It must, I think, be admitted that, during, at all events, the first half of the reign of Louis XV., it was possible, by timely concessions, still to preserve the political institutions of France. Reforms there must have been; and reforms too of a large and uncompromising character. So far, however, as I am able to understand the real history of that period, I make no doubt that, if these had been granted in a frank and ungrudging spirit, everything could have been retained necessary for the only two objects at which government ought to aim, namely, the preservation of order, and the prevention of crime. But, by the middle of the reign of Louis XV., or, at all events, immediately afterwards, the state of affairs began to alter; and, in the course of a few years, the spirit of France became so democratic, that it was impossible even to delay a revolution, which, in the preceding generation, might have been altogether averted. This remarkable change is connected with that other change already noticed, by virtue of which, the French intellect began, about the same period, to direct its hostility against the state, rather than, as heretofore, against the church. As soon as this, which may be called the second epoch of the eighteenth century, had been fairly entered, the movement became irresistible. Event after event followed each other in rapid succession; each one linked to its antecedent, and the whole forming a tendency impossible to withstand. It was in vain that the government, yielding some points of real importance, adopted measures by which the church was controlled, the power of the clergy diminished, and even the order of the jesuits suppressed. It was in vain that the crown now called to its councils, for the first time, men imbued with the spirit of reform; men, like Turgot and Necker, whose wise and liberal proposals would, in calmer days, have stilled the agitation of the popular mind. It was in vain that promises were made to equalize the taxes, to redress some of the most crying grievances, to repeal some of the most obnoxious laws. It was even in vain that the states-general were summoned; and that thus, after the lapse of a hundred and seventy years, the people were again admitted to take part in the management of their own affairs. All these things were in vain; because the time for treaty had gone by, and the time for battle had come. The most liberal concessions that could possibly have been devised would have failed to avert that deadly struggle, which the course of preceding events made inevitable. For the measure of that age was now full. The upper classes, intoxicated by the long possession of power, had provoked the crisis; and it was needful that they should abide the issue. There was no time for mercy; there was no pause, no compassion, no sympathy. The only question that remained was, to see whether they who had raised the storm could ride the whirlwind; or, whether it was not rather likely that they should be the first victims of that frightful hurricane, in which, for a moment, laws, religion, morals, all perished, the lowest vestiges of humanity were effaced, and the civilization of France not only submerged, but, as it then appeared, irretrievably ruined.
To ascertain the successive changes of this, the second epoch of the eighteenth century, is an undertaking full of difficulty; not only on account of the rapidity with which the events occurred, but also on account of their extreme complication, and of the way in which they acted and reacted upon each other. The materials, however, for such an inquiry are very numerous; and, as they consist of evidence supplied by all classes and all interests, it has appeared to me possible to reconstruct the history of that time, according to the only manner in which history deserves to be studied; that is to say, according to the order of its social and intellectual development. In the seventh chapter of the present volume, I shall, therefore, attempt to trace the antecedents of the French Revolution during that remarkable period, in which the hostility of men, slackening in regard to the abuses of the church, was, for the first time, turned against the abuses of the state. But, before entering into this, which may be distinguished as the political epoch of the eighteenth century, it will be necessary, according to the plan which I have sketched, to examine the changes that occurred in the method of writing history, and to indicate the way in which those changes were affected by the tendencies of the earlier, or, as it may be termed, the ecclesiastical epoch. In this manner, we shall the more easily understand the activity of that prodigious movement which led to the French Revolution; because we shall see that it not only affected the opinions of men in regard to what was passing under their eyes, but that it also biased their speculative views in regard to the events of preceding ages; and thus gave rise to that new school of historical literature, the formation of which is by no means the least of the many benefits which we owe to the great thinkers of the eighteenth century.
CHAPTER VI
STATE OF HISTORICAL LITERATURE IN FRANCE FROM THE END OF THE SIXTEENTH TO THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
It may be easily supposed, that those vast movements in the intellect of France, which I have just traced, could not fail to produce a great change in the method of writing history. That bold spirit with which men were beginning to estimate the transactions of their own time, was sure to influence their opinions respecting those of a former age. In this, as in every branch of knowledge, the first innovation consisted in recognizing the necessity of doubting what had hitherto been believed; and this feeling, when once established, went on increasing, destroying at each step some of those monstrous absurdities by which, as we have seen, even the best histories were disfigured. The germs of the reform may be discerned in the fourteenth century, though the reform itself did not begin until late in the sixteenth century. During the seventeenth century, it advanced somewhat slowly; but in the eighteenth century it received a sudden accession of strength, and, in France in particular, it was hastened by that fearless and inquisitive spirit which characterized the age, and which, purging history of innumerable follies, raised its standard, and conferred on it a dignity hitherto unknown. The rise of historical scepticism, and the extent to which it spread, do indeed form such curious features in the annals of the European intellect, as to make it surprising that no one should have attempted to examine a movement to which a great department of modern literature owes its most valuable peculiarities. In the present chapter, I hope to supply this deficiency so far as France is concerned; and I shall endeavour to mark the different steps by which the progress was effected, in order that, by knowing the circumstances most favourable to the study of history, we may with the greater ease inquire into the probability of its future improvement.
There is, in reference to this subject, a preliminary consideration well worthy of notice. This is, that men seem always to have begun to doubt in matters of religion, before they ventured to do so in matters of history. It might have been expected that the reproaches, and, in a superstitious age, the dangers, to which heresy is exposed, would have intimidated inquirers, and would have induced them to prefer the safer path of directing their scepticism upon questions of literary speculation. Such, however, is by no means the course which the human mind has adopted. In an early stage of society, when the clergy had universal influence, a belief in the unpardonable criminality of religious error is so deeply rooted, that it engrosses the attention of all; it forces every one who thinks, to concentrate upon theology his reflections and his doubts, and it leaves no leisure for topics which are conceived to be of inferior importance.807 Hence, during many centuries, the subtlest intellects of Europe exhausted their strength on the rights and dogmas of Christianity; and while upon these matters they often showed the greatest ability, they, upon other subjects, and especially upon history, displayed that infantine credulity, of which I have already given several examples.
But when, in the progress of society, its theological element begins to decay, the ardour with which religious disputes were once conducted becomes sensibly weakened. The most advanced intellects are the first to feel the growing indifference, and, therefore, they are also the first to scrutinize real events with that inquisitive eye which their predecessors had reserved for religious speculations. This is a great turning-point in the history of every civilized nation. From this moment theological heresies become less frequent,808 and literary heresies become more common. From this moment the spirit of inquiry and of doubt fastens itself upon every department of knowledge, and begins that great career of conquest, in which by every succeeding discovery the power and dignity of man are increased, while at the same time most of his opinions are disturbed, and many of them are destroyed: until, in the march of this vast but noiseless revolution, the stream of tradition is, as it were, interrupted, the influence of ancient authority is subverted, and the human mind, waxing in strength, learns to rely upon its own resources, and to throw off incumbrances by which the freedom of its movements had long been impaired.
The application of these remarks to the history of France, will enable us to explain some interesting phenomena in the literature of that country. During the whole of the Middle Ages, and I may say till the end of the sixteenth century, France, though fertile in annalists and chroniclers, had not produced a single historian, because she had not produced a single man who presumed to doubt what was generally believed. Indeed, until the publication of Du Haillan's history of the kings of France, no one had even attempted a critical digest of the materials which were known to be extant. This work appeared in 1576;809 and the author, at the conclusion of his labours, could not disguise the pride which he felt at having accomplished so great an undertaking. In his dedication to the king he says, ‘I am, sire, the first of all the French who have written the history of France, and, in a polite language, shown the grandeur and dignity of our kings; for before there was nothing but the old rubbish of chronicles which spoke of them.’ He adds in the preface: ‘Only I will say, without presumption and boasting, that I have done a thing which had not been done before, or seen by any of our nation, and have given to the history of France a dress it never appeared in before.’810 Nor were these the idle boasts of an obscure man. His work went through numerous editions; was translated into Latin, and was reprinted in foreign countries. He himself was looked upon as one of the glories of the French nation, and was rewarded by the favour of the king, who conferred on him the office of secretary of finance.811 From his work, we may, therefore, gain some notion of what was then the received standard of historical literature; and with this view, it is natural to inquire what the materials were which he chiefly employed. About sixty years earlier, an Italian named Paulus Emilius had published a gossiping compilation on the ‘Actions of the French.’812 This book, which is full of extravagant fables, was taken by Du Haillan as the basis of his famous history of the kings of France; and from it he unhesitatingly copies those idle stories which Emilius loved to relate. This will give us some idea of the credulity of a writer, who was reckoned by his contemporaries to be, beyond all comparison, the greatest historian France had produced. But this is not all. Du Haillan, not content with borrowing from his predecessor everything that was most incredible, gratifies his passion for the marvellous by some circumstances of his own invention. He begins his history with a long account of a council which, he says, was held by the celebrated Pharamond, in order to determine whether the French should be governed by a monarchy or by an aristocracy. It is, indeed, doubtful if any such person as Pharamond ever existed; and it is certain that, if he did exist, all the materials had long perished from which an opinion could be formed respecting him.813 But Du Haillan, regardless of these little difficulties, gives us the fullest information touching the great chieftain; and, as if determined to tax to the utmost the credulity of his readers, mentions, as members of the council of Pharamond, two persons, Charamond and Quadrek, whose very names are invented by the historian.814
Such was the state of historical literature in France early in the reign of Henry III. A great change was, however, at hand. The remarkable intellectual progress made by the French towards the close of the sixteenth century was, as I have shown, preceded by that scepticism which appears to be its necessary precursor. The spirit of doubt, which had begun with religion, was communicated to literature. The impulse was immediately felt in every department of knowledge, and now it was that history first emerged from a debasement in which it had for centuries been sunk. On this subject a mere statement of dates may be of service to those persons who, from a dislike to general reasoning, would otherwise deny the connexion which I wish to establish. In 1588 was published the first sceptical book ever written in the French language.815 In 1598, the French government, for the first time, ventured upon a great public act of religious toleration. In 1604, De Thou published that celebrated work, which is allowed by all critics to be the first great history composed by a Frenchman.816 And at the very moment when these things were passing, another eminent Frenchman, the illustrious Sully,817 was collecting the materials for his historical work, which, though hardly equal to that of De Thou, comes immediately after it in ability, in importance, and in reputation. Nor can we fail to remark, that both these great historians, who left all their predecessors immeasurably behind them, were the confidential ministers and intimate friends of Henry IV., the first king of France whose memory is stained by the imputation of heresy, and the first who dared to change his religion, not in consequence of any theological arguments, but on the broad and notorious ground of political expediency.818
But it was not merely over such eminent historians as these that the sceptical spirit displayed its influence. The movement was now becoming sufficiently active to leave its marks in the writings of far inferior men. There were two particulars in which the credulity of the earlier historians was very striking. These consisted in the uncritical manner in which, by blindly copying their predecessors, they confused the dates of different events; and in the readiness with which they believed the most improbable statements, upon imperfect evidence, and often upon no evidence at all. It is surely a singular proof of that intellectual progress which I am endeavouring to trace, that, within a very few years, both these sources of error were removed. In 1597, Serres was appointed historiographer of France; and, in the same year, he published his history of that country.819 In this work, he insists upon the necessity of carefully recording the date of each event; and the example, which he first set, has, since his time, been generally followed.820 The importance of this change will be willingly acknowledged by those who are aware of the confusion into which history has been thrown by the earlier writers having neglected, what now seems, so obvious a precaution. Scarcely had this innovation been established, when it was followed, in the same country, by another of still greater moment. This was the appearance, in 1621, of a history of France, by Scipio Dupleix; in which, for the first time, the evidence for historical facts was published with the facts themselves.821 It is needless to insist upon the utility of a step which, more than any other, has taught historians to be industrious in collecting their authorities, and careful in scrutinizing them.822 To this may be added, that Dupleix was also the first Frenchman who ventured to publish a system of philosophy in his own language.823 It is true, that the system itself is intrinsically of little value;824 but, at the time it appeared, it was an unprecedented, and, on that account, a profane attempt, to unfold the mysteries of philosophy in the vulgar speech; and, in this point of view, supplies evidence of the increasing diffusion of a spirit bolder and more inquisitive than any formerly known. It is not, therefore, surprising, that, almost at the same moment, there should be made, in the same country, the first systematic attempt at historical scepticism. The system of philosophy by Dupleix appeared in 1602; and in 1599, La Popelinière published at Paris what he calls the History of Histories, in which he criticizes historians themselves, and examines their works with that sceptical spirit, to which his own age was deeply indebted.825 This able man was also the author of a Sketch of the New History of the French; containing a formal refutation of that fable, so dear to the early historians, according to which the monarchy of France was founded by Francus, who arrived in Gaul after the conclusion of the siege of Troy.826
It would be useless to collect all the instances in which this advancing spirit of scepticism now began to purge history of its falsehoods. I will only mention two or three more of those which have occurred in my reading. In 1614, De Rubis published at Lyons a work on the European monarchies; in which he not only attacks the long-established belief respecting the descent from Francus, but boldly asserts, that the Franks owe their name to their ancient liberties.827 In 1620, Gomberville, in a dissertation on history, refutes many of those idle stories respecting the antiquity of the French, which had been universally received until his time.828 And, in 1630, Berthault published at Paris the ‘French Floras,’ in which he completely upsets the old method; since he lays it down as a fundamental principle, that the origin of the French must only be sought for in those countries where they were found by the Romans.829
All these, and similar productions, were, however, entirely eclipsed by Mezeray's History of France; the first volume of which was published in 1643, and the last in 1651.830 It is, perhaps, hardly fair to his predecessors, to call him the first general historian of France;831 but there can be no doubt that his work is greatly superior to any that had yet been seen. The style of Mezeray is admirably clear and vigorous, rising, at times, to considerable eloquence. Besides this, he has two other merits much more important. These are, an indisposition to believe strange things, merely because they have hitherto been believed; and an inclination to take the side of the people, rather than that of their rulers.832 Of these principles, the first was too common among the ablest Frenchmen of that time to excite much attention.833 But the other principle enabled Mezeray to advance an important step before all his contemporaries. He was the first Frenchman who, in a great historical work, threw off that superstitious reverence for royalty which had long troubled the minds of his countrymen, and which, indeed, continued to haunt them for another century. As a necessary consequence, he was also the first who saw that a history, to be of real value, must be a history, not only of kings, but of nations. A steady perception of this principle led him to incorporate into his book matters which, before his time, no one cared to study. He communicates all the information he could collect respecting the taxes which the people had paid; the sufferings they had undergone from the gripping hands of their governors; their manners, their comforts, even the state of the towns which they inhabited; in a word, what affected the interests of the French people, as well as what affected the interests of the French monarchy.834 These were the subjects which Mezeray preferred to insignificant details respecting the pomp of courts and the lives of kings. These were the large and comprehensive matters on which he loved to dwell, and on which he expatiated; not, indeed, with so much fulness as we could desire, but still with a spirit and an accuracy which entitles him to the honour of being the greatest historian France produced before the eighteenth century.
This was, in many respects, the most important change which had yet been effected in the manner of writing history. If the plan begun by Mezeray had been completed by his successors, we should possess materials, the absence of which no modern researches can possibly compensate. Some things, indeed, we should, in that case, have lost. We should know less than we now know of courts and of camps. We should have heard less of the peerless beauty of French queens, and of the dignified presence of French kings. We might even have missed some of the links of that evidence by which the genealogies of princes and nobles are ascertained, and the study of which delights the curiosity of antiquaries and heralds. But, on the other hand, we should have been able to examine the state of the French people during the latter half of the seventeenth century; while, as things now stand, our knowledge of them, in that most important period, is inferior in accuracy and in extent to the knowledge we possess of some of the most barbarous tribes of the earth.835 If the example of Mezeray had been followed, with such additional resources as the progress of affairs would have supplied, we should not only have the means of minutely tracing the growth of a great and civilised nation, but we should have materials that would suggest or verify those original principles, the discovery of which constitutes the real use of history.
But this was not to be. Unhappily for the interests of knowledge, the march of French civilization was, at this period, suddenly checked. Soon after the middle of the seventeenth century, that lamentable change took place in France, which gave a new turn to the destinies of the nation. The reaction which the spirit of inquiry underwent, and the social and intellectual circumstances which, by bringing the Fronde to a premature close, prepared the way for Louis XIV., have been described in a former part of this volume, where I have attempted to indicate the general effects of the disastrous movement. It now remains for me to point out how this retrogressive tendency opposed obstacles to the improvement of historical literature, and prevented authors, not only from relating with honesty what was passing around them, but also from understanding events which had occurred before their time.
The most superficial students of French literature must be struck by the dearth of historians during that long period in which Louis XIV. held the reins of government.836 To this, the personal peculiarities of the king greatly contributed. His education had been shamefully neglected; and as he never had the energy to repair its deficiencies, he all his life remained ignorant of many things with which even princes are usually familiar.837 Of the course of past events he knew literally nothing, and he took no interest in any history except the history of his own exploits. Among a free people, this indifference on the part of the sovereign could never have produced injurious results; indeed, as we have already seen, the absence of royal patronage is, in a highly civilized country, the most favourable condition of literature. But at the accession of Louis XIV. the liberties of the French were still too young, and the habits of independent thought too recent, to enable them to bear up against that combination of the crown and the church, which was directed against them. The French, becoming every day more servile, at length sunk so low, that, by the end of the seventeenth century, they seemed to have lost even the wish of resistance. The king, meeting no opposition, endeavoured to exercise over the intellect of the country an authority equal to that with which he conducted its government.838 In all the great questions of religion and of politics, the spirit of inquiry was stifled, and no man was allowed to express an opinion unfavourable to the existing state of things. As the king was willing to endow literature, he naturally thought that he had a right to its services. Authors, who were fed by his hand, were not to raise their voices against his policy. They received his wages, and they were bound to do the bidding of him who paid them. When Louis assumed the government, Mezeray was still living; though I need hardly say that his great work was published before this system of protection and patronage came into play. The treatment to which he, the great historian of France, was now subjected, was a specimen of the new arrangement. He received from the crown a pension of four thousand francs; but when he, in 1668, published an abridgment of his History,839 it was intimated to him that some remarks upon the tendency of taxation were likely to cause offence in high quarters. As, however, it was soon found that Mezeray was too honest and too fearless to retract what he had written, it was determined to have recourse to intimidation, and half of his pension was taken from him.840 But as this did not produce a proper effect, another order was issued, which deprived him of the remaining half; and thus early, in this bad reign, there was set an example of punishing a man for writing with honesty upon a subject in which, of all others, honesty is the first essential.841
Such conduct as this showed what historians were to expect from the government of Louis XIV. Several years later, the king took another opportunity of displaying the same spirit. Fénelon had been appointed preceptor to the grandson of Louis, whose early vices his firmness and judgment did much to repress.842 But a single circumstance was thought sufficient to outweigh the immense service which Fénelon thus rendered to the royal family, and, if his pupil had come to the throne, would have rendered prospectively to the whole of France. His celebrated romance, Telemachus, was published in 1699, as it appears, without his consent.843 The king suspected that, under the guise of a fiction, Fénelon intended to reflect on the conduct of government. It was in vain that the author denied so dangerous an imputation. The indignation of the king was not to be appeased. He banished Fénelon from the court; and would never again admit to his presence a man whom he suspected of even insinuating a criticism upon the measures adopted by the administration of the country.844
If the king could, on mere suspicion, thus treat a great writer, who had the rank of an archbishop and the reputation of a saint, it was not likely that he would deal more tenderly with inferior men. In 1681, the Abbé Primi, an Italian, then residing at Paris, was induced to write a history of Louis XIV. The king, delighted with the idea of perpetuating his own fame, conferred several rewards upon the author: and arrangements were made that the work should be composed in Italian, and immediately translated into French. But when the history appeared, there were found in it some circumstances which it was thought ought not to have been disclosed. On this account, Louis caused the book to be suppressed, the papers of the author to be seized, and the author himself to be thrown into the Bastille.845
Those, indeed, were dangerous times for independent men; times when no writer on politics or religion was safe, unless he followed the fashion of the day, and defended the opinions of the court and the church. The king, who had an insatiable thirst for what he called glory,846 laboured to degrade contemporary historians into mere chroniclers of his own achievements. He ordered Racine and Boileau to write an account of his reign; he settled a pension upon them, and he promised to supply them with the necessary materials.847 But even Racine and Boileau, poets though they were, knew that they would fail in satisfying his morbid vanity; they, therefore, received the pension, but omitted to compose the work for which the pension was conferred. So notorious was the unwillingness of able men to meddle with history, that it was thought advisable to beat up literary recruits from foreign countries. The case of the Abbé Primi has just been mentioned; he was an Italian, and only one year later a similar offer was made to an Englishman. In 1683, Burnet visited France, and was given to understand that he might receive a pension, and that he might even enjoy the honour of conversing with Louis himself, provided he would write a history of the royal affairs; such history, it was carefully added, being on the ‘side’ of the French king.848
Under such circumstances as these, it is no wonder that history, so far as its great essentials are concerned, should have rapidly declined during the power of Louis XIV. It became, as some think, more elegant; but it certainly became more feeble. The language in which it was composed was worked with great care, the periods neatly arranged, the epithets soft and harmonious. For that was a polite and obsequious age, full of reverence, of duty, and of admiration. In history, as it was then written, every king was a hero, and every bishop was a saint. All unpleasant truths were suppressed; nothing harsh or unkind was to be told. These docile and submissive sentiments being expressed in an easy and flowing style, gave to history that air of refinement, that gentle, unobtrusive gait, which made it popular with the classes that it flattered. But even so, while its form was polished, its life was extinct. All its independence was gone, all its honesty, all its boldness. The noblest and the most difficult department of knowledge, the study of the movements of the human race, was abandoned to every timid and creeping intellect that cared to cultivate it. There was Boulainvilliers, and Daniel, and Maimburg, and Varillas, and Vertot, and numerous others, who in the reign of Louis XIV. were believed to be historians; but whose histories have scarcely any merit, except that of enabling us to appreciate the period in which such productions were admired, and the system of which they were the representatives.