Louis Napoleon to Henry V. Napoleon still seems capable of giving France a dynasty; this possibility will be soon extinguished by the incapability of his representative. Louis will reign long enough to exhibit that recompense to Josephine, in the person of her grandson, which heaven delights to allot to a repudiated wife; and then, for his own sake, he will be called coquin and poltron. Napoleon will take his historical position as an individual, having no remaining hold on France; and the imperial fetishism will be ignominiously extinguished. Richard Cromwell made a very decent old English gentleman, and Louis Napoleon may perhaps end his days as respectably, in some out-of-the-way corner of Corsica. Let me again quote the French Mentor. He says, "There never has existed a royal family to whom a plebeian origin could be assigned. Men may say, if Richard Cromwell had possessed the genius of his father, he would have fixed the protectorate in his family; which is precisely the same thing as to say – if this family had not ceased to reign, it would reign still." Here is the formula that will suit the case of Louis Napoleon; but future historians will moralise upon the manner in which Napoleon himself worked out his own destruction. For the sake of a dynasty, he puts away poor Josephine. The King of Rome is born to him, but his throne is taken. The royal youth perishes in early manhood, and men find Napoleon's only representative in the issue of the repudiated wife. Her grandson comes to power, and holds it long enough to make men say – how much better it might have been with Napoleon had he kept his faith to Josephine, and contentedly taken as his heir the child in whom Providence has revealed at last his only chance of continuing his family on a throne! It makes one thing of Scripture, "Yet ye say wherefore? because the Lord hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously; … therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth, for the Lord, the God of Israel, saith that he hateth putting away."
A traveller from the south of France says that he saw everywhere the portrait of Henry V. Besides the mysterious hold which legitimacy keeps upon the vulgar and the polite alike, there are associations with it which operate on all classes of men. Tradesmen and manufacturers are for legitimacy, because they love peace, and want to make money. The roturiers sooner or later learn the misery of mobs, and the love of change makes them willing to welcome home the king, especially as they mistake their own hearts, and flatter themselves that their sudden loyalty is proof of remaining virtue. Then the profligate and abandoned, they want a monarchy, in hopes of another riot in the palace. It may be doubted whether the blouses can be permanently contented without a king to curse. The national anthem cannot be sung with any spirit, unless there be a monarch who can be imagined to hear all its imprecations against tyrants: in fact, the king must come back, if only to make sense of the Marseilles Hymn.
Que veut cette horde d'esclaves,
De traîtres, de rois conjurés?
Pour qui ces ignobles entraves,
Ces fers, dès long-tems préparés?
What imaginable sense is there in singing these red-hot verses at a feast of fraternity, and in honour of the full possession of absolute liberty? Then, where is the sport of clubs, and the excitement of conspiracies, if there's no king to execrate within locked doors? Is Paris to have no more of those nice little émeutes? What's to be done with the genius that delights in infernal machines? Who's to be fired at in a glass coach? Everybody knows that Cavaignacs and Lamartines are small game for such sport. Your true assassin must have, at least, a duke of the blood. These are considerations which must have their weight in deciding upon probabilities; though, for one, I am not sure but France is doomed, by retributive justice, to be thus the Tantalus of nations, steeped to the neck in liberty, but forbidden to drink, with kings hanging over them to provoke the eye, and yet escaping the hand.
In 1796 de Maistre published his Considérations sur la France. They deserve to be reproduced for the present age. Nothing can surpass the cool contempt of the philosophical réactionnaire, or the confidence with which, from his knowledge of the past, he pronounces oracles for the future. Do you ask how Henry V. is to recover his rights? In ten thousand imaginable ways. See what Cavaignac might have done last July, had the time been ripe for another Monk! There's but one way to keep legitimacy out; it comes in as water enters a leaky ship, oozing through seams, and gushing through cracks, where nobody dreamed of such a thing. As long as even a tolerable pretender survives, a popular government must be kept in perpetual alarm. But you shall hear the Count, my Basil! Let me give you a free translation.
"In speculating about counter-revolutions, we often fall into the mistake of taking it for granted that such reactions can only be the result of popular deliberation. The people won't allow it, it is said; they will never consent; it is against the popular feeling. Ah! is it possible? The people just go for nothing in such affairs; at most they are a passive instrument. Four or five persons may give France a king. It shall be announced to the provinces that the king is restored: up go their hats, and vive le roi! Even in Paris, the inhabitants, save a score or so, shall know nothing of it till they wake up some morning and learn that they have a king. 'Est-il possible?' will be the cry: 'how very singular! What street will he pass through? Let's engage a window in good time, there'll be such a horrid crowd!' I tell you the people will have nothing more to do with re-establishing the monarchy, than they have had in establishing the revolutionary government!.. At the first blush one would say, undoubtedly, that the previous consent of the French is necessary to the restoration; but nothing is more absurd. Come, we'll crop theory, and imagine certain facts.
"A courier passes through Bordeaux, Nantes, Lyons, and so en route, telling everybody that the king is proclaimed at Paris; that a certain party has seized the reins, and has declared that it holds the government only in the king's name, having despatched an express for his majesty, who is expected every minute, and that every one mounts the white cockade. Rumour catches up the story, and adds a thousand imposing details. What next? To give the republic the fairest chance, let us suppose it to have the favour of a majority, and to be defended by republican troops. At first these troops shall bluster very loudly; but dinner-time will come; the fellows must eat, and away goes their fidelity to a cause that no longer promises rations, to say nothing of pay. Then your discontented captains and lieutenants, knowing that they have nothing to lose, begin to consider how easily they can make something of themselves, by being the first to set up Vive-le-roi! Each one begins to draw his own portrait, most bewitchingly coloured; looking down in scorn on the republican officers who so lately knocked him about with contempt; his breast blazing with decorations, and his name displayed as that of an officer of His Most Christian Majesty! Ideas so single and natural will work in the brains of such a class of persons: they all think them over; every one knows what his neighbour thinks, and they all eye one another suspiciously. Fear and distrust follow first, and then jealousy and coolness. The common soldier, no longer inspired by his commander, is still more discouraged; and, as if by witchcraft, the bonds of discipline all at once receive an incomprehensible blow, and are instantly dissolved. One begins to hope for the speedy arrival of his majesty's paymaster; another takes the favourable opportunity to desert and see his wife. There's no head, no tail, and no more any such thing as trying to hold together.
"The affair takes another turn with the populace. They push about hither and thither, knocking one another out of breath, and asking all sorts of questions; no one knows what he wants; hours are wasted in hesitation, and every minute does the business. Daring is everywhere confronted by caution; the old man lacks decision, the lad spoils all by indiscretion; and the case stands thus, – one may get into trouble by resisting, but he that keeps quiet may be rewarded, and will certainly get off without damage. As for making a demonstration – where is the means? Who are the leaders? Whom can ye trust? There's no danger in keeping still; the least motion may get one into trouble. Next day comes news —such a town has opened its gates. Another inducement to hold back! Soon this news turns out to be a lie; but it has been believed long enough to determine two other towns, who, supposing that they only follow such example, present themselves at the gates of the first town to offer their submission. This town had never dreamed of such a thing; but, seeing such an example, resolves to fall in with it. Soon it flies about that Monsieur the mayor has presented to his majesty the keys of his good city of Quelquechose, and was the first officer who had the honour to receive him within a garrison of his kingdom. His Majesty – of course – made him a marshal of France on the spot. Oh! enviable brevet! an immortal name, and a scutcheon everlastingly blooming with fleurs-de-lis! The royalist tide fills up every moment, and soon carries all before it. Vive-le-roi! shouts out long-smothered loyalty, overwhelmed with transports: Vive-le-roi! chokes out hypocritical democracy, frantic with terror. No matter! there's but one cry; and his Majesty is crowned, and has all the royal makings of a king. This is the way counter-revolutions come about. God having reserved to himself the formation of sovereignties, lets us learn the fact, from observing that He never commits to the multitude the choice of its masters. He only employs them, in those grand movements which decide the fate of empires, as passive instruments. Never do they get what they want: they always take; they never choose. There is, if one may so speak, an artifice of Providence, by which the means which a people take to gain a certain object, are precisely those which Providence employs to put it from them. Thus, thinking to abase the aristocracy by hurrahing for Cæsar, the Romans got themselves masters. It is just so with all popular insurrections. In the French revolution the people have been perpetually handcuffed, outraged, betrayed, and torn to pieces by factions; and factions themselves, at the mercy of each other, have only risen to take their turn in being dashed to atoms. To know in what the revolution will probably end, find first in what points all the revolutionary factions are agreed. Do they unite in hating Christianity and monarchy? Very well! The end will be, that both will be the more firmly established in the earth."
Cool, certainly; is it not, my Basil? The legitimists are the only Frenchmen who can keep cool, and bide their time. Chateaubriand has observed, in the same spirit, that there is a hidden power which often makes war with powers that are visible, and that a secret government was always following close upon the heels of the public governments that succeeded each other between the murder of Louis XVI. and the restoration of the Bourbons. This hidden power he calls the eternal reason of things; the justice of God, which interferes in human affairs just in proportion as men endeavour to banish and drive it from them. It is evident that the whole force of de Maistre's prophecy was owing to his religious confidence in this divine interference. He wrote in 1796. That year the career of Napoleon began at Montenotte; and, for eighteen years succeeding, every day seemed to make it less and less probable that his predictions could be verified. The Bourbon star was lost in the sun of Austerlitz. The Republic itself was forgotten; the Pope inaugurated the Empire; Austria gave him a princess, to be the mould of a dynasty, and the source of a new legitimacy. France was peopled with a generation that never knew the Bourbons, and which was dazzled with the genius of Napoleon, and the splendour of his imperial government. But the time came for this puissance occulte, cette justice du ciel! When the Allies entered Paris in 1814, it was suggested to Napoleon that the Bourbons would be restored; and, with all his sagacity, he made the very mistake which de Maistre had foreshown, and said, in almost his very words – "Never! nine-tenths of the people are irreconcilably against it!" One can almost hear what might have been the Count's reply – "Quelle pitié! le peuple n'est pour rien dans les revolutions. Quatre ou cinq personnes, peut-être, donneront un roi à la France." What could Talleyrand tell about that? The facts were, that in four days the Bourbons were all the rage! The Place Vendôme could hardly hold the mob that raved about Napoleon's statue; and, with ropes and pulleys, they were straining every sinew to drag it to the ground, when it was taken under the protection of Alexander!14 What next? In terror for his very life, this Napoleon flies to Frejus, now sneaking out of a back-window, and now riding post, as a common courier, actually saving himself by wearing the white cockade over his raging breast, and all the time cursing his dear French to Tartarus! A British vessel gives him his only asylum, and the salute he receives from a generous enemy is all that reminds him what he once had been in France. Meantime these detested Bourbons are welcomed home again, with De Maistre's own varieties of Vive-le-roi! The Duke d'Angouleme, advancing to the capital, sees the silver lilies dancing above the spires of Bordeaux: the Count d'Artois hails the same tokens at Nancy: not captains and lieutenants, but generals and marshals, rush to receive His Most Christian Majesty; and the successor of the butchered Louis XVI. comes to his palace, after an exile of twenty years, with the title of Louis the Desired! Nor are subsequent events anything more than the swinging of a pendulum, which must eventually subside into a plummet. If the first disaster of Napoleon, in the fulness of his strength, could make France welcome her legitimacy in 1814, why should not the imbecility of the mere shadow of his name produce a stronger revulsion before this century gains its meridian? There is a residuary fulfilment of de Maistre's augury, which remains to the Bourbons, when all of Napoleon that survives has found its ignominious extinction. Then will the ripe fruit fall into the lap of one who, if he is wise, will make the French forget his kindred with the fourteenth and fifteenth Louises, and remember only that Henry of Bordeaux has before him the example of Henry of Navarre.
There is, indeed, another conceivable end. C'est l'arrêt que le ciel prononce enfin contre les peuples sans jugement, et rebelles à l'expérience.15 If France does not soon come back to reason, we shall be forced to think her given up of God, to become such a country as Germany, or perhaps as miserable as Spain. But we must not be too hasty in coming to conclusions so deplorable. Let the republic have its day. It will work its own cure; for the chastisement of France must be the curse of ancient Judah. "The people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and everyone by his neighbour; the child shall behave himself proudly against the ancient, and the base against the honourable." For the mob of Paris, who got drunk with riot, and must grow sober with headache; for the blousemen and the boys who have pulled a house upon their head, and now maul each other in painful efforts to get from under the ruins; and for the miserable philosophes who see, in the charming state of their country, the fruit of their own atheistic theories; for all these it is but retribution. They needed government; they resolved on license: God has sent them despotism in its worst form. One pities Paris, but feels that it is just. My emotions are very different when I think of what were once "the pleasant villages of France." Miserable campagnards! There are thousands of them, besides the poor souls starving in provincial towns, who curse the republic in their hearts; and, from Normandy to Provence and Languedoc, there are millions of such Frenchmen, who care nothing for dynasties, or fraternities, or democracy, but only pray the good Lord to give peace in their time, that they may sit under their own vine, and earn and eat their daily bread. For them – may God pity them! – what a life Dame Paris leads them! If, with the simplicity of rustics, they were for a moment disposed to be merry last February – when they heard that thereafter loaves and fishes were to fling themselves upon every table, for the mere pleasure of being devoured – how bitterly the simpletons are undeceived! Their present notions of fraternity and equality they get from hunger and from rags. It is not now in France as in the days of Henry IV., when every peasant had a pullet in the pot for his Sunday dinner. That was despotism. It is liberty now – liberty to starve. There is no more oppression, for the very looms refuse to work, and water-wheels stand still; and the vines go gadding and unpruned, and the grape disdains to be trampled in the wine-vat. Yes – and the old paysan and his sprightly dame, who used to drive dull care away in the sunshine – she, with her shaking foot and head, and he with his fiddle and his bow, they have liberty to the full; for their seven sons, who were earning food for them in the sweat of their brow, have come home to the old cabin, ragged and unpaid; and they lounge about in hungry idleness, longing for war, but only because war would provide them with a biscuit or a bullet. What care they for glory, or for constitutions? They ask for bread, and their teeth are ground with gravel-stones. Let England look and learn. If she has troubles, let her see how easily troubles may be invested at compound interest, with the certainty of dividends for years to come. Is hard thrift in a kingdom so bad as starvation in a democracy? And whether is it better to wear out honestly, in this work-day world, as good and quiet subjects; or to be thrust out of it, kicking and cursing, behind a barricade of cabs and paving-stones, in the name of equality? These are the common-sense questions, that every English labourer should be made to feel and answer.
It provokes me, Basil, that my letter may be superannuated while it is travelling in the steamer! The changes of democracy are more frequent than the revolutions of a paddle-wheel. Adieu. Yours,
Ernest.