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principles when personally attacked, and leaving the ultimate issue of his cause in the hands of Time.

Thus much we have allowed ourselves to say; for there is no trial of temper and of personal dignity more searching than that of long obscure political exile, and he who has borne it well deserves the tribute of respect, however little we may approve his political conduct. As far as the purposes of the present work are concerned, this exile, which at first seemed likely to prevent altogether the completion of the present work, turned out, singularly enough, of the greatest possible advantage to the author. Deprived of the resources of the public and private libraries of his own country, his residence here introduced him to those possessed by the British Museum. What he found there, and how he used it, is described in the preface to his seventh volume, published in 1855. J'ai de grandes 'actions de grâce à rendre à mon exil,' he says, 'qui m'a mis en 'état d'approfondir mon sujet beaucoup mieux que je ne l'aurais 'pu à Paris même.' The late Mr. Croker was an insatiable collector of pamphlets, newspapers, records of every sort, respecting the first French Revolution; and on two different occasions (unless we are misinformed) he parted with all which he possessed in this way to the British Museum.* These masses of matter, being added to the collections made and stored by the establish

*To give some idea of its value and extent, we quote the description which Louis Blanc himself has left on record of it in the Avis 'au Lecteur' which precedes his seventh volume :

'En relations contemporaines, brochures pour ou contre, discours, rapports, pamphlets, satires, chansons, statistiques, portraits, procèsverbaux, proclamations, placards, &c., &c., le catalogue comprend: sur la seule affaire du Collier, 3 énormes dossiers; sur les Parlements, 6; sur les États-Généraux, 75; sur la Noblesse, 3; sur le Clergé, 86; sur les Travaux Publics pendant la Révolution, 7; sur le Commerce, 3; sur l'Agriculture, 2; sur les Clubs, 22; sur les Fêtes Civiques, 9; sur la Police des Cultes, 62; sur les Poids et Mesures, 1; sur les Sciences pendant la Révolution, 3; sur la Garde Nationale, 3; sur les Sections de Paris, 5; sur l'Education, 9; sur la Philosophie, 16; sur les Monuments Publics, 3; sur les Emigrés, 28; sur les Colonies, 45; sur la Mendicité et les Hospices, 4; sur les Prisons, 5; sur Robespierre, 12; sur Camille Desmoulins, 13; sur Brissot, 5; sur Marat, 13; sur Babœuf, 10; et ainsi de suite. . . . Inutile d'ajouter qu'à chaque évènement notable de la Révolution correspond une masse de documents proportionnés à son importance. C'est ainsi, par exemple, que l'ensemble des pièces diverses relatives aux affaires d'Avignon va du no 591 au no 599. Quant aux histoires proprement dites, la collection s'étend du numéro 1208 au numéro 1340!'

ment and by George III. during the period of the Revolution itself, complete the unrivalled repository of which Louis Blanc speaks.

The

By the aid of these means, envied by his French critics themselves, and with his literary ability sharpened by political experience, M. Louis Blanc has produced a work of a very high order. But a History, in the highest sense of all, we dare not call it. It is in truth another contribution to that series of eloquent and voluminous essays, framed on preconceived ideas, which their authors have entitled Histories of the French Revolution. Its peculiar merit lies in the unity of thought and purpose which prevails throughout the whole. casual reader, who will merely take it up to peruse his account of particular scenes and characters, though he may find much to interest and strike him, will not be able to appreciate this its highest characteristic the mode in which the sequence of facts is brought powerfully and distinctly out; in which it is shown how each mistake, each injustice committed by the several parties, as well as each bold and successful political stroke, depended on its antecedent, and produced its results; how one day was the father of another, and each incident only to be understood by close advertence to that which preceded and followed it. This is Louis Blanc's greatest achievement; and, for historical purposes, it is one of no common order. And it exhibits itself, very markedly, in the dramatic part of his work, in the delineation of character. It has been said that Shakespeare differs from almost all other dramatists essentially in this, that his characters are not figures introduced complete into the canvas; they alter, grow, and develope under the eye. So it is, in due proportion, with the personages brought forward in the pages of Louis Blanc. Unlike most French writers of equal power, he does not seem to us to excel in the artistic finishing of elaborate portraits, where he attempts it. But his characters draw themselves. Mirabeau, Brissot, Robespierre, Saint-Just, seem to grow out of their indistinct beginnings into definite individualities, chapter by chapter, and to assume by degrees, as they did in life, their due proportion to the scene which they fill.

It is evident how considerable, and rightly so, are the advantages which the historian who deals with a great work in this complete way has over those who exercise their ingenuity on the production of monographs,' as some term them historical essays on special subjects, characters, or scenes, forming portions of the great whole. We have been much struck with this circumstance, when comparing the history

before us with the recent special works of anti-revolutionary writers who have obtained success in France, and in some instances deservedly; Granier de Cassagnac (Histoire des Girondins'), and the more solid, but not less one-sided, De Barante ('Histoire de la Convention'). We must add to these the work of M. Mortimer-Ternaux, which we have named at the head of this article. Although full of valuable and hitherto unknown or unappreciated materials, it comprises, at present, merely the history of Paris during the three summer months of 1792. Its chief merit consists in the large amount of original written evidence it has brought to light, M. Mortimer-Ternaux having had the patience to disinter and examine several hundred thousand documents and entries of the time, which in many cases correct the loose statements of contemporary narrative by irrefragable evidence. The impartial reader will no doubt often agree with the corrections which these authorities make in the facts, and the disproof which they administer to the theories, of our republican. But their accounts of each particular crisis and action seem mutilated by the want of suite' -the want of that connexion with things before and after, which he on his part traces with such clearness and ability. Conduct which seems absurd, or ignoble, or inconsequent, becomes often intelligible and in a sense justifiable by comparison with some other and distant series of facts.

We have in our time felt indignant with Barnave and the Jacobins of 1791, for their spiteful detraction of their own great leader Mirabeau, who had set in movement that Revolution by which they lived; we now know clearly, what they doubtless knew darkly, that Mirabeau had sold the Revolution and them to the Court, through ascertained brokers, for ready money. We have probably judged according to preconceived opinions that passage in the life of Robespierre, where, in the beginning of 1792, he sets himself with all his force to oppose the declaration of war against the Coalition; contrary to the views of all the various sections of the friends of liberty, and in contradiction also to the expressed and enthusiastic feeling of the country. We may have attributed it to personal jealousy of opposite leaders-to a sense of his own civil importance, which a state of war would nullify — to fear of the extinguishment of liberty by military chiefs, and so forth. We now know that whatever effect these secondary

*

This passage of history is treated with great force-allowing for his partisanship wherever Robespierre is concerned-by Louis Blanc, vol. vi. chap. 7.

causes may have had, Robespierre was in his own sense perfectly right, and the more impulsive liberals were deceived; that the Court and a portion of the constitutionalists actually entertained the intention of using that war, and the military force which it would call out, for the direct purpose of counterrevolution. We have all read, perhaps with admiration, but most of us certainly with some disgust, Vergniaud's famous apostrophe to his outraged, impotent sovereign, in daily peril of liberty and life:-Tu n'es plus rien pour ce peuple que tu as 'si lâchement trahi,' and so forth; and may have deemed it, as M. Ternaux would still apparently have us deem it, a piece of cruel rhetorical pedantry, a base attempt to earn popularity by appealing to the worst feelings of the mob. But Time, the great rectifier, has revealed to us what Vergniaud knew well enough in a general way, though he could not prove it as we can -that in that very month of July, 1792, the King's agent, Mallet du Pan, was haunting the doors of the ministers of Austria and Prussia at Frankfort, with the King's own propositions, inviting their masters to march to Paris in order to save the monarchy. And thus it is that in judging either a man or a cause by insulated facts or expressions occurring in the course of a career, one is almost inevitably unjust; and this is the peculiar injustice which the study of special portions of history, otherwise so attractive, is calculated to promote, the study of connected and elaborate histories calculated to

correct.

But if calculated to correct this error, it is unfortunately calculated to involve the mind of the reader in far more binding and durable error, unless he is fortified by that amount of scepticism which only the cooling of the passions and the slow acquisition of much knowledge produce in some, and which no discipline seems to produce in others. L'histoire de la Révolution,' Louis Blanc over and over again declares to us, 'est encore à faire.' The era for impartial history, that is, has not yet begun. And his own work certainly furnishes no exception. It is a remarkable achievement: but no more a history, in the higher sense, than those of Thiers, or Michelet, or Lacretelle, or Montgaillard. It is, from beginning to end, simply an advocate's defence of a client. The causes of revolution against conservatism, of the popular party against the Court, of the Jacobins against the Feuillans, the Mountain against the Gironde, Robespierre against Danton and against the Committees, and his disciples against the Thermidorians'these are the causes, or rather the successive phases of the same cause, to the establishment of which he devotes himself

assiduously, pertinaciously, without yielding and remorse, without a single looking back, with hardly a single deviation into the vice of candour. He may, indeed, blame and inveigh against the excesses of his friends; but he never admits that they were wrong as against their immediate opponents. In general, his object is sufficiently attained by a bold and lucid developement of the case which he wishes to make, honestly exposing its weak side but arguing with all his force in favour of its strong. But he is by no means above the more ordinary arts of the advocate. This is especially manifest where he has to deal with what in modern phrase we must call the 'sensation' portions of his subject. It is never his tendency to slur over, or to colour in undertone, the horrors which he has to depict: his own thorough love of humanity, his tendency to take on all occasions the weaker side, preserve him sufficiently from all such temptation. But having faithfully brought out the dark side of his picture, he hurries to dart in as many patches of light-often with very little authentication-as the subject will admit of. He does not soften the crimes of the revolutionary tribunals, of the chief agents of Terror, or of the 'men of September;' but he brings into as much prominence as he can their fits of human weakness, their acquittals, their connivances at escape. In the same style of pleading -and it is an employment of it which we more regretheroic acts, or personages, on the wrong side, are not indeed suppressed, but all that can be said in detraction of them is brought forward with a judicial air. Louis XVI. died a martyr, no doubt-in his own cause- but he lost his patience, was noisy, and struggled with his executioners. Charlotte Corday was a heroine, but she had a certain légèreté de 'caractère;' was by no means free from affectation, had a 'préoccupation de gloire toute payenne,' and was not particular about truth; and, though descended from the great Corneille, she was not perfect in her spelling. But the more effective

Nothing is more unjust, at times, than a minute dissection of words. Charlotte Corday admitted that she left Caen with the design of killing Marat. Nevertheless, she says in her letter to Barbaroux that Marat's threats, in his conversation with her, to have the Girondins sent to the scaffold, ont décidé de son sort.' Louis Blanc thinks it worth his while to quarrel with this contradiction as indicating a want of truthfulness. Who cannot reconcile the two statements in the mouth of a determined but impulsive girl? M. Vatel, in his curious republication of the 'Dossiers du Procès de Charlotte Corday,' seems to make out that this letter to Barbaroux was written at intervals and in fragments.

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