CHRISTIAN POWER IN THE AGE OF REVOLUTION=
From
the First French Revolution to the Treaty of Paris, 1789-1856=
Vladimir Moss<= o:p>
© Vladimir Moss, 2005
CONTENTS
Introduction..……̷= 0;…………………………= 230;……….……………...…..4<= o:p>
Part
I. Revolution and Counter-Revolution (1789-1830)
1.
The West: The Man-God
Arises..…..…….……..…………=
;...…………7
The French Revolution: (1) The
Constitutional Monarchy – Burke versus Paine – The American
Constitution and Slavery - Illuminism – The French Revolution: (2) The
Jacobin Terror – The Revolution and Religion – The French
Revolution: (3) Napoleon Bonaparte – Napoleon and Catholicism - La
Grande Nation - The Jews and the Revolution - Napoleon and the Jews =
211;
Napoleon and the Latin American Revolutions – Romanticism and Nationa=
lism
- German Nationalism – The German War of Liberation – The Ideol=
ogy
of Counter-Revolution
2.
The East: The Man-God
Defeated..……….....……………..&#=
8230;…….126
Tsar Paul I – The Annexatio=
n of
Georgia and the Edinoverie – The Murder of Tsar Paul -
The Golden Age of Masonry – Alexander, Napoleon and Speransky - 1812
– The Aftermath of Victory – The Holy Alliance - The Polish
Question - The Jewish Question - The Reaction against Masonry –
Nationalism Moves East - The Greek Revolution – The Serbian Revolution
– The Decembrist Rebellion – St. Seraphim of Sarov
Part II. Liberalism and Autocracy
(1830-1856)
3. The West: The Dual
Revolution….………….…………=
……………218
Liberty, History and Historicism - Art=
and
Revolution: (1) Byronism – Art and Revolution: (2) The July Days R=
11;
The Polish Question – Liberalism and Free Trade – The Irish Fam=
ine
– The British Empire - De Tocqueville on America – Mill on Libe=
rty
– Victorian Religion and Morality - English Self-Help – French
Socialism – German Historicism – Hegel’s Political Philos=
ophy
- The Spectre of Communism: (1) Heinrich Heine – The Spectre of
Communism: (2) Karl Marx - 1848 – Emperor Napoleon III - The World as
Will: Schopenhauer – Nature as Will: Darwin
4. The East: The Gendarme of
Europe………………..………R=
30;……..339
Introduction: Instinct and
Consciousness – Tsar Nicholas I – Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov:
The Struggle against Westernism - Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow: Church a=
nd
State – The Old Ritualists Acquire a Hierarchy – The Russian Ch=
urch
and the Anglicans - The Autocephalous Church of Greece – Leontiev on =
Two
Kinds of Nationalism – The Kollyvades Movement - Russian Hegelianism -
Russia and Europe: (1) Chaadaev vs. Pushkin – Russia and Europe: (2)
Belinsky vs. Gogol – Russia and Europe: (3) Herzen vs. Khomiakov R=
11;
Russia and Europe: (4) Kireevsky - Russia and Europe: (5) Dostoyevsky ̵=
1;
Kireevsky on Autocracy – Tiutchev on Autocracy - The Crimean War R=
11;
Hieroschemamonk Hilarion on Autocracy
INTRODUCTION
I will give him
power over the nations, and he shall rule them with a rod of iron, as when
earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I Myself have received power fro=
m My
Father; and I will give him the morning star.
Revelation 2.26-27.
This book represents a continuati=
on
of my earlier books, The Mystery of Christian Power (to 1453) and
Christian Power in the Age of Reason (1453-1789). It follows the same t=
heme
of the struggle between Christian political power and its enemies into the =
age
of revolution – that is, the age beginning with=
the
storming of the Bastille in 1789 and ending with the Crimean War of 1854-18=
56. Of course, the revolution neither
began nor ended in this period. But it may be called the revolutionary age =
par
excellence insofar as it
presented all the main ideas of the revolution in their classical French ex=
pression,
and provided the classic themes and symbolism of the later, and still great=
er
Russian revolution.
&nb=
sp;
The book is divided into two parts, with each part further subdivided
into chapters on East and West on the model of my earlier books. In the fir=
st
part, we see the first French revolution, its continuation and
internationalisation under Napoleon I, and its defeat and seeming reversal =
in
the period of the Holy Alliance. The second part continues the story of the
French revolutions of 1830 and 1848, and their offshoots in other European
countries, while outlining the development of political and economic libera=
lism
in England and America. In the East, meanwhile, we see Russia, “the
Gendarme of Europe”, both administering the decisive blow to Napoleon=
I,
and, in its suppression of the Polish and Hungarian uprisings, ensuring that
the revolution will not spread to Eastern Europe for the time being. Howeve=
r,
Russia’s defeat in the Crimean War at the hands of England, France and
Turkey marks the end of the Holy Alliance and the first international attem=
pt
to contain the revolution, which bodes badly for truly Christian statehood
– indeed, for legitimate statehood in general - in the coming age.
&nb=
sp;
As in my earlier books, I have tried to look beyond the political and
economic events to the spiritual events that are the real causes of history.
For, as Fr. Seraphim Rose said: “The real cause is the soul and God:
whatever God is doing and whatever the soul is doing. These two things
actualise the whole of history; and all the external events – what tr=
eaty
was signed, or the economic reasons for the discontent of the masses, and so
forth – are totally secondary. In fact, if you look at modern history=
, at
the whole revolutionary movement, it is obvious that it is not the economics
that is the governing factor, but various ideas which get into people’=
;s
souls about actually building paradise on earth. Once that idea gets there,
then fantastic things are done, because this is a spiritual thing. Even tho=
ugh
it is from the devil, it is on a spiritual level, that is where actual hist=
ory
is made…”[1]
&nb=
sp;
In pursuit of this, the spiritual meaning of history I owe an especi=
al
debt to Fr. Seraphim Rose, Adam Zamoyski, Lev Alexandrovich Tikhomirov,
Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow, the Russian Slavophile philosophers and
Constantine Nikolaevich Leontiev.
&nb=
sp;
Through the prayers of our Holy Fathers, Lord Jesus Christ, our God,
have mercy on us!
May 21 / June 3, 2005.
Holy Equals-to-the-Apostles
Constantine and Helena.
East House, Beech Hill, Mayford,
Woking, England.
PART I. REVOLUTION AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION
(1789-1830)
1. THE WEST: THE MAN-GOD ARISES
Lo, thy dread Empire, CHAOS! is
restor’d;
Light dies before thy uncreating word:=
Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curta=
in
fall;
And Universal Darkness buries All.
Alexander Pope, Dunciad.
The human I, wishing to depend only on
itself, not recognising and not accepting any other law besides its own will
– in a word, the human I, taking the place of God, - does not, of cou=
rse,
constitute something new among men. But such has it become when raised to t=
he
status of a political and social right, and when it strives, by virtue of t=
his
right, to rule society. This is the new phenomenon which acquired the name =
of
the French revolution in 1789.
F.I. Tiutchev, Russia and the Revol=
ution
(1848).
The
nation, this collective organism, is just as inclined to deify itself as the
individual man. The madness of pride grows in this case in the same
progression, as every passion becomes inflamed in society, being refracted =
in
thousands and millions of souls.
Metropolitan Anastasius (Gribanovsky) =
of New
York.[2]
After the Humanist-Protes=
tant
revolution of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the English revolution=
of
the seventeenth century and the Enlightenment Programme of the eighteenth
century, the French revolution of 1789 marks the fourth major turning-point=
in
Western life and thought. In some countries – England, for example, a=
nd
still more America - some of the less radical ideas of the French revolution
were already being put into effect, at least partially, well before 1789; w=
hile
in others – Russia and China, for example – they did not achieve
dominance until the twentieth century. Eventually, however, the French revo=
lutionary
ideals of “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity” and “the Rig=
hts
of Man”, combined with an essentially secularist and utilitarian atti=
tude
to religion, became the dominant ideology, not only of Europe and North
America, but of the whole world. For, as Eric Hobsbawn writes, “alone=
of
all the contemporary revolutions, the French was ecumenical. Its armies set=
out
to revolutionize the world; its ideas actually did so.”[3]
The period 1789-=
1815
can be compared, for its profound impact on the destinies of the world, only
with the period 1914-45. Both periods are dominated by a national revolution
with enormous international ramifications – the French in the earlier
period, the Russian in the later – and by international war on a
previously unprecedented scale. In both periods the main victors were an
Anglo-Saxon nation (Britain in the earlier period, America in the later), on
the one hand, and Russia (Tsarist Russia in the earlier period, Soviet Russ=
ia
in the later), on the other. At the end of each period Russia became the
dominant political power on the continent of Europe, while the Anglo-Saxon
nation became the dominant power outside Europe, going on to dominate the w=
orld
economically through its exploitation of important scientific and technolog=
ical
discoveries.
The French revol=
ution,
like its English forerunner, went through several phases, each of which on =
its
own was profoundly influential outside the borders of France. The first was=
the
constitutional monarchy (1789-92). The second was the Jacobin terror (1792-=
94).
The third (after the interregnum of the Directory) was the Napoleonic
dictatorship and empire (1799-1815). Just as the English revolution had its
proto-communist elements, which, however, failed in the end, so did the Fre=
nch
(Babeuf’s failed coup of 1796). Just as the upshot of the English
revolution was to transfer power from the king to the landowning aristocrac=
y,
so the upshot of the French revolution was to transfer power from the king =
and
the aristocrats to the bourgeoisie – a trend which came to dominate t=
he
whole of Western Europe in the course of the nineteenth century.
From a sociologi=
cal
point of view, France in 1789 had not changed in essence since the eleventh
century; it was an agrarian, hierarchical society consisting of “the
three Estates”: those who prayed (the clergy), those who fought (the
nobility) and those who worked (the rest, mainly peasants, but including
lawyers and intellectuals). The ideas of the Enlightenment and Masonry had
infected a narrow stratum of the more educated classes. But the mass of the
population lived and thought as they had lived and thought for centuries.
It is customary =
to
explain the French revolution as the product of corrupt political, social a=
nd
economic conditions, and in particular of the vast gap in wealth and power
between the ancien régime and the people. Discontent with soc=
ial
and economic injustices undoubtedly played a large part in fuelling this
horrific atheist and anti-theist outburst. But it was not the king who was
primarily to blame for these injustices. In the years 1745-89 he and his
ministers made numerous attempts at economic reform and a more equitable
redistribution of the tax burden. But they were always foiled by opposition=
at
court and in the Parlements from the aristocrats, who paid no tax. T=
hus
when five of his minister Turgot’s Six Edicts were rejected by the Pa=
ris Parlement
in 1776, Louis XVI observed: “I see well that there is no-one here bu=
t M.
Turgot and myself who love the people.”[4] This
prompted de Tocqueville’s words: “The social order destroyed by=
a
revolution is almost always better than that which preceded it; and experie=
nce
shows that the most dangerous moment for a bad government is generally that=
in
which it sets about reform. Only great genius can save a ruler who takes on=
the
task of improving the lot of his subjects after long oppression…̶=
1;[5]
The aristocrats
claimed that their opposition was an expression of Montesquieu’s doct=
rine
of the necessity of checks on executive power. In fact, however, they were
trying to replace a royal “despotism” with their own aristocrat=
ic
one. For, as Hobsbawm writes, “the Revolution began as an aristocratic
attempt to recapture the state.”[6] And =
here,
as so often in history, the “despotism” of one man standing abo=
ve
the political fray turned out to be less harmful to the majority of the
population than the despotism of an oligarchical clique pursuing only one c=
lass
or factional interest. Indeed, the problem with the French monarchy was not=
its
excessive strength, but its weakness, its inability to impose its will on t=
he
privileged class.
However, there w=
as
much more to the Revolution than a conflict between king and nobility, lett=
ing
in the Third Estate that destroyed them both. The essential conflict was
between two ideas of the origin of authority: between the idea that it comes
from above – ultimately, from God, and the idea that it comes =
from
below – ultimately from what the Masons called “Nature”. =
King
Louis XVI stated the Christian
principle: “I have taken the firm and sincere decision to remain loft=
ily,
publicly and generously faithful to Him Who holds in His hand kings and
kingdoms. I can only be great through Him, because in Him alone is greatnes=
s,
glory, majesty and power; and because I am destined one day to be his living
image on earth.”[7] This
firm, but humble statement of the doctrine, not so much of the Divine ri=
ght
of kings, as of their Divine dependence on the King of kings, was op=
posed
by the satanic pride of the revolutionary faith. “The Revolution is
neither an act nor a fact,” said De Mounier. “It is a political
doctrine which claims to found society on the will of man instead of foundi=
ng
it on the will of God, which puts the sovereignty of human reason in the pl=
ace
of the Divine law.[8]=
This anti-theist=
ic
character of the French Revolution was confirmed by the great Anglo-Irish
parliamentarian, Edmund Burke, wrote: “We cannot, if we would, delude
ourselves about the true state of this dreadful contest. It is a religio=
us
war. It includes in its object undoubtedly every other interest of soci=
ety
as well as this; but this is the principal and leading feature. It is throu=
gh
this destruction of religion that our enemies propose the accomplishment of=
all
their other views. The French Revolution, impious at once and fanatical, ha=
d no
other plan for domestick power and foreign empire. Look at all the proceedi=
ngs
of the National Assembly from the first day of declaring itself such in the
year 1789, to this very hour, and you will find full half of their business=
to
be directly on this subject. In fact it is the spirit of the whole. The
religious system, called the Constitutional Church, was on the face of the
whole proceeding set up only as a mere temporary amusement to the people, a=
nd
so constantly stated in all their conversations, till the time should come,
when they might with safety cast off the very appearance of all religion
whatsoever, and persecute Christianity throughout Europe with fire and
sword… This religious war is not a controversy between sect and sect =
as
formerly, but a war against all sects and all religions…”[9]
So the real ques=
tion
that the Revolution sought to answer was not political or economic, but
theological or ideological, not: who pays the taxes?, but: who rules the
universe?
It is striking h=
ow
similar was the sequence of events in the French Revolution to that in its
English predecessor. Just as the English revolution started with the
king’s compelling need to seek money for his war against the Scots, so
the French revolution started with a severe financial crisis caused by the
king’s intervention in the American War of Independence. And just as =
the
English parliament’s refusal to accede to the king’s request led
successively to civil war, the overthrowing of the State Church, the execut=
ion
of the king, a radicalisation of the country to a state of near-communist
revolution, foreign wars (in Scotland and Ireland), and finally a military
dictatorship under Cromwell that restored order while preserving many of the
fruits of the revolution, so the refusal, first of the Nobles’ Assemb=
ly
and then of the Estates General to accede to the French king’s request
led to a constitutional monarchy, the overthrowing of the State Church, the
execution of the king, increased radicalisation and the Great Terror, wars =
with
both internal and external enemies, and finally a military dictatorship und=
er
Napoleon that restored order while consolidating many of the results of the
revolution.
But the French
Revolution went much further than the English in the number of its victims,=
in
the profundity of its effects, not only on France but also on almost every
country in Europe, and in its unprecedented radicalism, even anti-theism. It
really began on June 17, 1789, when the Third Estate gathered a so-called
National Assembly, of which they declared: “To it, and it alone, belo=
ngs
the right to interpret and express the general will of the nation. Between =
the
throne and this Assembly there can exist no veto, no power of negation.R=
21;[10] Thi=
s,
writes Davies, “was the decisive break. Three days later, locked out =
of
their usual hall, the deputies met on the adjacent tennis court, le jeu =
de
paume, and swore an oath never to disband until France was given a
Constitution. ‘Tell your master,’ thundered Count Mirabeau to t=
he
troops sent to disperse them, ‘that we are here by the will of the
people, and will not disperse before the threat of bayonets.’
“Pandemoni=
um
ensued. At court, the King’s conciliatory ministers fell out with the=
ir
more aggressive colleagues. On 11 July [the chief minister] Jacques Necker,=
who
had received a rousing welcome at the opening of the Estates General, was
dismissed. Paris exploded. A revolutionary headquarters coalesced round the=
Duc
d’Orléans at the Palais Royal. The gardens of the Palais Royal
became a notorious playground of free speech and free love. Sex shows spran=
g up
alongside every sort of political harangue. ‘The exile of Necker,R=
17;
screamed the fiery orator Camille Desmoulins fearing reprisals, ‘is t=
he
signal for another St. Bartholomew of patriots.’ The royal garrison w=
as
won over. On the 13th a Committee of Public Safety[11] was
created, and 48,000 men were enrolled in a National Guard under General Laf=
ayette.
Bands of insurgents tore down the hated barrières or internal
customs posts in the city, and ransacked the monastery of Saint-Lazare in t=
he
search for arms. On the 14th, after 30,000 muskets were removed =
from
the Hôtel des Invalides, the royal fortress of the Bastille was besie=
ged.
There was a brief exchange of gunfire, after which the governor capitulated.
The King had lost his capital.”[12]
Power appeared t=
o have
passed from the king to the National Assembly and the Third Estate; but alr=
eady
at this early stage of the revolution (as in February, 1917 in Russia), real
power was neither with the king nor with any of the Estates, but with the m=
ob
– or rather, with those who incited and controlled the mob. Thus on J=
uly
20 Arthur Young wrote: “I hear nothing of their [the Assembly’s]
moving from Versailles; if they stay there under the control of an armed mo=
b,
they must make a government that will please the mob; but they will, I supp=
ose,
be wise enough to move to some central town, Tours, Blois or Orléans,
where their deliberations may be free. But the Parisian spirit of commotion
spreads quickly…”
So quickly, in f=
act,
that a year later Antoine, Comte de Rivarol could write: “Three milli=
on
armed peasants, from one end of the kingdom to the other, stop travellers,
check their papers, and bring the victims back to Paris; the town hall cann=
ot
protect them from the fury of the patriotic hangman; the National Assembly =
in
raising Paris might well have been able to topple the throne, but it cannot=
save
a single citizen. The time will come… when the National Assembly will=
say
to the citizen army: ‘You have saved me from authority, but who will =
save
me from you?’ When authority has been overthrown, its power passes
inevitably to the lowest classes of society… Such is today the state =
of
France and its capital.”[13]
The success of t=
he
Revolution was assured by the weakness of the King; for when “he who
restrains” stops restraining, “then everything is permittedR=
21;.
Doyle writes: “News of the king’s surrender to popular resistan=
ce
broke all restraints. His acquiescence in the defeat of the privileged orde=
rs
was taken as a signal for all his subjects to take their own measures again=
st
public enemies. The prolonged political crisis has spawned countless wild r=
umours
of plots to thwart the patriotic cause by starving the people. Monastic and
noble granaries, reputedly bulging with the proceeds of the previous
season’s rents, dues, and tithes, seemed obvious evidence of their
owners’ wicked intentions. Equally suspicious were urban merchants
scouring country markets far beyond their usual circuits to provide bread f=
or
hungry townsmen. Besides, the roads were thronged with unprecedented number=
s of
men seeking work as a result of the slump. Farmers had good reason to dread=
the
depredations of bands of travelling vagrants, and now took little persuading
that the kingdom was alive with brigands in aristocratic pay. It was just a
year since the notorious storms of July 1788, and as a promising harvest be=
gan
to ripen country people were particularly nervous. All this produced the
‘Great Fear’, a massive panic that swept whole provinces in the
last weeks of July and left only the most peripheral regions untouched.
Peasants assembled, armed themselves, and prepared to fight off the ruthless
hirelings of aristocracy. Seen from a distance, such armed bands were often
taken for brigands themselves, and so the panic spread. “In many a=
reas
villagers did not wait for the marauders to arrive. Then it would be too la=
te.
They were determined to make sure of aristocratic defeat by striking
pre-emptively. After all, they would only anticipating what the Assembly was
bound to decree. As one country priest explained, ‘When the inhabitan=
ts
heard that everything was going to be different they began to refuse to pay
both tithes and dues, considering themselves so permitted, they said, by the
new law to come.’”[14] On August 4, und=
er
pressure of the peasant revolt, the National or Constituent Assembly declar=
ed
that it “abolishes the feudal system in its entirety”. It also
proclaimed “King Louis XVI Restorer of French Liberty”… <=
o:p> In his pamphlet =
What
is the Third Estate? published in that year, Abbé Sieyès
asked: What is the Third Estate? Everything. What has it been in the politi=
cal
order up to the present? Nothing. What does it demand? To become
something…” Now the Third Estate was something. Rarely, if ever, in political hist=
ory
has a single act had such a huge and immediate effect (the abdication of the
Tsar in February, 1917 is perhaps the only parallel). On August 26, the
Assembly passed the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, which
listed the following “natural, inalienable and sacred rights”: =
“’I.=
Men
are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions can only =
be
founded on public utility. II. The purpose =
of
every political association is the preservation of the natural and
unprescriptible rights of men. These rights are liberty, property, and safe=
ty
from, and resistance to, oppression. III. The princip=
le of
all sovereignty lies in the nation. No body of men, and no individual, can
exercise authority which does not emanate directly therefrom. IV. Liberty cons=
ists
in the ability to do anything which does not harm others. V. The Law can o=
nly
forbid actions which are injurious to society…
VI. The Law is t=
he
expression of the General Will… It should be the same for all, whethe=
r to
protect or to punish.
VII. No man can =
be
accused, arrested, or detained except in those instances which are determin=
ed
by law.
VIII. The Law sh=
ould
only establish punishments which are strictly necessary. No person should be
punished by retrospective legislation.
IX. No man [is]
presumed innocent till found guilty…
X. No person sho=
uld be
troubled for his opinions, even religious ones, so long as their manifestat=
ion
does not threaten public order.
XI. The free
communication of thoughts and opinions is one of men’s most precious
rights. Every citizen, therefore, can write, speak, and publish freely, sav=
ing
only the need to account for abuses defined by law.
XII. A public fo=
rce is
required to guarantee the [above] rights. It is instituted for the benefit =
of
all, not for the use of those to whom it is entrusted.
=
; XIII. Public taxation =
is
indispensable for the upkeep of the forces and the administration. It shoul=
d be
divided among all citizens without distinction, according to their abilitie=
s.
XIV. Citizens=
230;
have the right to approve the purposes, levels, and extent of taxation.
XV. Society has =
the
right to hold every public servant to account.
XVI. Any society=
in
which rights are not guaranteed nor powers separated does not have a
constitution.
XVII. Property b=
eing a
sacred and inviolable right, no person can be deprived of it, except by pub=
lic
necessity, legal process, and just compensation.’
“Social
convention held that the ‘Rights of Man’ automatically subsumed=
the
rights of women. But several bold souls, including Condorcet, disagreed,
arguing that women had simply been neglected.[15] In =
due
course the original Declaration was joined by new ideas, notably about human
rights in the social and economic sphere. Article XXI of the revised
Declaration of June 1793 stated: ’Public assistance is a sacred
obligation [dette]. Society owes subsistence to unfortunate citizens,
whether in finding work for them, or in assuring the means of survival of t=
hose
incapable of working.’ Slavery was outlawed in 1794. Religious tolera=
tion
was guaranteed.”[16]
In October=
a
great crowd of hungry women brought the king from Versailles to Paris.
Thereafter the forging of a new Constitution that would include limited pow=
ers
for the king went ahead relatively peacefully. However, the king.could not =
make
up his mind whether to accept or reject the Revolution[17]; and
this vacillation, combined with his arrest at Varennes on June 21, 1791 whi=
le
attempting to flee the country, gradually undermined what remained of his
authority.[18]
For, as Hobsbawn points out, “traditional kings who abandon their peo=
ples
lose the right to royalty".[19] In a
similar situation in 1917, Tsar Nicholas II was given the opportunity to fl=
ee
by the Provisional Government, but chose not to…
Moreover, while =
the
Assembly passed a large number of laws, it completely failed to solve the
problems which had propelled it to power – the financial insolvency of
the country. It simply printed money which rapidly deteriorated in value,
fuelling inflation, and in 1791 collected only 249 livres in taxes against
822.7 livres expended.[20]
In spite of these
problems, the first anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, witnessed =
an
extraordinary celebration of the revolution in which even the king took par=
t.
Zamoyski writes:
“It was to be a kind of Rousseauist troth-pledging, at which the nati=
on
would come together and symbolically constitute itself as a body,
simultaneously paying homage to itself as such – the first of many ac=
ts
of political onanism. Bailly [the mayor of Paris] suggested that the solemn=
ity
should take the form of a ‘National Federation’, with delegatio=
ns
from every corner of France meeting in Paris while those from surrounding
villages congregated in every provincial town. Lafayette steered the whole
exercise into the military sphere, substituting companies of National Guards
from every part of the country for civilian delegates.
“The capit=
al was
to be decked out in a fitting manner to greet those making their long
pilgrimage. Half the population of Paris spent three days in the pouring ra=
in
putting up triumphant arches and decorations. The Champ-de-Mars was transfo=
rmed
into a vast elliptical arena surrounded by grass banks on which seats were
erected for spectators. At the end nearest the École Militaire there=
was
a stand draped in the tricolor for the members of the Assembly and important
guests. At the opposite end, nearest the River Seine, was the entrance, thr=
ough
a triple triumphal arch in the Roman style. Between the two stood a podium =
with
a throne for the king and seats for the royal family, and, towering above
everything else, a great square plinth with steps on all four sides, on whi=
ch
stood an altar.
“The morni=
ng of
14 July was wetter than ever, and the feet of the 300,000 Parisians soon tu=
rned
the Champ-de-Mars into a quagmire. This did not make the event any easier to
manage, but good humour triumphed. As they waited in the rain, people made
jokes about being baptized in the national rain, and groups from different
parts of the country showed off regional dances to each other.
“The king =
and
queen arrived at noon, but it took a long time for them to be settled into
their stand. Then came a march-past by 50,000 National Guards. It was not u=
ntil
four in the afternoon that the Bishop of Autun, Charles Maurice de Talleyra=
nd-Périgord,
attended by four hundred priests wearing the tricolor, began to celebrate m=
ass.
The altar at which he officiated was not a traditional liturgical mensa<=
/u>,
but a circular neoclassical affair redolent of burnt offerings in ancient R=
ome.
It was not the altar of God, on which sacrifice was offered up to the Almig=
hty,
it was the autel de la patrie, on which citizens pledged their devot=
ion
to the motherland.
“Lafayette=
was
much in evidence all day on his white charger, and when the mass was over, =
he
took centre stage. As if by a miracle, the weather cleared and the sun came
out, bathing the whole scene in a soft luminous aura. While trumpets blared,
Lafayetter ascended the steps of the altar. As he began to swear loyalty to=
the
king, the nation and the law, he drew his sword with a flourish and laid it=
on
the altar. Fifty thousand National Guardsmen then repeated the same oath,
followed by the king. Next came the singing of the Te Deum specially
composed by François Gossec, during which people of all stations
embraced tearfully in a hundred thousand acts of national fraternity.
Lafayetter was carried by the crowd to his white horse, on which he
majestically left the field, with people kissing his hands and his
clothers…
“The F&eci=
rc;te
de la Fédération represented a reconciliation of all the peop=
le
living in France, and their betrothal as one nation. It mimicked
Rousseau’s vision of the Corsicans coming together to found their nat=
ion
through a common pledge. The festival was also a recognition that the Marqu=
is
de Lafayette and the humblest peasant in France were brothers, both as memb=
ers
of a biological family and through the ideological kinship represented by t=
he
oath. At the same time, the celebration exposed a new reality. It showed ho=
w far
the concept of nationhood had altered from the Enlightenment vision of a
congeries living in consensus to something far more metaphysical and inhere=
ntly
divine…”[21]
Burke versus Paine
The ideas of the
French revolution posed a great threat to the British, who prided themselve=
s on
being the home of liberty, but who saw that French revolutionary
“liberty” would speedily destroy their own. Already the America=
ns
had shown that libertarianism and empire made an uncomfortable fit; and the=
fit
would look still worse in India and Ireland as the French ideas filtered
through. Moreover, the first effects of the industrial revolution on the
industrial poor, and of the “dark, satanic mills” on
England’s “green and pleasant land”, threatened to arouse
revolutionary passions among the poor.
“’Two
causes, and only two, will rouse a peasantry to rebellion,’ opined Ro=
bert
Southey, a radical turned Tory: ‘intolerable oppression, or religious
zeal’. But that moderately comforting scenario no longer applied:
‘A manufacturing poor is more easily instigated to revolt: they have =
no
local attachments… they know enough of what is passing in the politic=
al
world to think themselves politicians’. England’s rulers must p=
ay
heed: ‘If the manufacturing system continues to be extended, I believe
that revolution inevitably must come, and in its most fearful
shape’.”[22]
Already in the y=
ears
1778-83 a debate had begun on whether the ideas of the founding philosopher=
of
English liberalism, John Locke, had been right after all. In 1783 the Bapti=
st
Noel Turner wondered whether the “present national propensity” =
was
the deployment of Locke on behalf of the “many-headed majesty” =
of
“king-people”. And in the same year Josiah Tucker publish his &=
#8220;On
the Evil Consequences Arising from the Propagation of Locke’s Democra=
tic
Principles”. Tucker’s disciple Soame Jenyns declared that he had
refuted the Lockean philosophy of the Whigs, writing:
I controvert these five positions
Which Whigs pretend are the conditions=
Of civil rule and liberty;
That men are equal born – and fr=
ee
–
That kings derive their lawful sway
All from the people’s yea and nay
–
That compact is the only ground,
On which a prince his rights can found
–
Lastly, I scout that idle notion,
That government is put in motion,
And stopt again, like clock or chime,<= o:p>
Just as we want them to keep time.[23]<=
/a>
This debate beca=
me
more urgent as the atrocities of the French revolution became known. Could =
the
ideas of the urbane and civilised Locke really have led to such barbarism?
William Jones thought so. Writing in 1798, he said that “with Mr. Loc=
ke
in his hand”, that “mischievous infidel Voltaire” had set
about destroying Christianity. And Locke was “the oracle of those who
began and conducted the American Revolution, which led to the French
Revolution; which will lead (unless God in his mercy interfere) to the total
overthrow of religion and government in this kingdom, perhaps in the whole
Christian world.”[24]
However, the most
famous ideological attack on the French revolution came from Edmund Burke, =
who
had adopted a liberal position on America and Ireland[25], and
who now tried to defend English liberalism while attacking French radicalis=
m.
His Reflexions on the Revolution in France (1790) foresaw saw that t=
he
French revolution would bring in its train, not freedom, but tyranny - and
precisely because of its populist character. For “the tyranny of a
multitude,” he wrote, “is a multiplied tyranny”.[26] Bur=
ke
agreed with the Catholic monarchist Joseph de Maistre in calling the revolu=
tion
“satanic”. And, as we have seen, he called the war that broke o=
ut
between revolutionary France and Britain in 1793 “a religious warR=
21;.
For truly, the war between the revolution and its opponents was a
religious war, a war between two opposed ideas of who rules human society: =
God
or the people.
Burke laid great
emphasis on the importance of tradition and the organic forms of social lif=
e,
which was important at a time when the rage was all for the destruction of
everything that was old and venerable. In this respect (although not in oth=
ers)
he went against one of the main presuppositions of the English social contr=
act
theorists, following rather in the line of thought of the German
Counter-Enlightenment thinkers Hamann and Herder.
As Berlin writes:
“Burke’s famous onslaughts on the principles of the French
revolutionaries was founded upon the selfsame appeal to the myriad strands =
that
bind human beings into a historically hallowed whole, contrasted with the
utilitarian model of society as a trading-company held together by contract=
ual
obligations, the world of ‘sophisters, oeconomists, and
calculators’ who are blind and deaf to the unanalysable relationships
that make a family, a tribe, a nation, a movement, any association of human
beings held together by something more than a quest for mutual advantage, o=
r by
force, or by anything that is not mutual love, loyalty, common history, emo=
tion
and outlook.”[27]
Society exists o=
ver
several generations, so why, asked Burke, should only one generation’s
interests be respected in drawing up the social contract? For, as Roger Scr=
uton
writes, interpreting his thought, “the social contract prejudices the
interests of those who are not alive to take part in it: the dead and the
unborn. Yet they too have a claim, maybe an indefinite claim, on the resour=
ces
and institutions over which the living so selfishly contend. To imagine soc=
iety
as a contract among its living members, is to offer no rights to those who =
go
before and after. But when we neglect those absent souls, we neglect everyt=
hing
that endows law with its authority, and which guarantees our own survival. =
We
should therefore see the social order as a partnership, in which the dead a=
nd
the unborn are included with the living.”[28]
“Every
people,” writes L.A. Tikhomirov, “is, first of all, a certain
historical whole, a long row of consecutive generations, living over hundre=
ds
or thousands of years in a common life handed down by inheritance. In this =
form
a people, a nation, is a certain socially organic phenomenon with more or l=
ess
clearly expressed laws of inner development… But political intriguers=
and
the democratic tendency does not look at a people in this form, as a
historical, socially organic phenomenon, but simply in the form of a sum of=
the
individual inhabitants of the country. This is the second point of view,
which looks on a nation as a simple association of people united into a sta=
te
because they wanted that, living according to laws which they like, and
arbitrarily changing the laws of their life together when it occurs to
them.”[29]
Burke rejected t=
he
idea that the French Revolution was simply the English Revolution writ larg=
e.
The Glorious Revolution of 1688 was not a revolution in the new, French sen=
se,
because it left English traditions, including English traditions of liberty,
intact: it “was made to preserve our ancient indisputable laws=
and
liberties, and that ancient constitution of government which is our =
only
security for law and liberty… We wished at the period of the Revoluti=
on,
and do now wish, to derive all we possess as an inheritance from our
forefathers… All the reformations we have hitherto made, have
proceeded upon the principle of reference to antiquity.”[30] In
fact, far from making the people the sovereign power, the English parliamen=
t in
1688 had sworn “in the name of the people” to “most humbly
and faithfully submit themselves, their heirs and posterities” to the
Monarchs William and Mary “for ever”. The French Revolution, by
contrast, rejected all tradition. “You had,” he told the French,
“the elements of a constitution very nearly as good as could be
wished…; but you chose to act as if you have never been moulded into
civil society, and had everything to begin anew. You began ill, because you
began by despising everything that belonged to you.” “Your
constitution, it is true,… suffered waste and dilapidation; but you
possessed in some parts the walls and, in all, the foundations of a noble a=
nd
venerable castle. You might have repaired those walls; you might have built=
on
those old foundations. Your constitution was suspended before it was
perfected.” “Rage and phrenzy will pull down more in half an ho=
ur,
that prudence, deliberation, and foresight can build up in an hundred
years.”[31]
There was in fact nothing new about the French Revolution. It was just anot=
her
disaster “brought upon the world by pride, ambition, avarice, revenge,
lust, sedition, hypocrisy, ungoverned zeal”. The “rights of
man” were just a “pretext” invented by the “wickedn=
ess”
of human nature.[32]
“It was Bu=
rke’s
Reflections,” writes G.P. Gooch, “which overthrew the
supremacy of Locke [for the time being], and formed the starting-point of a
number of schools of thought, agreeing in the rejection of the individualis=
tic
rationalism which had dominated the eighteenth century. The work is not only
the greatest exposition of the philosophic basis of conservatism ever writt=
en,
but a declaration of the principles of evolution, continuity, and solidarit=
y,
which must hold their place in all sound political thinking. Against the
omnipotence of the individual, he sets the collective reason; against the
claims of the present, he sets the accumulated experience of the past; for
natural rights he offers social rights; for liberty he substitutes law. Soc=
iety
is a partnership between those who are living, those who are dead, and those
who are yet to be born.”[33]
Burke, writes Do=
yle,
attributed the fall of the old order “to a conspiracy. On the one hand
were the ‘moneyed interest’, resentful at their lack of esteem =
and
greedy for new profits; on the other, and even more important, were the
so-called philosophers of the Enlightenment, a ‘literary cabal’
committed to the destruction of Christianity by any and every available mea=
ns.
The idea of a philosophic conspiracy was not new. It went back to the only =
one
ever conclusively proved to have existed, the plot of the self-styled
Illuminati to undermine the Church-dominated government of Bavaria. The
Bavarian government published a sensational collection of documents to
illustrate its gravity, and Burke had read it. Although he was not the firs=
t to
attribute events in France to conspiracy of the sort thwarted in Bavaria, t=
he
way he included the idea in the most comprehensive denunciation of the
Revolution yet to appear lent it unprecedented authority. Nor was the
destruction of Christianity and the triumph of atheism the only catastrophe=
he
predicted. Disgusted by the way the ‘Republic of Paris’ and its
‘swinish multitude’ held the government captive, the provinces
would eventually cut loose and France would fall apart. The assignats would
drive out sound coinage and hasten, rather than avert, bankruptcy. The only
possible end to France’s self-induced anarchy would come when ‘=
some
popular general, who understand the art of conciliating the soldiery, and w=
ho
possesses the true spirit of command, shall draw the eyes of all men upon
himself. Armies will obey him on his personal account… the moment in
which that event will happen, the person who really commands the army is yo=
ur
master.’”[34]
Burke’s
Paine admitted t=
hat
Louis XVI had “natural moderation”; but the revolution, he argu=
ed,
was not against people, but against principles – in
particular, the principle of despotism. In any case, he wrote, “[Burk=
e]
is not affected by the showy resemblance of it striking his imagination. He
pities the plumage, but forgets the dying bird… His hero or his heroi=
ne
must be a tragedy victim, expiring in show, and not the real prisoner of
misery, sliding into death in the silence of a dungeon.”[36]
However, Paine himself was soon to become “a real prisoner of
misery” in a Jacobin dungeon, just one of the hundreds of thousands o=
f people
– including the “naturally moderate” King and vast number=
s of
the poorer classes – far more than the ancien régime had
caused in centuries.
As for the pr=
inciple
of despotism, Paine saw it everywhere: “When despotism has established
itself for ages in a country, as in France, it is not in the person of the =
King
only that it resides. It has the appearance of being so in show, and in nom=
inal
authority; but it is not so in practice, and in fact. It has its standard
everywhere. Every office and department has its despotism, founded upon cus=
tom
and usage. Every place has its Bastille, and every Bastille its despot. The
original hereditary despotism resident in the person of the King, divides a=
nd
subdivides itself into a thousand shapes and forms, till at last the whole =
of
it is acted by deputation. This was the case in France; and against this
species of despotism, proceeding on through an endless labyrinth of office =
till
the source of it is scarcely perceptible, there is no mode of redress. It
strengthens itself by assuming the appearance of duty, and tyrannizes under=
the
pretence of obeying.
“When a man
reflects on the condition which France was in from the nature of her
government, he will see other causes for revolt than those which immediately
connect themselves with the person or character of Louis XVI. There were, i=
f I
may so express it, a thousand despotisms to be reformed in France, which had
grown up under the hereditary despotism of the monarchy, and became so root=
ed
as to be in a great measure independent of it. Between the monarchy, the
parliament, and the church, there was a rivalship of despotism, besi=
des
the feudal despotism operating locally, and the ministerial despotism opera=
ting
everywhere.”[37]
So even parliame=
nt was
despotic! Paine gives himself away here: his real target is not despotism, =
but hierarchy,
every relationship in society which involves the submission of one person to
another. He rejected the role of tradition in politics as radically as Luth=
er
and Calvin had rejected it in theology.
“Every age=
and
generation,” he wrote, “must be as free to act for itself, in
all cases, as the ages and generations which preceded it. The vanity and
presumption of governing beyond the grave, is the most ridiculous and insol=
ent
of all tyrannies. Man has no property in man; neither has any generation
property in the generations which are to follow. The parliament or the peop=
le
of 1688, or of any other period, has no more right to dispose of the people=
of
the present day, or to bind or to control those who are to live a hundred o=
r a
thousand years hence. Every generation is, and must be, competent to all the
purposes which its occasions require. It is the living, and not the dead, t=
hat
are to be accomodated. When man ceases to be, his power and his wants cease
with him; and having no longer any participation in the concerns of this wo=
rld,
he has no longer any authority in directing who shall be its governors, or =
how
its government shall be organized, or how administered…. I am contend=
ing
for the rights of the living, and against their being willed away by=
the
manuscript assumed authority of the dead…
“The error=
of
those who reason by precedents drawn from antiquity, respecting the rights =
of
man, is, that they do not go far enough into antiquity. They do not go the
whole way. They stop in some of the intermediate stages of an hundred or a
thousand years, and produce what was then done, as a rule for the present d=
ay.
This is no authority at all. If we travel still farther into antiquity, we
shall find a direct contrary opinion and practice prevailing; and if antiqu=
ity
is to be authority, a thousand such authorities may be produced, successive=
ly
contradicting each other:
“…If=
the
mere name of antiquity is to govern the affairs of life, the people who are=
to
live an hundred or a thousand years hence, may as well take us for a preced=
ent,
as we make a precedent of those who lived an hundred or a thousand years ag=
o.
The fact is, that portions of antiquity, by proving everything, establish
nothing. It is authority against authority all the way, till we come to the
divine origin of the rights of man at the creation. Here our inquiries find=
a
resting-place, and our reason finds a home. If a dispute about the rights o=
f man
had arisen at the distance of an hundred years from the creation, it is to =
this
same source of authority they must have referred, and it is to the same sou=
rce
of authority that we must now refer.
“Though I =
mean
not to touch upon any sectarian principle of religion, yet it may be worth
observing, that the genealogy of Christ is traced to Adam. Why then not tra=
ce
the rights of man to the creation of man? I will answer the question. Becau=
se
there have been upstart governments, thrusting themselves between, and
presumptuously working to un-make man.
“If any
generation of men ever possessed the right of dictating the mode by which t=
he
world should be governed for ever, it was the first generation that existed;
and if that generation did it not, no succeeding generation can show any
authority for doing it, nor can set any up. The illuminating and divine
principle of the equal rights of man, (for it has its origin from the Maker=
of
man) relates, not only to the living individuals, but to generations of men
succeeding each other. Every generation is equal in rights to the generatio=
ns
which preceded it, by the same rule that every individual is born equal in
rights with his contemporary.”[38]
Paine had a poin=
t.
Arguments based on merely human tradition are relative; one precedent
from antiquity is cancelled out by another. Human tradition needs to be
supported by Divine Tradition – that is, the Tradition handed =
down
from God to His Chosen People and passed on by them from generation to
generation in the Church.
Burke had this p=
roblem
not only in relation to Paine, but also in relation to other contemporary
English radicals. If he claimed that British liberties “were an entai=
led
inheritance peculiar to the inhabitants of the island” and going back=
to
William the Conqueror, “his radical opponents, who were rather less k=
een
on entails, claimed that their rights were derived from the alleged practic=
es
of free-born Englishmen before the days of the ‘Norman
yoke’.”[39] And=
the
precedent his opponents pointed to was both older and more noble; for, as P=
aine
pointed out, if any ruler was a despot and usurper, - that is, a destroy=
er
of tradition - it was William the Conqueror. And he was right: it had been
William who, in 1066, cut off England from the One, True Church in the East=
and
destroyed her traditions, both human and Divine.
Again, since Bur=
ke
accepted the legitimacy of both the English and American revolutions (while
preferring to rest on their least revolutionary moments), he could not atta=
ck
the French revolution from a position of basic principle (for its principles
were not fundamentally different from those of its Anglo-Saxon predecessors=
),
but only because it carried those principles “too far”. But if =
the
principle itself is accepted, who is to say when the application of the
principle has gone “too far”? In any case, both Burke and his
English radical opponents (but not Paine) agreed that the rights they were
talking about “did not rest on principle and had no relevance to
foreigners”[40] - a=
nd
so had no relevance to the French revolution, either.
And yet Burke wa=
s not
defending just the English way of doing things, which was relevant only to
Englishmen (in other of his works he defended the rights of the Irish and t=
he
Indians to keep their own traditions within the British Empire). The French
revolution attacked the very foundation of society – religion.
So in defending =
the
Christian religion Burke was defending a universal principle: “We kno=
w,
and what is better, we feel inwardly[41], th=
at
religion is the basis of civil society, and the source of all good and of a=
ll
comfort. In England we are so convinced of this, that there is no rust of
superstition… that ninety-nine in a hundred of the people of England
would not prefer to impiety… We know, and it is our pride to know, th=
at
man is by his constitution a religious animal; that atheism is against, not
only our reason, but our instincts; and that it cannot prevail long. But
if… we should uncover our nakedness, by throwing off that Christian
religion which has hitherto been our boast and comfort, and one great sourc=
e of
civilisation amongst us, and among many other nations, we are apprehensive
(being well aware that the mind will not endure a void) that some uncouth,
pernicious, and degrading superstition might take the place of it.”[42]
The very radical= ism of Paine’s rejection of tradition and hierarchy undermined the validity = of his argument. First, no society can exist without tradition or hierarchy – least of all revolutionary ones, which immediately act to fill the = void they have created. Secondly, if sovereignty resides in the Nation, as Paine affirms, the question arises: what is the Nation if it has to be constantly re-inventing itself, holding nothing from the past as sacred and= starting again from a tabula rasa with every new generation? A Nation defines itself precisely by its continuity over time and over many generations; the= re must be some loyalty to, and preservation of, the past if the Nation is to recognise itself as the same Nation throughout its transformations.<= o:p>
But Paine, true
revolutionary that he was, was as sweeping in his rejection of temporal
tradition as he was of spatial hierarchy. Not surprisingly, therefore, he h=
ad
little time for religion, the main guarantor of both the spatial and the
temporal dimensions of society. “My country is the world,” he
wrote, “and my religion is to do good”.[43] The=
re
was no one, true dogmatic religion for Paine, only conflicting human opinio=
ns
which he made no attempt to evaluate: “With respect to what are called
denominations of religion, if everyone is left to judge of his own religion,
there is no such thing as a religion that is wrong; but if they are to judg=
e of
each other’s religion, there is no such thing as a religion that is
right; and therefore, all the world is right, or all the world is
wrong…”[44]
“Every religion is good that teaches man to be good”. “I =
do
not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Churc=
h,
by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by
any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.”[45]
Paine was not
anti-religious as such; but in his attitude to religion there was more than=
a
hint of contempt: “All religions are in their nature kind and benign =
[!],
and united with principles of morality. They could not have made proselytes=
at
first, by professing anything that was vicious, cruel, persecuting, or immo=
ral.
Like everything else, they had their beginning; and they proceeded by
persuasion, exhortation, and example. How then is it that they lose their
native mildness, and become morose and intolerant?
“It procee=
ds
from the connexion which Mr. Burke recommends. By engendering the church wi=
th
the state, a sort of mule-animal, capable only of destroying, and not of
breeding up, is produced, called The Church established by Law. It i=
s a
stranger, even from its birth, to any parent mother on which it is begotten,
and whom in time it kicks out and destroys.”[46]
On this principl=
e,
Paine should have been very happy in America, where he spent his last years,
insofar as the American Constitution made a complete separation between Chu=
rch
and State. But where there is no persecution from the State, there can stil=
l be
criticism from individuals – indeed, that is their right according to
Paine’s own principles. And the Americans criticised him for his Deist
views, so that Paine spent his last years in loneliness and misery.
For all his
Rousseauist iconoclasm, Paine’s revolutionary zeal was profoundly
non-Rousseauist, Anglo-Saxon and individualist. Society exists, according to
him, for the sake of the individual and his needs, especially his need to be
free from various ills. There is no place in his system for a general
will that is superior to the individual and which forces him to be free =
to
be himself. “Civil power, properly considered as such, is made up of =
the
aggregate of that class of the natural rights of man, which becomes defecti=
ve
in the individual in point of power, and answers not to his purpose; but wh=
en
collected to a focus, becomes competent to the purpose of every one.”=
[47] In
other words, the State has no special rights over an individual unless he
interferes with the rights of other individuals; it simply exists to service
the individual(s), to help him to do things he would not be able to do on h=
is
own.
Paine was more
influential than Burke, and even the stolid and traditionalist British found
themselves moving along the path that he indicated. Thus, as Hampson points
out, “it was the British who moved towards the attitudes proclaimed by
the French Revolution… After 1832 it was conceded that, irrespective =
of
precedent and tradition, whole categories of Englishmen had a right to
vote.”[48]
Moreover, Paine’s vision of a welfare state outlined in part two of <=
i>The
Rights of Man was to inspire generations of British and American radica=
ls.
And yet, it was =
Burke,
not Paine, who was right on the Revolution…
The
American Constitution and Slavery
The success of t= he American revolution had provided an inspiration for the French revolution in its first phase; and the French revolution in its turn influenced the furth= er development of the American. The debate between Burke and Paine had its analogues in the controversies among the Founding Fathers. Some, such as Alexander Hamilton and George Washington, still looked towards the more conservative and authoritarian British model of democracy, in spite of the experience of the War of Independence; while others, such as Thomas Jeffers= on, drew inspiration from the French revolution even in its later, Jacobin phas= e in his almost anarchical drive to “rekindle the old spirit of 1776”= ;.
Thus Hamilton sa= id to the Constitutional Convention in 1787: “I believe the British governm= ent forms the best model the world ever produced… All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and well born,= the other the mass of the people… The people are turbulent and changing; = they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distin= ct, permanent share in the government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second… Nothing but a permanent body can check the impudence of democracy.”[49]
Jefferson, on the other hand, believed that a rebellion every 20 years or so was necessary to stop the arteries of freedom from becoming sclerotic. As he wrote to William Stephens Smith in 1787: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from t= ime to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is its natural manure.”[50] And to James Madison he wrote in the same year: “I hold it, a little rebellion now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical… It is a medicine for the sound healt= h of government.”[51]
These different = understandings of democracy were reflected in different views on the two most important is= sues of the day: the relative powers of the central government and the states, a= nd slavery.
With regard to t= he first issue, the champions of a strong central government, the federalists, believed that a strong central government was necessary in order to preserve the gains of the revolution, to guarantee taxation income, and preserve law= and order. As George Washington put it: “Let then the reins of government= be braced and held with a steady hand, and every violation of the Constitution= be reprehended. If defective, let it be amended, but not suffered to be trampl= ed on whilst it has an existence.”[52]
Not surprisingly= , many of the antifederalists thought that Washington himself was substituting his= own style of monarchy for the British king. As Joseph J. Ellis writes, they were haunted by “the ideological fear, so effective as a weapon against the taxes imposed by Parliament and decrees of George III, that once arbitrary power was acknowledged to reside elsewhere [than in the states], all liberty was lost. And at a primal level it suggested the unconscious fear of being completely consumed, eaten alive.”[53]
With regard to slavery, there can be no question that the main thrust of the ideology of t= he American revolution was against it. The Declaration of Independence in 1776 declared that it was “not possible that one man should have property = in person of another”. “Removing slavery, however, was not like re= moving British officials or revising constitutions. In isolated pockets of New York and New Jersey, and more panoramically in the entire region south of the Potomac, slavery was woven into the fabric of American society in ways that defied appeals to logic and morality. It also enjoyed the protection of one= of the Revolution’s most potent legacies, the right to dispose of one’s property without arbitrary interference from others, especially when the others resided far away or claimed the authority of some distant government. There were, to be sure, radical implications latent in the ‘principles of ‘76’ capable of challenging privileged app= eals to property rights, but the secret of their success lay in their latency – that is, the gradual and surreptitious ways they revealed their egalitarian implications over the course of the nineteenth century. If slavery’s cancerous growth was to be arrested and the dangerous malignancy removed, it demanded immediate surgery. The radical implications= of the revolutionary legacy were no help at all so long as they remained only implications.
“The depth= and apparent intractability of the problem became much clearer during the debat= es surrounding the drafting and ratification of the Constitution. Although the final draft of the document was conspicuously silent on slavery, the subject itself haunted the closed-door debates. No less a source than Madison belie= ved that slavery was the central cause of the most elemental division in the Constitutional Convention: ‘the States were divided into different interests not by their difference of size,’ Madison observed, ‘= but principally from their having or not having slaves… It did not lie between the large and small States: it lay between the Northern and Souther= n.’
“The deleg= ates from New England and most of the Middle Atlantic states drew directly on the inspirational rhetoric of the revolutionary legacy to argue that slavery was inherently incompatible with the republican values on which the American Republic had been based. They wanted an immediate end to the slave trade, an explicit statement prohibiting the expansion of slavery into the western territories as a condition for admission into the union, and the adoption o= f a national plan for gradual emancipation analogous to those state plans alrea= dy adopted in the North…
“The south= ern position might more accurately be described as ‘deep southern’, since it did not include Virginia. Its major advocates were South Carolina = and Georgia, and the chief burden for making the case in the Constitutional Convention fell almost entirely on the South Carolina delegation. The underlying assumption of this position was most openly acknowledged by Char= les Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina – namely, that ‘South Car= olina and Georgia cannot do without slaves’. What those from the Deep South wanted was open-ended access to African imports to stock their plantations. They also wanted equivalently open access to western lands, meaning no fede= ral legislation restricting the property rights of slave owners… <= /p>
“Neither s= ide got what it wanted at Philadelphia in 1787. The Constitution contained no provision that committed the newly created federal government to a policy of gradual emancipation, or in any clear sense placed slavery on the road to ultimate extinction. On the other hand, the Constitution contained no provisions that specifically sanctioned slavery as a permanent and protected institution south of the Potomac or anywhere else. The distinguishing featu= re of the document when it came to slavery was its evasiveness. It was neither= a ‘contract with abolition’ nor a ‘covenant with death̵= 7;, but rather a prudent exercise in ambiguity. The circumlocutions required to place a chronological limit on the slave trade or to count slaves as three-= fifths of a person for purposes of representation in the House, all without ever u= sing the forbidden word, capture the intentionally elusive ethos of the Constitution. The underlying reason for this calculated orchestration of non-commitment was obvious: Any clear resolution of the slavery question one way or the other rendered ratification of the Constitution virtually impossible…”[54]
Even Washington =
was
silent about slavery when he came to make his retirement address in 1796.
“His silence on the slavery question was strategic, believing as he d=
id
that slavery was a cancer on the body politic of America that could not at
present be removed without killing the patient…”[55] And
with reason; for by 1790 the slave population was 700,000, up from about 50=
0,000
in 1776. This, and the implicit threat that South Carolina and Georgia would
secede from the Union if slavery were outlawed, made it clear that abolition
was impractical as politics (but not on a personal level – Washington
decreed in his will that all his slaves should be freed after his wife̵=
7;s
death). And so “the effort to make the Revolution truly complete seem=
ed
diametrically opposed to remaining a united nation.”[56]
Illuminism
In order to unde=
rstand
how the French Revolution passed from its first, democratic and relatively
non-violent phase to the second, proto-communistic and exceedingly bloody
phase, it is necessary to study the history of the secret society known as =
the Illuminati.
Illuminism arose as a kind of parasite feeding on the body of Masonry. Its
appearance was preceded by an astonishing increase in the number of masonic
lodges in France. Zamoyski writes that “there were 104 lodges in Fran=
ce
in 1772, 198 by 1776, and a staggering 629 by 1789. Their membership includ=
ed
virtually every grandee, writer, artist, lawyer, soldier or other professio=
nal
in the country, as well as notable foreigners such as Franklin and Jefferson
– some 30,000 people.”[57]
“Between 8=
00 and
900 masonic lodges,” writes Doyle, “were founded in France betw=
een
1732 and 1793, two-thirds of them after 1760. Between 1773 and 1779 well ov=
er
20,000 members were recruited. Few towns of any consequence were without on=
e or
more lodges by the 1780s and, despite several papal condemnations of a deis=
tic
cult that had originated in Protestant England, the élite of society
flocked to join. Voltaire was drafted in on his last visit to Paris, and it=
was
before the assembled brethren of the Nine Sisters Lodge that he exchanged
symbolic embraces with Franklin.”[58]
Franklin, as we =
have
seen, was an American mason, a famous scientist, and a major player in the
American revolution in which French and Americans had co-operated in
overthrowing British monarchical rule. The American revolution had demonstr=
ated
that the ideas of the philosophes were not just philosophical theory,
but could be translated into reality. And the meeting of Franklin and Volta=
ire
showed that science and philosophy could meet in the womb of Masonry to bri=
ng
forth the common dream - liberty and “the pursuit of happiness”=
.
But just as the
American Revolution was child’s play compared with the savagery and
radicalism of the French Revolution, so these earlier masonic lodges and or=
ders
were innocent by comparison with the profound evil of Illuminism, which was
founded on May 1, 1776[59] by a
Bavarian professor called Weishaupt, who assumed the name of
“Spartacus” (from the slave who rebelled against Rome in the fi=
rst
century BC). It appears to have arisen out of the dissatisfaction of a grou=
p of
Masons with the general state of Masonry. Thus another founder member, the
famous Count Mirabeau, noted in his Memoir in the same year of 1776: “=
;The
Lodge Theodore de Bon Conseil at Munich, where there were a few men =
with
brains and hearts, was tired of being tossed about by the vain promises and
quarrels of Masonry. The heads resolved to graft on to their branch another
secret association to which they gave the name of the Order of the Illum=
inés.
They modelled it on the Society of Jesus, whilst proposing to themselves
diametrically opposed.”[60]
“Our
strength,” wrote Weishaupt, “lies in secrecy. Therefore we must
without hesitation use as a cover some innocent societies. The lodges of bl=
ue
masonry are a fitting veil to hide our real aims, since the world is accust=
omed
to expecting nothing important or constructive from them. Their ceremonies =
are
considered pretty trifles for the amusement of big children. The name of a
learned society is also a magnificent mask behind which we can hide our low=
er
degrees.”[61]
“Weishaupt construc=
ed his
organization on several levels, revealing his most radical plans only to his
chosen co-workers. Weishaupt chose the members of his organization mainly
amidst young people, carefully studying each candidature.
“Having si=
fted
out the unreliable and dubious, the leaders of the order performed on the r=
est
a rite of consecration, which took place after a three-day fast in a dark
basement. Every candidate was consecrated separately, having first had his =
arms
and legs bound. [Then] from various corners of the dark basement the most
unexpected questions were showered upon the initiate.
“Having re=
plied
to the questions, he swore absolute obedience to the leaders of the order.
Every new member signed that he would preserve the secrets of the organizat=
ion
under fear of the death penalty.
“However, =
the
newcomer was not yet considered to be a full member of the organization, but
received the status of novice and for one to three months had to be under t=
he
observation of an experienced illuminé. He was told to keep a special
diary and regularly present it to the leaders. The novice filled in numerous
questionnaires, and also prepared monthly accounts of all matters linking h=
im
with the order. Having passed through all the trials, the novice underwent a
second initiation, now as a fully-fledged member.
“After his
initiation the new member was given a distinguishing sign, gesture and
password, which changed depending on the rank he occupied.
“The newco=
mer
received a special pseudonym (order’s name), usually borrowed from
ancient history…, and got to know an ancient Persian method of
timekeeping, the geography of the order, and also a secret code.
“Weishaupt
imposed into the order a system of global spying and mutual tailing.
“Most of t=
he
members were at the lowest level of the hierarchy.
“No less t=
han a
thousand people entered the organization, but for conspiratorial purposes e=
ach
member knew only a few people. As Weishaupt himself noted, ‘directly
under me there are to, who are completely inspired by me myself, while under
each of them are two, etc. Thus I can stir up and put into motion a thousand
people. This is how one must command and act in politics.”[62]
“Do you re=
alize
sufficiently,” he wrote in the discourse of the reception of the I=
lluminatus
Dirigens, “what it means to rule – to rule in a secret soci=
ety?
Not only over the lesser or more important of the populace, but over the be=
st
men, over men of all ranks, nations, and religions, to rule without external
force, to unite them indissolubly, to breathe one spirit and soul into them,
men distributed over all parts of the world?” [63]
The supposed =
aim
of the new Order was to improve the present system of government and to abo=
lish
“the slavery of the peasants, the servitude of men to the soil, the
rights of main morte and all the customs and privileges which abase humanit=
y,
the corvées under the condition of an equitable equivalent, all the
corporations, all the maîtrises, all the burdens imposed on industry =
and
commerce by customs, excise duties, and taxes… to procure a universal
toleration for all religious opinions… to take away all the arms of
superstitions, to favour the liberty of the press, etc.”[64] This
was almost exactly the same programme as that carried out by the Constituent
Assembly at the beginning of the French revolution in 1789-91 under the
leadership of, among others, the same Count Mirabeau – a remarkable
coincidence!
However, this liberal dem=
ocratic
programme was soon forgotten when Weishaupt took over control of the Order.=
For
“Spartacus” had elaborated a much more radical programme, a
programme that was to resemble the socialism of the later, more radical sta=
ges
of the revolution.
“Weishaupt=
had
made into an absolute theory the misanthropic gibes [boutades] of
Rousseau at the invention of property and society, and without taking into
account the statement so distinctly formulated by Rousseau on the impossibi=
lity
of suppressing property and society once they had been established, he prop=
osed
as the end of Illuminism the abolition of property, social authority, of
nationality, and the return of the human race to the happy state in which it
formed only a single family without artificial needs, without useless scien=
ces,
every father being priest and magistrate. Priest of we know not what religi=
on,
for in spite of their frequent invocations of the God of Nature, many
indications lead us to conclude that Weishaupt had, like Diderot and
d’Holbach, no other God than Nature herself…”[65]
Weishaupt procee=
ded to
create an inner secret circle concealed within Masonry. He used the religio=
us
forms of Masonry, and invented a few “mysteries” himself. But h=
is
aim was the foundation of a political secret organisation controlled=
by
himself.
His political th=
eory,
according to Webster, was “no other than that of modern Anarchy, that=
man
should govern himself and rulers should be gradually done away with. But he=
is
careful to deprecate all ideas of violent revolution – the process is=
to
be accomplished by the most peaceful methods. Let us see how gently he lead=
s up
to the final conclusion:
“’The first s=
tage in
the life of the whole human race is savagery, rough nature, in which the fa=
mily
is the only society, and hunger and thirst are easily satisfied… in w=
hich
man enjoys the two most excellent goods, Equality and Liberty, to their ful=
lest
extent. … In these circumstances… health was his usual
condition… Happy men, who were not yet enough enlightened to lose the=
ir
peace of mind and to be conscious of the unhappy mainsprings and causes of =
our
misery, love of power… envy… illnesses and all the results of
imagination.’
“The
manner in which man fell from this primitive state of felicity is then
described:
“=
217;As
families increased, means of subsistence began to lack, the nomadic life
ceased, property was instituted, men established themselves firmly, and thr=
ough
agriculture families drew near each other, thereby language developed and
through living together men began to measure themselves against each other,
etc… But here was the cause of the downfall of freedom; equality
vanished. Man felt new unknown needs…’
“Thus men =
became
dependent like minors under the guardianship of kings; the human must attai=
n to
majority and become self-governing:
“’Why
should it be impossible that the human race should attain to its highest
perfection, the capacity to guide itself? Why should anyone be eternally led
who understands how to lead himself?’
“Further, =
men
must learn not only to be independent of kings but of each other:
“’Wh=
o has
need of another depends on him and has resigned his rights. So to need litt=
le
is the first step to freedom; therefore savages and the most highly enlight=
ened
are perhaps the only free men. The art of more and more limiting one’s
needs is at the same time the art of attaining freedom…’
“Weishaupt=
then
goes on to show how the further evil of Patriotism arose:
“’Wi=
th the
origin of nations and peoples the world ceased to be a great family, a sing=
le
kingdom: the great tie of nature was torn… Nationalism took the place=
of
human love…. Now it became a virtue to magnify one’s fatherland=
at
the expense of whoever was not enclosed within its limits, now as a means t=
o this
narrow end it was allowed to despise and outwit foreigners or indeed even to
insult them. This virtue was called Patriotism…’
“And so by
narrowing down affection to one’s fellow-citizens, the members of
one’s own family, and even to oneself:
“’Th=
ere
arose out of Patriotism, Localism, the family spirit, and finally Egoism=
230;
Diminish Patriotism, then men will learn to know each other again as such,
their dependence on each other will be lost, the bond of union will widen
out…’
“… W=
hilst
the ancient religions taught the hope of a Redeemer who should restore man =
to
his former state, Weishaupt looks to man alone for his restoration.
‘Men,’ he observes, ‘no longer loved men but only such and
such men. The word was quite lost…’ Thus in Weishaupt’s
masonic system the ‘lost word’ is ‘Man,’ and its
recovery is interpreted by the idea that Man should find himself again. Fur=
ther
on Weishaupt goes on to show how ‘the redemption of the human race is=
to
be brought about’:
“’Th=
ese
means are secret schools of wisdom, these were from all time the archives of
Nature and of human rights, through them will Man be saved from his Fall,
princes and nations will disappear without violence from the earth, the hum=
an
race will become one family and the world the abode of reasonable men. Mora=
lity
alone will bring about this change imperceptibly. Every father of a family =
will
be, as formerly Abraham and the patriarchs, the priest and unfettered lord =
of
his family, and Reason will be the only code of Man. This is one of our
greatest secrets…’
“… H=
is
first idea was to make Fire Worship the religion of Illuminism; the profess=
ion
of Christianity therefore appears to have been an after-thought. Evidently
Weishaupt discovered, as others have done, that Christianity lends itself m=
ore
readily to subversive ideas than any other religion. And in the passages wh=
ich
follow we find adopting the old ruse of representing Christ as a Communist =
and
as a secret-society adept. Thus he goes on to explain that ‘if Jesus
preaches contempt of riches, He wishes to teach us the reasonable use of th=
em
and prepare for the community of goods introduced by Him,’ and in whi=
ch,
Weishaupt adds later, He lived with His disciples. But this secret doctrine=
is
only to be apprehended by initiates…
“Weishaupt=
thus
contrives to give a purely political interpretation to Christ’s teach=
ing:
“’The
secret preserved through the Disciplinam Arcani, and the aim appeari=
ng
through all His words and deeds, is to give back to men their original libe=
rty
and equality… Now one can understand how far Jesus was the Redeemer a=
nd
Saviour of the world.’
“The missi=
on of
Christ was therefore by means of Reason to make men capable of freedom:
‘When at last reason becomes the religion of man, so will the problem=
be
solved.’
“Wei=
shaupt
goes on to show that Freemasonry can be interpreted in the same manner. The
secret doctrine concealed in the teaching of Christ was handed down by
initiates who ‘hid themselves and their doctrine under the cover of
Freemasonry,’ and in a long explanation of Masonic hieroglyphics he
indicates the analogies between the Hiramic legend and the story of Christ.
‘I say then Hiram is Christ.’… In this manner Weishaupt
demonstrates that ‘Freemasonry is hidden Christianity… But this=
is
of course only the secret of what Weishaupt calls ‘real
Freemasonry’ in contradistinction to the official kind, which he rega=
rds
as totally unenlightened.”[66]
But the whole of=
this
religious side of Weishaupt’s system is in fact simply a ruse, a cove=
r,
by which to attract religious men. Weishaupt himself despised religion:
“You cannot imagine,” he wrote, “what consideration and
sensation our Priest’s degree is arousing. The most wonderful thing is
that great Protestant and reformed theologians who belong to =
Q [Illuminism] still belie=
ve that
the religious teaching imparted in it contains the true and genuine spirit =
of
the Christian religion. Oh! men, of what cannot you be persuaded? I never
thought that I should become the founder of a new religion.”[67]
Only gradually, =
and
only to a very few of his closest associates, did Weishaupt reveal the real
purpose of his order – the revolutionary overthrow of the whole of
society, civil and religious. Elements of all religions and philosophical
systems, including Christianity and Masonry, were used by Weishaupt to enro=
l a
body of influential men (about 2500 at one time[68]) who
would obey him in all things while knowing neither him personally nor the r=
eal
aims of the secret society they had been initiated into. The pyramidal stru=
cture
of his organization, whereby nobody on a lower level knew what was happenin=
g on
the one above his, while those on the higher levels knew everything about w=
hat
was happening below them, was copied by all succeeding revolutionary
organizations.
Weishaupt was we=
ll on
the way to taking over Freemasonry (under the guise of its reform) when, in
July, 1785, an Illuminatus was struck by lightning and papers found =
on
him led to the Bavarian government banning the organisation. However, both
Illuminism and Weishaupt continued in existence – only France rather =
than
Germany became the centre of their operations. Thus the Parisian lodge of t=
he
Amis Réunis, renamed the Ennemis Réunis, gathered together all
the really radical Masons from various other lodges, many of which were sti=
ll
royalist, and turned them, often unconsciously, into agents of Weishaupt. T=
hese
adepts included no less than thirty princes. For it was characteristic of t=
he
revolution that among those who were most swept up by the madness of its in=
toxication
were those who stood to lose most from it.
Some far-sighted=
men,
such as the Apostolic Nuncio in Vienna and the Marquis de Luchet, warned
against Illuminism, and de Luchet predicted almost exactly the course of ev=
ents
that the revolution would take on the basis of his knowledge of the order. =
But
no one paid any attention. But then, in October, 1789 a pamphlet was seized=
in
the house of the wife of Mirabeau’s publisher among Mirabeau’s
papers and published two years later.
“Beginning=
with
a diatribe against the French monarchy,” writes Webster, “the
document goes on to say that ‘in order to triumph over this hydra-hea=
ded
monster these are my ideas’:
“’We=
must
overthrow all order, suppress all laws, annul all power, and leave the peop=
le
in anarchy. The law we establish will not perhaps be in force at once, but =
at
any rate, having given back the power to the people, they will resist for t=
he
sake of the liberty which they will believe they are preserving. We must ca=
ress
their vanity, flatter their hopes, promise them happiness after our work has
been in operation; we must elude their caprices and their systems at will, =
for
the people as legislators are very dangerous, they only establish laws which
coincide with their passions, their want of knowledge would besides only gi=
ve
birth to abuses. But as the people are a lever which legislators can move at
their will, we must necessarily use them as a support, and render hateful to
them everything we wish to destroy and sow illusions in their path; we must
also buy all the mercenary pens which propagate our methods and which will
instruct the people concerning their enemies which we attack. The clergy, b=
eing
the most powerful through public opinion, can only be destroyed by ridiculi=
ng
religion, rendering its ministers odious, and only representing them as
hypocritical monsters… Libels must at every moment show fresh traces =
of
hatred against the clergy. To exaggerate their riches, to makes the sins of=
an
individual appear to be common to all, to attribute to them all vices; calu=
mny,
murder, irreligion, sacrilege, all is permitted in times of revolution.R=
17;
“’We=
must
degrade the noblesse and attribute it to an odious origin, establish=
a
germ of equality which can never exist but which will flatter the people; [=
we
must] immolate the most obstinate, burn and destroy their property in order=
to
intimidate the rest, so that if we cannot entirely destroy this prejudice we
can weaken it and the people will avenge their vanity and their jealousy by=
all
the excesses which will bring them to submission.’
“After
describing how the soldiers are to be seduced from their allegiance, and the
magistrates represented to the people as despots, ‘since the people,
brutal and ignorant, only see the evil and never the good of things,’=
the
writer explains they must be given only limited power in the municipalities=
.
“’Le=
t us
beware above all of giving them too much force; their despotism is too
dangerous, we must flatter the people by gratuitous justice, promise them a
great diminution in taxes and a more equal division, more extension in
fortunes, and less humiliation. These phantasies [vertiges] will
fanaticise the people, who will flatten out all resistance. What matter the
victims and their numbers? Spoliations, destructions, burnings, and all the
necessary effects of a revolution? Nothing must be sacred and we can say wi=
th
Machiavelli: “What matter the means as long as one arrives at the
end?”’”[69]
The early phase =
of the
revolution appears to have been driven by the more idealistic kind of
Freemasons – men such as the Duc d’Orléans. But its later
stages were controlled by the Illuminati with their more radically
destructive plans. Thus “according to Lombard de Langres [writing in
1820]: ’France in 1789 counted more than 2,000 lodges affiliated to t=
he
Grand Orient; the number of adepts was more than 100,000. The first events =
of
1789 were only Masonry in action. All the revolutionaries of the Constituent
Assembly were initiated into the third degree. We place in this class the D=
uc
d’Orléans, Valence, Syllery, Laclos, Sièyes, Pét=
ion,
Menou, Biron, Montesquiou, Fauchet, Condorcet, Lafayette, Mirabeau, Garat,
Rabaud, Dubois-Crancé, Thiébaud, Larochefoucauld, and others.=
’
“Amongst t=
hese
others [continues Webster] were not only the Brissotins, who formed the nuc=
leus
of the Girondin party, but the men of the Terror – Marat, Robespierre,
Danton, and Desmoulins.
“It was th=
ese
fiercer elements, true disciples of the Illuminati, who were to sweep
away the visionary Masons dreaming of equality and brotherhood. Following t=
he
precedent set by Weishaupt, classical pseudonyms were adopted by these lead=
ers
of the Jacobins, thus Chaumette was known as Anaxagoras, Clootz as Anachars=
is,
Danton as Horace, Lacroix as Publicola, and Ronsin as Scaevola; again, after
the manner of the Illuminati, the names of towns were changed and a
revolutionary calendar was adopted. The red cap and loose hair affected by =
the
Jacobins appear also to have been foreshadowed in the lodges of the Illu=
minati.
“Yet faith=
fully
as the Terrorists carried out the plan of the Illuminati, it would s=
eem
that they themselves were not initiated into the innermost secrets of the
conspiracy. Behind the Convention, behind the clubs, behind the Revolutiona=
ry
Tribunal, there existed, says Lombard de Langres, that ‘most secret
convention [convention sécrétissime] which directed
everything after May 31, an occult and terrible power of which the other
Convention became the slave and which was composed of the prime initiates of
Illuminism. This power was above Robespierre and the committees of the
government,… it was this occult power which appropriated to itself the
treasures of the nation and distributed them to the brothers and friends who
had helped on the great work.’”[70]
Illuminism repre=
sents
perhaps the first clearly organised expression of that philosophy which
Hieromonk Seraphim Rose called “the Nihilism of Destruction”.[71] Fr.
Seraphim considered that this philosophy was unique to the twentieth centur=
y;
but the evidence for its existence already in the eighteenth century is
overwhelming. With Illuminism, therefore, we enter the atmosphere of the
twentieth-century totalitarian revolutions....
The French Revolution: (2=
) The
Jacobin Terror
In June, 1791 Lo=
uis
XVI tried, unsuccessfully, to flee abroad, and in August the monarchs of
Austria and Prussia met at Pillnitz to co-ordinate action against the
Revolution. Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden and Catherine of Russia also prepar=
ed
to crush the “orang-outangs of Europe”. From the summer of 1791=
to
the summer of 1792 power steadily slipped away from the elected Constituent
Assembly, which was still broadly in favour of a constitutional monarchy, a=
nd
into the hands of the mob, or the Paris Commune. Their passionate hatred of
refractory priests and monarchists inside the country was inflamed by the f=
irst
attempts of the foreign powers to invade France and restore legitimate
authority from outside.
The rhetoric bec=
ame
increasingly bloody. Thus on April 25, 1792 the “Marseillaise” =
was
composed for the army of the Rhine; “impure blood, it exulted, would
drench the tracks of the conquering French armies.”[72] And=
on
the same day the new invention of the Guillotine claimed its first
victim…
On June 20 the m=
ob or sansculottes
(without breeches), invaded the Tuileries. “By sheer weight of
numbers,” writes Zamoyski, “the crowd pushed through the gates =
of
the royal palace and came face to face with Louis XVI in one of the upstairs
salons, where the defenceless monarch had to endure the abuse of the mob.
Pistols and drawn sabres were waved in his face, and he was threatened with
death. More significantly, he was made to don a red cap [symbol of the
revolution] and drink the health of the nation – and thereby to
acknowledge its sovereignty. By acquiescing, he toasted himself off the
throne.”[73]
For a brief mome=
nt, on
July 14, the third anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, it looked a=
s if
constitutional monarchy could be saved. Louis was called “king of the French” a=
nd
“father of his country”. But on the same day Marie
Antoinette’s nephew, Francis II, was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in
Frankfurt in a ceremony that reaffirmed with great splendour the principle =
of
autocratic monarchy. Between the revolution celebrated in France and the
autocracy celebrated in Germany there could be no permanent compromise. The
centre, constitutional monarchy, could not hold…
Pressure mounted=
on
the Assembly to declare the dethronement of the king. Finally, on August 10,
the Tuileries was again invaded, 600 Swiss guards were brutally massacred, =
and
the king was imprisoned. The Assembly “had little alternative but to
‘invite’ the French people to form a convention ‘to assure
the sovereignty of the people and the reign of liberty and equality. The ne=
xt
day it decreed that the new assembly was to be elected by manhood suffrage,
without distinction between citizens. Only servants and the unemployed had =
no
vote.”[74]
Paris was ruled =
by the
mob now. In September the prisons were opened and suspected royalists were
slaughtered. On September 20 the Prussian army was defeated at Valmy, and t=
he
next day the monarchy was officially abolished.[75]
The newly elected
Convention’s task was to legislate for a new republican Constitution.=
It
was divided between “Montagnards” (Jacobins) on the left, led by
Marat, Danton, Robespierre and the Parisian delegates, and the
“Girondins” on the right, led by Brissot, Vergniaud and the
“faction of the Gironde”. The Montagnards were identified with =
the
interests of the Paris mob and the most radical ideas of the Revolution; the
Girondins – with the interests of the provinces and the original libe=
ral
ideals of 1789. The Montagnards stood for disposing of the king as soon as
possible; the Girondins wanted a referendum of the whole people to decide. =
The Montagnard
Saint-Just said that a trial was unnecessary; the people had already judged=
the
king on August 10; it remained only to punish him. For “there is no
innocent reign… every King is a rebel and a usurper.”[76]
Robespierre had voted against the death penalty in the Assembly, but now he
said that “Louis must die that the country may love”. And he ag=
reed
with Saint-Just: “Louis cannot be judged, he has already been judged.=
He
has been condemned, or else the Republic is not blameless. To suggest putti=
ng
Louis XVI on trial, in whatever way, is a step back towards royal and
constitutional despotism; it is a counter-revolutionary idea; because it pu=
ts
the Revolution itself in the dock. After all, if Louis can still be put on
trial, Louis can be acquitted; he might be innocent. Or rather, he is presu=
med
to be until he is found guilty. But if Louis can be presumed innocent, what
becomes of the Revolution?”[77]
There was a cert=
ain
logic in these words: since the Revolution undermined all the foundations of
the ancien régime, the possibility that the head of that
régime might be innocent implied that the Revolution might be guilty=
. So
“revolutionary justice” required straight execution rather than=
a
trial; it could not afford to question the foundations of the Revolution
itself. It was the same logic that led to the execution without trial of Ts=
ar
Nicholas II in 1917.
But the majority=
of
the deputies were not yet as “advanced” in their thinking as
Robespierre. So “during the third week of January 1793,” writes
Ridley, “the Convention voted four times on the issue. A resolution
finding Louis guilty of treason, and rejecting the idea of an appeal to the
people by a plebiscite [so much for Rousseauist democracy!], was carried by=
426
votes to 278; the decision to impose the death penalty was carried by 387 to
314. Philippe Egalité [the Duke of Orléans and cousin of the =
king
who became Grand Master of the Masons, then a Jacobin, renouncing his title=
for
the name ‘Philippe Egalité’] voted to convict Louis and =
for
the death penalty. A deputy then proposed that the question of what to do w=
ith
Louis should be postponed indefinitely. This was defeated by 361 to 360, a
single vote. Philippe Egalité voted against the proposal, so his vote
decided the issue. On 20 January a resolution that the death sentence shoul=
d be
immediately carried out was passed by 380 to 310, and Louis was guillotined=
the
next day.”[78]
After the execut=
ion a
huge old man with a long beard who had been prominent in the murdering of
priests during the September riots mounted the scaffold, plunged both hands
into the kind’s blood and sprinkled the people with it, shouting:
“People of France! I baptise you in the name of Jacob and Freedom!=
221;[79]
“Traditionally,” writes Zamoyski, “the death of a =
king
of France was announced with the phrase: ‘Le Roi est mort, vive le
Roi!’, in order to stress the continuity of the institution of
monarchy. When the king’s head, was held aloft on that sunless day, t=
he
crowd assembled around the scaffold shouted: ‘Vive la Nation!̵=
7;
The message was unequivocal. The nation had replaced the king as the sovere=
ign
and therefore as the validating element in the state. The dead king’s=
God
had been superseded by ‘Our Lord Mankind’, to use the words of =
one
prominent revolutionary.”[80]
“The
condemnation of the king,” wrote Camus, “is the crux of
contemporary history. It symbolizes the secularization of our history and t=
he
disincarnation of the Christian God. Up to now, God played a part in history
through the medium of kings. But His representative in history has been
killed…”[81]
The execution of=
the
king was the signal for the abandonment of all restraint. The cause of the
Revolution became the absolute value to which every other value was to be
subordinated and sacrificed. In February, 1793, after the British broke off
relations because of the execution of the king, the Convention declared war=
on
the British and the Dutch, and in effect “bade defiance to the whole =
of
Europe. ‘They threaten you with kings!’ roared Danton to the
Convention. ‘You have thrown down your gauntlet to them, and this
gauntlet is a king’s head, the signal of their coming death.’
‘We cannot be calm,’ claimed the ever-bombastic Brissot,
‘until Europe, all Europe, is in flames.’ In token of this
defiance, annexations were now vigorously pursued…”[82] No
matter that the Declaration of the Rights of Man had declared for the freed=
om
of every nation: revolutionary casuistry interpreted sovereignty to be the
right only of revolutionary nations; all others deserved to become slaves of
the Republic.
Moreover, on Dec=
ember
15, 1792 “generals were authorized in all occupied territories to
introduce the full social programme of the French Republic. All existing ta=
xes,
tithes, feudal dues, and servitudes were to be abolished. So was nobility, =
and
all types of privilege. The French motto would be, declared some deputies, =
War
on the castles, peace to the cottages! In the name of peace, help, frat=
ernity,
liberty and equality, they would assist all people to establish ‘free=
and
popular’ governments, with whom they would then co-operate.”[83]
But practice did=
not
match theory: the theory of cosmopolitan universalism too often gave way to=
the
practice of imperialist nationalism. Thus when Holland was conquered by the
revolutionary armies, “it was compelled to cede various southern
territories, including control of the mouth of the Scheldt, and pay for the
upkeep of a French occupying army of 25,000 men. Finally, it was forced to
conclude an alliance with the French Republic whose chief attraction was to
place the supposedly formidable Dutch navy in the balance against Great
Britain. This, then, was what the fraternity and help of the French Republi=
c actually
meant: total subordination to French needs and purposes.”[84]
Imperialism abro=
ad was
matched by despotism at home, forced conscription and crippling taxes. And =
now
for the first time there was massive resistance. First came the peasant
counter-revolution in the western regions of Brittany and the Vendée,
which was crushed with great cruelty[85] with
the loss of about 250,000 lives, about ten times more than were claimed by =
the
guillotine. At about the same time the revolutionary army under Dumouriez w=
as
defeated by the Austrians at Neerwinden. Dumouriez then changed sides, and =
it
was only the army’s refusal to co-operate that prevented him from
marching on Paris to restore the constitution of 1791 with Louis XVII as ki=
ng.[86]
The peasant revo=
lt in
the Vendée was by far the most serious and prolonged that the
revolutionaries had to face, and it is significant that it was fought under=
the
banner of the restoration of the king and the Church. The rebels wore
“sacred hearts, crosses, and the white cockade of royalism. ‘Lo=
ng
live the king and our good priests,’ was their cry. ‘We want our
king, our priests and the old regime.’”[87]
However, the
counter-revolution in other parts of the country, and especially among the =
bourgeoisie
of such large cities as Marseilles, Lyons and Bourdeaux, was less principled
and therefore much less effective. As one general reported of the Bordelais:
“They appeared to me determined not to involve themselves in Parisian
affairs, but more determined still to retain their liberty, their property,
their opulence… They don’t want a king: they want a republic, b=
ut a
rich and tranquil republic.”[88]
This difference =
in
motivation between different parts of the counter-revolution, and the failu=
re
of many of its leaders to condemn the revolution in toto and as s=
uch,
and not just some of its wilder excesses, doomed it to failure in the long
term. As long as the revolutionaries held the centre, and were able to use =
the
methods of terror and mass conscription to send large armies into the field
against their enemies, the advantage lay with them. And their position was
strengthened still further by the coup against the Girondist deputies carri=
ed
out between May 31 and June 2, 1793.
“In July
1793,” writes Ridley, “a young Girondin woman, Charlotte Corday,
gained admission to Marat’s house by pretending that she wished to gi=
ve
him a list of names of Girondins to be guillotined. She found him sitting as
usual in his bath to cure his skin disease, and she stabbed him to death.[89] She=
was
guillotined, and the Girondin party was suppressed.
“In Lyons,=
the
Girondins had gained control of the Freemasons’ lodges. In the summer=
of
1793 the Girondins there defied the authority of the Jacobin government in
Paris, and guillotined one of the local Jacobin leaders. The Lyons Freemaso=
ns
played a leading part in the rising against the Paris Jacobins; but the
Jacobins suppressed the revolt, and several of the leading Girondin Freemas=
ons
of Lyons were guillotined.”[90]
And so the Revol=
ution
was frenziedly devouring its own children.[91] Or
rather, the Masons were devouring their own brothers; for the struggle betw=
een
the Girondists and the Montagnards was in fact, according to Lev Tikhomirov=
, a
struggle between different layers of Masonry.[92]
“However, in the period of the terror the majority of Masonic lodges =
were
closed. As Louis Blanc explains, a significant number of Masons, though
extremely liberal-minded, could still not, in accordance with their personal
interests, character and public position, sympathise with the incitement of=
the
maddened masses against the rich, to whom they themselves belonged. In the
hottest battle of the revolution it was those who split off into the highest
degrees who acted. The Masonic lodges were replaced by political clubs,
although in the political clubs, too, there began a sifting of the
revolutionaries into the more moderate and the extremists, so that quite a =
few
Masons perished on the scaffolds from the hands of their
‘brothers’. After the overthrow of Robespierre on 9 Thermidor t=
he
Masonic lodges were again opened.”[93]
Now the Terror w=
ent
into overdrive. The guillotine was used to eliminate traitors, backsliders,
suspects, speculators and “egoists”. “The spirit of
moderation,” declared Leclerc, needed to be expunged.[94]
On September 17 a
comprehensive Law of Suspects was passed, which empowered watch committees
“to arrest anyone who ‘either by their conduct, their contacts,
their words or their writings, showed themselves to be supporters of tyrann=
y,
of federalism, or to be enemies of liberty’, as well as a number of m=
ore
specific categories such as former nobles ‘who have not constantly
manifested their attachment to the revolution.’ Practically anybody m=
ight
fall foul of such a sweeping law. In the weeks following even everyday spee=
ch
acquired a sansculotte style. Those who refused to call each other
‘citizen’ rather than the deferential ‘Monsieur’, a=
nd
to use the familiar form of address (tutoiement), fell under automat=
ic
suspicion. Then on 29 September the Convention passed a General Maximum Law
which imposed price controls on a wide range of goods defined as of first
necessity from food and drink to fuel, clothing, and even tobacco. Those who
sold them above the maximum would be fined and placed on the list of suspec=
ts.
The Revolutionary Army was at last set on foot…”[95]
The Committee of
Public Safety now took over control of the government, subject only to the
oversight of the Convention. This anti-democratic move was said to be tempo=
rary
and justified by the emergency situation. “It is impossible,” s=
aid
Saint-Just in the Committee’s name, “for revolutionary laws to =
be
executed if the government itself is not constituted in a revolutionary
way.”[96]
The revolutionary
government now took terrible revenge on its defeated enemies. On October 12=
the
Committee “moved a decree that Lyons should be destroyed. Its very na=
me
was to disappear, except on a monument among the ruins which would proclaim
‘Lyons made war on Liberty. Lyons is no more.’”[97] Lyo=
ns
was not completely destroyed, but whole ranges of houses were burnt and
thousands were guillotined and shot. “The effect… was designed =
to
be a salutory one. ‘What cement for the Revolution,’ gloated Ac=
hard
in a letter to Paris.”[98]
In order to carr=
y out
its totalitarian programme of control of the whole population, the governme=
nt
issued “certificates of civisme – identity cards and
testimonials of public reliability all in one. Originally only foreigners h=
ad
been required to carry these documents, but the Law of Suspects made the
requirement general [thereby showing that for the revolutionary government =
all
citizens were aliens]. Those without them were liable to arrest and
imprisonment; and in fact up to half a million people may have been impriso=
ned
as suspects of one sort or another during the Terror. Up to 10,000 may have
died in custody, crowded into prisons never intended for such numbers, or
makeshift quarters no better equipped. These too deserve to be numbered amo=
ng
the victims of the Terror, although not formally condemned. So do those who
were murdered or lynched without trial or official record during the chaoti=
c,
violent autumn of 1793, when the supreme law of public safety seemed to
override more conventional and cumbersome procedures. Altogether the true t=
otal
of those who died under the Terror may have been twice the official figure
– around 30,000 people in just under a year… Nor is it true that
most of those killed in the Terror were members of the former ‘privil=
eged
orders’, whatever the Revolution’s anti-aristocratic rhetoric m=
ight
suggest. Of the official death sentences passed, less than 9 per cent fell =
upon
nobles, and less than 7 per cent on the clergy. Disproportionately high as
these figures may have been relative to the numbers of these groups in the
population as a whole, they were not as high as the quarter of the
Terror’s victims who came from the middle classes. And the vast major=
ity
of those who lost their lives in the proscriptions of 1793-4 – two-th=
irds
of those officially condemned and doubtless a far higher proportion of those
who disappeared unofficially – were ordinary people caught up in trag=
ic
circumstances not of their own making, who made wrong choices in lethal tim=
es,
when indifference itself counted as a crime.”[99]
The incarnation =
of the
revolution in this, its bloodiest phase was the lawyer Maximilien Robespier=
re.
Uniting in his own person the despotism of Louis XIV and the freedom-worshi=
p of
Rousseau, he said: “I am not a flatterer, a conciliator, an orator, a
protector of the people; I myself am the people.” Again, uniti=
ng
opposites in thoroughly Hegelian fashion, he said: “The impulse behind
the people’s revolutionary government is virtue and terror: virtue
without which terror is pernicious; terror without which virtue is
impotent… The government of the Revolution is the despotism of liberty
over tyranny…”[100]
As the Girondin =
Manon
Roland said just before his execution: “Oh, Liberty! How many crimes =
are
committed in thy name!”[101]
The institution which suf=
fered
most in the years 1789-91 was the Catholic Church. It lost its feudal dues =
in
August and its lands in October, 1789. In February, 1790 all monasteries and
convents, except those devoted to educational and charitable work, were
dissolved, and new religious vows were forbidden. The Assembly then
“replaced the 135 bishops with 85, one for each départment<=
/u>,
and provided one curé for every 6,000 inhabitants. Bishops we=
re
henceforth to be elected (by an electorate including non-believers, Protest=
ants
and Jews) without reference to Rome.”[102]
The weakened pos=
ition
of the Church encouraged the Protestants, and in June 300 died in clashes
between Catholics and Protestants in Nîmes. Meanwhile, 150,000 papal
subjects living in Avignon and the Comtat agitated for integration with Fra=
nce.
Pope Pius VI rejected this, and on March 29 he also rejected the Declaratio=
n of
the Rights of Man and all the religious legislation so far passed in the
Assembly. On July 12 a Civil Constitution for the Clergy was passed,
rationalising the Church’s organisation, putting all the clergy on the
State’s pay-roll and decreeing the election of the clergy by lay
assemblies who might included Protestants and Jews as well as Catholics. The
Pope had already, on July 10, pleaded with the King to veto the Civil
Constitution, but the king, advised by weak bishops, had already given his
preliminary sanction.
With the Pope ag=
ainst
the Civil Constitution, its acceptance or rejection became a test of faith =
for
Catholics. As opinion polarised, on October 30 thirty bishops from the Asse=
mbly
signed an Exposition of Principles, explaining that, as Doyle writes,
“they could not connive at such radical changes without consulting the
Church through either a council or the Pope. Nevertheless patriots saw it a=
s an
incitement to disobey the law, and local authorities, clamorously supported=
by
Jacobin clubs, began to enforce it. Bishops began to be expelled from
suppressed sees; chapters were dissolved. In October and early November the
first departmental bishops were elected. But this time the clergy did not
meekly accept its fate. There were protests. ‘I can no more’,
declared the incumbent of the doomed see of Senez, ‘renounce the
spiritual contract which binds me to my Church than I can renounce the prom=
ises
of my baptism… I belong to my flock in life and in death… If God
wishes to test his own, the eighteenth century, like the first century, will
have its martyrs.’ The first elected bishop, the deputy Expilly, who =
was
chosen by the Finistère department, was refused confirmation by the
archbishop of Rennes. In Soissons, the bishop was dismissed by the departme=
ntal
authorities for denouncing the Civil Constitution. It was impossible to dis=
miss
all the 104 priests of Nantes who did the same, but their salaries were
stopped. Evidently there was to be no peaceful transition to a new
ecclesiastical order, and indignant local authorities bombarded the Assembly
with demands for action. Eventually, on 27 November, action was taken. The =
deputies
decided, after two days of bitter debate, to dismiss at once all clerics who
did not accept the new order unequivocally. And to test this acceptance they
imposed an oath. All beneficed clergy were to swear after mass on the first
available Sunday ‘to be faithful to the nation, the King and the law,=
and
to uphold with all their power the constitution declared by the National
Assembly and accepted by the king.’ All who refused were to be replac=
ed
at once through the procedures laid down in the Civil Constitution.
“The French
Revolution had many turning-points: but the oath of the clergy was, if not =
the
greatest, unquestionably one of them. It was certainly the Constituent
Assembly’s most serious mistake. For the first time the revolutionari=
es
forced fellow citizens to choose; to declare themselves publicly for or aga=
inst
the new order… With no word from Rome, the king sanctioned the new de=
cree
of 26 December, so that oath-taking (or refusal) dominated public life
throughout the country in January and February 1791. The clergy in the Asse=
mbly
themselves set the pattern, in that they were completely divided. Only 109 =
took
the oath, and only two bishops, one of them Talleyrand. As the deadline
approached on 4 January the Assembly was surrounded by crowds shouting for
nonjurors to be lynched; and the patriots, led unpersuasively by the Protes=
tant
Barnave, used every possible argument and procedural ploy to sway waverers.=
But
there were none. And faced with this example from the majority of clerical =
deputies,
it is little wonder that so many clerics in the country at large became
refractories (as nonjurors were soon being called)… Above all, there =
was
a massive refusal of the oath throughout the west…In the end, about 54
per cent of the parish clergy took the oath. This suggests that well over a
third of the country was now prepared to signal that the Revolution had gone
far enough…”[103]
There is a bitter
irony in these events. How often, since 1066 and the Investitures Conflict,=
had
Popes bent western kings to their evil will! However, as present events now
demonstrated, these were pyrrhic victories, which, in weakening the Monarch=
y,
ultimately weakened the Church, too, in that Church and Monarchy are the two
essential pillars of every Christian society. Right up to the Reformation t=
he
Popes had failed to understand that attacks on the throne were also attacks=
on
the altar, and that an accusation of “royal despotism” would al=
most
invariably be linked with one of “episcopal despotism”. The
Counter-Reformation Popes were more careful to respect monarchical authorit=
y,
and Louis XIV’s abrupt about-turn from Gallicanism to Ultramontanism
witnessed to their continuing influence. But the constant political intrigu=
es
of the papal society of the Jesuits, which made them a kind of “state
within the state”, led to their being banned by all the governments of
Western Europe - a severe blow from which the power of the Popes never fully
recovered and which was an important condition of the success of the revolu=
tion.
The Masons and even more radical groups like the “Illuminati” (=
see
below) were quick to take the place of the Jesuits as the main threat to
established authority, while using the Jesuits’ methods. And now, at =
the
end of the eighteenth century, when papism was in full retreat before the
onslaught of enlightened despots like Joseph II and revolutionary democrats
like the French National Assembly, and the Popes were desperately in need of
the support of “Most Catholic Kings” such as Louis XVI, they pa=
id
the price for centuries of papal anti-monarchism. Indeed, since it was Papi=
sm
that destroyed the Orthodox symphony of powers, and thereby created the
conditions for the revolution, there was some sense in Catherine II’s
suggestion that the European powers “embrace the Greek religion to sa=
ve
themselves from this immoral, anarchic, wicked and diabolical
plague…”[104]
In its second, J=
acobin
phase the revolution revealed its anti-Christian essence most clearly. Thus=
at
the funeral of Marat in July, 1793, the following eulogy was given: “O
heart of Marat, sacré coeur… can the works and
benevolence of the son of Mary be compared with those of the Friend of the
People and his apostles to the Jacobins of our holy Mountain?… Their
Jesus was but a false prophet but Marat is a god…”[105]
The revolution w=
as in
essence anti-Christian because it came to provide a new faith instead of
Christianity: the cult of the nation. Let us recall the earlier stages in t=
he
rise of the cult of the nation: the oath to the nation that Rousseau provid=
ed
for Napoleon’s native Corsica; the speech of the Polish marshal, Josef
Pulaski at Bar in 1768, when he said: “We are to die so that the
motherland may live; for while we live the motherland is dying”[106]; t=
he
birth of the American nation in 1776; the abortive Irish revolution of 1783;
the abortive Dutch revolution of 1785, which declared liberty the
“inalienable right” of every citizen, and whose “Leiden
draft” declared: “the Sovereign is no other than the vote of th=
e people”.[107]
But these were m=
erely
dress-rehearsals for the full emergence of the new nationalist faith, whose
foundation stone, as we have seen, was the third of the Rights of Man decla=
red
by the French National Assembly on August 26, 1789: “The principle of=
all
sovereignty lies in the nation. No body of men, and no individual, can exer=
cise
authority which does not emanate directly therefrom.”
It should be
understood that this was not simply an expression of patriotism, but precis=
ely a
new faith to replace all existing faiths. For “the nation, as
Abbé Siéyès put it, recognized no interest on earth ab=
ove
its own, and accepted no law or authority other than its own – neither
that of humanity at large nor of other nations”[108]
– nor, it goes without saying, of God. The nation therefore stood in =
the
place of God; in the strict sense of the word, it was an idol. So Hobsbawm
rightly comments: “’The people’ identified with ‘the
nation’ was a revolutionary concept; more revolutionary than the
bourgeois-liberal programme which purported to express it.”[109]
But what precise=
ly was
the nation, and how was it revealed? To this question the most revolutionar=
y of
the philosophes and the prophet of nationalism, Rousseau, had provid=
ed
the answer. The nation, he said, is revealed in the general will, which was=
not
to be identified with the will of any individual, such as the king, or grou=
p,
such as a parliamentary majority, but only in some spontaneous, mystical
upswelling of emotion that carried all before it and was not to be question=
ed
or criticised by any rational considerations. It was a “holy
madness”, to use Lafayette’s phrase.[110]
“’He=
who
would dare to undertake to establish a nation would have to feel himself
capable of altering, so to speak, human nature, to transform each individua=
l, who
by his very nature is a unique and perfect whole, into a mere part of a gre=
ater
whole, from which this individual would in a sense receive his life and his
being,’ Rousseau had written. He understood that any polity, however
logical, simple, elegant, poetic or modern, would be inadequate to replace =
the
layered sacrality of something like the Crown of France and the whole
theological and mythical charge of the Catholic Church. Human emotions need=
ed
something richer to feed on than a mere ‘system’ if they were t=
o be
engaged. And engaged they must be, for if one removed religious control of
social behaviour and the monarch’s role as ultimate arbiter, the very
fount-head of civil sanction would dry up. Something had to be put in their
place. The question was ultimately how to induce people to be good in a god=
less
society.
“As it was=
the
people themselves who gave the state its legitimacy, it was they who had to=
be
invested with divinity. The monarch would be replaced by a disembodied
sovereign in the shape of the nation, which all citizens must be taught to
‘adore’. ‘It is education that must give to the souls of =
men
the national form, and so direct their thoughts and their tastes, that they
will be patriotic by inclination, by passion, by necessity,’ Rousseau
explained. This education included not only teaching but also sport and pub=
lic
ceremonies designed to inculcate the desired values. ‘From the excite=
ment
caused by this common emulation will be born that patriotic intoxication wh=
ich
alone can elevate men above themselves, and without which liberty is no more
than an empty word and legislation but an illusion.’
“A precond=
ition
of this was the the total elimination of Christianity. Being a sentimental
person, Rousseau could not remain entirely unmoved by what he saw as the
‘sublime’ core of Christianity. But the existence of a morally
independent religion alongside the civil institutions was bound to be
destructive. ‘Far from binding the hearts of the citizens to the stat=
e,
it detaches them from it, as from all earthly things,’ he writes:
‘I can think of nothing more contrary to the social spirit.’ It
forced on people ‘two sets of laws, two leaders, two motherlands̵=
7;,
subjecting them to ‘contradictory duties’ and preventing them f=
rom
being ‘both devout practitioners and good citizens’. Christiani=
ty
demanded self-denial and submission, but only to God, and not to any creati=
on
of Man’s. A Christian’s soul could not be fused with the
‘collective soul’ of the nation, challenging the very basis of
Rousseau’s proposition. His assertion that ‘a man is virtuous w=
hen
his particular will is in accordance in every respect with the general
will’, was heresy in Christian terms, according to which virtue consi=
sts
in doing the will of God. There was no room for someone whose ultimate loya=
lty
was to God in Rousseau’s model, which substituted the nation for
God.”[111]
Zamoyski continu=
es:
“Anthropologically visualized as a universal ideal female, the nation
kindled desire for selfless sacrifice in its cause, and that was the great
strength of the French revolution. ‘Since it appeared to be more
concerned with the regeneration of the human race than with reforming Franc=
e,
it aroused feelings that no political revolutions had hitherto managed to
inspire,’ explained Tocqueville. ‘It inspired proselytism and g=
ave
birth to the propagande,’ he continued, and, ‘like Islam,
flooded the whole world with its soldiers, its apostles and its
martyrs.’”[112]
A programme know=
n as
de-christianization was now launched. The calendar and festivals of the old
religion were replaced by those of the new, civic religion of the nation. T=
hus
July 14, August 10, January 21 (the day of the execution of Louis XVI) and =
May
31 (the day of the establishment of the Jacobin tyranny) were commanded to =
be
celebrated as feast-days.
Bamber Gascoigne
writes: “August 10th was the first anniversary of the day =
on
which the Paris mob had stormed the Tuileries and had put an effective end =
to
the monarchy. The occasion was celebrated with a Festival of Regeneration, =
also
known by the even more uninspiring name of Festival of the Unity and
Indivisibility of the Republic. Among the ruins of the Bastille Jacques-Lou=
is
David had built a huge figure of a seated woman. She was Mother Nature. From
her breasts there spurted two jets of water, at which delegates filled their
cups and drank libations. Three months later there was a Festival of Reason=
, in
which an actress from the opera played the Goddess of Reason and was enthro=
ned
in the cathedral of Notre-Dame – with the red bonnet of Liberty on her
head and a crucifix beneath one of her elegant feet.”[113]
All the churches=
in
Paris were closed, and the royal tombs were destroyed. Then there arrived in
the Nièvre in September, 1793 the representative Fouché, who
“transformed it into a beacon of religious terror. Fouché, him=
self
a former priest, came from the Vendée, where he had witnessed the
ability of the clergy to inspire fanatical resistance to the RevolutionR=
17;s
authority. Christianity, he concluded, could not coexist in any form with t=
he
Revolution and, brushing aside what was left of the
‘constitutional’ Church, he inaugurated a civic religion of his=
own
devising with a ‘Feast of Brutus’ on 22 September at which he
denounced ‘religious sophistry’. Fouché particularly
deplored clerical celibacy: it set the clergy apart, and in any case made no
contribution to society’s need for children. Clerics who refused to m=
arry
were ordered to adopt and support orphans or aged citizens. The French peop=
le,
Fouché declared in a manifesto published on 10 October, recognized no
other cult but that of universal morality; and although the exercise of all
creeds was proclaimed to be free and equal, none might henceforth be practi=
sed
in public. Graveyards should exhibit no religious symbols, and at the gate =
of
each would be an inscription Death is an eternal sleep. Thus began t=
he
movement known as dechristianization. Soon afterwards Fouché moved o=
n to
Lyons; but during his weeks in Nevers his work had been watched by Chaumett=
e,
visiting his native town from Paris. He was to carry the idea back to the
capital, where it was energetically taken up by his colleagues at the commu=
ne.
“Other
representatives on mission, meanwhile, had also taken to attacking the outw=
ard
manifestations of the Catholic religion. At Abbeville, on the edge of
priest-ridden Flanders, Dumont favoured forced public abjuration of orders,
preferably by constitutional clergy whose continued loyalty to the Revoluti=
on
could only now be proved by such gestures. On October 7 in Rheims, Ruhl
personally supervised the smashing of the phial holding the sacred oil of
Clovis used to anoint French kings. None of this was authorized by the
Convention: on the other hand the adoption on 5 October of a new republican
calendar marked a further stage in the divorce between the French State and=
any
sort of religion. Years would no longer be numbered from the birth of Chris=
t,
but from the inauguration of the French Republic on 22 September 1792. Thus it was already the Year II. T=
here would
be twelve thirty-day months with evocative, seasonal names; each month would
have three ten-day weeks (décades) ending in a rest-day (d=
écadi).
Sundays therefore disappeared and could not be observed unless they coincid=
ed
with the less-frequent décadis. The introduction of the syste=
m at
this moment only encouraged representatives on mission to intensify their l=
ead;
and dechristianization became an important feature of the Terror in all the
former centres of rebellion when they were brought to heel. Once launched it
was eminently democratic. Anybody could join in smashing images, vandalizing
churches (the very word was coined to describe this outburst of iconoclasm),
and theft of vestments to wear in blasphemous mock ceremonies. Those needing
pretexts could preach national necessity when they tore down bells or walked
off with plate that could be recast into guns or coinage. Such activities w=
ere
particular favourites among the Revolutionary Armies. The Parisian detachme=
nts
marching to Lyons left a trail of pillaged and closed churches, and smoulde=
ring
bonfires of ornaments, vestments, and holy pictures all along their route.
Other contributions took more organization, but Jacobin clubs and popular
societies, not to mention local authorities, were quite happy to orchestrate
festivals of reason, harmony, wisdom, and other such worthy attributes to
former churches; and to recruit parties of priests who, at climactic moment=
s in
these ceremonies, would renounce their vows and declare themselves ready to
marry. If their choice fell on a former nun, so much the better.
“When Chau=
metter
returned from Nevers, the Paris Commune made dechristianization its official
policy. On 23 October the images of kings on the front of Notre-Dame were
ordered to be removed: the royal tombs at Saint-Denis had already been empt=
ied
and desecrated by order of the Convention in August. The word Saint
began to be removed from street names, and busts of Marat replaced religious
statues. Again the Convention appeared to be encouraging the trend when it
decreed, on 20 October, that any priest (constitutional or refractory)
denounced for lack of civisme by six citizens would be subject to
deportation, and any previously sentenced to deportation but found in France
should be executed. Clerical dress was now forbidden in Paris, and on 7
November Gobel, the elected constitutional bishop, who had already sanction=
ed
clerical marriage for his clergy, came with eleven of them to the Convention
and ceremonially resigned his see. Removing the episcopal insignia, he put =
on a
cap of liberty and declared that the only religion of a free people should =
be
that of Liberty and Equality. In the next few days the handful of priests w=
ho
were deputies followed his example. Soon Grégoire, constitutional bi=
shop
of Blois, was the only deputy left clinging to his priesthood and clerical
dress. The sections meanwhile were passing anti-clerical motions, and on 12
November that of Gravilliers, whose idol had so recently been Jacques Roux,
sent a deputation to the Convention draped in ‘ornaments from churche=
s in
their district, spoils taken from the superstitious credulity of our
forefathers and repossessed by the reason of free men’ to announce th=
at
all churches in the section had been closed. This display followed a great
public ceremony held in Notre-Dame, or the ‘Temple of Reason’, =
as
it was now redesignated, on the tenth. On this occasion relays of patriotic
maidens in virginal white paraded reverently before a temple of philosophy
erected where the high altar had stood. From it emerged, at the climax of t=
he
ceremony, a red-capped female figure representing Liberty. Appreciatively
described by an official recorder of the scene as ‘a masterpiece of
nature’, in daily life she was an actress; but in her symbolic role s=
he
led the officials of the commune to the Convention, where she received the
fraternal embrace of the president and secretaries.
“However
carefully choreographed, there was not much dignity about these posturings;=
and
attacks on parish churches and their incumbents (who were mostly now popula=
rly
elected) risked making the Revolution more enemies than friends. Small-town=
and
anti-religious Jacobin zeal, for example, provoked a minor revolt in the Br=
ie
in the second week in December. To shouts of Long live the Catholic
Religion, we want our priests, we want the Mass on Sundays and Holy Days,
crowds of peasants sacked the local club. Several thousands took up arms and
joined the movement, and only a force of National Guards and sansculottes f=
rom
the Revolutionary Army restored order in a district whose tranquillity was
vital to the regular passage of food supplies to the capital from southern
Champagne. But even before this the Committee of Public Safety was growing
anxious about the counter-productive effects of dechristianization. Robespi=
erre
in particular, who [following his teacher, Rousseau] believed that religious
faith was indispensable to orderly, civilized society, sounded the alarm. On
November 21 he denounced anti-religious excesses at the Jacobin club. They
smacked of more fanaticism than they extinguished.[114] The
people believed in a Supreme Being, he warned, whereas atheism was
aristocratic.[115]
At the same time he persuaded the Committee to circularize popular societies
warning them not to fan superstition and fanaticism by persecution. On 6
December, finally, the Convention agreed to reiterate the principle of
religious freedom in a decree which formally prohibited all violence or thr=
eats
against the ‘liberty of cults’. But by then it was too late. The
example of Paris had encouraged Jacobin zealots everywhere, and with the
repression of revolt in full swing and the role of priests in the Vend&eacu=
te;e
particularly notorious, the remaining trappings of religion were too tempti=
ng a
target to ignore. The commune’s response to Robespierre on 23 November
had been to decree the closing of all churches in the capital; and soon loc=
al
authorities were shutting them wholesale throughout the country. By the spr=
ing,
churches were open for public worship only in the remotest corners of Franc=
e,
such as the Jura mountains. By then, perhaps 20,000 priests had been bullied
into giving up their status, and 6,000 had given their renunciation the
ultimate confirmation by marrying. In some areas, such as Provence,
dechristianization only reached its peak in March or April 1794."[116]
On October 31 the Girondi=
sts went
to the guillotine. By the Law of 14 Frumaire (4 December) extreme
centralisation was decreed, heralding the end of the Terror, but accelerati=
ng
the Terror within the central administration itself. In March it was the tu=
rn
of the Hébertists; in April – of the Dantonists. On March 27 t=
he
Revolutionary Army was disbanded. By the end of April the commune had been
purged.
Robespierre was =
still
alive, preaching the new, revolutionary virtue and religion. By the Decree =
of
18 Floréal (7 May) it was declared that the French people recognised=
a
Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul, and that a cult worthy of the
Supreme Being was the fulfilment of a man’s civic duties. Thus the
emphasis was still on man’s civic duties: religion had no
independent function outside the State, in accordance with the words of
Abbé Guillaume Raynal in 1780: “The State, it seems to me, is =
not
made for religion, but religion for the State.”[117]
It was the same =
with
morality, which was now defined to include among the highest virtues “=
;the
hatred of bad faith and tyranny, the punishment of tyrants and traitors, he=
lp
to the unhappy, respect for the weak, protection to the oppressed, to do all
the good possible to others and to be unjust to nobody.”[118]
On 20 Prairial (8
June), Robespierre moved that “the nation should celebrate the Supreme
Being. Thus every locality was given a month to make its preparations. The =
fact
that 8 June was also Whit Sunday may or may not have been a coincidence; if
not, it could have been conceived either as a challenge or as an olive bran=
ch
to Christianity. In the event little direction was given to the localities =
on
how to organize the festival. Some adopted the props of all-too-recent
festivals of reason, merely painting out old slogans with new ones. Others =
used
the opportunity to allow mass to be said publicly for the first time in mon=
ths.
But in Paris the organization of the occasion was entrusted to the experien=
ced
hands of the painter David, himself a member of the Committee of General
Security. He built an artificial mountain in the Champ de Mars, surmounted =
by a
tree of liberty, and thither a mass procession made its way from the Tuiler=
ies.
At its head marched the members of the Convention, led by their president, =
who
happened that week to be Robespierre. He used the opportunity to deliver two
more eulogies of virtue and republican religion, pointedly ignoring, though=
not
failing to notice, the smirks of his fellow deputies at the posturings of t=
his
pseudo-Pope. Others found it no laughing matter. ‘Look at the
bugger,’ muttered Thuriot, an old associate of Danton. ‘It̵=
7;s
not enough for him to be master, he has to be God.’”[119]
Like the other g=
ods of
the revolution[120],
Robespierre did not survive its terror. On 22 Prairial (10 June, 1794),
witnesses and defending counsels were decreed to be no longer necessary in
trials – so no one was safe. On 9 Thermidor (27 June) Robespierre fell
from power. The next day, screaming in terror, he was executed.
While the fall of
Robespierre marked the end of the most fanatical phase in the revolution,
normal life was not restored quickly. “On 18 September 1794, the
Convention had carried the drift of the Revolution since 1790 to a logical
conclusion when it finally renounced the constitutional Church. The Republi=
c,
it decreed, would no longer pay the costs or wages of any cult – not =
that
it had been paying them in practice for a considerable time already. It mea=
nt the
end of state recognition for the Supreme Being, a cult too closely identifi=
ed
with Robespierre. But above all it marked the abandonment of the
Revolution’s own creation, the constitutional Church. For the first t=
ime
ever in France, Church and State were now formally separated. To some this
decree looked like a return to dechristianization, and here and there in the
provinces there were renewed bursts of persecution against refractories. But
most read it, correctly, as an attempt to deflect the hostility of those st=
ill
faithful to the Church from the Republic. The natural corollary came with t=
he
decree of 21 February 1795 which proclaimed the freedom of all cults to wor=
ship
as they liked. The tone of the law was grudging, and it was introduced with
much gratuitous denigration of priestcraft and superstition. Religion was
defined as a private affair, and local authorities were forbidden to lend it
any recognition or support. All outward signs of religious affiliation in t=
he
form of priestly dress, ceremonies, or church bells remained strictly
forbidden. The faithful would have to buy or rent their own places of worsh=
ip
and pay their own priests or ministers…”[121]
The
French Revolution: (3) Babeuf and the Directory
Let us summarise=
the
effects of the revolution so far. “Where the Church was concerned,=
221;
writes Hampson, “the Civil Constitution of 1790 had the social effect=
of
a Reformation, in the sense that it deprived a wealthy corporate institutio=
n of
its autonomous position within the state. Politically, this was the opposit=
e of
a Reformation, since it destroyed the basis of the Gallican Church and made=
the
French clergy dependent upon Rome.”[122]
“Nobles we=
re
never proscribed as such and their property was not confiscated unless they
went into exile or were condemned for political offences. Some noble famili=
es
suffered very heavy casualties during the Terror; others survived without m=
uch
difficulty. The ‘anti-feudal’ legislation of the Constituent
Assembly bore heavily on those who income was derived mainly from manorial
dues; those whose wealth came from their extensive acres may have gained mo=
re
from the abolition of tithes than they lost from increased taxation. Some m=
ade
profitable investments in church land which were the ‘best buy’=
of the
revolution since massive inflation reduced to a nominal figure the price pa=
id
by those who had opted to buy in instalments…Over the country as a wh=
ole
the proportion of land owned by the nobility was somewhat reduced by the
revolution but in most parts a substantial proportion of the landowners sti=
ll
came from the nobility, and the land was the most important source of wealth
until well into the nineteenth century.”[123]
“The urban
radicals whom the more radical – but nevertheless gentlemanly –
revolutionary leaders liked to eulogize as sans-culottes, fared badly…=
; As
an observer reported in 1793, ‘That class has suffered badly; it took=
the
Bastille, was responsible for the tenth of August and so on…
Hébert and Marat, two of the most extreme of the radical journalists,
agreed that the sans-culottes were worse off than they had been in 1789. So=
on,
of course, all this was going to change… but it never did.”[124]
“The revolution did=
not
‘give the land to the peasants’. They already possessed about a
quarter of it, although most of them did not own enough to be self-sufficie=
nt.
The Church lands were mostly snapped up by the wealthier farmers or by outs=
ide
speculators… The prevailing economic theories persuaded the various
assemblies to concentrate very heavily on direct taxation, most of which fe=
ll
on the land. Requisitioning of food, horses and carts was borne exclusively=
by
the peasants….
“Once agai=
n the
revolution greatly increased the impact of the state on the day-to-day life=
of
the community. This was especially obvious where religion was concerned.=
221;[125]
After Thermidor =
and
the execution of Robespierre, a new phase of the Revolution began. In 1795 a
committee of five, the Directory, was established. Fearing coups from the
royalist right as well as the Jacobin left, it continued the slow torture of
the Dauphin (Louis XVII), who died in prison on June 10.
“With the
Directory,” writes Edmund Wilson, “the French Revolution had pa=
ssed
into the period of reaction which was to make possible the domination of Bo=
naparte.
The great rising of the bourgeoisie, which, breaking out of the feudal form=
s of
the monarchy, dispossessing the nobility and the clergy, had presented itse=
lf
to society as a movement of liberation, had ended by depositing the wealth =
in
the hands of a relatively small number of people and creating a new conflic=
t of
classes. With the reaction against the Terror, the ideals of the Revolution
were allowed to go by the board. The five politicians of the Directory and =
the
merchants and financiers allied with them were speculating in confiscated
property, profiteering in army supplies, recklessly inflating the currency =
and
gambling on the falling gold louis. And in the meantime, during the winter =
of
1795-96, the working people of Paris were dying of hunger and cold in the
streets.”[126]
This situation l= ed to attempts to overthrow the government, the most significant of which was tha= t of “Gracchus” Babeuf, who “rallied around him those elements= of the Revolution who were trying to insist on its original aims. In his paper= , The Tribune of the People, he denounced the new constitution of 1795, which= had abolished universal suffrage and imposed a high property qualification. He demanded not merely political but also economic equality. He declared that = he would prefer civil war itself to ‘this horrible concord which strangl= es the hungry’. But the men who had expropriated the nobles and the Chur= ch remained loyal to the principle of property itself. The Tribune of the People was stopped, and Babeuf and his associates were sent to prison.<= o:p>
“While Bab=
euf
was in jail, his seven-year-old daughter died of hunger. He had managed to
remain poor all his life. His popularity had been all with the poor. His
official posts had earned him only trouble. Now, as soon as he was free aga=
in,
he proceeded to found a political club, which opposed the policies of the
Directory and which came to be known as the Society of the Equals. They
demanded in a Manifesto of the Equals (not, however, at that time made pu=
blic)
that there should be ‘no more individual property in land; the land
belonged to no one… We declare that we can no longer endure, with the
enormous majority of men, labor and sweat in the service and for the benefi=
t of
a small minority. It is has now been long enough and too long that less tha=
n a
million individuals have been disposing of that which belongs to more than
twenty millions of their kind… Never has a vaster design been conceiv=
ed
or put into execution. Certain men of genius, certain sages, have spoken of=
it
from time to time in a low and trembling voice. Not one of them has had the
courage to tell the whole truth… People of France! Open your eyes and
your heart to the fullness of happiness. Recognize and proclaim with us the
Republic of Equals!’
“The Socie=
ty of
Equals was also suppressed; Bonaparte himself closed the club. But, driven
underground, they now plotted an insurrection; they proposed to set up a new
directory. And they drafted a constitution that provided for ‘a great
national community of goods’ and worked out with some precision the
mechanics of a planned society. The cities were to be deflaed and the
population distributed in villages. The State was to ‘seize upon the
new-born individual, watch over his early moments, guarantee the milk and c=
are
of his mother and bring him to the maison nationale, where he was to
acquire the virtue and enlightenment of a true citizen.’ There was th=
us
to be equal education for all. All able-bodied persons were to work, and the
work that was unpleasant or arduous was to be accomplished by everybodyR=
17;s
taking turns. The necessities of life were to be supplied by the government,
and the people were to eat at communal tables. The government was to control
all foreign trade and to pass on everything printed.
“In the
meantime, the value of the paper money had depreciated almost to zero. The
Directory tried to save the situation by converting the currency into land
warrants, which were at a discount of eight-two per cent the day they were
issued; and there was a general belief on the part of the public that the
government had gone bankrupt. There were in Paris along some five hundred
thousand people in need of relief. The Babouvistes placarded the city with a
manifesto…; they declared that Nature had given to every man an equal
right to the enjoyment of every good, and it was the purpose of society to
defend that right, that Nature had imposed on every man the obligation to w=
ork,
and that no one could escape this obligation without committing a crime; th=
at
in ‘a true society’ there would be neither rich nor poor; that =
the
object of the Revolution had been to destroy every inequality and to establ=
ish
the well-being of all; that they Revolution was therefore ‘not
finished’, and that those who had done away with the Constitution of =
1793
were guilty of lese majesté against the people…
“Babeuf=
217;s
‘insurrectionary committee’ had agents in the army and the poli=
ce,
and they were doing such effective work that the government tried to send i=
ts
troops out of Paris, and, when they refused to obey, disbanded them. During=
the
early days of May, 1796, on the eve of the projected uprising, the Equals w=
ere
betrayed by a stool pigeon and their leaders were arrested and put in jail.=
The
followers of Babeuf made an attempt to rally a sympathetic police squadron,=
but
were cut down by a new Battalion of the Guard which had been pressed into
service for the occasion.
“Babeuf wa=
s made
a public example by being taken to Vendôme in a cage – an indig=
nity
which not long before had filled the Parisians with furty when the Austrians
had inflicted it on a Frenchman…
“[At this =
trial]
the vote, after much disagreement, went against Babeuf. One of his sons had
smuggled in to him a tin dagger made out of a candlestick, and when he hear=
d the
verdict pronounced, he stabbed himself in the Roman fashion, but only wound=
ed
himself horribly and did not die. The next morning (May 27, 1797) he went to
the guillotine. Of his followers thirty were executed and many sentenced to
penal servitude or deportation.”[127]
The
French Revolution: (4) Napoleon Bonaparte
Thus the revolut=
ion
appeared to have lost its way, consumed in poverty, corruption and mutual
blood-letting. It was saved by a young soldier, Napoleon Bonaparte, who was=
as
sincerely faithful to the spirit of the revolution as Cromwell had been. Ma=
dame
de Stael called Robespierre on horseback After all, he came from Corsica, w=
hich
in 1755 had successfully rebelled from Genoa, and for which Rousseau wrote =
one
of his most seminal works, Project de constitution pour la Corse, in
1765. But, like Cromwell (and Caesar), he found that in order to save the
republic he had to take control of it and rule it like a king.
His chance came =
on 19
Brumaire (November 10), 1799, when
he overthrew the Directory (he described parliamentarism as “h=
ot
air”), and frightened the two elective assemblies into submission. On
December 13 a new constitution was proclaimed with Bonaparte as the first of
three Consuls with full executive powers. And on December 15 the three Cons=
uls
declared: “Citizens, the Revolution is established upon its original
principles: it is consummated…”[128]
Paul Johnson wri=
tes,
“the new First Consul was far more powerful than Louis XIV, since he
dominated the armed forces directly in a country that was now organized as a
military state. All the ancient restraints on divine-right kingship –=
the
Church, the aristocracy and its resources, the courts, the cities and their
charters, the universities and their privileges, the guilds and their
immunities – all had been swept away by the Revolution, leaving Franc=
e a
legal blank on which Bonaparte could stamp the irresistible force of his
personality.”[129]=
But, again like =
Caesar
and Cromwell, he could never confess to being a king in the traditional sen=
se.
Under him, in Davies’ phrase, “a pseudo-monarchy headed
pseudo-democratic institutions; and an efficient centralized administration=
ran
on a strange cocktail of legislative leftovers and bold innovation.”[130] So=
, as
J.M. Roberts writes, while Napoleon reinstituted monarchy, “it was in=
no
sense a restoration. Indeed, he took care so to affront the exiled Bourbon
family that any reconciliation with it was inconceivable. He sought popular
approval for the empire in a plebiscite and got it.[131]
=
;
This was a monar=
chy
Frenchmen had voted for; it rested on popular sovereignty, that is, the
Revolution. It assumed the consolidation of the Revolution which the Consul=
ate
had already begun. All the great institutional reforms of the 1790s were
confirmed or at least left intact; there was no disturbance of the land sal=
es
which had followed the confiscation of Church property, no resurrection of =
the
old corporations, no questioning of the principle of equality before the la=
w.
Some measures were even taken further, notably when each department was giv=
en
an administrative head, the prefect, who was in his powers something like o=
ne
of the emergency emissaries of the Terror (many former revolutionaries beca=
me
prefects)…”[132]
Cromwell had esc=
hewed
the trappings and ceremonial of monarchy, but Napoleon embraced them with
avidity. The trend towards monarchy and hierarchy was already evident
elsewhere; and “earlier than is generally thought,” writes Phil=
ip
Mansel, “the First Consul Bonaparte aligned himself with this monarch=
ical
trend, acquiring in succession a guard (1799), a palace (1800), court
receptions and costumes (1800-02), a household (1802-04), a dynasty (1804),
finally a nobility (1808)… The proclamation of the empire in May 1804,
the establishment of the households of the Emperor, the Empress and the
Imperial Family in July, the coronation by the pope in December of that yea=
r,
were confirmations of an existing monarchical reality.”[133]
Moreover, Napole=
on
spread monarchy throughout Europe. In the wake of his conquests, and exclud=
ing
the direct annexations to the French Empire, the kingdoms and Grand Duchies=
of
Italy, Venice, Rome, Naples, Lucca, Dubrovnik, Holland, Mainz, Bavaria,
Württemburg, Saxony, Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt, Westphalia and Spain were=
all
established or re-established with still greater monarchical power - and all
ruled by Napoleon’s relations by blood or marriage. According to
Stendhal, Napoleon’s court “totally corrupted” him “=
;and
exalted his amour propre to the state of a disease… He was on =
the
point of making Europe one vast monarchy.”[134]
“As one of=
his
secretaries Baron Meneval wrote, he saw himself as ‘the pillar of roy=
alty
in Europe’. On January 18th, 1813, he wrote to his brother
Jerome that his enemies, by appealing to popular feeling, represented
‘upheavals and revolutions… pernicious doctrines.’ In
Napoleon’s opinion his fellow monarchs were traitors to ‘their =
own
cause’ when in 1813 they began to desert the French Empire, or in 181=
4 refused
to accept his territorial terms for peace…”[135]
Jocelyn Hunt wri=
tes:
“Kings before 1791 were said to be absolute but were limited by all k=
inds
of constraints and controls. The Church had an almost autonomous status.
Bonaparte ensured that the Church was merely a branch of the civil service.
Kings were anointed by the Church, and thus owed their authority to God:
Bonaparte took power through his own strength, camouflaged as ‘the
General Will’ which, as Correlli Barnett acidly remarks, ‘became
synonymous with General Bonaparte’.[136]
Indeed, when he became emperor in 1804, he crowned himself...
“The First
Consul’s choice of ministers was a far more personal one than had been
possible for the kings of France. Bonaparte established a system of meeting=
his
ministers individually, in order to give his instructions. In the same way,
Bonaparte chose which ‘ordinary’ citizens he would consult; kin=
gs
of France had mechanisms for consulting ‘the people’ but these =
had
fallen into disuse and thus, when the Estates General met in 1789, the effe=
ct
was revolutionary. Bonaparte’s legislative body was, until 1814,
submissive and compliant.…
“Police co=
ntrol
and limitations on personal freedom had been a focus of condemnation by the
Philosophes before the Revolution, but had not been entirely efficient: a w=
hole
industry of importing and distributing banned texts had flourished in the 1=
770s
and 1780s. Bonaparte’s police were more thorough, and so swingeing we=
re
the penalties that self-censorship rapidly became the safest path for a
newspaper to take. Bonaparte closed down sixty of the seventy-three newspap=
ers
in Paris in January, 1800, and had a weekly summary prepared of all printed
material, but he was soon able to tell his Chief of Police, Fouché,
‘They only print what I want them to.’[137] In=
the
same way, the hated lettres de cachet appear limited and inefficient
when compared to Bonaparte’s and Fouché’s record of poli=
ce
spies, trials without jury and imprisonment without trial. Bonaparte’s
brief experience as a Jacobin leader in Ajaccio had taught him how to
recognise, and deal with, potential opponents.[138]
“The judic=
iary
had stood apart from the kings of the ancien régime: while the
King was nominally the supreme Judge, the training of lawyers and judges had
been a matter for the Parlements, with their inherent privileges and
mechanisms. The Parlements decided whether the King’s laws were
acceptable within the fundamental laws of France. Under the Consulate, there
were no such constraints on the legislator. The judges were his appointees,=
and
held office entirely at his pleasure; the courts disposed of those who oppo=
sed
or questioned the government, far more rapidly that had been possible in the
reign of Louis XVI. Imprisonment and deportation became regularly used
instruments of control under Bonaparte.
“Kings of =
France
were fathers to their people and had a sense of duty and service. Bonaparte,
too, believed that he was essential to the good and glory of France, but was
able to make his own decisions about what constituted the good of France in=
a
way which was not open to the king. Finally, while the monarchy of France w=
as
hereditary and permanent, and the position of First Consul was supposed to =
be
held for ten years, Bonaparte’s strength was demonstrated when he cha=
nged
his own constitution, first to give him the role for life and then to becom=
e a
hereditary monarch. All in all, no monarch of the ancien régime
had anything approaching the power which Bonaparte had been permitted to ta=
ke
for himself…
“When a Ro= yalist bomb plot was uncovered in December, 1800, Bonaparte seized the opportunity= to blame it on the Jacobins, and many were guillotined, with over a hundred mo= re being exiled or imprisoned. The regime of the Terror had operated in similar ways to remove large numbers of potential or actual opponents. Press censor= ship and the use of police spies ensured that anti-government opinions were not publicly aired. The Declaration of the Rights of Man had guaranteed freedom= of expression; but this freedom had already been eroded before Bonaparte’= ;s coup. The Terror had seen both moral and political censorship, and the Directory had on several occasions exercised its constitutional right to ce= nsor the press. Bonaparte appears merely to have been more efficient… <= o:p>
“Bonaparte
certainly held power without consulting the French people; he took away man=
y of
the freedoms they had been guaranteed in 1789; he taxed them more heavily t=
han
they had been taxed before. [In 1803 he wrote:] ‘I haven’t been
able to understand yet what good there is in an opposition. Whatever it may
say, its only result is to diminish the prestige of authority in the eyes of
the people’.”[139]
In 1804, he even
declared himself emperor with the name Napoleon, after which Beethoven tore=
out
the title-page of his Eroica symphony, which had been dedicat=
ed
to him, and said: “So he too is nothing but a man. Now he also will
trample all human rights underfoot, and only pander to his own ambition; he
will place himself above everyone else and become a tyrant…”[140] As
Alexis de Tocqueville wrote: “Absolute government found huge scope for
its rebirth [in] that man who was to be both the consummator and the nemesi=
s of
the Revolution.”[141] So
Napoleon was undoubtedly a despot, but a despot who could claim many preced=
ents
for his despotism in the behaviour of the Jacobins and Directory. And if he=
was
not faithful to the forms of the revolution in its early phase, replacing
democracy (of a despotic kind) with monarchy (of a populist kind), he
nevertheless remained faithful to its spirit.
And what was that spirit? On the one
hand, the principle that nobody and nothing should be independent of the St=
ate
– in other words, the principle of totalitarianism. And on the other,=
the
principle that the Nation was the supreme value, and serving and dying for =
the
Nation the supreme glory.
And yet “at
bottom,” as Johnson notes, “Bonaparte despised the French, or
perhaps it would be more exact to say the Parisians, the heart of the
‘political nation’. He thought of them, on the basis of his exp=
erience
during the various phases of the Revolution, as essentially frivolous.̶=
1;[142] The
truth is, therefore, that it was neither the State nor the Nation that
Bonaparte exalted above all, – although he greatly increased the wors=
hip
of both State and Nation in subsequent European history, – but himsel=
f.
So the spirit th=
at
truly reigned in the Napoleonic era can most accurately be described as =
the
spirit of the man-god, of the Antichrist, of whom Bonaparte himself, as=
the
Russian Holy Synod quite rightly said, was the incarnation and forerunner. =
This
antichristian quality is most clearly captured in Madame De Staël̵=
7;s
characterization: “I had the disturbing feeling that no emotion of the
heart could ever reach him. He regards a human being like a fact or a thing,
never as an equal person like himself. He neither hates nor loves… The
force of his will resides in the imperturbable calculations of his egotism.=
He
is a chess-master whose opponents happen to be the rest of humanity…
Neither pity nor attraction, nor religion nor attachment would ever divert =
him
from his ends… I felt in his soul cold steel, I felt in his mind a de=
ep
irony against which nothing great or good, even his own destiny, was proof;=
for
he despised the nation which he intended to govern, and no spark of enthusi=
asm
was mingled with his desire to astound the human race.”[143]
Napoleon
and Catholicism
The Revolution h=
ad
already swept away all the complex structures of feudalism, thereby prepari=
ng
the way for the totalitarian state. But Napoleon went further. Thus in addi=
tion
to the measures discussed above, he abolished trade unions, introduced a
standardised system of weights and measures, and a standardised system of
education and legislation, the famous Code Napoléon. Everythi=
ng,
from religion and charity to economics and the government of friendly
sister-republics, such as Holland, had to be controlled from the centre. And
the centre was Napoleon.
Napoleon’s
attitude towards religion was on the one hand respectful and on the other h=
and
manipulative and utilitarian. His respectfulness is revealed in the followi=
ng
remark: “There are only two forces in the world: the sword and the
spirit; by spirit I mean the civil and religious institutions; in the long =
run
the sword is always defeated by the spirit.”[144] On=
the
other hand, his essentially unbelieving, utilitarian attitude is revealed in
the following: “I see in religion not the mystery of the Incarnation =
but
the mystery of order in society”.[145]
“What is it that makes the poor man take it for granted that ten chim=
neys
smoke in my palace while he dies of cold – that I have ten changes of
raiment in my wardrobe while he is naked – that on my table at each m=
eal
there is enough to sustain a family for a week? It is religion, which says to him =
that in
another life I shall be his equal, indeed that he has a better chance of be=
ing
happy there than I have.”[146]
In other words,
religion was powerful, and as such had to be respected. But it was powerful=
not
because it was true, but because it was a – perhaps the –
major means of establishing order in society. More particularly, it was the
major means of establishing obedience to his rule – which is w=
hy
he issued an Imperial Catechism whose purpose was to “bind by religio=
us
sanctions the conscience of the people to the august person of the
Emperor”[147]:
A: Because God… has =
made him
the agent of His power on earth. Thus it is that to honour and serve our
Emperor is to honour and serve God Himself.[148]
Napoleon, writes
Doyle, “never made the mistake of underestimating either the power of
religion or the resilience of the Church. Under orders in the spring of 179=
6 to
march on Rome to avenge the murder by a Roman mob of a French envoy, he was
confronted by a Spanish emissary from the pontiff. ’I told him [the
Spaniard reported], if you people take it into your heads to make the pope =
say
the slightest thing against dogma or anything touching on it, you are decei=
ving
yourselves, for he will never do it. You might, in revenge, sack, burn and
destroy Rome, St. Peter’s etc. but religion will remain standing in s=
pite
of your attacks. If all you wish is that the pope urge peace in general, and
obedience to legitimate power, he will willingly do it. He appeared to me
captivated by this reasoning…’ Certainly he continued while in
Italy to treat the Pope with more restraint than the Directory had ordered:=
and
when, early the next year, the Cispadane Republic was established in
territories largely taken from the Holy See, he advised its founders that:
‘Everything is to be done by degrees and with gentleness. Religion is=
to
be treated like property.’ Devoid of any personal faith, in Egypt he =
even
made parade of following Islam in the conviction that it would strengthen
French rule. By the time he returned to Europe, it was clear that Pope Pius=
VI
would not after all be the last…
“This appr=
oach
bore one important fruit: in his Christmas sermon for 1797 the new Pope, Pi=
us
VII, declared that Christianity was not incompatible with democracy –=
a
very major concession to the revolution that later Popes would take back.
“On his se=
cond
entry into Milan, in June 1800, he convoked the city’s clergy to the
great cathedral, and declared, even before Marengo was fought: ‘It is=
my
firm intention that the Christian, Catholic and Roman religion shall be
preserved in its entirety, that it shall be publicly performed… No
society can exist without morality; there is no good morality without relig=
ion.
It is religion alone, therefore, that gives to the State a firm and durable
support…’”[149]
Religious tolera= tion was both in accordance with the ideals of democracy and politically expedie= nt. Thus to the same clergy convocation he said: “The people is sovereign= ; if it wants religion, respect its will.” And to his own Council of State= he said: “My policy is to govern men as the majority wish. That, I belie= ve, is the way to recognize the sovereignty of the people. It was… by tur= ning Muslim that I gained a hold in Egypt, by turning ultramontane that I won ov= er people in Italy. If I were governing Jews, I should rebuild Solomon’s temple.”[150]. <= o:p>
It is in this
astonishingly cynical attitude to religion that Napoleon reveals his modern=
ity.
It is what made him perhaps the closest forerunner to the Antichrist that h=
ad
yet appeared on the stage of world history, and closer even, in some ways, =
than
Lenin or Stalin. For the Antichrist will not – at first – perse=
cute
religion; he will rather try to be the champion of all religions =
211;
in order to subdue them all to his will. He will very likely be an
ecumenist as Napoleon was. And he will rebuild Solomon’s temple…=
;
Napoleon’s=
first
task in the religious sphere was to heal the breach between the Constitutio=
nal
Church, which had accepted the revolution, and the non-jurors, who had reje=
cted
it. Only the non-jurors were recognised by the Pope, so an agreement had to=
be
reached with Rome. Finally, on July 15, 1801, a Concordat was signed.
“This
document,” writes Cronin, “opens with a preamble describing Rom=
an
Catholicism as ‘the religion of the great majority of the French
people’ and the religion professed by the consuls. Worship was to be =
free
and public. The Pope, in agreement with the Government, was to re-map dioce=
ses
in such a way as to reduce their number by more than half to sixty. The hol=
ders
of bishoprics were to resign and if they declined to do so, were to be repl=
aced
by the Pope. The First Consul was to appoint new bishops; the Pope was to
invest them. The Government was to place at the disposal of bishops all the
un-nationalized churches necessary for worship, and to pay bishops and
curés a suitable salary.
“The Conco=
rdat
was an up-to-date version of the old Concordat, which had regulated the Chu=
rch
in France for almost 300 years. But it was less Gallican, that is, it gave =
the
French hierarchy less autonomy. Napoleon conceded to the Pope not only the
power of investing bishops, which he had always enjoyed, but the right, in
certain circumstances, to depose them, which was something new. Napoleon did
this in order to be able to effect a clean sweep of bishops.
“Napoleon =
did
not discuss the Concordat beforehand with his Council of State. When he did
show it to them they criticized it as insufficiently Gallican. The assembli=
es,
they predicted, would never make it law unless certain riders were added.
Finally seventy ‘organic articles’ were drawn up and added to t=
he
Concordat. For example, all bulls from Rome were to be subject to the
Government’s placet, one of which asserted that the Pope must
abide by the decisions of an ecumenical council…”[151]
In April, 1802,
Napoleon reopened the churches in France, which proved to be one of his most
popular measures, and it enabled him to enlist the Church in support of his=
government
– as did, of course, his coronation by the Pope. Moreover, notes John=
son,
“by making peace with the Church, he prepared the way for a
reconciliation with the old landowners and aristocrats who had been driven =
into
exile by the Revolution, and whom he wanted back to provide further legitim=
acy
to his regime.”[152]
“But even =
while
seeking the Church’s support,” writes Cronin, “Napoleon k=
ept
firmly to the principle that the temporal and spiritual are two separate
realms, and had to be kept separate in France. He might easily have used his
growing authority to subordinate the Church to the State, but although he w=
as
occasionally tempted to do so, he quickly drew back… Equally, Napoleon
refrained from subordinating the State to the Church. When bishops urged hi=
m to
shut all shops and cabarets on Sundays so that the faithful should not be
enticed from Mass, Napoleon replied: ‘The curé’s power
resides in exhortations from the pulpit and in the confessional; police spi=
es
and prisons are bad ways of trying to restore religious
practices.’”[153]
However, while
Napoleon wanted the Church to flourish, he was too fundamentally irreligiou=
s to
allow it to escape the general control of the State. This was made abundant=
ly
clear at his coronation in 1804, when instead of allowing the Pope to crown
him, he took the crown from his hands and crowned himself! “For the
pope’s purposes,” he said to Cardinal Fesch, “I am
Charlemagne… I therefore expect the pope to accommodate his conduct t=
o my
requirements. If he behaves well I shall make no outward changes; if not, I
shall reduce him to the status of bishop of Rome…”[154] Not
for nothing did Napoleon say:
Again, he appoin=
ted a
Minister of Religions to solve the day-to-day problems of the Church, and f=
ixed
the salary of curés at 500 francs. Then, in 1809, he occupied Rome a=
nd
the Papal States and removed Pius from his position as ruler in exchange fo=
r a
handsome salary. “Our Lord Jesus Christ,” he said, “altho=
ugh
a descendant of David, did not want an earthly kingdom…” Pius t=
hen
excommunicated Napoleon for his “blasphemy” and refused to inve=
st
his nominees to vacant bishoprics. Napoleon had still not tamed the rebelli=
ous
priest by the time of his downfall…[156]
Monsieur Emery, =
the
director of Saint-Sulpice, defended the Pope, reminding Napoleon “that
God had given the Pope spiritual power over all Christians. ‘But not
temporal power,’ objected Napoleon. ‘Charlemagne gave him that,=
and
I, as Charlemagne’s successor, intended to relieve him of it. What do=
you
think of that, Monsieur Emery?’ ‘Sire, exactly what Bossuet
thought. In his Declaration du clergé de France he says that =
he
congratulates not only the Roman Church but the Universal Church on the
Pope’s temporal sovereignty because, being independent, he can more
easily exercise his functions as father of all the faithful.’ Napoleon
replied that what was true for Bossuet’s day did not apply in 1811, w=
hen
western Europe was ruled by one man, not disputed by several”.[157]
Thus in France, =
as in
England, the established Church survived the Revolution. The restoration of=
the
one-man-rule went hand-in-hand with the restoration of the Church, if not t=
o a
position of independence, still less “symphony” with the State,=
at
any rate of greater influence. In the longer term, however, the Catholic
Church’s authority and influence continued to decline…
With regard to t=
he
Nation, Napoleon managed to persuade his fellow-countrymen that everything =
he
did was for the glory and honour of France, and that nothing was more impor=
tant
than the glory and honour of France. And so while his despotism angered some
Frenchmen, the tickling of their pride was ample compensation, and enabled =
them
reconcile themselves with the loss of their freedom. “As Frenchmen
accorded more and more weight to Napoleon’s wishes, so the notion of
honour came to the fore in the French Republic: honour and its sister conce=
pt,
glory, patriotism à outrance and the chivalry that had made
Napoleon crown Josephine…”[158]
If the nation wa=
s the
new Church, and Napoleon its new Christ, the revolution itself was the Holy
Spirit. It blew where it wished, overthrowing kings, liberating subject peo=
ples
and making them into “real” nations. This liberation of nations=
was
conceived as being a democratic, egalitarian process; it by no means implied
the superiority of any one nation over the others, which would simply be a
repetition, on the collective level, of the despotism that the revolution h=
ad
come to destroy. The religion of the French revolution was a universalist
religion based on equal rights for all men and all nations. It was believed
that once the kings had been removed, the general will of each nation would
reveal itself, spreading peace and harmony not only within, but also betwee=
n,
nations. Thus “sooner or later,” said Mirabeau to the National
Assembly, “the influence of a nation that… has reduced the art =
of
living to the simple notions of liberty and equality – notions endowed
with irresistible charm for the human heart, and propagated in all the
countries of the world – the influence of such a nation will undoubte=
dly
conquer the whole of Europe for Truth, Moderation and Justice, not immediat=
ely
perhaps, not in a single day…”[159]
But it was not l=
ong
before such noble sentiments were being transformed into a purely pagan pri=
de.
“’You are, among the nations, what Hercules was amongst the
heroes,’ Robespierre assured his countrymen. ‘Nature has made y=
ou
sturdy and powerful; your strength matches your virtue and your cause is th=
at
of the gods.’ France was unique in her destiny, she was La Grande
Nation, and all interests were necessarily subordinate to hers. Her ser=
vice
was the highest calling, since it naturally benefited mankind.”[160]
Soon it became e=
vident
to other nations, whether those bordering France or her overseas colonies, =
that
the French believed not so much in the Nation (i.e. any and every
nation) as the Nation (one particular nation, the only truly Great
Nation) – which could only be France. Thus in 1802 Napoleon himse=
lf
said: “Never will the French Nation give chains to men whom it has on=
ce
recognized as free.”[161] And
yet in the very same year, when the former French colony of Haiti became the
first country to declare its freedom in the wake of the revolution, Napoleon
tried to reintroduce slavery there, and his troops were defeated by black
soldiers singing the Marseillaise...[162]
And that was onl=
y the
beginning. In the next thirteen years Napoleon created a swathe of suffering
and destruction throughout Europe from Lisbon to Moscow that had not been s=
een
since the invasions of the Huns and the Goths. In retrospect, the seemingly
irrational and chaotic system of old Europe, whereby kings could buy and se=
ll
territories to which they were quite unrelated by birth or upbringing, turn=
ed
out to have kept the peace far better than the system of more clearly defin=
ed, homogeneous
nation-states that emerged as a result of the Napoleonic wars. This is not =
to
say, of course, that there were no wars under the old system. But they tend=
ed
to be short in duration, with relatively few casualties, which were mainly
confined to the warrior class, and they were very quickly patched up by some
redistribution of territories among the monarchs. By contrast, the
revolutionary wars that began after 1792 were more like the religious wars =
of
pre-1648 vintage: much bloodier and crueller, involving far greater casualt=
ies
among the civilian populations.[163]
Moreover, they never came to a real end, since the losers felt bound to rec=
over
the territories lost and avenge the wounds inflicted on their national or
regional pride. After all, if the people, and not the king, was now soverei=
gn,
victory in war had to be won over the people (or rather, the
“enemies” of “the people”) as well as the king. Thu=
s as
Napoleon exported the ideals of Freedom, Equality and Fraternity into neigh=
bouring
countries, their freedom was destroyed, their equality with their
“brothers” who had “liberated” them was jettisoned,=
and
the dream of universal brotherhood became the nightmare of universal war. F=
or
“abroad, liberty simply meant French rule.”[164]
How did the inte=
rnationalist
dream turn into a nationalist nightmare? The problem was partly a conceptual
one: it turned out to be notoriously difficult to define what “the
nation” was, by what criteria it should be defined (territory? religi=
on?
blood? language?). Revolutionary definitions of who was a “patriot=
221;
– that is, the true member of the nation - invariably meant defining
large sections of the population who did not accept this definition or did =
not
come under it as being “aliens” or “traitors” or
“enemies of the people”.
But the problem =
went
deeper: even when a certain degree of unanimity had been achieved in the
definition of the nation, - as Napoleon achieved it for France, for example=
, in
the period 1800-1813, - there were now no accepted limits on the national w=
ill,
no authority higher than the nation itself. This inevitably resulted in
nationalism in the evil sense of the word that has become so tragically
familiar to us in twentieth-century fascism – not a natural pride in
one’s own nation and its achievements, but the exaltation of the nati=
on
to the level of divinity, and of faith in the nation to the level of the tr=
ue
faith, the defence of which justified any and every sacrifice of self and
others. If in “Dark Age” (i.e. Orthodox) and Medieval (i.e. Cat=
holic)
Europe, men had seen in the Church a higher, supranational authority which
arranged “Truces of God” and served, at least in principle, as a
higher court of appeal to which kings and nations submitted, this was now
finally swept away by article three of the Rights of Man, which pitted the
“general wills” of an ever-increasing number of sovereign natio=
ns
against each other in apparently endless and irreconcilable hostility.
Unless, that is,=
they
all recognized France, the revolutionary nation par excellence, as t=
heir
true nation. And there were some who did this; Thomas Jefferson, for exampl=
e,
American ambassador to Paris, said: “Every man has two countries R=
11;
his own, and France.” Others, while not recognizing France as their o=
wn
nation, nevertheless welcomed the conquering French armies into their own l=
and
Thus as late as 1806 the German philosopher Hegel called Napoleon “th=
at
world spirit” and hoped that he would defeat his opponents:
“Everyone prays for the success of the French army”. Such a sub=
stitution
of loyalty to the messianic revolutionary nation of the time rather than
one’s own was to manifest itself again in the twentieth century, when
millions of people around the world betrayed their own country for the sake=
of
the greater glory of the Soviet Union…
However, as
captivation turned to captivity, pious internationalism (or French messiani=
sm)
turned into violent xenophobia, and enthusiasm into disillusion. Among the
nations that had been “forced to be free” by the French, only t=
he
Poles (conveniently protected by Germany from French invasion, and needing
French support against Russia) remained faithful to the Napoleonic vision. =
Doyle writes:
“An exuberant, uncompromising nationalism lay behind France’s
revolutionary expansion in the 1790s: but when the French found, after this
first impact of a nation in arms on its neighbours, was that the neighbours
responded in kind. They found that the doctrine of the sovereignty of the
nation, proclaimed by them at the outset of the Revolution in 1789, could be
turned against them by other peoples claiming their own national sovereignt=
y.
In states long united by custom and language, such as the Dutch Republic, a=
ll
the French example did was to reinforce patriotic sentiments already strong=
. In
areas never before united, like Italy, it created a powerful national senti=
ment
for the first time by showing that archaic barriers and divisions could be
swept away. The first Italian nationalists placed their hopes in French pow=
er
to secure their ends, but from the start their attitude was double-edged.
‘Italy,’ declared the winning entry for an essay competition on=
the
best form of Italian government, sponsored by the new French regime in Mila=
n in
1796, ‘has almost always been the patrimony of foreigners who, under =
the
pretext of protecting us, have consistently violated our rights, and, while
giving us flags and fine-sounding names, have made themselves masters of our
estate. France, Germany and Spain have held lordship over us in turn…=
it
is therefore best to provide… the sort of government capable of oppos=
ing
the maximum of resistance to invasion.’ The tragedy for nationalistic
Italian Jacobins was that, when popular revulsion against the French invade=
rs
swept the peninsula in 1798 and 1799, they found themselves identified with=
the
hated foreigners. Elsewhere, peoples and intellectual nationalists found
themselves more at one; and not the least of the reasons why France’s
most inveterate enemies were able to resist her successfully was the streng=
th
of volunteering. An Austrian call for volunteers against the French produced
150,000 men in 1809. Three years later the Russians were able to supplement
their normal armed forces with over 420,000 more or less willing recruits to
drive out the alien invader. Only nationalism could successfully fight
nationalism: and when it did, as Clausewitz… saw, it would be a fight=
to
the death.”[165]
Again, as Hobsba=
wm
notes, the Anglo-French conflict had “a persistence and stubbornness
unlike any other. Neither side was really – a rare thing in those day=
s,
though a common one today – prepared to settle for less than total
victory”.[166] The
main legacy of the revolution, therefore, was total war. War between
classes, war between nations, war between religions. Such was the “fraternityR=
21;
the revolution of the revolution…
The
Jews and the Revolution
Of all the
nationalisms stirred up by the revolution, the most important was that of t=
he
Jews. In fact, it was the French revolution that gave the Jews the opportun=
ity
to burst through into the forefront of world politics for the first time si=
nce
the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. There were 39,000 of them in France in 178=
9;
most (half according to one estimate, nine-tenths according to another[167]<=
/a>)
were Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazim living in Alsace and Lorraine, which France
had acquired under the terms of the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648.
“It is
important,” writes Nesta Webster, “to distinguish between these=
two
races of Jews [the Ashkenazi and the Sephardim] in discussing the question =
of
Jewish emancipation at the time of the Revolution. For whilst the Sephardim=
had
shown themselves good citizens and were therefore subject to no persecution=
s,
the Ashkenazim by their extortionate usury and oppressions had made themsel=
ves
detested by the people, so that rigorous laws were enforced to restrain the=
ir
rapacity. The discussions that raged in the National Assembly on the subjec=
t of
the Jewish question related therefore mainly to the Jews of Alsace.”[168]<=
/a>
=
The eighteenth c=
entury
had already witnessed some important changes in the relationship between the
State and Jewry. In England, the Jews had achieved emancipation de facto=
,
if not de jure. This was helped by the small number of Jews in Brita=
in,
and the non-ideological, approach of the British government.
It was a
different matter on the continent, where a more ideological approach prevai=
led.
In 1782 the Masonic Austrian Emperor Joseph II published his Toleranzpat=
ent,
whose purpose was that “all Our subjects without distinction of
nationality and religion, once they have been admitted and tolerated in our
States, shall participate in common in public welfare,… shall enjoy l=
egal
freedom, and encounter no obstacles to any honest way of gaining their
livelihood and of increasing general industriousness… Existing laws
pertaining to the Jewish nation… are not always compatible with these=
Our
most gracious intentions.” Most restrictions on the Jews were removed,
but these new freedoms applied only to the “privileged Jew” =
211;
that is, the Jew whom the State found “useful” in some way R=
11;
and not to the “foreign Jew”. Moreover, even privileged Jews we=
re
not granted the right of full citizenship and craft mastership.[169] For
Joseph wanted to grant tolerance to the Jews, but not full equali=
ty.
As for France,
“already, in 1784, the Jews of Bordeaux had been accorded further
concessions by Louis XVI; in 1776 all Portuguese Jews had been given religi=
ous
liberty and the permission to inhabit all parts of the kingdom. The decree =
of
January 28, 1790, conferring on the Jews of Bordeaux the rights of French
citizens, put the finishing touch to this scheme of liberation. [The Sephar=
dic
Jews of South-West France and papal Avignon, who were already more assimila=
ted
than their Ashkenazi co-religionists in Alsace, were given full citizenship=
in
July, 1790.] But the proposal=
to
extend this privilege to the Jews of Alsace evoked a storm of controversy in
the Assembly and also violent insurrections amongst the Alsace peasants.=
221;[170]
In their first d=
ebate
on the subject, on September 28, 1789, they made a further important
distinction between the nation and the individuals constituting the nation.
Thus Stanislas Comte de Clermont-Tonnerre argued that “there cannot b=
e a
nation within a nation”, so “the Jews should be denied everythi=
ng
as a nation but granted everything as individuals.”[171] A
separate nation of the Jews could not be allowed to exist within Fra=
nce.
For “virtually all – moderates no less than radicals, Dantonist=
s no
less than Robespierrists, Christians as well as deists, pantheists, and
atheists – held that equality of status in the state they were in the=
ir
various ways intent on establishing was bound up of necessity with the
elimination of all groups, classes, or corporations intermediate (and there=
fore
mediating) between the state itself and the citizen.”[172]
Vital writes:
“The immediate issue before the Assembly was the admission of certain
semi-pariah classes – among them actors and public executioners ̵=
1;
to what came to be termed ‘active citizenship’. It was soon
apparent, however, that the issues presented by the Jews were very differen=
t.
It was apparent, too, that it would make no better sense to examine the
Jews’ case in tandem with that of the Protestants. The latter, like t=
he
Jews, were non-Catholics, but their national identity was not in dou=
bt,
nor, therefore, their right to the new liberties being decreed for all.
Whatever else they were, they were Frenchmen. No one in the National Assemb=
ly
thought otherwise. But were the Jews Frenchmen? If they were not, could they
become citizens? The contention of the lead speaker in the debate, Count
Stanislaw de Clermont-Tonnerre, was that the argument for granting them full
rights of citizenship needed to be founded on the most general principles.
Religion was a private affair. The law of the state need not and ought not =
to
impinge upon it. So long as religious obligations were compatible with the =
law
of the state and contravened it in no particular it was wrong to deprive a
person, whose conscience required him to assume such religious obligations,=
of
those rights which it was the duty of all citizens qua citizens to
assume. One either imposed a national religion by main force, so erasing the
relevant clause of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen to
which all now subscribed. Or else one allowed everyone the freedom to profe=
ss
the religious opinion of his choice. Mere tolerance was unacceptable.
‘The system of tolerance, coupled.. to degrading distinctions, is so
vicious in itself, that he who is compelled to tolerate remains as dissatis=
fied
with the law as is he whom it has granted no more than such a form of
tolerance.’ There was no middle way. The enemies of the Jews attacked
them, and attacked him, Clermont-Tonnerre, on the grounds that they were
deficient morally. It was also held of the Jews that they were unsociable, =
that
their laws prescribed usury, that they were forbidden to mix with the Frenc=
h by
marriage or at table or join them in defence of the country or in any other=
common
enterprise. But these reproaches were either unjust or specious. Usury was
blameworthy beyond a doubt, but it was the laws of France that had compelled
the Jews to practise it. And so with most of the other charges. Once the Je=
ws
had title to land and a country of their own the practice of usury would ce=
ase.
So would the unsociability that was held against them. So would much of the=
ir
religious eccentricity [ces travers religieux]. As for the further
argument, that they had judges and laws of their own, why so they did, and =
on
this matter he, Clermont-Tonnerre, would say to his critics (coming to the
passage in his address to the Assembly that would be quoted over and over a=
gain
in the course of the two centuries that followed), that that indeed was imp=
ermissible.
“’As=
a
nation the Jews must be denied everything, as individuals they must be gran=
ted
everything; their judges can no longer be recognized; their recourse must b=
e to
our own exclusively; legal protection for the doubtful laws by which Jewish
corporate existence is maintained must end; they cannot be allowed to creat=
e a
political body or a separate order within the state; it is necessary that t=
hey
be citizens individually.’
“There rem=
ained
the question, what if, as some argued, it was the case that the Jews themse=
lves
had no interest in citizenship? Why in that case, he went on, ‘if the=
y do
not want it, let them say so, in which case expel them [s’ils veul=
ent
ne l’être pas, qu’ils le disent, et alors, qu’on les
bannisse]’. The idea of a society of non-citizens within the state
and a nation within a nation was repugnant to him. But in fact, the speaker
concluded, that was not at all what the Jews wanted. The evidence was to the
contrary. They wished to be incorporated into the nation of France.
“Clermont-Tonnerre was promptly contradicted on this last, vit=
al
point by the abbé Maury. The term ‘Jew’, said the
abbé did not denote a religious sect, but a nation, one which had la=
ws
which it had always followed and by which it wished to continue to abide.
‘To proclaim the Jews citizens would be as if to say that, without
letters of naturalization and without ceasing to be English or Danish,
Englishmen and Danes could become Frenchmen.’ But Maury’s chief
argument was of a moral and social order. The Jews were inherently undesira=
ble,
socially as well as economically. They had been chased out of France, and t=
hen
recalled, no less than seven times – chased out by avarice, as Voltai=
re
had rightly put it, readmitted by avarice once more, but in foolishness as
well.
“’Th=
e Jews
have passed seventeen centuries without mingling with the other nations. Th=
ey
have never engaged in anything but trade in money; they have been the plagu=
e of
the agricultural provinces; not one of them has ever dignified [su ennob=
lir]
his hands by driving a plough. Their laws leave them no time for agricultur=
e;
the Sabbath apart, they celebrate fifty-six more festivals than the Christi=
ans
in each year. In Poland they possess an entire province. Well, then! While =
the
sweat of Christian slaves waters the furrows in which the Jews’ opule=
nce
germinates they themselves, as their fields are cultivated, engage in weigh=
ing
their ducats and calculating how much they can shave off the coinage without
exposing themselves to legal penalties.’
“They have never be=
en
labourers, Maury continued, not even under David and Solomon. And even then
they were notorious for their laziness. Their sole concern was commerce. Wo=
uld
you make soldiers of them, the abbé asked. If you did, you would der=
ive
small benefit from them: they have a horror of celibacy and they marry youn=
g.
He knew of no general who would wish to command an army of Jews either on t=
he
Sabbath – a day on which they never gave battle – or indeed at =
any
other time. Or did the Assembly imagine that they could make craftsmen of t=
hem
when their many festivals and sabbath days presented an insurmountable obst=
acle
to such an enterprise. The Jews held 12 million mortgages in Alsace alone, =
he
informed his colleagues. Within a month of their being granted citizenship =
they
would own half the province outright. In ten years’ time they would h=
ave
‘conquered’ all of it, reducing it to nothing more than a Jewish
colony – upon which the hatred the people of Alsace already bore for =
the
Jews would explode.[173]
“It was no=
t that
he, Maury, wished the Jews to be persecuted. ‘They are men, they are =
our
brothers; anathema on whoever speaks of intolerance!’ Nor need their
religious opinions disturb anyone [!!!]. He joined all others in agreeing t=
hat
they were to be protected. But that did not mean that they could be citizen=
s.
It was as individuals that they were entitled to protection, not as Frenchm=
en.
“Robespier= re took the opposite line, supporting Clermont-Tonnerre. All who fulfilled the= generally applicable conditions of eligibility to citizenship were entitled to the ri= ghts that derived from it, he argued, including the right to hold public office.= And so far as the facts were concerned, much of what Maury had said about the J= ews was ‘infinitely exaggerated’ and contrary to known history. Moreover, to charge the Jews themselves with responsibility for their own persecution at the hands of others, was absurd.
“’Vi=
ces
are imputed to them… But to whom should these vices be imputed if not=
to
ourselves for our injustice?… Let us restore them to happiness, to
country [patrie], and to virtue by restoring them to the dignity of =
men
and citizens; let us reflect that it can never be politic, whatever anyone
might say, to condemn a multitude of men who live among us to degradation a=
nd
oppression.’”[174]
Thus spoke the m=
an who
was soon to lead the most degrading and oppressive régime in European
history to that date. Indeed, it is striking how those who spoke most ferve=
ntly
for the Jews – apart from leaders of the Jewish community such as the
banker Cerfbeer and Isaac Beer – were Freemasons or Illuminati=
.
Thus in the two =
years
before the crucial debate on September 27, 1791, writes General Nechvolodov,
“fourteen attempts were made to give the Jews civic equality and
thirty-five major speeches were given by several orators, among them Mirabe=
au,
Robespierre, Abbé Grégoire, Abbé Sièyes, Camill=
e,
Desmoulins, Vernier, Barnave, Lameth, Duport and others.
“’Now
there is a singular comparison to be made,’ says Abbé Lemann,
‘- all the names which we have just cited and which figure in the =
Moniteur
as having voted for the Jews are also found on the list of Masons… Is
this coincidence not proof of the order given, in the lodges of Paris, to w=
ork
in favour of Jewish emancipation?’
“And yet, =
in
spite of the revolutionary spirit, the National Assembly was very little
inclined to give equality of civil rights to the Jews. Against this reform
there rose up all the deputies from Alsace, since it was in Alsace that the
majority of the French Jews of that time lived….
“But this
opposition in the National Assembly did not stop the Jews. To attain their =
end,
they employed absolutely every means.
“According=
to
Abbé Lemann, these means were the following:
“First mea=
ns:
entreaty. A charm exercised over several presidents of the Assembly. Second:
the influence of gold. Third means: logic. After the National Assembly had
declared the ‘rights of man’, the Jews insisted that these righ=
ts
should logically be applied to them, and they set out their ideas on this
subject with an ‘implacable arrogance’.
“Fourth me= ans: recourse to the suburbs and the Paris Commune, so as to force the National Assembly under ‘threat of violence’ to give the Jews equality.<= o:p>
“’One of their most thorough historians (Graetz),’
says Abbé Lemann, ‘did not feel that he had to hide this
manoeuvre. Exhausted, he says, by the thousand useless efforts they had mad=
e to
obtain civil rights, they thought up a last means. Seeing that it was
impossible to obtain by reason and common sense what they called their righ=
ts,
they resolved to force the National Assembly to approve of their emancipati=
on.
“’To=
this
end, naturally, were expended vast sums, which served to establish the
‘Christian Front’ which they wanted.
“’In= the session of the National Assembly of January 18, 1791, the Duke de Broglie expressed himself completely openly on this subject: ‘Among them,R= 17; he said, ‘there is one in particular who has acquired an immense fort= une at the expense of the State, and who is spending in the town of Paris considerable sums to win supporters of his cause.’ He meant Cerfbeer.=
“At the he=
ad of
the Christian Front created on this occasion were the lawyer Godard and thr=
ee
ecclesiastics: the Abbés Mulot, Bertoliot and Fauchet.
“Abb&eacut=
e;
Fauchet was a well-known illuminatus, and Abbé Mulot – =
the
president of the all-powerful Paris Commune, with the help of which the
Jacobins exerted, at the time desired, the necessary pressure on the Nation=
al
and Legislative Assemblies, and later on the Convention.
“What Greg=
ory,
curé of Embermeuil, was for the Jews in the heart of the National
Assembly, Abbé Mulot was in the heart of the Commune.
“However,
although they were fanatical Jacobins, the members of the Commune were far =
from
agreeing to the propositions of their president that they act in defence of
Jewish rights in the National Assembly. It was necessary to return constant=
ly
to the attack, naturally with the powerful help of Cerfbeer’s gold and
that of the Abbés Fauchet and Bertoliot. This latter declared during=
a
session of the Commune on this question: ‘It was necessary that such a
happy and unexpected event as the revolution should come and rejuvenate
France… Let us hasten to consign to oblivion the crimes of our
fathers.’
“Then, dur=
ing
another session, the lawyer Godard bust into the chamber with fifty armed
‘patriots’ dressed in costumes of the national guard with
three-coloured cockades. They were fifty Jews who, naturally provided with
money, had made the rounds of the sections of the Paris Commune and of the
wards of the town of Paris, talking about recruiting partisans of equality =
for
the Jews. This had its effect. Out of the sixty sections of Paris fifty-nine
declared themselves for equality (only the quartier des Halles abstained). =
Then
the Commune addressed the National Assembly with an appeal signed by the
Abbés Mulot, Bertoliot, Fauchet and other members, demanding that
equality be immediately given to the Jews.
“However, =
even
after that, the National Assembly hesitated in declaring itself in the mann=
er
provided. Then, on September 27, the day of the penultimate session of the
Assembly before its dissolution, the Jacobin deputy Adrien Duport posed the
question of equality for the Jews in a categorical fashion. The Assembly kn=
ew
Adrien Duport’s personality perfectly. It knew that in a secret meeti=
ng
of the chiefs of Freemasonry which preceded the revolution, he had insisted=
on
the necessity of resort to a system of terror. The Assembly yielded. There
followed a decree signed by Louis XVI granting French Jews full and complete
equality of rights…”[175]
The power of the
Jewish minority was revealed especially during the reign of terror under Ro=
bespierre.
2300 Catholic churches were converted into “temples of Reason”.=
And
at that point some voices were raised, writes Tikhomirov, “demanding =
that
the ban be spread onto the Jews also, and that circumcision be forbidden. T=
hese
demands were completely ignored, and were not even put to the vote. In the
local communes individual groups of especially wild Jacobins, who had not b=
een
initiated into higher politics, sometimes broke into synagogues, destroying=
the
Torah and books, but it was only by 1794 that the revolutionary-atheist log=
ic
finally forced even the bosses to pose the question of the annihilation not
only of Catholicism, but also of Jewry. At this point, however, the Jews we=
re
delivered by 9 Thermidor, 1794. Robespierre fell and was executed. The mode=
rate
elements triumphed. The question of the ban of Jewry disappeared of itself,
while the Constitution of Year III of the Republic granted equal rights =
to
the Jews.”[176]
But this was not=
the
end of the matter. In the late 1790s a new wave of Ashkenazis entered France
from Germany, attracted by the superior status their French brothers now
enjoyed. This was to lead to further disturbances in Alsace, which it was l=
eft
to Napoleon to deal with…
“Nevertheless,” as Paul Johnson writes, “the deed =
was
done. French Jews were now free and the clock could never be turned back.
Moreover, emancipation in some form took place wherever the French were abl=
e to
carry the revolutionary spirit with their arms. The ghettos and Jewish clos=
ed
quarters were broken into in papal Avignon (1791), Nice (1792) and the
Rhineland (1792-3). The spread of the revolution to the Netherlands, and the
founding of the Batavian republic, led to Jews being granted full and formal
rights by law there (1796). In 1796-8 Napoleon Bonaparte liberated many of =
the
Italian ghettos, French troops, young Jews and local enthusiasts tearing do=
wn
the crumbling old walls.
“For the f=
irst
time a new archetype, who had always existed in embryonic form, began to em=
erge
from the shadows: the revolutionary Jew. Clericalists in Italy swore enmity=
to
‘Gauls, Jacobins and Jews’. In 1793-4 Jewish Jacobins set up a
revolutionary regime in Saint Esprit, the Jewish suburb of Bayonne. Once ag=
ain,
as during the Reformation, traditionalists saw a sinister link between the
Torah and subversion.”[177]
However, the abo=
ve
picture of the Jewish struggle for emancipation in Paris and, later, Bayonne
should not obscure the fact that there was still very strong opposition to =
the
idea of emancipation from within Jewry itself led especially by the rabbinic
leaders of Ashkenazi Jewry in Poland.
Thus Zalkind Hou=
rwitz
was a Polish Jew who won a prize for an essay advocating Jewish emancipation
from the Royal Society for Arts and Sciences at Metz in 1787. Nevertheless,=
as
Vital writes, he “made no bones about his view of the internal
constraints to which Jews in all parts were subject through the workings of=
the
rabbinical-Talmudic system: of the limits it set upon their worldly freedom=
, of
the manner in which it effectively barred their entry into society on a bas=
is
of equality. The social liberation of the Jews was conditional, he believed=
, on
the power that the rabbis and the parnassim [chief synagogue officia=
ls]
jointly exercised over ordinary people in their daily lives being terminated
– in great matters as in small. ‘Their rabbis and syndics [i.e.=
parnassim]
must be strictly forbidden to assume the least authority over their fellows
outside the synagogue, or refuse honours to those who have shaved off their
beards, or curled their hair, or who dress like Christians, go to the theat=
re,
or observe other customs that bear no actual relation to their religion, but
derive from superstition alone as a means of distinguishing them from other
peoples.’”[178]
In France, it ha=
d been
the less typical, socially marginalized Jews who had pressed for emancipati=
on.
Even the more acculturated Sephardic Jews of Bourdeaux and Bayonne had been
slow to ask for emancipation, first, because they feared that they might ha=
ve
to pay for liberties which they already enjoyed de facto, and second=
ly,
because they wanted to be clearly delineated from the Ashkenazi Jews of Als=
ace.
The latter, cont=
inues
Vital, “had been slower still to ask for liberation. There is no evid=
ence
of their authorized representatives pressing for anything remotely of the k=
ind
before the Revolution; and when they made their own first approach to the n=
ew
National Assembly it was to ask for no more than an end to the special taxes
laid upon them and the abolition of the residential, and travel restriction=
s to
which they were subject. The greatest anxiety of the Alsatians was to retain
their own internal communal autonomy – to which end, with only rare
exceptions, they (at all events, their authorized representatives) were
prepared to forgo emancipation altogether. Only when they learned that other
branches of French Jewry, the small community in Paris among them, were
prepared to yield to the demand that they give up their ancient corporate
status did the Alsatians and Lorrainers fall, reluctantly, into line.”=
;[179]
The question: to
emancipate or not to emancipate? was to cause bitter divisions in Jewry that
have continued to the present day. It brought into sharp focus another
question: was it possible for the Jews, while remain Jewish, ever to
become an integral part of non-Jewish society? And if not, how were they to
live – as a separate nation with its own homeland and language as the
other Gentile nations, or in some other way?
The extreme
revolutionary zeal of many of the champions of Jewish emancipation, on the =
one
hand, and the equally extreme bigotry and ghetto-creating mentality of the
opponents of emancipation, on the other, suggested that there was no easy
solution to this problem, even with the best intentions of the Gentile rule=
rs.
For, as Norman S=
tone
points out, “Jewish emancipation was a double-edged operation. It
required a fundamental change in the conduct and the attitudes both of the =
host
societies and of the Jews themselves. It demanded the dismantling not only =
of
the constraints imposed on Jews from outside but also of the ‘internal
ghetto’ in Jewish minds. Modern concern with the roots of anti-Semiti=
sm
sometimes overlooks the severity of the Jews’ own laws of segregation.
Observant Jews could not hold to the 613 rules of dress, diet, hygience and
worship if they tried to live outside their own closed community; and
intermarriage was strictly forbidden. Since Judaic law taught that Jewishne=
ss
was biologically inherited in the maternal line, Jewish women were jealously
protected. A girl who dared to marry out could expect to be disowned by her
family, and ritually pronounced dead. Extreme determination was needed to
withstand such acute social pressures…”[180]
Napoleon
and the Jews
If the French
revolution gave the Jews their first great political victory, Napoleon gave
them their second. On May 22, 1799, Napoleon’s Paris Moniteur
published the following report, penned from Constantinople on April 17:
“Buonaparte has published a proclamation in which he invites all the =
Jews
of Asia and Africa to come and place themselves under his flag in order =
to
re-establish ancient Jerusalem. He has already armed a great number and
their battalions are threatening Aleppo.”
This was not the=
first
time that the Jews had persuaded a Gentile ruler to restore them to Jerusal=
em.
In the fourth century the Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate allowed the Jew=
s to
return to Jerusalem and start rebuilding the Temple. However, fire came out
from the foundations and black crosses appeared on the workers’ garme=
nts,
forcing them to abandon the enterprise.[181]
And the Jews wer=
e to
be thwarted again. For British sea-power prevented Napoleon from reaching
Jerusalem and making himself, as was reported to be his intention, king of =
the
Jews. The Jews would have to wait over a century before another Gentile pow=
er
– this time, the British – again offered them a return to Zion.=
Napoleon now lea=
rned
what many rulers before and after had learned: that kindness towards the Je=
ws
does not make them more tractable. Nechvolodov writes: “Since the fir=
st
years of the Empire, Napoleon I had become very worried about the Jewish
monopoly in France and the isolation in which they lived in the midst of the
other citizens, although they had received citizenship. The reports of the
departments showed the activity of the Jews in a very bad light:
‘Everywhere there are false declarations to the civil authorities;
fathers declare the sons who are born to them to be daughters… Again,=
there
are Jews who have given an example of disobedience to the laws of conscript=
ion;
out of sixty-nine Jews who, in the course of six years, should have formed =
part
of the Moselle contingent, none has entered the army.’
“By contra=
st,
behind the army, they give themselves up to frenzied speculation.
“’Unfortunately,’ says Thiers describing the entry=
of
the French into Rome in his History of the Revolution, ‘the
excesses, not against persons but against property, marred the entry of the
French into the ancient capital of the world… Berthier had just left =
for
Paris, Massena had just succeeded him. This hero was accused of having given
the first example. He was soon imitated. They began to pillage the palaces,
convents and rich collections. Some Jews in the rear of the army bought for=
a
paltry price the magnificent objects which the looters were offering
them.’
“It was in=
1805,
during Napoleon’s passage through Strasbourg, after the victory of
Austerlitz, that the complaints against the Jews assumed great proportions.=
The
principal accusations brought against them concerned the terrible use they =
made
of usury. As soon as he returned to Paris, Napoleon judged it necessary to
concentrate all his attention on the Jews. In the State Council, during its
session of April 30, he said, among other things, the following on this
subject:
“’The
French government cannot look on with indifference as a vile, degraded nati=
on
capable of every iniquity takes exclusive possession of two beautiful
departments of Alsace; one must consider the Jews as a nation and not as a
sect. It is a nation within a nation; I would deprive them, at least for a
certain time, of the right to take out mortgages, for it is too humiliating=
for
the French nation to find itself at the mercy of the vilest nation. Some en=
tire
villages have been expropriated by the Jews; they have replaced
feudalism… It would be dangerous to let the keys of France, Strasbourg
and Alsace, fall into the hands of a population of spies who are not at all=
attached
to the country.’”[182]
Napoleon eventua=
lly
decided on an extraordinary measure: to convene a 111-strong Assembly of Je=
wish
Notables in order to receive clear and unambiguous answers to the following
questions: did the Jewish law permit mixed marriages; did the Jews regard
Frenchmen as foreigners or as brothers; did they regard France as their nat=
ive
country, the laws of which they were bound to obey; did the Judaic law draw=
any
distinction between Jewish and Christian debtors? At the same time, writes
Johnson, Napoleon “supplemented this secular body by convening a para=
llel
meeting of rabbis and learned laymen, to advise the Assembly on technical
points of Torah and halakhah. The response of the more traditional elements=
of
Judaism was poor. They did not recognize Napoleon’s right to invent s=
uch
a tribunal, let alone summon it…”[183]
However, if some
traditionalists did not welcome it, other Jews received the news with unbou=
nded
joy. “According to Abbé Lemann,” writes Nechvolodov,
“they grovelled in front of him and were ready to recognize him as the
Messiah. The sessions of the Sanhedrin [composed of 46 rabbis and 25 laymen
from all parts of Western Europe] took place in February and March, 1807, a=
nd
the Decision of the Great Sanhedrin began with the words:
“’Bl=
essed
forever is the Lord, the God of Israel, Who has placed on the throne of Fra=
nce
and of the kingdom of Italy a prince according to His heart. God has seen t=
he
humiliation of the descendants of ancient Jacob, and He has chosen Napoleon=
the
Great to be the instrument of His mercy… Reunited today under his
powerful protection in the good town of Paris, to the number of seventy-one
doctors of the law and notables of Israel, we constitute a Great Sanhedrin,=
so
as to find in us a means and power to create religious ordinances in confor=
mity
with the principles of our holy laws, and which may serve as a rule and exa=
mple
to all Israelites. These ordinances will teach the nations that our dogmas =
are
consistent with the civil laws under which we live, an do not separate us at
all from the society of men…’”[184]
“Love of c=
ountry
is in the heart of Jews a sentiment so natural, so powerful, and so consona=
nt
with their religious opinions, that a French Jew considers himself in Engla=
nd,
as among strangers, although he may be among Jews; and the case is the same
with English Jews in France. To such a pitch is this sentiment carried among
them, that during the last war, French Jews were fighting desperately again=
st
other Jews, the subject of countries then at war with France.”[185]
“The Jewish
delegates,” writes Platonov, “declared that state laws had the =
same
obligatory force for Jews, that every honourable study of Jewish teaching w=
as
allowed, but usury was forbidden, etc. [However,] to the question concerning
mixed marriages of Jews and Christians they gave an evasive, if not negative
reply. ‘Although mixed marriages between Jews and Christians cannot be
clothed in a religious form, they nevertheless do not draw upon them any
anathema.”[186]
On the face of i=
t, the
Decision of the Sanhedrin was a great triumph for Napoleon, who could
now treat Jewry as just another religious denomination, and not a separate
nation.[187]
And indeed, as Douglas Reed says, “Orthodox Judaism, with the face of=
it
turned towards the West, denied any suggestion that the Jews would form a
nation within nations. Reform Judaism in time ‘eliminated every prayer
expressing so much as even the suspicion of a hope or desire for any form of
Jewish national resurrection’ (Rabbi Moses P. Jacobson).”[188]
However, the Jew=
s did
not restrain their money-lending and speculative activities, as Napoleon had
pleaded with them. On the contrary, only one year after the convening of the
Great Sanhedrin, Napoleon was forced to adopt repressive measures against t=
heir
financial excesses. Moreover, Napoleon created rabbinic consistories in Fra=
nce
having disciplinary powers over Jews and granted rabbis the status of state
officials – a measure that was strengthen the powers of the rabbis ov=
er their
people. In time Jewish consistories were created all over Europe. They
“began the stormy propaganda of Judaism amidst Jews who had partially
fallen away from the religion of their ancestors, organised rabbinic schools
and spiritual seminaries for the education of youth in the spirit of Talmud=
ic
Judaism.”[189]
Moreover, as
Tikhomirov points out, “no laws could avert the international links of
the Jews. Sometimes they even appeared openly, as in Kol Ispoel Khaberim=
(Alliance Israelite Universelle), although many legislatures forbid
societies and unions of their own citizens to have links with foreigners. T=
he
Jews gained a position of exceptional privilege. For the first time in the
history of the diaspora they acquired greater rights than the local citizen=
s of
the countries of the dispersion. One can understand that, whatever the furt=
her
aims for the resurrection of Israel might be, the countries of the new cult=
ure
and statehood became from that time a lever of support for Jewry.”[190]
Indeed, the main
result of the Great Sanhedrin, writes Nechvolodov, “was to unite Juda=
ism
still more. “’Let us not forget from where we draw our
origin,’ said Rabbi Salomon Lippmann Cerfbeer on July 26, 1808, in his
speech for the opening of the preparatory assembly of the Sanhedrin:-
‘Let it no longer be a question of “German” or
“Portuguese” Jews; although disseminated over the surface of the
globe, we everywhere form only one unique people.’”[191]
The emancipation=
of
the Jews in France led to their emancipation in other countries under French
influence, as we have seen. Even after the fall of Napoleon, on June 8, 181=
5,
the Congress of Vienna decreed that “it was incumbent on the members =
of
the German Confederation to consider an ‘amelioration’ of the c=
ivil
status of all those who ‘confessed the Jewish faith in
Germany.’”[192]
Gradually, though not without opposition, Jewish emancipation spread throug=
hout
Europe.
Napoleon
and the Latin American Revolutions
Another kind of
nationalism owed its origins to the impact of Napoleon, not on whole societ=
ies,
but directly on certain individuals, who then tried to imitate NapoleonR=
17;s
impact on society as a whole. Such individuals were generally ambitious
adventurers who managed by hook or by crook to impose themselves on weakened
government structures and then claim for themselves the mandate of the peop=
le,
as if their individual will represented the “general will” of t=
he
people. Simple despotism, in other words, disguised as liberation from
despotism. Very often these “liberated” peoples had no idea that
they had been a distinct nation before, and would have been much happier
without any “liberator”. They were indeed “forced to be
free”, in Rousseau’s phrase.
The most famous =
of the
“liberators” was Simon Jose Antonio de la Santissima Trinidad de
Bolivar. Bolivar is a good example of the terrible spiritual damage done to=
a
whole generation of young men by the heroic image of Napoleon. Just as Napo=
leon
himself stood between the rationalism of the Enlightenment and the passion =
of
the Romantic age, uniting them in the image of himself fighting for both the
ideals of the Enlightenment and the death-defying glory of the romantic her=
o,
so did Bolivar and a host of similar adventurers in Central and South Ameri=
ca
aspire to unite national “liberation” with personal glory.
“Bolivar a=
rrived
in the French capital just in time for Napoleon’s coronation as Emper=
or
of the French, an event he watched with fascination. In March 1805 ... he s=
aw
Napoleon crown himself king of Italy. ‘I centred my attention on Napo=
leon
and saw nothing but him out of that crowd of men,’ he wrote. He trave=
lled
on to Rome under the spell of this vision and there, after considering what=
he
had seen, he ascended the Monte Sacro, where he fell on his knees and swore=
an
oath before Rodriguez to liberate South America.”[193]
Bolivar seized h=
is
chance after Napoleon deposed King Ferdinand VII of Spain, which eventually
unleashed a strong nationalist backlash in Spain – but not before
breaking the legal links between Spain and its colonies in the Americas.
Returning to Venezuela, Boliva proceeded to win, lose and finally reconquer
Caracas from the Spaniards in a series of civil wars distinguished by appal=
ling
savagery on both sides. Although the Venezuelan Republic had been proclaime=
d on
a whites-only franchise in 1811, thereby excluding all Indians and blacks f=
rom
“the nation”, and although Bolivar himself was a slave-owner an=
d to
all intents and purposes Spanish, on reconquering Caracas in 1813 he
immediately likened all royalist Spaniards to wandering Jews, to be “=
cast
out and persecuted”, and declared: “Any Spaniard who does not w=
ork
against tyranny in favour of the just cause, by the most active and effecti=
ve
means, shall be considered an enemy and punished as a traitor to the country
and in consequence shall inevitably be shot. Spaniards and Canarios, depend
upon it, you will die, even if you are simply neutral, unless you actively
espouse the liberation of America.”[194]
Bolivar was as good as his word, and proceeded to slaughter the whole Spani=
sh
population of Caracas – whereupon the people he had supposedly come to
liberate, the Indians and blacks, both free and slave, marched against him
under the slogan of “Long live Ferdinand VII”! After murdering =
a further
1200 Spaniards in retaliation, Bolivar then harangued the inhabitants of
Caracas, saying: “You may judge for yourselves, without partiality,
whether I have not sacrificed my life, my being, every minute of my time in
order to make a nation of you.”[195]
Like his idol Na=
poleon,
and many Latin American strongmen since, Bolivar did not like the people
expressing its will in elections, which he called “the greatest scour=
ge
of republics [which] produce only anarchy”. The liberator of Mexico,
Agustin de Iturbide, agreed, proclaiming himself Emperor in 1822. But such
unrepublican immodesty was nothing compared to Bolivar’s, who “=
hung
in the dining room of his villa outside Bogota a huge portrait of himself b=
eing
crowned by two genii, with the inscription: ‘Bolivar is the God of
Colombia’.”[196]
Nor, in the end,=
did
he have much time for the people he had liberated. Shortly after the
assassination of his right-hand man, General José Antonio de Sucre, =
when
he was in self-imposed exile in Europe, he admitted that independence was t=
he
only benefit he had brought “at the cost of everything else”, a=
nd
declared: “America is ungovernable. He who serves the revolution ploughs the sea… This country will
inexorably fall into the hands of uncontrollable multitudes, thereafter to =
pass
under… tyrants of all colours and races. Those who have served the revolution h=
ave
ploughed the sea. The only thing to do in America is emigrate.”[197] And
again: “America can be ruled only by an able despotism.”[198]
Despotism also
prevailed in another “liberated” country of the region, Paragua=
y,
where it became a “secular replacement” for the former
“Jesuit communist empire”.[199]
“After
independence,” writes David Landes, “like other debris states of
the great Hispanic empire, Paraguay had fallen almost immediately under the
control of dictators. The laws said republic, but the practice was one-man =
rule
– a mix of benevolent despotism and populist tyranny. The first of th=
ese
dictators…, Dr. Gaspar Rodriguez de Francia, was something special. A
Jacobin ideologue, and like many of the French variety, a lawyer by trainin=
g,
Francia was committed to a republic of equals and him more equal than the r=
est.
He was he was the ‘organic leader’, the elitist embodying the
popular will… Dr. Francia and his successors, Lopez father and son, w=
ould
turn the country into an enlightened Sparta – egalitarian, literate,
disciplined, and brave.”[200]
“It is gen=
erally
accepted,” writes Zamoyski, “that the former Spanish colonies n=
ever
again achieved the wealth in which they had basked before 1810. Some mainta=
in
that they were also better governed, more lawful and more peaceful under
Spanish rule than at any time since, and there is something to be said for =
this
view.
“Slavery w=
as
finally abolished in the former Spanish colonies in the late 1850s, but
economic slavery remained endemic throughout the region. The manner in which
independence and nationhood were forced upon these societies gave rise to
systemic instability. The various Liberators could not count on devotion to=
a cause
to animate their troops and supporters, as the cause was imaginary. Nor cou=
ld
they mobilize one whole section of the population on behalf of a specific
interest for any length of time. And they certainly could not depend on
colleagues, who were bound, sooner or later, to contest their authority. Th=
ey
therefore had to keep rearranging alliances and decapitating any faction th=
at
grew too strong. In order to enlist the loyalty and sympathy of the lower
orders, they would make a point of drawing these into the army. But as such
recruits became professionals, they cut their links with the classes they c=
ame
from and grew into arrogant Praetorians who carried with them an element of
incipient mutiny.”[201]
There is a profo=
und
irony here. The cult of the nation introduced by article three of the Right=
s of
Man was meant to unite the peoples, not disunite them. But in fact it divid=
ed
and splintered the Americas, as it had divided and splintered Europe.
Romanticism
and Nationalism
Reference has al=
ready
been made to that broader movement, known as Romanticism, which fed =
into
the development of nationalism from the other side of the Rhine. Romanticism
was born as a reaction to the Enlightenment and, more generally, to the who=
le
classical concept of civilisation. If the English Enlightenment dominated t=
he
cultural life of the early 18th century, and the French Enlightenment - the
later part of the century, then German Romanticism dominated the intellectu=
al
and cultural life of the early 19th century.
Hume had shown t=
hat
the empirical, rationalist view of the world had, paradoxically, no rational
foundations, for it led to a denial of the objective existence of God, the
soul, morality and even of the external world. Kant desperately attempted to
rescue something from Hume’s withering criticism. But ultimately he
begat, not a rebirth of empiricism on rational foundations, but the German
philosophy of idealism, which turned everything on its head by defin=
ing
the world as spirit, the objective as the subjective.
Romanticism is t=
he
counterpart in art to idealism in philosophy. Jacques Barzun attempts to de=
fine
it thus: “In Romanticism thought and feeling are fused; its bent is
toward exploration and discovery at whatever risk of error or failure; the =
religious
emotion is innate and demands expression. Spirit is a reality but where it =
is
placed varies and is secondary: the divine may be reached through nature or
art. The individual self is a source of knowledge on which one must act; for
one is embarked – engagé, as the 20C Existentialists sa=
y.
To act, enthusiasm must overcome indifference or despair; impulse must be
guided by imagination and reason. The search is for truths, which reside in
particulars, not in generalities; the world is bigger and more complex than=
any
set of abstractions, and it includes the past, which is never fully done wi=
th.
Meditating on past and present leads to the estimate of man as great and
wretched. But heroes are real and indispensable. They rise out of the peopl=
e,
whose own mind-and-heart provides the makings of high culture. The errors of
heroes and peoples are the price of knowledge, religion, and art, life itse=
lf
being a heroic tragedy.”[202]
Sir Isaiah
Berlin’s definition is also illuminating: “Since the Greeks, and
perhaps long before them, men have believed that to the central questions a=
bout
the nature and purpose of their lives, and of the world in which they lived,
true, objective, universal and eternal answers could be found. If the answe=
rs
could not be discovered by me, then perhaps by someone more expert or wiser
than I; if not in the circumstances in which I found myself, then in others
more propitious: in an innocent and happy past – a Garden of Eden from
which our ancestors had for their sins been expelled, or perhaps in a golden
age that still lay in the future, which posterity (perhaps after much labour
and suffering) would, or at any rate could, one day reach. It was assumed t=
hat
all the truly central problems were soluble in principle even if not in
practice. Somewhere true answers to all genuine questions must exist, if no=
t in
the minds of men, then in the mind of an omniscient being – real or
imaginary, material or ideal, a personal deity, or the universe come to full
consciousness of itself.
“This pres=
upposition,
which underlies most classical and Christian thought, orthodox and heretica=
l,
scientific and religious, was connected with the belief that, whether men k=
new
it or not, the whole of life on earth was in some sense bound up with the
search for answer to the great, tormenting questions of fact and of conduct=
; of
what there is, was, will be, can be; of what to do, what to live by, what to
seek, hope for, admire, fear, avoid; whether the end of life was happiness =
or
justice or virtue or self-fulfilment or grace and salvation. Individuals,
schools of thought, entire civilisations differed about what the answers we=
re,
about the proper method of discovering them, about the nature and place of
moral or spiritual or scientific authority – that is to say, about ho=
w to
identify the experts who are qualified to discover and communicate the answ=
ers.
They argued about what constitutes such qualifications and justifies such
claims to authority. But there was no doubt that the truth lay somewhere; t=
hat
it could in principle be found. Conflicting beliefs were held about the cen=
tral
questions: whether the truth was to be found in reason or in faith, in the
Church or the laboratory, in the insights of the uniquely privileged indivi=
dual
– a prophet, a mystic, an alchemist, a metaphysician – or in the
collective consciousness of a body of men – the society of the faithf=
ul,
the traditions of a tribe, a race, a nation, a social class, an academy of
experts, an elite of uniquely endowed or trained beings – or, on the
contrary, in the mind or heart of any man, anywhere, at any time, provided =
that
he remained innocent and uncorrupted by false doctrines. What was common to=
all
these views – incompatible enough for wars of extermination to have b=
een
fought in their name – was the assumption that there existed a realit=
y, a
structure of things, a rerum natura, which the qualified enquirer co=
uld
see, study and, in principle, get right. Men were violently divided about t=
he
nature and identity of the wise – those who understood the nature of
things – but not about the proposition that such wise men existed or
could be conceived, and that they would know that which would enable them to
deduce correctly what men should believe, how they should act, what they sh=
ould
live by and for.
“This was the great foundatio=
n of
belief which romanticism attacked and weakened. Whatever the differences
between the leading romantic thinkers – the early Schiller and the la=
ter
Fichte, Schelling and Jacobi, Tieck and the Schlegels when they were young,
Chateaubriand and Byron, Coleridge and Carlyle, Kierkegaard, Stirner,
Nietzsche, Baudelaire – there runs through their writings a common
notion, held with varying degrees of consciousness and depth, that truth is=
not
an objective structure, independent of those who seek it, the hidden treasu=
re
waiting to be found, but is itself in all its guises created by the seeker.=
It
is not to be brought into being necessarily by the finite individual: accor=
ding
to some it is created by a greater power, a universal spirit, personal or
impersonal, in which the individual is an element, or of which he is an asp=
ect,
an emanation, an imperfect reflection. But the common assumption of the
romantics that runs counter to the philosophia perennis is that the
answers to the great questions are not to be discovered so much as to be
invented. They are not something found, they are something literally made. =
In
its extreme Idealistic form it is a vision of the entire world. In its more
familiar form, it confines itself to the realm of values, ideals, rules of
conduct – aesthetic, religious, social, moral, political – a re=
alm
seen not as a natural or supernatural order capable of being investigated,
described and explained by the appropriate method – rational examinat=
ion
or some more mysterious procedure – but as something that man creates=
, as
he creates works of art; not by imitating, or even obtaining illumination f=
rom,
pre-existent models or truths, or by applying pre-existent truths or rules =
that
are objective, universal, eternal, unalterable but by an act of creation, t=
he
introduction into the world of something literally novel – the activi=
ty,
natural or supernatural, human or in part divine, owing nothing to anything
outside it (in some versions because nothing can be conceived as being outs=
ide
it), self-subsistent, self-justified, self-fulfilling. Hence that new empha=
sis
on the subjective and ideal rather than the objective and the real, on the
process of creation rather than its effects, on motives rather than
consequences; and, as a necessary corollary of all this, on the quality of =
the
vision, the state of mind or soul of the acting agent – purity of hea=
rt,
innocence of intention, sincerity of purpose rather than getting the answer
right, that is, accurate correspondence to the ‘given’. Hence t=
he
emphasis on activity, movement that cannot be reduced to static segments, t=
he
flow that cannot be arrested, frozen, analysed without being thereby fatally
distorted; hence the constant protest against the reduction of ‘life&=
#8217;
to dead fragments, of organism to ‘mere’ mechanical or uniform
units; and the corresponding tendency towards similes and metaphors drawn f=
rom
‘dynamic’ sciences – biology, physiology, introspective
psychology – and the worship of music, which, of all the arts, appear=
s to
have the least relation to universally observable, uniform natural order.
Hence, too, the celebration of all forms of defiance directed against the
‘given’ – the impersonal, the ‘brute fact’ in
morals or in politics – or against the static and the accepted, and t=
he
value placed on minorities and martyrs as such, no matter what the ideal for
which they suffered.
“This, too=
, is
the source of the doctrine that work is sacred as such, not because of its
social function, but because it is the imposition of the individual or
collective personality, that is, activity, upon inert stuff. The activity, =
the
struggle is all, the victory nothing: in Fichte’s words, ‘Frei =
sein
ist nichts – frei werden ist der Himmel’ (‘To be free is
nothing – to become free is very heaven’). Failure is nobler th=
an
success. Self-immolation for a cause is the thing, not the validity of the
cause itself, for it is the sacrifice undertaken for its sake that sanctifi=
es
the cause, not some intrinsic property of it.
“These are=
the symptoms
of the romantic attitude. Hence the worship of the artist, whether in sound=
, or
word, or colour, as the highest manifestation of the ever-active spirit, and
the popular image of the artist in his garret, wild-eyed, wild-haired, poor,
solitary, mocked-; but independent, free, spiritually superior to his
philistine tormentors. This attitude has a darker side too: worship not mer=
ely
of the painter or the composer or the poet, but of that more sinister artis=
ts
whose materials are men – the destroyer of old societies, and the cre=
ator
of new ones – no matter at what human cost: the superhuman leader who
tortures and destroys in order to build on new foundations – Napoleon=
in
his most revolutionary aspect. It is this embodiment of the romantic ideal =
that
took more and more hysterical forms and in its extreme ended in violent
irrationalism and Fascism. Yet this same outlook also bred respect for
individuality, for the creative impulse, for the unique, the independent, f=
or
freedom to live and act in the light of personal, undictated beliefs and
principles, of undistorted emotional needs, for the value of personal life,=
of
personal relationships, of the individual conscience, of human rights. The
positive and negative heritage of romanticism – on the one hand conte=
mpt
for opportunism, regard for individual variety, scepticism of oppressive
general formulae and final solutions, and on the other self-prostration bef=
ore
superior beings and the exaltation of arbitrary power, passion and cruelty
– these tendencies, at once reflected and promoted by romantic doctri=
nes,
have done more to mould both the events of our century and the concepts in
terms in which they are viewed and explained than is commonly recognised in
most histories of our time.”[203]
Romanticism was =
an
individualist attitude par excellence: but it had its collectivist
analogues, including nationalism, which may therefore be said to have been
nurtured from the streams both of the French Enlightenment and of the German
Romantic anti-Enlightenment. Thus “for Byronic romantics,” writ=
es
Berlin, “’I’ is indeed an individual, the outsider, the
adventurer, the outlaw, he who defies society and accepted values, and foll=
ows
his own – it may be to his doom, but this is better than conformity,
enslavement to mediocrity. But for other thinkers ‘I’ becomes
something much more metaphysical. It is a collective – a nation, a
Church, a Party, a class, an edifice in which I am only a stone, an organis=
m of
which I am only a tiny living fragment. It is the creator; I myself
matter only in so far as I belong to the movement, the race, the nation, the
class, the Church; I do not signify as a true individual within this
super-person to whom my life is organically bound. Hence German nationalism=
: I
do this not because it is good or right or because I like it – I do it
because I am a German and this is the German way to live. So also modern
existentialism – I do it because I commit myself to this form of
existence. Nothing makes me; I do not do it because it is an objective orde=
r which
I obey, or because of universal rules to which I must adhere; I do it becau=
se I
create my own life as I do; being what I am, I give it direction and I am
responsible for it. Denial of universal values, this emphasis on being above
all an element in, and loyal to, a super-self, is a dangerous moment in
European history, and has led to a great deal that has been destructive and
sinister in modern times; this is where it begins, in the political ruminat=
ions
and theories of the earliest German romantics and their disciples in France=
and
elsewhere.”[204]