Of the Pretended Dangers
of a Counter-Revolution
I. General Considerations.
It is an all-too-common fallacy of this age to insist on the dangers of a counter-revolution in order to establish that we must not return to the monarchy.
A great number of works intended to persuade the French to hold to the Republic are but a development of this idea. The authors of these works insist on the evils inseparable from revolutions; then, observing that the monarchy cannot be restored in France without a new revolution, they conclude that the Republic must be maintained.
This stupendous fallacy, whether derived from fear or the desire to deceive, merits careful discussion.
Words are the source of almost all errors. It has become customary to give the name counter-revolution to any movement which must kill the Revolution; and because this movement will be contrary to the other, one would have to conclude that it is its exact inverse.
But would one perhaps argue that the return from illness to health is as painful as the transition from health to illness? and that the monarchy, overthrown by fiends, must be restored by their ilk? Ah! would that those who peddle this fallacy do it justice in their heart of hearts! They know well enough that the friends of religion and the monarchy are incapable of any of the excesses with which their enemies are defiled; they know well enough that in a worst-case scenario, and taking into account all human frailties, the oppressed party has a thousand times more virtue than their oppressors! They know well enough that the first party knows not how to defend or avenge itself: often enough they are openly mocked for it.
In order to accomplish the French Revolution, it was necessary to overthrow religion, outrage morality, violate all propriety, and commit every crime: for this diabolical work it was necessary to employ so many vicious men that perhaps never before have so many vices acted in concert to do any evil whatsoever. On the contrary, to restore order, the King will summon all virtues; he will wish to do so, no doubt; but, by the very nature of things, he will be forced to do so. His most pressing interest will be to combine justice with mercy; worthy men will come of their own volition to place themselves in posts where they can be useful; and religion, lending its sceptre to politics, will give it the strength that it can draw only from this august sister.
I have no doubt that a host of men should ask to be shown the basis of these magnificent hopes; but do we, therefore, believe that the political world works haphazardly, that it is not organized, directed, and animated by the same wisdom that manifests in the physical world? The guilty hands which overthrow a state necessarily produce tears of pain; for no free agent can oppose the plans of the Creator without attracting, in the sphere of his own activity, evils proportionate to the magnitude of the crime; and this law belongs more to the goodness of the Supreme Being than to His justice.
But when man works to restore order, he associates himself with the Author of order; he is favoured by nature, that is, by the ensemble of secondary forces which are the ministers of Divinity. His action has something of the divine in it, being at once gentle and imperious; it forces nothing, and nothing resists it: in arranging, it restores health: as it acts, we see disquiet calmed, that painful agitation which is the effect and the symptom of disorder; just as, under the hand of the skilled surgeon, it is apparent by the cessation of pain that the dislocated joint has been put right.
Frenchmen, it is to the sound of infernal songs, the blasphemies of atheism, the cries of death, and the prolonged moans of slaughtered innocence; it is by the light of the fires, on the debris of throne and altar, anointed with the blood of the best kings and of an innumerable host of other victims; it is in contempt of morality and the public faith; it is in the midst of every crime that your seducers and tyrants have founded what they call your liberty.
It is in the name du Dieu très-grand et très-bon,1 following the men He loves and inspires, and under the influence of His creative power, that you will return to your old constitution, and that a king will give you the only thing you should wisely desire, liberty through the monarch.
What deplorable blindness makes you persist in struggling painfully against that power which annuls all your efforts to warn you of its presence? You are powerless only because you have dared to separate yourself from it, and even to oppose it; the moment you act in concert with it, you will participate in some way in its nature; all obstacles will be levelled before you, and you will laugh at the childish fears that disturb you today. All parts of the political machine having a natural tendency towards the place assigned to them, and this tendency, which is divine, will favour all the efforts of the King; and order being the natural element of man, you shall find the happiness that you vainly seek in disorder. The Revolution has made you suffer because it was the work of every vice, and the vices are very justly the executioners of man. For the contrary reason, the return to monarchy, far from producing the evils that you fear for the future, will put an end to those that are consuming you today; all your efforts will be positive; you will destroy only destruction.
Rid yourselves, for once, of these distressing doctrines which have dishonoured our century and lost France. You have already learned to recognize the preachers of these fatal dogmas for what they are; but the impression they have made on you has not been effaced. In all your plans for creation and restoration, you forget naught but God: they have separated you from Him: it is only by an effort of reasoning that you raise your thoughts to the inexhaustible source of all existence. You want to see only man—his actions so weak, so dependent, so circumscribed; his will so corrupt, so wavering—and the existence of a superior cause is for you only a theory. Yet it presses in on you, it surrounds you: you feel it, and the whole universe announces it to you. When it is told you that without it you shall have the power only to destroy, this is no vain theory you are sold, it is a practical truth founded on the experience of all ages, and on the knowledge of human nature. Examine history, and you will see no political creation—what am I saying! you will see no institution whatsoever, if it has any strength and duration, which does not rest on a divine idea; it matters not what its nature is, for there is no entirely false religious system. So speak to us no more of the difficulties and misfortunes that alarm you in the consequences of what you call counter-revolution. All the misfortunes you have suffered are your own doing; why should you not have been maimed by the ruins of the edifice which you have toppled over on to yourselves? Reconstruction is another order of things; you have only to return to the path that can lead you there. It is not by the path of nothingness that you will create anything.
Oh! how guilty are those deceitful or fainthearted writers who permit themselves to frighten the people with this vain scarecrow called counter-revolution! who, while agreeing that the Revolution was a terrible scourge, nevertheless maintain that it is impossible to go back. Shall we say that the evils of the Revolution have passed, and that the French have arrived at a safe harbour? The reign of Robespierre has so crushed this people, so beaten down its imagination, that it considers as endurable and almost as happy any state of affairs other than uninterrupted slaughter. During the height of the Terror, foreigners remarked that all letters from France recounting the frightful scenes of this cruel age ended with these words: At present it is tranquil; that is to say, the executioners are resting; they are recovering their strength; in the meantime, everything is fine. This feeling survived the infernal regime that produced it. The Frenchman, paralysed by terror and discouraged by foreign policy errors, has shut himself up in an egoism which allows him to see only himself and his own time and place: a hundred places in France play host to murder; no matter, for it is not he who has been pillaged or massacred; if any one of those attacks has been committed on his street, near his house, what does it matter? The moment has passed; now all is quiet: he will double his locks and think no more of it: in a word, every Frenchman is happy enough on any given day when he is not being killed.
Nevertheless, the laws are without force, and the government recognizes its impotence to execute them: the most infamous crimes multiply in all quarters: the revolutionary demon proudly raises its head, the constitution is no more than a spider’s web, and the regime permits itself horrible outrages. Marriage is no more than a legal prostitution; there is no more paternal authority, no more fear of crime, no more refuge for indigence. Hideous suicides announce to the government the despair of the unfortunates who accuse it. The people are demoralized in the most frightening manner; and the abolition of religion, together with the total absence of public education, is preparing for France a generation the very thought of which makes one shudder.
Cowardly optimists! here is the order of things you fear to see change! Throw off, throw off your wretched lethargy! Instead of showing the people the imaginary evils which a change must produce, use your talents to make them desire the sweet and health-giving upheaval which will restore the King to his throne, and order to France.
Show us, men too preoccupied, show us these terrible evils that so menace you as to disgust you with the monarchy; do you not see that your republican institutions have no roots, and that they are only placed on your soil, as opposed to their antecedents, which were planted there? It took the axe to fell these; others will yield to a gust of wind and leave no trace. It is, no doubt, altogether different to deprive a parliamentary president of his hereditary rank, which was his property, than it is to remove from his bench a temporary judge who has no rank. The Revolution has caused so much suffering because it has destroyed so much; because it has brusquely and harshly violated all propriety, prejudice, and custom; all plebeian tyranny being reckless, insulting, and ruthless in its nature, that which brought about the French Revolution had to push these characteristics to excess; the universe has never seen a baser and more absolute tyranny.
Opinion is man’s sore point: he cannot help but cry out when he is wounded here; this is what made the Revolution so painful, because it trampled underfoot all nobility of opinion. Now, when the restoration of monarchy should cause the same number of men the same real privations, there would always be an immense difference in that it would not destroy any dignity; for there is no dignity in France, for the same reason that there is no sovereignty.
But even if we considered only physical privations, the difference would be no less striking. The usurping power has immolated the innocent; the King will pardon the guilty: the one has abolished legitimate property, the other will consider whether to abolish illegitimate property. The one has taken for its motto: diruit, aedificat, mutat quadrata rotundis [“it destroys, it builds, it changes square things into round”].2 After seven years of effort, it has not yet been able to organize a primary school or a country festival: even its supporters mock its laws, its public offices, its institutions, its feasts, and even its vestments: the other, building on a foundation of truth, will not fumble about; an obscure force will preside over its actions; it will act only to restore: for all orderly action torments only evil.
Furthermore, it is a great error to imagine that the people have something to lose in the restoration of the monarchy; for the people have won in the general upheaval nothing but an idea: they are all entitled to any position, it is said; what is the significance? The significance lies in knowing what these positions are worth. These positions, over which so much fuss is made, and which are offered to the people as a great conquest, in fact count for nothing in the tribunal of public opinion. The military class itself, honourable in France above all others, has lost its lustre; it has no more nobility of opinion, and peace will lower it still further. The military are threatened with the restoration of the monarchy, and yet no one has a greater interest in its restoration than they. There is nothing so evident as the King’s necessity of maintaining them at their post; and dependence upon them will, sooner or later, change this necessity of politics into the necessity of affection, respect, and gratitude. By an extraordinary combination of circumstances, there is nothing in the military that could shock the most royalist opinion. No one has the right to despise them, since they fight only for France: there is between them and the King no barrier of prejudice capable of hindering their mutual respect; he is a Frenchman first and foremost. Let them remember James II, during the battle at La Hogue,3 applauding from the seashore the valour of those Englishmen who finished by dethroning him: could they doubt that the King was proud of their valour and saw them in his heart as the defenders of the integrity of his kingdom? Did he not publicly applaud this valour, regretting (it must be said) that it was not employed for a better cause? Did he not congratulate the brave men of Condé’s army for having conquered the hatreds that the deepest artifice had worked so long to nourish?4 The French soldiers, after their victories, have only one need: it is that legitimate sovereignty comes to legitimize their character; at present they are feared and despised. The most profound unconcern is their wage, and their fellow-citizens are the men most indifferent of all in the world to the triumphs of the army; they often go so far as to hate those victories which nourish the warlike temper of their masters. The restoration of the monarchy will suddenly grant to the military a high place in public opinion; talents will be on the way to eliciting a real dignity, an ever-increasing lustre which will be warrior’s due, and which they shall hand down to their children; this pure glory, this tranquil brilliance, will be worth the honourable mentions, and the ostracism of forgetfulness which has succeeded the scaffold.
If we examine the question from a more general point of view, we will find that monarchy is, without fear of contradiction, the government that gives the greatest distinction to the largest number of people. In this kind of government, sovereignty possesses enough brilliance to communicate a part of it, with the necessary gradations, to a host of agents whom it distinguishes to a greater or lesser degree. Sovereignty is not as palpable in a republic as in monarchy; it is a purely moral concept, and its greatness is incommunicable: also, in republics, public offices are nothing outside the city where the government resides; and they are nothing insofar as they are occupied by members of the government; then it is the man who honours the office, not the office that honours the man; he does not shine forth as an agent, but as a portion of the sovereign.
We can see in the provinces that obey republics that public offices (except those reserved for members of the sovereign) raise men very little in the eyes of their peers, and are of almost no significance at all in public opinion; for by its nature, a republic is the government which gives the most rights to the smallest number of men who are called the sovereign, and which takes the most away from all others who are called subjects.
The nearer a republic approaches pure democracy, the more striking this observation will be.
Recall that innumerable host of offices (even disregarding all those bought and sold) that the former government of France presented to universal ambition. The secular and regular clergy, the sword, the robe, finance, the administration, etc., doors open to all talents and all kinds of ambition! What incalculable gradations of personal distinction! Of this infinite number of places, none was, by law, placed above the aspirations of the ordinary citizen;5 there were even an enormous quantity that were valuable properties, which really made the holder a notable, and belonged exclusively to the Third Estate.
That the highest positions were more difficult for the ordinary citizen to obtain was a very reasonable thing. There is too much movement in the state, and not enough subordination, when all have a claim to everything. Order demands that, in general, offices be graduated just as the condition of the citizens, and that talents, and sometimes even simply patronage, should surmount the barriers separating the different classes. In this way, there is emulation without humiliation, and movement without destruction; the distinction attached to an office is even produced, as the word implies, only by the greater or lesser difficulty of obtaining it.
If we object that these distinctions are bad, we change the nature of the question; but I say, if your offices do not elevate those who possess them, do not boast of giving them to everyone; for you shall not give them anything. If, on the contrary, offices are and must be distinctions, I repeat what no man of good faith can deny—that monarchy is the government which, by offices alone, and independently of the nobility, distinguishes the greatest number of men from the rest of their fellow citizens.
Moreover, one must not be the dupe of that ideal equality which is equality in words only. The soldier who has the privilege of speaking to his officer in a grossly informal tone is not, by that, his equal. An aristocracy of position, which could not at first be perceived in the general upheaval, is beginning to take shape; even the nobility is again taking up its indestructible influence. The army and navy are already commanded, in part, by gentlemen, or by pupils whom the old regime had ennobled by admitting them to a noble profession. The Republic has even won its greatest successes by them. If the perhaps unfortunate delicacy of the French nobility had not sundered it from France, it would already command everywhere; and it is quite common to hear that if the nobility had been willing, they would have been given all the offices. Certainly, at the time of writing (January 4, 1797) the Republic would like to have on its ships the nobles whom it had massacred at Quiberon.6
The people, or the mass of citizens, have nothing to lose; and on the contrary, they have everything to gain from the restoration of the monarchy, which will bring back a host of real, lucrative, and even hereditary distinctions in place of the fleeting and undignified jobs that the Republic brings.
I have not insisted on the monetary compensation attached to these positions, since it is well known that the Republic pays poorly if it pays at all. It has produced only scandalous fortunes: vice alone has been enriched in its service.
I shall end this article with observations which (it seems to me) clearly prove that the danger we see in the counter-revolution lies precisely in delaying this great change.
The Bourbon family cannot be touched by the chiefs of the republic; it exists; its rights are visible, and its silence speaks louder, perhaps, than any possible manifesto.
It is an obvious truth that the French Republic, even since it has apparently softened its maxims, cannot have real allies. By its nature, it is the enemy of all governments; it tends to destroy them all; so that all have an interest in destroying it. Politics may no doubt give allies to the Republic;7 but these alliances are unnatural, or, if you like, France has allies, but the French Republic has none.
Friends and enemies will always agree to give to France a King. The success of the English Revolution in the last century is often cited; but what a difference! The monarchy was not overthrown in England. The monarch alone had disappeared to make way for another. The very blood of the Stuarts was on the throne; and it was from this that the new King acquired his right. This King of himself was a strong prince, with all the power of his House and his family connections. The government of England, moreover, posed no threat to other governments: it was a monarchy as before the Revolution: nevertheless, it would not have taken much for James II to regain his sceptre; had he only a little more good fortune or skill, it would not have escaped him; although England had a King; although religious prejudices united with political prejudices to exclude the Pretender; although the very location of this kingdom defended it against invasion; nevertheless, until the middle of this century, the danger of a second revolution weighed upon England. Everything depended, as we know, on the Battle of Culloden.8
In France, on the other hand, the government is not monarchical; it is, in fact, the enemy of all neighbouring monarchies; it is not a prince who commands; and if ever the state is attacked, there is no reason to think that the foreign relatives of the pentarchs9 would raise troops to defend them. France will therefore be in habitual danger of civil war; and this danger will have two constant causes, for it shall have constantly to fear the just rights of the Bourbons, and the clever policy of the other powers, which might try to profit from circumstances. While the French throne is occupied by the legitimate sovereign, no prince in the world could think of seizing it; but while it is vacant, every royal ambition may covet and clash with it. Moreover, power is within anyone’s grasp since it is face down in the dirt. An orderly government excludes an infinity of plots; but under the dominion of a false sovereignty, there are nothing but chimerical plots; all passions are unleashed, and all hopes are permitted. The cowards who rebuff the King for fear of civil war are preparing the very fuel for it. It is because they foolishly desire repose and the constitution that they will have neither repose nor the constitution. There is no perfect security for France in her current state. Only the King, and the legitimate King, in raising from his throne the sceptre of Charlemagne, can extinguish or disarm all hatreds, foil all sinister plots, order ambitions by ordering men, calm agitated minds, and suddenly raise that magical enclosure around power which is its real guardian.
There is still a thought which must constantly be kept before the eyes of those Frenchmen who are part of the establishment, and who, in their position, can influence the restoration of the monarchy. The most esteemed of these men must not forget that, sooner or later, they will be carried away by the force of circumstances; that time flies, and that hope of glory escapes them. That which they enjoy is a comparative glory: they have stopped the massacres; they have tried to dry the nation’s tears: they shine because they have succeeded the greatest villains ever to defile the globe; but when a hundred causes together have raised the throne, amnesty, in the full sense of the term,10 will be theirs; and their names, forever obscure, will remain enshrouded in oblivion. Let them never lose sight of the immortal halo that must surround the names of the monarchy’s restorers. Each insurrection of the people against the nobles only ever results in the creation of new nobles; we see already how these new races will be formed, whose circumstances shall hasten their glory; and who, from the cradle, will be able to claim everything.
II. Of National Property.
The French are frightened of the restitution of national property; the King is accused of having not dared, in his declaration, to broach this delicate subject. One could say to a very large part of the nation: what does it matter to you? and perhaps this would not be such a bad response. But, so as not to appear to evade difficulties, it is better to observe that, with regard to national property, the visible interest of France in general, and even the well-understood interest of the buyers of these properties in particular, accords with the restoration of the monarchy. The brigandage exercised over these properties strikes even the most insensitive conscience. No one believes in the legitimacy of these acquisitions; and even he who speaks the most eloquently in favour of the present legislation hastens to sell to secure his profit. We dare not fully enjoy them; and the cooler opinions on them become, the less we dare spend on these funds. The buildings will languish, and no one will dare build new ones for a long time: growth will be weak; French capital will wither away considerably. There is much of this trouble already, and those who have reflected on the abuses of decrees must understand that this is like a decree heaped upon perhaps a third of the most powerful kingdom in Europe.
In the heart of the legislative body, we have often seen striking depictions of the deplorable state of this property. Trouble will never cease until the public conscience no longer doubts the soundness of these acquisitions; but who can foresee when?
To consider only the possessors, the first danger for them comes from the government. Do not be deceived, it matters not which government: the most unjust one imaginable will ask no more than to fill its coffers while making itself the fewest possible enemies. Yet we know under what conditions the buyers have acquired their properties: we know what nefarious manoeuvring, what scandalous premiums they have involved. The original and continued corruption of these acquisitions is apparent to all eyes; so the French government cannot but know that in pressuring these buyers it will have public opinion on its side, and that it will seem unjust only to the buyers; besides, in popular governments, even legitimate ones, injustice has no shame; we can judge what will happen in France, where the government, as variable as its staff and lacking identity, never thinks that it is breaking its word in reversing what it has done.
It will, therefore, plunder national property as soon as possible. Strong in its conscience, and (let us not forget) in the jealousy of all paupers, it will torment the possessors, either by new sales modified in some way, or by general calls for price supplements, or by extraordinary taxes; in a word, the possessors will never have a moment’s peace.
But everything is stable under a stable government; so that it is even important to the buyers of national property that the monarchy be restored, so they can know where they stand. It is quite misplaced to reproach the King for not having spoken clearly on this point in his declaration: he could not have done so without extreme imprudence. When the time comes, a legal solution on this point may not be the best approach.
But here we must recall what I said in the preceding chapter; the conveniences of this or that class of individuals will not stop the counter-revolution. All I pretend to prove is that it is in the interest of that small number of men who can influence this great event not to wait for the accumulated abuses of anarchy to make it inevitable and bring it to fruition suddenly; for the more the King is needed, the crueller the fate of all those who have gained from the Revolution.
III. Of Vengeance.
Another scarecrow used to make the French fear the return of their King is the vengeance which must accompany this return.
This objection, like the others, is above all made by intelligent men who do not believe in it; nevertheless, it is well to discuss it for the benefit of those who honestly believe it to be well-founded.
Many royalist writers have rejected, as an insult, this desire for vengeance which is supposed on their part; one alone will speak for all: I quote him for my own pleasure and for that of my readers. I shall not be accused of choosing from among cold and indifferent royalists.
Under the dominion of an illegitimate power, the most horrible vengeance is to be feared; for who would have the right to oppose it? The victim can only call to his aid the authority of laws that do not exist, and a government which is only the product of crime and usurpation.
It is quite otherwise with a government resting on sacred, ancient, and legitimate bases; it has the right to stifle the most just vengeance, and at a moment’s notice, to punish with the sword of justice anyone who delivers himself more to the feeling of nature than to those of his duties.
A legitimate government alone has the right to proclaim an amnesty and the means to enforce it.
Then it is shown that the most perfect, the purest of royalists, the one whose parents and properties have been the most grievously outraged, must be punished with death under a legitimate government if he should dare to avenge his own injuries when the King ordered them to be forgiven.
It is, therefore, under a government based on our laws that amnesty can be certainly granted and severely observed.
Ah! no doubt it would be easy to dispute to what extent the right of the King may extend amnesty. The exceptions prescribed by the first of his duties are quite evident. All who were stained with the blood of Louis XVI have no hope of pardon but from God; but who would then dare to trace with a sure hand the limits of the King’s amnesty and clemency? My heart and my pen equally dare not. If anyone dares to write on such a subject, it will doubtless be that rare and perhaps unique man, if he exists, who himself has never failed of his duty during this horrible revolution; and whose heart, as pure as his conduct, has never needed pardon.11
Reason and sentiment could not be expressed with more nobility. We should pity the man who does not recognize in this piece the accent of conviction.
Ten months after the date of this writing, the King pronounced, in his declaration, this phrase so well-known and so worthy of being known: who would dare to avenge himself when the King grants pardon?
He excluded from amnesty only those who voted the death of Louis XVI, the co-operators, the direct and immediate instruments of his execution, and the members of the revolutionary tribunal who sent to the scaffold the Queen and Madame Elizabeth. Seeking even to restrict the anathema to the first, as far as conscience and honour permitted, he did not place into the rank of parricides those about whom it might be believed that they associated with the assassins of Louis XVI only with the intention of saving him.
Even with regard to those monsters whom posterity will name only with horror, the King has contented himself with saying, with as much restraint as justice, that the whole of France calls down upon their heads the sword of justice.
By this phrase, he is not deprived of the right to grant pardon to individuals: it is for the guilty to see what they can place in the balance to make amends for their crime. Monck used Ingoldsby to stop Lambert. We can do even better than Ingoldsby.12
I will observe, moreover, without claiming to minimize the horror which is justly due the murderers of Louis XVI, that in the eyes of divine justice, not all are equally guilty. In the realm of morality as well as of physics, the strength of fermentation is determined by the fermenting mass. The seventy judges of Charles I were far more masters of themselves than the judges of Louis XVI. There were, certainly, some very wilful culprits among them, who cannot be detested enough; but these great culprits had the craft to excite such terror; they had made such an impression on less vigorous minds that I doubt not that several deputies were deprived of a part of their free will. It is difficult to form a clear idea of the indefinable and supernatural delirium which seized the assembly at the time of Louis XVI’s judgment. I am persuaded that many of the guilty, remembering this disastrous period, think of it like a bad dream; that they are tempted to doubt what they have done, and that they are less able to explain it to themselves than we are to them.
Those guilty men, angry and surprised to be so, should try to make their peace.
Moreover, this concerns them alone; for the nation would be base indeed if it regarded the punishment of such men as an inconvenience of the counter-revolution; but for the faint of heart, it may be observed that Providence has already begun the punishment of the guilty: more than sixty regicides, among them the most guilty, have died a violent death; others will no doubt perish, or vacate Europe before France has a King; very few will fall into the hands of justice.
The French, perfectly calm about judicial revenge, must also be so about private vengeance: they have received the most solemn promises in this regard; they have the word of their King; they are not permitted to fear.
But as one must speak to all men and overcome all objections; and as one must answer even those who do not believe in honour and faith, one must prove that private vengeance is not possible.
The most powerful ruler has only two arms; he is only strong by the instruments he employs, and what public opinion presents to him. Now, although it is clear that after the supposed restoration the King will seek only to pardon, let us, to consider a worst-case scenario, make the exact opposite supposition. How would he go about it if he wished to exercise arbitrary vengeance? Would the French army as we know it be a very flexible instrument in his hands? Ignorance and bad faith are pleased to represent this future King as a Louis XIV, who, like Homer’s Jupiter, had only to nod his head to convulse France. We hardly dare prove how false this supposition is. The power of sovereignty is altogether moral; it commands in vain if this power is not with it; and it must be possessed in its fullness to be abused. The King of France who ascends the throne of his ancestors will surely have no desire to begin with abuses; and if he had, it would be in vain, because he would not be strong enough to satisfy this desire. The red bonnet, in touching the royal forehead, has made all trace of holy oil disappear: the charm is broken; prolonged profanations have destroyed the divine sway of national prejudices; and for a long time yet, while cold reason will make bodies to kneel, minds will remain upright. We pretend to fear that the new King of France will clamp down on his enemies: the poor unfortunate! can he even recompense his friends?13
The French, therefore, have two infallible guarantees against the alleged vengeance of which they are frightened, the King’s interest, and his impotence.14
The return of the émigrés furnishes the opponents of the monarchy with still another inexhaustible subject of imaginary fears; it is important to dispel this vision.
The first thing to note is that there are true propositions which are true only in one age; yet one is accustomed to repeat them long after time has rendered them false and even ridiculous. The revolutionary party might have feared the return of the émigrés shortly after ratifying the law that proscribed them; nevertheless, I do not affirm that they were right; but what does it matter? this is a purely idle question which it would be quite useless to address. The question is to know if, at this moment, the return of the émigrés is something dangerous for France.
The nobility sent two hundred eighty-four deputies to the Estates-General of fatal memory which produced all that we have seen. According to a work done on several bailiwicks, we have never found more than eighty electors for a deputy. It is not absolutely impossible that some bailiwicks had a higher number; but one must also take into account individuals who have voted in more than one bailiwick.
All things considered, we can estimate at 25,000 the number of heads of noble families who are represented in the Estates-General; and multiplying by five, a number we know is commonly attributed to each family, we have 125,000 noble heads. Let us take 130,000 to be even more charitable: let us then subtract the women; 65,000 remain. Let us subtract from this number, (1) the nobles who never left; (2) those who have returned; (3) the elderly; (4) the children; (5) the ill; (6) the priests; and (7) all those who have perished in war, by torture, or by natural causes—a number will remain which is not easy to precisely determine, but which, from every possible point of view, cannot alarm France.
A prince, worthy of his name, led to war five or six thousand men at most; this corps, which was not even composed of nobles alone, has shown admirable valour under foreign colours; but if we isolate it, it would disappear. In the end, in military terms, clearly émigrés are nothing and can do nothing.
There is one more consideration which relates more particularly to the spirit of this work, and which deserves to be developed.
In this world there is no chance, and even in a secondary sense there is no disorder, in that disorder is ordered by a sovereign hand that bends it according to a rule and forces it to contribute toward a goal.
A revolution is only a political movement that must produce a certain effect in a certain time. This movement has its laws; and in observing them attentively within a certain period of time, certain enough conclusions can be drawn for the future. Now, one of the laws of the French Revolution is that émigrés can attack it only to their own misfortune and are totally excluded from any work they undertake.
From the first chimeras of counter-revolution to the lamentable expedition of Quiberon, none of their efforts were successful—they have even mockingly turned against them. Not only are they unsuccessful, but all that they undertake is marked with such a character of impotence and deficiency that public opinion has at last become accustomed to regard them as men who persist in defending a proscribed party; which casts them into a disrepute that even their friends perceive.
And this disrepute will surprise few men who think that the principal cause of the French Revolution was the moral degradation of the nobility.
M. de Saint-Pierre has observed somewhere in his Etudes de la Nature that if we compare the countenance of French nobles with that of their ancestors, the painting and sculpture of whom has conveyed their features to us, we see evidence that these races have degenerated.
We can believe him on this point better than on polar fusions and the shape of the earth.15
In each state, even in monarchies, there is a certain number of families which may be called co-sovereigns; for in these governments, the nobility is but an extension of sovereignty. These families are the repositories of the sacred fire; it is extinguished when they cease to be chaste.
There is a question as to whether these families, once extinguished, can be perfectly replaced. We must at least not believe, if we want to speak precisely, that sovereigns can ennoble. There are new families which, so to speak, spring into the administration of the state; that draw themselves out of the mass of equals in a striking manner and arise from among the others like vigorous saplings amid a thicket. Sovereigns can sanction these natural ennoblements, but this is the limitation of their power. If they oppose too many of them, or if they allow too many on their own authority, they work for the destruction of their states. False nobility was one of the great plagues of France: other less brilliant empires are wearied and dishonoured by it while awaiting other misfortunes.
Modern philosophy, which loves to speak of chance, speaks above all of the chance of birth; this is one of its favourite texts: but there is no more chance on this point than on any other: there are noble families just as there are sovereign families. Can a man make a sovereign? At most he can serve as an instrument to dispossess a sovereign and deliver his states to another sovereign already a prince.16 Moreover, there has never been a sovereign family which can be assigned a plebeian origin. If such a phenomenon should appear, it would mark a new epoch in the world.17
Keeping proportion in view, it is the same with nobility as with sovereignty. Without going into greater detail, let us observe that if the nobility renounces the national dogmas, the state is lost.18
The part played by some nobles in the French Revolution is a thousand times, I do not say more horrible, but more terrible than anything we have seen during this revolution. There has been no more frightening, more decisive sign of the awful judgment of the French monarchy.
Perhaps we may ask what these faults have in common with the émigrés who hate them. I answer that the individuals who make up nations, families, and even political bodies, are in solidarity: this is a fact. Secondly, I reply that the causes of the émigré nobility’s suffering are quite anterior to its emigration. The difference which we perceive between these or those French nobles, is, in the eyes of God, only a difference of longitude and latitude: it is not because one is here or there, that one is what one must be; and not all who say, Lord! Lord! will enter the kingdom. Men can only judge by the exterior; but this noble at Koblenz is able to reproach himself more sternly than that noble on the left in the so-called constituent assembly. Lastly, the French nobility can blame only itself for all its misfortunes; and when it is persuaded thus, it will have taken a great step forward. The exceptions, more or less numerous, are worthy of the world’s respect; but one can only speak in general. Today the unfortunate nobility (who can suffer only an eclipse) must bow its head and resign itself. One day it must willingly embrace children whom it has not held to its bosom; meanwhile, it must no longer make exterior efforts; perhaps it would even be desirable that it should never be seen in a menacing attitude. In any case, emigration was an error, and not an injustice: the greater number believed they were obeying honour.
Numen abire jubet; prohibent discedere leges.19
[“The god bids him depart; the laws forbid him to leave.”]
God must prevail.
There are many other things to be said on this point; let us keep to the obvious. Émigrés can do nothing; we may even add that they are nothing; for every day, despite the government, their number diminishes by a continuation of that invariable law of the French Revolution, which wills that everything be done in spite of men, and against all probabilities. Long misfortunes having softened the émigrés, every day they approximate their fellow-citizens; bitterness disappears; on both sides we begin to recall our common fatherland; we offer up a hand, and even on the field of battle we recognize our brothers. The strange amalgam we have seen for some time has no visible cause; for these laws are invisible, but no less real. Thus, it is obvious that the number of émigrés is of no account, that they are of no account in force, and that soon they will be of no account in hatred.
As for the more vigorous passions of a small number of men, we can neglect them.
But there is still an important reflection that I must not pass over in silence. Some imprudent speeches uttered by young men, thoughtless or embittered by misfortune, are relied upon to frighten the French at the return of these men. To put all suppositions against me, I grant that these discourses really do announce definite intentions: do we think that those who harbour them will be able to execute them after the restoration of the monarchy? We would be badly deceived. From the very moment when the legitimate government is restored, these men would have no power but to obey. Anarchy is required for revenge; order sharply excludes it. A man who, at this moment, speaks only of punishment, will then be surrounded by circumstances that will force him to will only what the law wills; and, for his own interest, he will be a quiet citizen, and will leave vengeance to the courts. We are always dazzled by the same sophism: One party cracked down harshly while in power; therefore, the opposing party will do so when it comes to power. Nothing is more false. In the first place, this sophism supposes that there are the same vices on both sides; which there assuredly are not. Without insisting too much on the virtues of the royalists, I am sure, at least, that I have with me the world’s conscience when I simply affirm that there are fewer virtues on the side of the republicans. Besides, their prejudices alone, separated from their virtues, would assure France that, on the part of the royalists, she can suffer nothing of the same sort as she experienced from their enemies.
Experience has already furnished a prelude on this point to calm the French: on more than one occasion, they have seen that the party which had suffered everything on the part of its enemies has not known how to avenge itself when it held them in its power. A small number of retaliations, which have provoked such a great uproar, prove the same proposition; for it has been seen that only the most scandalous denial of justice could bring about these retaliations, and that no one would have taken justice into his own hands if the government could or would have done it.
What’s more, there is great evidence that the King’s most pressing interest will be to prevent revenge. In putting the evils of anarchy behind him, he will not want to bring it back; the very idea of violence will make him blanch, and this crime will be the only one he will not allow himself to pardon.
Besides, France is so very tired of convulsions and horrors, it does not want any more blood; and since public opinion is, at this moment, strong enough to suppress the party that would wish for it, one can judge of this opinion’s strength at a time when it has government endorsement. After such prolonged and terrible evils, the French will rest with delight in the arms of the monarchy. Any attack on this tranquillity would truly be a crime of lèse-nation, which the courts, perhaps, may not have time to punish.
These reasons are so convincing that no one can be mistaken: furthermore, we must not be duped by those writings in which we see a hypocritical philanthropy pass judgement on the horrors of the Revolution, and then rely on these excesses to establish the necessity of preventing a second. In fact, they condemn this Revolution only in order not to excite a universal outcry against themselves; but they love it, they love its authors and its results; and of all the crimes it has begat, they hardly even condemn those they could have done without. There is not one of these writings in which we do not find obvious proofs that the authors are inclined to the party that they shame.
Thus, the French, perennial dupes, are duped on this occasion more than ever: they are generally afraid for their safety, and they have nothing to fear; and they sacrifice their happiness to please a few scoundrels.
But if the most obvious theories cannot convince the French, and if they still cannot bring themselves to believe that Providence is the guardian of order, and that it is altogether not the same thing to act with or against it, let us at least judge what Providence shall do by what it has done; and if reasoning slips our minds, let us at least believe in history, which is experimental politics. In the last century, England has offered nearly the same spectacle that France has in our own. There the fanaticism of liberty, agitated by that of religion, penetrated souls far more deeply than it did in France, where the cult of liberty rests on nothing whatsoever. Moreover, what a difference in the character of the two nations, and in that of the actors who played a part on the two stages! Where are, I do not say the Hampdens,20 but the Cromwells of France? And yet, in spite of the burning fanaticism of the republicans, in spite of the attentive firmness of the national character, in spite of the too understandable terrors of numerous guilty parties, and especially of the army, did the restoration of the monarchy in England cause schisms similar to those begotten by a regicide revolution? Show us the atrocious vengeance of the royalists. Some regicides perished under the authority of the law; apart from that, there was neither fighting nor private revenge. The return of the King was marked only by a cry of joy which resounded throughout England; all enemies embraced each other. The King, surprised at what he saw, emotionally exclaimed: Is it not my fault if I have been rejected so long by such a good people! The illustrious Clarendon, a witness to and impartial historian of these great events, tells us that “a man could not help but wonder where those people dwelt who had done all the mischief, and kept the King from enjoying the comfort and support of such excellent subjects for so many years.”21
That is to say, the people no longer recognized the people. It could not be put any better.
But this great change, whence came it? From nothing, or, better still, from nothing visible: a year before, no one thought it possible. It is not even known whether it was brought about by a royalist; for it is an insoluble problem to know when Monck began to serve the monarchy in good faith.
Was it not, at least, the royalist forces that imposed this on the opposing party? Not at all: Monck had only six thousand men; the republicans had five or six times more: they held all the offices, and militarily possessed the whole kingdom. Nevertheless, Monck was not put in the position of having to fight a single battle; everything was done without effort and as if by magic: it will be the same in France. The return to order cannot be painful because it will be natural, and because it will be favoured by a secret force whose action is entirely creative. We will see precisely the opposite of all that we have seen. Instead of these violent commotions, these painful divisions, these perpetual and desperate oscillations—a certain stability, an indefinable repose, a universal well-being, will announce the presence of sovereignty. There will be no shocks, no violence, not even any grave punishments except those which the true nation will approve: even crime and usurpations will be treated with a measured severity, with a calm justice that belongs only to legitimate power: the King will bind the wounds of the state with a restrained and paternal hand. In short, here is that great truth by which the French cannot be too deeply permeated: the restoration of the monarchy, which one calls the counter-revolution, will not be a contrary revolution, but the contrary of revolution.
1 [The French rendering of the Latin ecclesiastical formula Deo Optimo Maximo (“to God most Good and Great”).]
2 [Horace, Epistle I, 100]
3 [During the Nine Years’ War, when the Dutch and English fleet destroyed the French ships beached at La Hogue in 1692.]
4 Letter from the King to the Prince of Condé, January 3, 1797, printed in all the newspapers.
5 The famous law which excluded the Third Estate from military service could not be enforced; it was simply ministerial clumsiness which passion has deemed a fundamental law.
6 [The disastrous battle of Quiberon saw 6,332 counter-revolutionary Chouans and émigrés captured on July 20, 1795. Of these, 430 were nobles, many of them veterans of Louis XVI’s fleet, executed by Lazare Hoche after a promise to treat them as prisoners of war.]
7 Scimus, et hanc veniam petimusque damusque vicissim;
Sed non ut placidis coeant immitia, non ut
Serpentes avibus geminentur, tigribus agni.
[“We know this, and this indulgence we seek and offer in turn;
But not so that the wild may rut with the tame, nor that
Serpents be united with birds, lambs with tigers.”
Horace, Ars Poetica, 11–13]
This is what certain cabinets ought to say to the Europe that questions them.
8 [Where the Scottish Jacobite army of pretender Charles Edward Stuart was finally defeated in 1746, and their struggle to restore the deposed Stuart dynasty came to an end.]
9 [See note 3, p. 101]
10 [“L’amnistie”, ultimately from the Greek ᾰ̓μνηστῐ́ᾱ, having the secondary meaning of “amnesty”, but the primary meaning of “forgetfulness, a passing over”.]
11 Observations sur la conduite des puissances coalisées, by the count d’Antraigues; avant-propos, pp. XXXIV et seq.
12 [Strategically outmanoeuvred by George Monck, John Lambert was deserted by his army, and after being arrested, escaped from the Tower of London in 1660 and tried to halt the Restoration. Shortly after, he was captured by the regicide Richard Ingoldsby, who received a pardon for his efforts.]
13 We are reminded of Charles II’s joke on the pleonasm of the English formula, Amnesty and Amnesia: I understand, he says; amnesty for my enemies, and oblivion for my friends.
14 Events have justified all these common-sense predictions. Since this work has been completed, the French Government has discovered and published documents concerning two conspiracies, which are to be judged in a somewhat different manner: one Jacobin, and the other royalist. In the Jacobin sheet it was written: death to all our enemies; and in the royalist: pardon to all those who shall not refuse it. To prevent the people from drawing the consequences, it was said that the parliament should annul the royal amnesty; but this stupidity exceeds the maximum; surely it will not gain any currency.
15 [In his theory of tides, Saint-Pierre claimed that the shifting altitude (“annual fusions”) of the polar ice caps could change the shape of the earth and its motion on the ecliptic.]
16 And even the way in which human power is used in these circumstances is quite apt to humiliate it. It is here, especially, that one can address to man these words of Rousseau: Show me your power, I will show you your weakness.
17 It is often said that if Richard Cromwell had had his father’s genius he would have made the protectorate hereditary in his family. Very well said!
18 An Italian scholar has made a singular remark. After observing that the nobility is a natural guardian and almost a depositary of the national religion, and that this character is more striking as one ascends towards the origin of nations and things, he adds: Talché dee esser un grand segno che vada a finire une nazione ove i nobili disprezzano la religione natia [“So it must be a great sign that a nation is at an end when the nobles despise the native religion”]. (Vico, The New Science, book II)
When the priesthood is part of the state’s political apparatus, and its highest offices are generally occupied by the high nobility, the result is the strongest and most durable of all possible constitutions. Thus sophism, which is the universal solvent, has produced its masterpiece in running roughshod over the French monarchy.
19 [Ovid, Metamorphoses, XV, 28]
20 [A dynasty of parliamentarians, with ship money tax protestor John Hampden (b.1594) the first to attain political significance. For the relevance of ship money to the English Civil War, see introduction to Filmer’s Patriarcha, Imperium Press, 2021.]
21 Hume, book X, ch. LXXII, 1660.