The French revolution and Napoleon

Preface

No historian believes that history repeats itself. Yet, between different ages there are frequentlystriking analogies and resemblances. It is problems that repeat themselves, not the conditions which determine their solution. One of these problems, recurrent in European annals, is that of the maintenance of a certain balance of power among the various nations as essential to their freedom, the maintenance of a situation to which they are accustomed and which they have found tolerable, a change in which would be prejudicial or dangerous to their peace and safety. Several times in modern history this balance has been threatened and Europe has purchased immunity from servitude by freely giving its life blood that life might remain and might be worth living.

To an age like our own, caught in the grip of a world war, whose issues, however incalculable, will inevitably be profound, there is much instruction to be gained from the study of a similar crisis in the destinies of humanity a ceniv PREFACE

tury ago. The most dramatic and most impressive chapter of modern history was written by the French Revolution and by Napoleon. And between that period and our own not only are there points of interesting and suggestive comparison but there is also a distinct line of causation connecting the two.

For the convenience of those who may wish to review this memorable and instructive period I have brought together in this volume the chapters dealing with it in my Modern European History. In the opening twentieth century, as in the opening nineteenth, mankind has been driven to the ordeal by battle by the resolve to preserve the most cherished things of life. Now, as then, civilization hangs upon the arbitrament of the sword. It is not churches alone that owe their existence and their power to the blood of the martyrs. The most precious rights of nations and of individuals have not only been achieved, but have been maintained inviolate, by the unconquerable spirit of the brave.

" Great is the glory, for the strife is hard! "

C. D. H.

Contents

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Introduction : The Old Regime in Europe . i

CHAPTER

Chapter I

THE French Revolution brought with it a newconception of the state, new principles of politics and of society, a new outlook upon life, a new faith which seized the imagination of multitudes, inspiring them with intense enthusiasm, arousing boundless hopes, and precipitating a long and passionate struggle with all those who feared or hated innovation, who were satisfied with things as they were, who found their own conditions of life comfortable and did not wish to be disturbed. Soon France and Europe were divided into two camps, the reformers and the conservatives, those believing in radical changes along many lines and those who believed in preserving what was old and tried, either because they profited by it or because they felt that men were happier and more prosperous in living under conditions and with institutions to which they were accustomed than under those that might be ideally more perfect but would at any rate be strange and novel and uncertain.

In order to understand the French Revolution it is necessary to examine the conditions and institutions of France out of which it grew; in other words, the Old Regime. Only thus can we get our sense of perspective, our standard of values and of criticism. The Revolution accomplished a sweeping transformation in the life of France. Putting it in a single phrase it accomplished the transition from the feudal system of the preceding centuries to the democratic system of the modern world. The entire structure of the French state and of French society was remodeled and planted on new and far-reaching principles.

The essence of the feudal system was class divisions and acknowledged privileges for all classes above the lowest. The essence of the new system is the removal of class distinctions, the abolition of privileges, the introduction of the principle of the equality of men, wherever possible.

What strikes one most in contemplating the Old Regime is the prevalence and the oppressiveness of the privileges that various classes enjoyed. Society was simply honeycombed with them. They affected life constantly and at every point. It is not an easy society to describe in a few words, for the variations were almost endless. But, broadly speaking, and leaving details aside, French society was graded from top to bottom, and each grade differed, in legal rights, in opportunities for enjoyment and development, in power.

The system culminated in the monarch, the lofty and glittering head of the state, the embodiment of the might and the majesty of the nation. The king claimed to rule by the will of God, that is, by divine right, not at all by the consent of the people. He was responsible to no one but God. Consequently in the actual conduct of his office he was subject to no control. He was an absolute monarch. He could do as he chose. It was for the nation to obey. The will of the king and that alone was, in theory, the only thing that counted. It determined what the law should be that should govern twenty-five million Frenchmen in their daily lives. " This thing is legal because I wish it," said Louis XVI, thus stating in a single phrase the nature of the monarchy, the theory, and the practice also, if the monarch happened to be a strong man. The king made the laws, he levied the taxes, he spent them as he saw fit, he declared wars, made peace, contracted alliances according to his own inclination. There was in theory no restriction upon his power, and all his subjects lay in the hollow of his hand. He could seize their property; he could imprison them by a mere order, a lettre de cachet, without trial, and for such a period as he desired; he could control, if not their thoughts, at least the expression of them, for his censorship of the press, whether employed in the publication of books or newspapers, could muzzle them absolutely.

So commanding a figure required a broad and ample stage for the part he was to play, a rich and spacious background. Never was a being more sumptuously housed. While Paris was the capital of France, the king resided twelve miles away amid the splendors of Versailles. There he lived and moved and had his being in a palace that was the envy of every other king in Christendom, a monumental pile, with its hundreds of rooms, its chapel, theater, dining halls, salons, and endless suites of apartments for its distinguished occupants, the royal family, its hundreds of servants and its guests. This mammoth residence had been built a century before at an expense of about a hundred million dollars in terms of our money today, an imposing setting for a most brilliant and numerous court, lending itself, with its miles of corridors, of walks through endless formal gardens studded with statues, fountains, and artificial lakes, to all the pomp and pageantry of power. For the court which so dazzled Europe was composed of 18,000 people, perhaps 16,000 of whom were attached to the personal service of the king and his family, 2,000 being courtiers, the favored guests of the house, nobles who were engaged in a perpetual round of pleasures and who were also busily feathering their own nests by soliciting, of course in polished and subtle ways, the favors that streamed from a lavish throne. Luxury was everywhere the prevailing note. Well may the occupants of the palace have considered themselves, in spirit and in truth, the darlings of the gods, for earth had not anything to show more costly. The king, the queen, the royal children, the king's brothers and sisters and aunts all had their separate establishments under the spacious roof. The queen alone had 500 servants. The royal stables contained nearly 1,900 horses and more than 200 carriages, and the annual cost of this service alone was the equivalent of $4,000,000. The king's own table cost more than a million and a half. As gaiety was unconfined, so necessarily was the expenditure that kept it going, for every one in this household secured what, in the parlance of our vulgar democracy, is called a handsome " rakeoff." Thus ladies-in-waiting secured about $30,000 each by the privilege they enjoyed of selling the candles that had once been lighted but not used up. Queen Marie Antoinette had four pairs of shoes a week, which constituted a profitable business for somebody. In 1789 the total cost of all this riot of extravagance amounted to not far from $20,000,000. No wonder that men spoke of the court as the veritable nation's grave.

Not only were the King's household expenses pitched to this exalted scale, but, in addition, he gave money or appointments or pensions freely, as to the manner born, to those who gained his approbation and his favor. It has been estimated that in the fifteen years between 1774, when Louis XVI came to the throne, and 1789, when the whirlwind began, the King thus presented to favorites the equivalent of more than a hundred million dollars of our money. For those who basked in such sunshine it was unquestionably a golden age.

Such was the dazzling apex of a state edifice that was rickety in the extreme. For the government of France was ill-constructed and the times were decidedly out of joint. That government was not a miracle of design, but of the lack of it. Complicated, ill-adjusted, the various branches dimly defined or overlapping, it was thoroughly unscientific and inefficient. The king was assisted by five councils which framed the laws, issued the orders, conducted the business of the state, domestic and foreign, at the capital. Then for purposes of local government France was split up into divisions, but, unfortunately, not into a single, simple set. There were forty " governments," so called, thirty-two of which corresponded closely to the old provinces of France, the outcome of her feudal history. But those forty " governments " belied their name. They did little governing, but they furnished many lucrative offices for the higher nobility who were appointed " governors " and who resided generally in Versailles, contributing their part to the magnificent ceremonial of that showy parade ground.

The real, prosaic work was done in the thirty-six "generalities," as another set 'of divisions was called. Over each of these was an intendant who was generally of the middle or bourgeois class, accustomed to work. These intendants were appointed by the king to carry on the royal government, each in his own district. They generally did not originate much, but they carried out the orders that came from the capital and made their reports to it. Their power was practically unrestricted. Upon them depended in large measure the happiness or the misery of the provinces. Judging from the fact that most of them were very unpopular, it must be admitted that this, the real working part of the national government, did not contribute to the welfare of the people. The intendants were rather the docile tools of the misgovernment which issued from the five councils which were the five fingers of the king. As the head is, so are the members, and the officials under the intendants for the smaller local areas enjoyed the disesteem evoked by the oppressive or unjust policies of their superiors.

Speaking broadly, local self-government did not exist in France, but the local, like the national, government was directed and determined in Versailles. Were a bridge to be repaired over some little stream hundreds of miles from Paris, were a new roof required for a village church, the matter was regulated from Paris, after exasperating delay. It was the reign of the red tape in every sense of the word. The people stood like dumb, driven cattle before this monstrous system. The only danger lay in the chance that they might not always remain dumb. Here obviously was no school for popular political education — a fact which explains many of the mistakes and failures of the people when, in the Revolution, they themselves undertook to rule, the monarchy having failed egregiously to discharge its functions either efficiently or beneficently.

Let no one suppose that because France was a highly centralized monarchy, culminating in the person of the king, that therefore the French government was a real unity. Nothing could be further from the truth. To study in detail the various aspects of the royal government, its divisions and subdivisions, its standards, its agents, its methods of procedure, is to enter a lane where the mind quickly becomes hopelessly bewildered, so great was the diversity in the machinery employed, so varied were the terms in use. Uniformity was nowhere to be seen. There was unity in the person of the king, necessarily, and there only. Everywhere else disunity, diversity, variety, without rhyme or reason. It would take a volume or many volumes to make this clear — even then the reader would be driven to despair in attempting to form a true mental picture of the situation. The institutions of France were a hodge-podge — chaos erected into a system, with no loss of the chaotic, and with no system. Nowadays the same laws, the same taxes, the same weights and measures prevail throughout the length and breadth of the land. But in 1789 no such simplicity or equality prevailed. Weights and measures had different names and different values as one moved from province to province, sometimes as one moved from village to village. In some provinces taxes were, not determined, but at least distributed, by certain people of the province. In other cases this distribution was effected directly by the agents of the king, that is, by the central government. In some parts of France the civil laws, that is, the laws that regulated the relations of individuals with each other, not with the state, were of Roman origin or character. There the written law prevailed. In other sections, however, mainly in the north, one changed laws, Voltaire said, as one changed posthorses. In such sections the laws were not written but were customary, that is, feudal in origin and in spirit. There were indeed 285 different codes of customary laws in force, that is 285 different ways of regulating legally the personal relations of men with men, within the confines of France.

Again the same diversity in another sphere. Thirteen of the provinces of central France enjoyed free trade, that is, merchandise could move freely from one end of that area to the other without restriction. But the other nineteen provinces were separated from each other, just as nations are, by tariff boundaries, and when goods passed from one such province to another, they passed through custom-houses and duties were paid on them, as on goods that come from Europe to the United States.

All these diversities in laws, all these tariff boundaries, are easily explained. They were historical survivals, troublesome and irritating reminders of the Middle Ages. As the kings of France had during the ages annexed this province and then that, they had, more or less, allowed the local customs and institutions to remain undisturbed. Hence this amazing patchwork which baffles description.

One consequence of all this was the persistence in France of that feeling which in American history is known as the states-rights feeling. While all admitted that they were Frenchmen, provincial feeling was strong and frequently assertive. Men thought of themselves as Bretons, as Normans, were attached to the things that differentiated them, were inflexible or stubborn opponents of all attempts at amalgamation. Before France could be considered strongly united, fusion on a grand scale had to be accomplished. This was to be one of the memorable and durable achievements of the Revolution.

The financial condition of this extravagant and inefficient state was deplorable and dangerous. Almost half of the national income was devoted to the payment of interest on the national debt. Expenditures were always larger than receipts, with the result that there was an annual deficit which had to be met by contracting a new loan, thus enlarging the debt and the interest charges. It appeared to be the principle of state finance that expenditures should not be determined by income but income should be determined by expenditure. The debt therefore constantly increased, and to meet the chronic deficit the government had recourse to well-known methods which only aggravated the evil — the sale of offices, new loans. During twelve years of the reign of Louis XVI, from 1776 to 1788, the debt increased nearly $600,000,000. People became unwilling to loan to the state, and it was practically impossible to increase the taxes. The national finances were in a highly critical condition. Bankruptcy impended, and bankruptcy can only be avoided in two ways, either by increasing receipts or by reducing expenditures, or both. Attempts were made in the one direction and in the other, but were ineffectual.

The receipts, of course, came from the taxes, and the taxes were already very burdensome, at least for those who paid them. They were of two kinds, the direct and the indirect. The direct taxes were those on real estate, on personal property, and on income. From some of these the nobles and the clergy were entirely exempt, and they therefore fell all the more heavily upon the class that remained, the third estate. From others the nobles, though not legally exempted, were in practice largely freed, because the authorities did not assess noble property nearly as high as they did the property of commoners. Tax-assessors stood in awe of the great. Thus the royal princes, who were subject to the income tax and who ought to have paid nearly two and a half million francs, as a matter of fact paid less than two hundred thousand. Again, a marquis who ought to have paid a property tax of 2,500 francs paid 400 and a bourgeois in the same province who ought to have paid 70 in reality paid 760. Such crass favoritism, which always worked in favor of the nobles, never in favor of members of the third estate, naturally served only deeply to embitter the latter class. Those who were the wealthiest and therefore the best able to support the state were the very ones who paid the least, thus conforming to the principle that to those that have shall be given and from those that have not shall be taken away even that which they have. It has been estimated that the state took from the middle classes, and from the workingmen and peasants, half their annual earnings in the form of these direct taxes.

There was another branch of the system of taxation which was oppressive and offensive for other reasons. There were certain indirect taxes which were collected, not by state officials but by private individuals or companies, the farmers of taxes, as they were called, who paid a lump sum to the state and then themselves collected the taxes, seeking of course to extract as much as possible from the people. Not only has this system of tax-collecting always proved most hateful, both in ancient and modern times, as the tax-farmers have always, in order to make as much as possible, applied the screws with pitiless severity, thus generating a maximum of odium and hatred; but in this particular case several of the indirect taxes would have been unjust and oppressive, even if collected with leniency, a thing never heard of. There was, for instance, the salt tax, or gabelle, which came home, in stark odiousness, to every one. The trade in salt was not open to any one who might wish to engage in it, but was a monopoly of a company that bought the privilege from the state, and that company was most astoundingly favored by the law. For every person above seven years of age was required to buy at least seven pounds of salt annually whether he wished it or not. Even the utterly poor, who had not money enough to buy bread, were severely punished if they refused or neglected to buy the stated amount of salt. Moreover the tax-collectors had the right to search all houses from top to bottom to see that there was no evasion. Illicit trade in this necessary commodity was incessantly tracked down and severely punished. On the very eve of the Revolution it was officially estimated that 20,000 persons were annually imprisoned and over 500 annually condemned to death, or to service in the galleys, which was hardly preferable, for engaging in the illegal trade in salt. Moreover by an extra refinement in the art of oppression the seven pounds that all must buy could be used only for cooking or on the table. If one desired to salt down fish or meats for preservation, one must not use this particular salt for that purpose, but must buy an additional amount.

There was another equally intolerable tax, the excise on wine. The making of wine was a great national industry which had existed for centuries, but if ever there was a system calculated to depress it, it was the one in vogue in France. Wine was taxed all along the line from the producer to the consumer. Taxed at the moment of manufacture, taxed at the moment of sale by the producer, it was also taxed repeatedly in transportation, — thirty-five or forty times, for instance, between the south of France and Paris, so that the combined taxes amounted in the end to nearly as much as the cost of the original production. A trade exposed to such constant and heavy impositions could not greatly flourish.

Again the taxes both on salt and on wine were not uniform, but varied from region to region, so that the sense of unjust treatment was kept alive every day in the ordinary course of business, and so that smuggling was in many cases extremely profitable. This in turn led to savage punishments, which only augmented the universal discontent and entered like iron into the souls of men. In the system of taxation, as in the political structure, we find everywhere inequality of treatment, privileges, arbitrary and tyrannical regulations, coupled with uncertainty from year to year, for the regulations were not infrequently changed. No wonder that men, even nobles, criticised this fiscal system as shockingly unjust and scandalously oppressive.

The social organization of France, also, was far from satisfactory. On even the most cursory view many notorious abuses, many intolerable grievances, many irritating or harmful maladjustments stood forth, condemned by reason or the interest of large sections of the population. Forms outworn, and institutions from which the life had departed, but whence issued a benumbing influence, hampered development in many directions. French society was frankly based upon the principle of inequality. There were three classes or orders, the clergy, the nobility, and the third estate. Not only were the two former classes privileged, that is, placed upon a better footing than the last, but it is curious to observe how the pervasive principle of unequal rights broke up even the formal unity of each of these classes. There was inequality of classes and there was also inequality between sections of the same class. The two privileged orders were favored in many ways, such as complete or partial exemption from taxes, or the right themselves to tax — the clergy through its right to tithes, the nobility through its right to exact feudal dues. Even some of the members of the third estate enjoyed privileges denied the rest. There were classes within classes. Of the 25,000,000 of Frenchmen the clergy numbered about 130,000, the nobility 140,000, while possibly about as many bourgeois as these two combined enjoyed privileges that separated them from the mass of their class. Thus the privileged as a whole numbered less than 600,000, while the unprivileged numbered well over 24,000,000. One man in forty therefore belonged to the favored minority whose lot was differentiated from that of their fellowmen by artificial advantages and distinctions.

The clergy of the Roman Catholic Church formed the first order in the state. It was rich and powerful. It owned probably a fifth of the land of France. This land yielded a large revenue, and, in addition, the clergy exacted tithes on all the agricultural products of the realm. This was in reality a form of national taxation, with this difference from the other forms, that the proceeds went, not to the nation, but to the church. The church had still another source of income, the dues which it exacted as feudal landlord from those to whom it stood in that relation. The total income of this corporation was approximately $100,000,- 000 of our money. Out of this it was the duty of the church to maintain religious edifices and services, to support many hospitals and schools, to relieve personal distress by charity, for there was no such thing in France as organized poor relief by the state or municipality. Thus the church was a state within the state, performing several functions which in most modern societies are performed by the secular authority. This rich corporation was relieved from taxation. Although from time to tijrne it paid certain lump sums to the national treasury, these were far smaller than they would have been had the church been taxed on its property and on its income in the same proportion as were the commoners.

An income so large, had it been wisely and justly expended, might have aroused no criticism, for many of the services performed by this organization were essential to the well-being of France. But here as elsewhere in the institutions of the country we find gross favoritism and wanton extravagance, which shocked the moral sense of the nation and aroused its indignation, because they belied so completely pretensions to a peculiar sanctity on which the church based its claims to its privileged position. For the organization did not treat its own staff with any sense of fair play. Much the larger part of the income went to the higher clergy, that is, to the 134 bishops and archbishops, and to a small number of abbots, canons, and other dignitaries — in all probably not more than 5,000 or 6,000 ecclesiastics. These highly lucrative positions were monopolized by the younger sons of the nobility, who were eager to accept the salaries but not disposed to perform the duties. Many of them resided at court and lived the gay and worldly life, with scarcely anything, save some slight peculiarity of dress, to indicate their ecclesiastical character. The morals of many were scandalous and their intellectual ability was frequently mediocre. They did not consider themselves men set apart for a high and noble calling, they did not take their duties seriously — of course there were honorable exceptions, yet they were exceptions — but their aims were distinctly finite and they conducted themselves as typical men of the world, attentive to the problem of self-advancement, devoted to all the pleasures, dissipations, and intrigues of Versailles. Some held several offices at once, discharging the obligations of none, and enjoying princely revenues. The Archbishop of Strassburg had an income of $300,000 a year and held high court in a splendid palace, entertaining 200 guests at a time. Even the saucepans of his kitchens were of silver. A hundred and eighty horses were in his stables, awaiting the pleasure of the guests.

A few of the bishops received small incomes, but the average among them was over $50,000 a year. They were in the main absentees, residing, not in their dioceses, but in Versailles, where further plums were to be picked up by the lucky, and where at any rate life was gay. Some of the bishoprics had even become the hereditary possessions of certain families, passing from uncle to nephew, as in the secular sphere many offices passed from father to son.

On the other hand, the lower clergy, the thousands of parish priests, who did the real work of spiritual consolation and instruction, who labored faithfully in the vineyard, were wretchedly requited. They were sons of the third estate, while their proud and prosperous superiors were sons of the nobility, and they were treated as plebeians. With wretched incomes of a few hundred francs, they had difficulty in keeping body and soul together. No wonder they were discontented and indignant, exclaiming that their lot " made the very stones and beams of their miserable dwellings cry aloud." No wonder they were bitter against their superiors, who neglected and exploited them with equal indifference. The privileged order of the clergy is thus seen to be divided into two classes, widely dissimilar in position, in origin, and in outlook upon life. The parish priests came from the people, experienced the hardships and sufferings of the people, saw the injustice of the existing system, and sympathized with plans for its reform. The clergy was divided into two classes. The triumph of the popular cause in the Revolution was powerfully aided by the lower clergy, who threw in their lot with the third estate at critical moments and against their clerical superiors, who rallied to the support of the absolute monarchy which had been so indulgent and so lavish to them. A house divided against itself, however, cannot permanently stand.

Somewhat similar was the situation of the second order, the nobility. As in the case of the clergy, there was here also great variety of condition among the members of this order, although all were privileged. There were several subdivisions, clearly enough marked. There were two main classes, the nobility of the sword and the nobility of the robe, that is, the old military nobility of feudal origin and the new judicial nobility, which secured its rank from the judicial offices its members held. The nobility of the sword consisted of the nobles of the court and of the nobles of the provinces. The former were few in number, perhaps a thousand, but they shone with peculiar brilliancy, for they were the ones who lived in Versailles, danced attendance upon the king, vied with each other in an eager competition for appointments in the army and navy and diplomatic service, for pensions and largesses from the royal bounty. These they needed, as they lived in a luxurious splendor that taxed their incomes and overtaxed them. Residing at court, they allowed their estates to be administered by bailiffs or stewards, who exacted all that they could get from the peasantry who cultivated them. Everybody was jealous of the nobles of this class, for they were the favored few, who practically monopolized all the pleasant places in the sun.