Paris, September 1821;
Revised in December 1846
MY POLITICAL education began during several different visits to Brittany in 1787 and 1788. The Estates of the province furnished a model of the Estates-General: the provincial troubles that broke out in the Estates of Brittany and Dauphiné were harbingers of the national troubles to come.
The transformations that had been developing for two centuries were coming to term. France had gone from a feudal monarchy to a monarchy of the Estates-General, from a monarchy of the Estates-General to a parliamentary monarchy, from a parliamentary monarchy to an absolute monarchy, now tending, through the struggle between the magistracy and the royal power, toward representative monarchy.
The Maupeou Parliament, the establishment of provincial assemblies in which individuals could vote, the first and second Assemblies of Notables, the Plenary Court, the formation of large bailiwicks, the civil reintegration of Protestants, the partial abolition of torture and forced labor, and the equal division of taxation: all these things were successive proofs of the revolution in progress. But then we could not see these facts together: each event seemed to be an isolated accident. In all historical periods, there is a presiding spirit. Seeing only one point, it is impossible for us to perceive the rays converging from all the other points on a common center; we cannot trace back the hidden agent that gives life and movement to the whole, as water or fire gives life to machines. That is why, at the start of revolutions, so many think it should suffice to break merely one wheel or another to keep the torrent from rushing forth or the steam from exploding.
The eighteenth century, a century of intellectual rather than material action, would not have succeeded in changing the laws so rapidly had it not stumbled on a suitable vehicle: the parliaments, and most notably the parliament of Paris, became the instruments of a philosophical system. Every opinion dies powerless or mad if it lacks an assembly to lend it strength and willpower, to give it hands and a tongue. It is and will always be through bodies, legal or illegal, that revolutions arise and continue to arise.
The parliaments had their own reasons for vengeance. Absolute monarchy had robbed them of the authority that they had usurped from the Estates-General. Enforced registrations, beds of justice, and sentences of exile increased the magistrates’ popularity and drove them to plead for liberties in which they did not sincerely believe. They called for the restoration of the Estates-General, but they didn’t dare admit that they wanted political and legislative power for themselves. In this way, they hastened the resurrection of a body whose inheritance they had reaped, a body that, on returning to life, would instantly reduce them to their own special function: the administration of justice. Men, whether they are moved by wisdom or passion, are almost always mistaken about what is in their own interest: Louis XVI restored the parliaments that forced him to summon the Estates-General; the Estates-General, transformed into the National Assembly and the Convention, destroyed both the throne and the parliaments, and condemned to death both the judges and the monarch from whom justice emanated. Louis XVI and the parliaments acted as they did because they were, without knowing it, instruments of a social revolution.
The idea of the Estates-General was already on everyone’s mind, only no one could see where it would lead. It was, for the masses, a question of how to make up a deficit that today the lowliest banker would be sure to eliminate. Such a violent remedy, applied to such a trivial evil, proved that we were being carried into uncharted political waters. In 1786, the only year for which financial accounts are well established, receipts added up to 412,924,000 livres and expenditures were 593,542,000 livres. Thus the deficit was 180,618,000 livres, reduced to 140 million by 40,618,000 livres in savings. According to this budget, the King’s household is reckoned to have cost the immense sum of 37,200,000 livres: debts owed by the Princes, the acquisition of castles, and the depredations of the Court were the cause of this excess.
Everyone wanted the Estates-General to take the form they had in 1614. Historians always cite their form at that time as if, after 1614, nobody ever heard tell of the Estates-General or called on them to assemble. Yet, in 1651, the orders of the Nobility and the Clergy, at a meeting in Paris, did call on them to assemble: there is a fat bundle of acts passed and speeches delivered in the archives. The all-powerful Paris Parliament, far from seconding the wishes of the Nobility and the Clergy, dissolved their assemblies as illegal, which they were.
And while I am on the subject, I want to take note of another serious fact, which has escaped those who have meddled and are still meddling with writing the history of France without understanding it. Men speak of the “three orders” as the essential constituents of the so-called Estates-General. Well, in fact, it often happened that bailiwicks only nominated representatives from one or two of the orders. In 1614, the bailiwick of Amboise nominated no representative of the clergy or the Third Estate; Le Puy, La Rochelle, Le Lauraguais, Calais, La Haute-Marche, and Châtellerault sent no representative of the clergy; Montdidier and Roy sent no representative of the Nobility. Nevertheless, the Estates of 1614 were called the Estates-General. The old chronicles therefore express themselves more correctly when they speak of our national assemblies as including the “three Estates,” or the “notable bourgeoisie,” or the “barons and the bishops,” as the case may be, and when they attribute to all of these assemblies, so composed, the same legislative power. In other provinces, the Third Estate, though having the right to be represented, appointed no delegates, for unremarked but quite natural reasons. The Third Estate had acquired total control of the magistracy and driven out all military men. It reigned there with absolute authority, except in a few noble parliaments, as judge, advocate, prosecutor, clerk, etc. It made both the criminal and the civil laws, and, by dint of its parliamentary usurpation, it took hold of great political power. The fortune, honor, and lives of citizens depended on the Third Estate. Everyone abided by its decrees, and every head fell beneath the broadsword of its justice. When it thus enjoyed such limitless power, what need was there for it to go looking for a paltry fraction of that power in assemblies where it could only appear on its knees?
The people, metamorphosed into monks, took refuge in cloisters and governed society by the power of religious opinion; the people, metamorphosed into tax collectors and bankers, took refuge in finance and governed society by the power of money; the people, metamorphosed into magistrates, took refuge in tribunals and governed society by the power of the law. The great kingdom of France, aristocratic in its parties and its provinces, was democratic as a whole: it acted under the direction of its king, with whom it maintained a marvelous understanding and almost always marched in step. It is this that explains the kingdom’s long existence. There is a whole new history of France to be written about this, or, rather, the history of France remains unwritten.
All the great questions mentioned above were under continual debate in 1786, 1787, and 1788. The minds of my fellow Bretons found in their natural vivacity, in the privileges of the province, the clergy, and the nobility, in the clashes between the Parliament and the Estates, plenty of inflammatory material. M. de Calonne, the intendant of Brittany for a brief moment, further intensified divisions by favoring the cause of the Third Estate. M. de Montmorin and M. de Thiard were not strong enough leaders to gain power for the Court party. The Nobility formed a coalition with the Parliament, which was also noble: now it resisted M. Necker, M. de Calonne, and the Archbishop of Sens; now it repressed the popular movement, which its own early resistance had favored. It assembled, deliberated, and protested. And the communes and municipalities assembled, deliberated, and protested in opposition. The particular business of “hearth money,” mixed up with general business, had only increased animosities. In order to understand this, one must first understand how the Duchy of Brittany was constituted.