Speculations on the Ways of Providence
in the French Revolution
Each nation, like each individual, has received a mission which it must fulfill. France exercises over Europe a true magistracy, which it would be useless to dispute, and which she has abused in the most reprehensible manner. She was, above all, at the head of the religious system, and it is not without reason that her King was called Most Christian. Bossuet has not over-emphasized this point. But as she has used her influence to gainsay her vocation and demoralize Europe, it is not surprising that she is being brought back to her mission by terrible means.
It is long since anyone has seen such a frightful punishment inflicted on so many of the guilty. No doubt, there are innocents among the unfortunate, but there are far fewer than is commonly imagined.
All who have worked to divorce the people from their religious beliefs; all who have opposed to the laws of property metaphysical sophistries; all who have said, strike, so long as we win; all who have infringed on the fundamental laws of the state; all who have counselled, approved, and favoured the violent measures used against the King, etc.; all these have willed the Revolution, and all those who have willed it have been quite justly its victims, even according to our limited views.
One weeps to see illustrious scholars falling under the axe of Robespierre. One cannot, humanely, bewail them too much; but divine justice has not the slightest respect for mathematicians or scientists. Too many French scholars were the principal authors of the Revolution; too many French scholars loved and favoured it, as long as, like Tarquin’s staff, it lopped the tallest heads. Like so many others, they said: it is impossible for a great revolution to take place without bringing misfortunes. But when a philosopher consoles himself of these misfortunes in view of the results; when he says in his heart, let a hundred thousand be murdered, provided we are free; if Providence answers him: I accept your recommendation, but you shall be counted among that number, where is the injustice? Would we judge otherwise in our own courts?
The details would be odious; but there are few French among those they call innocent victims of the Revolution to whom their conscience could not say:
So you see the sad fruits that your faults have produced,
Now, acknowledge the blows you yourselves have induced.1
Our ideas of good and evil, of innocence and guilt, are too often affected by our prejudices. We declare guilty and villainous two men who fight with a three-inch long blade; but if the blade is three feet, the duel becomes honourable. We brand one who steals a cent from his friend’s pocket; if he steals only his friend’s wife, it is as nothing. All brilliant crimes which involve great or likeable qualities—especially those that are rewarded by success—we forgive, even if we do not make virtues of them; while the brilliant qualities which surround the culprit blacken him in the eyes of true justice, whose greatest crime is the abuse of his gifts.
Every man has certain duties to fulfill, and the extent of his duties is relative to his civil position and to the extent of his means. It is far from the case that the same action performed by two given men is equally criminal. So as not to leave our object, an act which was only a mistake or folly on the part of an obscure man, suddenly clothed with unlimited power, could be a crime on the part of a bishop, a duke, or a peer.
Finally, there actions that are excusable, even commendable according to human views, and which are at bottom infinitely criminal. If we are told, for example: I embraced the French Revolution in good faith, from a pure love of liberty and country; I believed in my soul and conscience that it would bring about the reform of abuses and the public good; we have nothing to answer. But the eye of Him for Whom all hearts are transparent sees inner guilt; it discovers in a ridiculous misunderstanding, in a little crumpling of pride, in a base or criminal passion, the prime mover of those resolutions which one would like to hold up as exemplary in men’s eyes; and for Him the lie of hypocrisy grafted on to treason is a further crime. But let us speak of the nation in general.
One of the greatest crimes that can be committed is undoubtedly the attack on sovereignty, no crime bringing more terrible consequences. If sovereignty resides in one head, and that head falls victim to attack, the crime augments the atrocity. But if this sovereign has not deserved his fate by committing no crime, if his very virtues have armed the hand of the guilty against him, the crime is unspeakable. In these features we recognize the death of Louis XVI; but what is important to note—never did such a great crime have more accomplices. The death of Charles I had far fewer, and yet one could reproach him, unlike Louis XVI. However, he was given proof of the most tender and courageous concern; the executioner himself, who only obeyed orders, dared not make himself known. In France, Louis XVI marched to his death in the midst of 60,000 armed men, who had not so much as a single shot for Santerre:2 not a voice was raised for the unfortunate monarch, and the provinces were as silent as the capital. We would have been exposed, they said. Frenchmen! if you find this a good reason, speak not so highly of your courage, or admit that you use it very badly.
The indifference of the army was no less remarkable. It served Louis XVI’s executioners much better than it had served him, for it had betrayed him. One does not see from it the slightest testimony of discontent. In fine, never has a greater crime belonged (in truth, with a multitude of gradations) to a greater number of guilty parties.
An important observation still needs to be made; that every attack committed against sovereignty, in the name of the nation, is always more or less a national crime; for it is always more or less the fault of the nation if any number of radicals put themselves in a position to commit the crime in its name. Thus, no doubt not all Frenchmen willed the death of Louis XVI; but the immense majority of the people willed, for more than two years, all the follies, all the injustices, all the offenses which brought about the disaster of January 21st.
Now, all national crimes against sovereignty are punished without delay and in a manner terrible; this is a law that has never suffered exception. A few days after the execution of Louis XVI, someone wrote in the Mercure universel: “Perhaps it did not have to come to this; but since our legislators have taken responsibility for the affair, let us rally around them: extinguish all hatreds, and put the question to rest.” Very well: it might have been unnecessary to assassinate the King, but since the deed is done, let us speak of it no more, and let us all be good friends. O madness! Shakespeare knew a little better when he said:
The single and peculiar life is bound,
With all the strength and armour of the mind,
To keep itself from noyance; but much more
That spirit upon whose weal depend and rest
The lives of many. The cease of majesty
Dies not alone; but, like a gulf, doth draw
What’s near it with it.3
Every drop of Louis XVI’s blood will cost France torrents; perhaps four million Frenchmen shall pay, with their heads, for the great national crime of an antireligious and antisocial insurrection, crowned by a regicide.
Where are the first national guards, the first soldiers, the first generals who swore an oath to the nation? Where are the leaders, the idols of this first guilty assembly, for whom the epithet of constituent shall be an eternal epigram? where is Mirabeau? where is Bailly with his beautiful day? where is Thouret who invented the term to expropriate? where is Osselin, proponent of the first law proscribing émigrés? The active instruments of the revolution, who perished by a violent death,4 could be named by the thousands.
Here again we can admire order in disorder; for it is evident, however little we think about it, that the great culprits of the Revolution could be felled only by the blows of their accomplices. If force alone had produced what is called the counter-revolution, and put the King back on the throne, there would have been no means of doing justice. The greatest misfortune that could happen to a sensitive man would be to have to judge the murderer of his father, his relative, his friend, or merely the usurper of his property. Now, this is precisely what would have happened in the case of a counter-revolution, as the term is understood; for the superior judges, by the very nature of things, would have almost all belonged to the injured class; and justice, even if it only punished, would have had an air of vengeance. Moreover, legitimate authority always retains a certain moderation in the punishment of crimes involving a multitude of accomplices. When it sends five or six culprits to their death for the same crime, it is a massacre: if it exceeds certain limits, it becomes odious. In fine, great crimes unfortunately require great torments; and in this way it is easy to exceed the limits when it comes to crimes of lèse-majesté, and flattery becomes the executioner. Humanity has not yet forgiven ancient French legislation for the dreadful torment of Damiens.5 What would the French magistrates have done with three or four hundred Damienses, and all the monsters that covered France? Would the sacred sword of justice have fallen as relentlessly as Robespierre’s guillotine? Would all the executioners and artillery horses in the kingdom have been summoned at once to Paris to quarter men? Would lead and pitch have been melted in large boilers to baste limbs torn by red-hot tongs? Moreover, how would different crimes be characterized? how would tortures be proportioned? and especially, how would punishments be levied without laws? One would have chosen, it might be said, some great culprits, and all the rest would have obtained pardon. This is precisely what Providence did not want. As she can do whatever she wants, she ignores those pardons produced by the inability to punish. It was necessary that the great purification be accomplished, and that eyes should be opened; it was necessary that the metal of France, purged of its sour and impure dross, should devolve cleaner and more malleable upon the hands of a future King. No doubt, Providence does not need to punish contemporaneously to justify its ways; but in our age it comes within our grasp and punishes like a human tribunal.
There have been nations literally sentenced to death as guilty individuals, and we know why.6 If it entered into God’s designs to reveal His plans for the French Revolution, we would read the chastisement of the French like the decree of a parliament. But what more would we know? Is this chastisement not visible? Have not we seen France dishonoured by more than a hundred thousand murders? the whole soil of this beautiful kingdom covered with scaffolds? and this unfortunate land watered with the blood of its children by judicial massacres, while inhuman tyrants squandered it abroad for the support of a cruel war waged for their own interest? Never has the most bloodthirsty despot sported with men’s lives with so much insolence, and never has a passive people presented itself at the slaughterhouse with more complacency. Sword and fire, frost and famine, privations, suffering of all kinds, no torment disgusts it: all who are assigned must accomplish their destiny: no disobedience shall be seen until the judgment is accomplished.
And yet in this war, so cruel, so disastrous, what interesting perspectives! and how one passes, by turns, from grief to admiration! Let us transport ourselves to the most terrible epoch of the revolution; let us suppose that, under the government of the infernal committee,7 the army, in a sudden metamorphosis, all at once becomes royalist: let us suppose that it rallies to its side the primary assemblies, and that it freely names the most enlightened and esteemed men to trace for it the road to take in this difficult situation: suppose, finally, that one of those representatives of the army rises and says:
“Brave and loyal soldiers, there are circumstances in which all human wisdom is reduced to choosing between different evils. It is hard, no doubt, to fight for the Committee of Public Safety; but there is something more fatal still—to turn our arms against it. The moment the army interferes in politics, the state is dissolved; and the enemies of France, taking advantage of this moment of disorder, will penetrate and divide it. It is not for this moment that we must act, but for future times: above all, it is about maintaining the integrity of France, and this we can only do by fighting for the government, whatever it may be; for in this way France, in spite of her internal schisms, will preserve her military power and external influence. To drive the point home, it is not for the government that we are fighting, but for France and for the future King, who shall be indebted to us for an empire greater, perhaps, than that which the Revolution produced. It is, therefore, a duty for us to overcome the repugnance that makes us sway. Our contemporaries may slander our conduct, but posterity shall do it justice.”
This man would have spoken as a great philosopher. Indeed! the army has carried out this fanciful hypothesis without knowing what it was doing; and terror on one side, immorality and extravagance on the other, have done precisely what a consummate and almost prophetic wisdom would have dictated to the army.
On clear reflection, we see that once the revolutionary movement was established, France and the monarchy could only be saved by Jacobinism.
The King has never had an ally; and it is a fact evident enough that there is no imprudence in stating it, that the coalition8 did not wish France to maintain her integrity. But how to resist the coalition? By what supernatural means could the European conspiracy be broken? The infernal genius of Robespierre alone could work this miracle. The revolutionary government hardened the soul of the French by steeping it in blood; it incensed the soldiers’ spirit and doubled their power by a ferocious despair and a contempt for life, which drew on rage. The horror of the gallows, pushing the citizen to the frontiers, bolstered military strength in the same measure as it destroyed even the least internal resistance. All lives, all wealth, all power was in the hands of the revolutionary authority; and this monster of power, drunk on blood and success, a frightful phenomenon which had never before been seen, and which no doubt never will be again, was at once a terrible chastisement for the French, and the only means to save France.
What were the royalists asking for when they demanded a counter-revolution such as they imagined it, that is to say, one accomplished abruptly and by force? They were asking for the conquest of France; they therefore demanded its division, the destruction of its influence, and the abasement of its King, that is to say, perhaps three centuries’ worth of massacres, the inevitable result of such a rupture of equilibrium. But our descendants, who will trouble themselves very little over our sufferings, and who will dance on our graves, will laugh at our present ignorance; they will easily console themselves for the excesses we have seen, and which will have preserved the integrity of the most beautiful kingdom after that of Heaven.9
All the monsters the Revolution has hatched have apparently worked only for royalty. Through them, the splendour of victory has won the world’s admiration and surrounded the name of France with a glory which the Revolution’s crimes have not entirely debased; through them, the King shall return to the throne with all his brilliance and power—perhaps with even greater power. And who knows if, instead of miserably sacrificing some of his provinces to gain the right to reign over others, he may not be restored with the pride of power which gives what it can rightly withhold? We have certainly seen more improbable things happen.
This same idea, that everything is being done for the benefit of the French monarchy, persuades me that any royalist revolution is impossible before peace; for the restoration of royalty would suddenly relax all the machinery of the state. The black magic operating at this moment would vanish like a mist before the sun. Kindness, clemency, justice, all the sweet and peaceful virtues, would suddenly reappear, and would bring with them a certain general mildness in character, a certain cheerfulness entirely opposed to the sombre rigor of revolutionary authority. No more requisitions, no more tolerated theft, no more violence. Would generals, preceded by the white flag, call the inhabitants of the invaded countries revolutionary for defending themselves legitimately? and enjoin them not to move on pain of being shot as rebels? These horrors, very useful to the future King, could not, however, be used by him; he would have only humane means at his disposal. He would be on a par with his enemies; and what would happen in that moment of suspension which necessarily accompanies the transition from one government to another? I do not know. I am well aware that the great conquests of the French seem to protect the integrity of the kingdom (I think I even touch here on the reason for these conquests). However, it seems always more advantageous to France and the monarchy that peace, and a glorious peace for the French, be made by the Republic, and that at the moment when the King should return to his throne, a profound peace should remove him from any sort of danger.
On the other hand, it is evident that an abrupt revolution, far from curing the people, would have confirmed their errors; that it would never have forgiven the power that snatched away their fantasies. As it was the people, properly speaking, or the multitude, that the radicals needed to overturn France, it is clear that in general the people had to be spared, and that the great burdens had to fall first on the upper class. It was, therefore, necessary that the usurping power should long weigh upon the people in order to disgust them. The people had only seen the Revolution; it was necessary for them to feel it, that they should, so to speak, savour the bitter consequences. Perhaps, as I write, they have not yet had enough.
The reaction, moreover, must be equal to the action—do not hurry, impatient men, thinking that the very duration of your ills announces to you a counter-revolution of which you have no idea. Calm your resentments, and above all, neither complain of kings, nor ask for miracles other than those you see. What! you claim that foreign powers fight for philosophical reasons in order to restore the throne of France, and with no hope of indemnity? But then, you wish men not to be men: you ask for the impossible. You would consent, you may say, to the dismemberment of France to restore order; but do you know what order? This is what we will see in ten years; perhaps sooner, perhaps later. Moreover, from whom do you gain the right to stipulate for the King, for the French monarchy, and for your posterity? When blind radicals decree the indivisibility of the Republic, see in this only Providence who decrees that of the kingdom.
Let us now take a look at the unheard-of persecution aroused against the national religion and its ministers; it is one of the most interesting facets of the revolution.
It cannot be denied that the priesthood in France was in need of regeneration; and although I am very far from adopting the vulgar declamations against the clergy, nonetheless it seems to me incontestable that wealth, luxury, and the general inclination of spirits towards laxity had caused this great body to decline; that one could often find under the surplice a knight instead of an apostle; and that finally, in the time immediately before the Revolution, the clergy had slipped, nearly as much as the army, from the place it had occupied in public opinion.
The first blow to the church was the nationalization of its properties; the second was the constitutional oath;10 and these two tyrannical measures began the regeneration. The oath sifted the priests, if so it can be said. All who swore it, with a few exceptions which we can ignore, have been led by degrees into the abyss of crime and disgrace: there is not but one view on these apostates.
The faithful priests, recommended to this same opinion by their initial act of firmness, became even more illustrious by the courage with which they managed to confront suffering and even death in defence of their faith. The massacre of the Carmelites is comparable in beauty to anything of this sort in ecclesiastical history.
The tyranny that drove them out of their homeland in the thousands, against all justice and decency, was, without doubt, as revolting as can be imagined; but on this point, as on all others, the crimes of the French tyrants became the instruments of Providence. It was probably necessary that the French priests should be exhibited to foreign nations; they lived among Protestant nations, and this rapprochement has greatly diminished hatreds and prejudices. The considerable emigration to England of the clergy, particularly of the French bishops, seems to me an especially remarkable development. Surely, we will have spoken words of peace! Surely, we will have formed projects for rapprochement during this extraordinary meeting! Even if only common desires were expressed, this would be a great deal. If ever Christians should be reconciled, as everyone invites them to be, it seems that the initiative must come from the Church of England. Presbyterianism was a French work, and therefore an exaggerated work. We are too far removed from the followers of this overly insubstantial religion; there is no common language between us. But the Anglican church, which touches us with one hand, touches with the other those whom we cannot approach; and although, from a certain point of view, it is exposed to attack from the two parties, and presents the somewhat ridiculous spectacle of a rebel who preaches obedience, yet it is very valuable under other aspects, and may be considered as one of those chemical intermediaries capable of bringing together elements irreconcilable by nature.
The property of the clergy being dissipated, no contemptible motive can provide it with new members for long; so that all circumstances combine to restore this body. There is reason to believe, moreover, that the contemplation of the work with which it seems charged will give it that degree of exaltation which elevates man above himself and enables him to produce great things.
Add to these circumstances the ferment of ideas in certain parts of Europe, the exalted ideas of a few remarkable men, and that kind of anxiety which affects religious natures, especially in Protestant countries, and is pushing them along extraordinary paths.
At the same time, see the storm thundering over Italy; Rome menaced at the same time as Geneva by the power which does not want any worship,11 and the national supremacy of religion abolished in Holland by a decree of the national convention.12 If Providence erases, no doubt it is to write.
I observe, moreover, that when great beliefs have been established in the world, they have been favoured by great conquests, by the formation of great sovereignties: the reason for this is apparent.
Finally, what, in our time, must become of those extraordinary combinations which have deceived all human prudence? In truth, one would be tempted to believe that the political revolution is only a secondary object of the grand plan which unfolds before us with a terrible majesty.
I began by talking about the magistracy that France exercises over the rest of Europe. Providence, which always fits means to ends, and which gives to nations, as to individuals, the organs necessary for the accomplishment of their destiny, has given the French nation precisely two instruments, and, so to speak, two arms, with which she shakes the world—her language and the spirit of proselytism which forms the essence of her character; so that she always has both the need and the power to influence men.
The power—I almost said the monarchy—of the French language is visible: one can, at most, only pretend to doubt it. As for the spirit of proselytism, it is as obvious as the sun; from the fashion designer to the philosopher, it is the salient trait of the national character.
This proselytism commonly comes in for ridicule, and really it often deserves it, especially in the forms it takes; at bottom though, it is an office.
Now, it is an eternal law of the moral world that every office entails a duty. The Gallican church was a cornerstone of the Catholic, or, to put it better, the Christian system; for, in truth, there is only one system. Although they perhaps doubt as much, the churches that are enemies of the universal Church exist only by virtue of it, like those parasitic plants, those sterile mistletoes which live only from the substance of the tree which supports them, and which they impoverish.
Because the action and reaction between opposing powers is always equal, the greatest efforts of the goddess Reason against Christianity were made in France: the enemy attacked the citadel.
The clergy of France must remain vigilant; it has a thousand reasons to believe that it is called to a great mission; and the same arguments which allow it to see why it has suffered also allow it to believe that it is destined for a crucial task.
In a word, if there is no moral revolution in Europe; if the religious spirit is not reinforced in this part of the world, the social bond will be dissolved. We cannot prophesy anything, and we must expect everything. But if there is to be a change for the better on this point, either there is no more need of analogy, induction, or the art of conjecture—or it is France who is called upon to produce the change.
This is, above all, what makes me think that the French Revolution is a great epoch, and that its consequences shall be felt in a variety of forms far beyond the time of its explosion and the limits of its birthplace.
Considered in its political implications, this opinion is confirmed. How many European powers have deceived themselves over France! How they have meditated on vain things! O you who think yourselves independent because you have no judges on earth! Never say: It suits me; discite justitiam moniti [“know justice—you have been warned”]!13 What hand, at once severe and paternal, crushed France with all imaginable scourges, and sustained the empire by supernatural means in turning all the efforts of her enemies against themselves? Let no one speak to us of assignats, of the force of numbers, etc., for it is precisely the possibility of assignats and the force of numbers that is beyond nature. Moreover, it is by neither paper money nor the advantage of numbers that the winds conduct French ships and repulse those of their enemies; that winter makes for them ice bridges at the moment when they need them; that the sovereigns who hamper them die at the right moment; that they invade Italy without cannons, and that phalanges, reputed to be the bravest of all armies, throw down their arms and pass under the yoke in the face of equal numbers.
Read the fine reflections of M. Dumas on the present war; you shall see perfectly why, but not at all how it took on the character we see. We must always go back to the Committee of Public Safety, which was a miracle, and whose spirit is still winning battles.
In fine, the punishment of the French breaks all the ordinary rules, as does the protection afforded to France: but these two miracles together multiply one another, and present one of the most astonishing spectacles that the human eye has ever seen.
As events unfold, we shall see further reasons and more wondrous reports. Moreover, I only see a part of those which a sharper vision could have discovered at this moment.
The horrible shedding of human blood occasioned by this great upheaval is a terrible means; however, it is a means as much as a punishment, and it can give rise to interesting reflections.
1 [Racine, Iphigenia, 2, lines 1611–12. Maistre’s “Alors, de vos erreurs voyant les tristes fruits, / Reconnoissez les coups que vous avez conduits” is a slight misquote; the original has “Alors, de vos respects voyant les tristes fruits, / Reconnaissez les coups, que vous aurez conduits.”]
2 [The jailer of Louis XVI who escorted him to the guillotine on January 21, 1793.]
3 Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 8.
4 [All these radicals, apart from Mirabeau, were executed in the ensuing Reign of Terror.]
5 Avertere omnes a tanta foeditate spectaculi oculos. Primum ultimumque illud supplicium apud Romanos exempli parum memoris legum humanarum fuit. [“All averted their eyes from such a terrible spectacle. That was the first and final punishment used among the Romans which was so unmindful of the laws of humanity.”] Livy I, 28, de suppl. Mettii.
6 Leviticus XVIII, 21 et seq. XX, 23. Deuteronomy XVIII, 9 et seq. I Kings XV, 24. IV Kings XVII, 7 et seq. and XXI, 2. Herodotus book II §46, and Larcher’s note on this section.
7 [The Committee of Public Safety, the de facto executive government during the Reign of Terror, which exercised effective dictatorial control over the military, judiciary, and legislature.]
8 [The War of the First Coalition—European powers allied against France, comprising Spain, Holland, Austria, Prussia, England, and Sardinia—resulted in the formation of the Committee of Public Safety.]
9 Grotius: De Jure Belli ac Pacis, Epistle ad Ludovicum XIII.
10 [On November 27, 1790, the National Assembly voted to require the clergy to swear an oath of loyalty to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. In this constitution was a clause declaring that the nation of France had ultimate authority over domestic religious matters, a stance later rejected by Pope Pius VI on February 23, 1791. The refusal to take this oath was seen as a challenge to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, and by extension, the National Assembly which had established it.]
11 [Referring to the 1796–1797 Napoleonic campaign on the Italian peninsula.
12 [On August 5, 1796, an edict was declared by the National Assembly of the Batavian Republic to put an end to the privileged position of the Reformed Church: “A privileged or ruling church will no longer be tolerated in the Netherlands.”]
13 Vergil, Aeneid, book 6, line 620.