Gildea - Children of the Revolution

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First published 2008
1

Copyright Robert Gildea, 2008

The moral right of the author has been asserted

All rights reserved Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book

978-0-14-191852-5

to Rachel, Georgia, William and Adam

Photographic acknowledgements are given in parentheses.

First and foremost I would like to thank Ruth Harris, my fellow traveller in nineteenth-century French history, for her close reading of much of this book and her insightful advice. Belinda Jack encouraged me to write a history that would be of use to modern linguists as well as to historians. Julian Wright kindly invited Colin Jones, author of The Great Nation , and myself to discuss our approaches at an event on The New Cobbans that he organized at the University of Durham in 2006. I would like to acknowledge the debt I owe to Theodore Zeldin, who supervised my thesis over thirty years ago, and whose revolutionary approach to French history stimulated some of my thinking about this book. My thanks go to Simon Winder, my editor at Penguin, for his guidance which was both firm and good-humoured, and to my agent Catherine Clarke for her sharp judgement and unfailing enthusiasm. Cecilia Mackay presented me with a vast range of rich images, only a sample of which are used as illustrations here. I am grateful to the editorial team at Penguin, notably to Peter James for his skilful copy-editing and to the editorial manager, Richard Duguid. I would like to thank Lucy-Jean for her support and affection, as ever. This book is dedicated to my children in the hope that they will learn a little more about the country they love.

On every generation to which it gave birth the French Revolution left its mark. A mark of hope for a new dawn, a new order of the world, but also a mark of tragedy, of a project that came to grief in anarchy, bloodletting and despotism. It proclaimed the power of mans reason to achieve progress and happiness in the world, the rights of man to liberty and equality which every government should protect, the sovereignty of the people, the virtues of self-government, and the duty of French citizens to spread liberty among oppressed peoples abroad. And yet the Revolution spawned new tyrannies, the tyranny of the masses who insulted and abused their elected representatives, a revolutionary dictatorship that terrorized its enemies and the plebiscitary dictatorship of Napoleon Bonaparte who appealed to the disgruntled masses over the heads of the politicians. Liberty was sacrificed to equality, and difference was eliminated in the name of the public interest. The fanaticism attributed to religion was replaced by a revolutionary fanaticism that persecuted its enemies and then consumed its own in a fratricidal struggle. Revolutionaries spawned new armies that set fire to Europe for a generation in the first manifestation of total war.

The Revolution divided the French into two irreconcilable camps. Each had its own defined sense of what France should be, claimed total legitimacy for itself and demonized its opponents. One camp dreamed of bringing back the Ancien Rgime, monarchy by divine right, a social hierarchy dominated by a noble caste, and the supremacy of the Catholic Church which sanctified the monarchy and was protected by it. It abhorred the Revolution, forgetting that for three years monarchy, Church and Revolution had coexisted, denouncing the violence it had unleashed from the taking of the Bastille on 14 July 1789, when the head of its governor was paraded on a pikestaff by the mob. Attempts to reform the Catholic Church quickly gave way to its destruction, the closure of churches, the massacre of priests and nuns, the silencing of bells. The monarchy was overthrown by a republic, and the Republic executed the king. A reign of Terror was orchestrated against the enemies of the Revolution, using the guillotine, grapeshot and drownings, and putting rebel provinces to fire and sword. For the counter-revolutionaries no compromise was possible with the Revolution: it would be terminated and those who had promoted it, beginning with the regicides who had voted for the kings death, would themselves be put to death. Neither could there be any deal with the regime of Napoleon to which the Revolution gave rise: he was regarded as a despot, a usurper and a warmonger.

The other camp, with the same passion, believed that the Revolution had been necessary to overthrow an Ancien Rgime that had refused to reform itself and had violated the right of every man to liberty and self-government. The forces of the Ancien Rgime had not given way but had brought in foreign armies and fomented civil war in the provinces. The Revolution had had to defend itself against its enemies, deposing a tyrant, crushing nobles and clergy who stirred up counter-revolution. The Republic was considered the perfect political order, enshrining liberty, equality and fraternity. It educated its citizens in patriotism or civic virtue the sacrifice of their selfish interests to the common good by a combination of republican schooling, participation in public festivals celebrating the Republic, and military service. Enrolled in revolutionary armies, citizens drove out the armies of kings and aristocrats who tried to destroy them and brought liberty and fraternity to peoples who were still oppressed. If the Republic came to an end in 1804 and the Revolution seemed to be over in 181415 with the restoration of the monarchy, this was because the education of citizens had not been thorough enough or because opposition had not been suppressed decisively enough. The Revolution and the Republic were unfinished business for revolutionaries, who returned to them repeatedly in the nineteenth century, in 1815, 1830, 1848 and 1871, in order to achieve them completely, permanently, better than before.

Each generation through the nineteenth century wrestled with these problems in their own way. Generations were not so much biological, born at the same time, as historical, shaped by the same events. These events might be the revolutions of 1789, 1830, 1848 and 1871. They might be the Hundred Days of 1815, when Napoleon returned briefly from exile to power until his overthrow at Waterloo, or defeat in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, or the challenge to French power of British aggression in 1898 or German aggression in 1905 or 1911. These events gave shape to successive generations which differed because of the different events they experienced in their formative years, or later in life. The birth dates of a generation would gravitate around a key year, although individuals defined by the same event might actually be born ten years before or after, so long as they reacted in the same way, most as peers, others as masters or disciples. Not all members of the same generation responded to the same events in the same way. Some, for example, would be swept up in the revolutionary fervour, while others would be turned against it by persecution, the loss of loved ones or enforced exile. The great challenge of the nineteenth century was whether rival or even enemy units of the same generation could find common ground on which to build a political consensus and lay to rest the painful conflicts inherited from the Revolution.